Past and Present, Present and Future
The whistle blew to end the first half, and the cameras found the players of the half.
The spotlight fell on striker Raphael di Guidotti, who had scored the opener, and on Lorenzo, who had added the second.
And as Yohan headed down the tunnel, the cameras lingered on him longer than he might have expected.
Watching him disappear into the passageway, surrounded by teammates who doted on him, Haley stared at her personal screen with a look of mild surprise.
Sweat-soaked and flushed, he looked nothing like the boy she knew.
You idiot. Some turtle you are.
She had been jabbing at him in her head for a while now — quiet, furtive little jabs, the way a timid nerd might curse someone under their breath. The same habit her little brother Aiden had, muttering insults only he could hear whenever someone intimidating stood in front of him.
Blood, after all, ran true.
While she was busy with that, a few tactical adjustments were taking shape inside the locker room.
Along with the manager's warning not to get complacent and to stay sharp defensively, Rich — who had been operating as the playmaker — was ordered to drop deeper and prioritize shielding the back line.
"If they switch to a wide-focused approach, the two in the middle open up and Enzo drops in underneath. Rafa covers Enzo's spot, and from there we play through the post."
"Yes, sir."
"Win your aerial duels. Sassuolo are going to push higher from here. That means our attacks will lean on long balls — and if we keep losing the first contact the way we did in the first half, we're finished."
After laying into their first-half performance, the manager went on about Sassuolo's yellow-card situation and their movement patterns. When the second half approached, he handed the team talk over to Lorenzo.
"Don't switch off. We keep this lead until the final whistle. Stay focused!"
The Roma players filed back through the tunnel.
Fans packed along both railings roared their support, and Yohan felt the energy surge through him as he stepped onto the pitch and took up his position between the halfway line and the box.
It almost felt like he had started the match.
Silently thanking Manager Ferraro for the chance, Yohan cleared his mind the moment the whistle sounded.
Peeeeeep—!
Once both sides were set, the second half began.
In the locker room, Ferraro had not designated anyone as the primary ball distributor. With Rich now focused on protecting the back four, the formation naturally placed the keys to the attack in Lorenzo's hands. But age had dulled his engine, and the role drifted elsewhere of its own accord.
It drifted to Yohan.
Yohan and his third-line partner were covering enormous ground through the middle, darting between the flanks and the center, serving as the connective tissue of every passing sequence. Early in the second half the ball was shared between them almost evenly.
But Yohan's partner was a defensive specialist — strong at covering every zone, weaker when it came to build-up and distribution. The ball gravitated, inevitably, toward the player who could actually use it.
Toward Yohan.
Thump—!
Good.
With his wide vision and sharp decision-making, Yohan was threading quality passes into every corner of the pitch. Dangerous counterattacks kept materializing, and it became inevitable that he would become the fulcrum of Roma's attack.
"This kid's unreal."
"Where did he come from? Primavera, they said? Wