Call-Up
Thud—!
With a heavy crack, the ball ricocheted off the woodwork and spun out past the line.
Yohan clicked his tongue in frustration at the sight.
He was the type to hold back on shooting. He only pulled the trigger on clear-cut chances, or when his confidence was surging — and the strike he'd just unleashed fell closer to the latter. A curling effort aimed at the far post. The spin had been exquisite, the kind of ball that should have nestled into the keeper's unreachable zone. Instead, it slammed into the upright.
Moments like these left him a little sore — at himself, and at the merciless goal frame.
"Be a little calmer next time!"
Yohan answered the Primavera coach with a nod, then threw himself back into training, sweat pouring off him as he prepared for the next match.
Here, Yohan was enormously popular. His selfless play, bright personality, and natural warmth won him affection from nearly every teammate — including the First Team players who occasionally dropped down for rehab.
"Gio! Drink this."
Among them, AS Roma's Uruguayan left-back Miguel Perez looked after Yohan like a little brother. With a face full of deep, sunken scars that immediately conjured the image of a bandit, the rough-looking man still brought two flasks of his beloved mate tea from home and pressed them on Yohan without fail.
"Mate tea again?"
"Yeah. Kids your age go for those sweet fizzy drinks — then they run out of gas and become useless. You drink this stuff and you'll still have legs in stoppage time. Got it?"
"But it's so bitter."
"Anything good for you usually is."
"Is that so? Do you make this yourself?"
"You just steep it. Nothing to it. Run out and tell me — I'll have the wife send more."
"Okay. Thank you."
"Good. I take this good care of you, so when you go back to that convent, put in a word with God for me. Ask for a blessing or something."
"I'm not religious, though."
"When someone says that, you're supposed to just go along with it, you little punk."
"Ah — right. I'll pray for a blessing for you."
"Damn it. Too late, you brat."
Yohan was fifteen. Old enough that pure childish innocence no longer fit, yet young enough that he still knew everything a kid his age was supposed to know. Most teenagers at this stage had curses hanging off their lips and rode a mild emotional instability — there was a reason they called it the storm-and-stress years. Yohan was living through that period too. The secondary sexual characteristics that had begun years earlier still hadn't fully settled, and his moods swung hard.
Even so, he carried the same simple, openhearted nature he'd had as an elementary schooler. Outwardly and inwardly alike, he looked at the world with optimism.
Except when they played Lazio.
Thud—!
Whistle—!
"Oh, come on...!!"
The next day. Mid-match, Yohan was shoved hard off the ball. He checked that it had gone out of play, then locked eyes on the player who'd just body-checked him.
"What? Got a problem?"
The Lazio defender strode straight at him. The gap in size and height was considerable — enough to feel oppressive — but Yohan only furrowed his brow and held the stare without so much as a blink.
"That was just violence...! Are you kidding me?"
"I put in a proper challenge and you're whining like that? What a load of crap, you idiot."
"What? Say that again."
Just as the temperature was about to boil over, Miguel barged in. A Lazio senior player, also down for rehab, stepped in alongside him.
"Cool it and back off. And you — watch your mouth."
"Things get heated in a match. That's normal. But singling a kid out like that is just cheap, isn't it?"
"Don't push it."
"I was about to say the same thing."
Tweet—! Tweet-tweet!
The two men growled just enough to shield their own while the referee finally sprinted over, then peeled Yohan and the Lazio defender apart without another word. Against Lazio, Miguel was usually the first to charge in alongside Ricci — but in the Primavera, at least, he showed a measure of adult restraint. In the First Team he would have been swearing up a storm and throwing hands. Here, as a senior player in a youth match, letting himself get too worked up would have been a failure of example, so he had no intention of prolonging the argument. The Lazio senior felt the same.
Yohan, who'd drawn a verbal warning for the unnecessary exchange, shook his head as he jogged back into position. He couldn't understand why the Lazio player hadn't been booked. Anyone could see the challenge had been excessive — a yellow card at minimum. That was the Roma side's view, at least. The officials saw it differently. From a neutral third-party perspective, it had been a legitimate physical duel. Yohan simply grew a little too sensitive whenever Lazio was involved, and that made everything feel over the line.
Miguel ruffled the hair of the boy still wearing a face full of grievance.
"If you're pissed off, score a goal. Or at least get an assist."
"That's the plan."
"You little... you're cute, you know that?"
In the six years since joining Roma, Yohan's competitive fire toward Lazio had risen as high as it could go. Every meeting left him aching in at least two places, and the matches themselves were fiercer than anything else on the calendar — so of course it had.
Whistle—!
Play resumed. Yohan cooled the boiling in his gut, and about ten minutes later a chance opened up and his eyes lit. The Lazio fullback had stepped up to deal with a Roma midfielder surging down the flank, cracking a gap in the defensive line. Yohan didn't miss it — he tore straight into the open space.
Thump—!
The midfielder spotted the run and lofted the ball through —
Thok.
— but the pass was imprecise and glanced off a Lazio defender's head.
Yohan didn't despair. The headed clearance hadn't gone forward; it had dribbled slightly to the side. Already threading the needle between Lazio's back line, Yohan snapped his direction, took the touch —
BOOM—!
— and struck the ball as it rose a fraction off the turf and began to drop, driving through it with the technique drilled into him across countless training sessions.
Whump—!
Clean contact. The ball rocketed out like a cannon shot and bulged the net. A beautiful strike — so fast the keeper never had a chance to react, and precise enough to find the bottom corner. Powered by the natural whip of his ankle, Yohan had buried a goal that could only be called thunderous. He roared and celebrated with his teammates, then glanced over at the defender he'd clashed with earlier.
"What are you doing?! You should've closed the angle!"
The man's face was rotten as he tore into his own teammates. Yohan's mood lifted. He barely managed to smother the laughter bubbling up as he jogged back across the halfway line into his own half.
"Gio."
After the match, Miguel — a towel draped over a chest thick with hair — approached the boy still glowing from his winner.
"Yes?"
"About that argument earlier."
"Ah — right. Did I lose my temper a bit?"
"That's not what I'm talking about. I'm telling you that when you face scumbags like Lazio, you can't talk all pure and innocent like that."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you need to start spitting curses. Want an example?"
"Huh? Me?"
"'Your eyes stuck on the back of your head, you piece of shit? Can't play football so you wanna scrap instead, you crippled bastard...' Start light like that, then gradually turn up the heat. The world's full of good insults. Mix and match until the other guy wants to crawl out of his own skin. That's how it's done."
Yohan's mouth fell open. The words coming out of Miguel were so vicious he couldn't even have imagined them himself.
"I... I really can't do that."
"There are times when you need it. Eventually you'll start enjoying watching the other guy shake. And didn't you say you wanted to be captain at Roma someday?"
"Yes."
"A captain has to be able to swear when the moment calls for it. If you're nothing but nice, you're not captain material. Your own team and the other side will both start looking at you like a soft touch. Oh — and one more thing. When you're going at someone, you can use whatever you want, but you never bring up their parents. That's an unwritten rule."
"...I hadn't even thought about that."
"Good enough. You might not get what I'm saying right now, but once you debut and the years pile up, you'll feel it deep."
Yohan shuddered at the mere thought of those rough curses leaving his own mouth. He had no desire for any of it now — but he thought he understood what Miguel was driving at. The delivery had been a little extreme, yet the meaning of the advice was clear: leadership didn't come from ability alone.
Yohan tucked Miguel's words away in his chest.
Not long after the Lazio match, the club measured Yohan's height. He nodded with quiet satisfaction.
One seventy-six...
Yohan stood at 176 centimeters — roughly four centimeters taller than the year before. Roma, which had fretted for a stretch over how slight he was within the squad, broke into broad smiles once it became clear his growth still had room to run.
Keeping a close eye on him, the club made a decision on his status in April, as the season wound down, and asked Miguel to deliver the news.
Miguel, out early as always to prepare for training, clapped Yohan hard on the back.
"Ah — you're here?"
"Yeah."
"You're back tomorrow, right?"
"That's right."
"I'll pray for a blessing for you."
"You little... your social skills are improving. You're moving over with me starting tomorrow."
"Sorry? Moving over — what does that mean?"
"It means you come with me when I go back up."
There was only one place a First Team player headed after regaining match fitness and returning. Roma had decided to call Yohan up — so he could train alongside the First Team.
"...Are you serious?"
"Yeah, you punk."
Simone had mentioned First Team training before, but hearing it for real left Yohan unable to form a proper thought. He was that happy. Breaking through the Primavera gate and stepping up to the First Team — that was what it meant.
"Look at you, about to die of joy."
Miguel laughed heartily at the boy who couldn't hide his face. And Yohan, practically bouncing with delight, clenched his fists and poured fresh fuel onto the competitive fire already burning hot inside him.
One last step remained.
Clear that, and he would debut.
He was nothing but grateful that Roma thought so highly of him. He vowed to kill himself working to live up to that expectation.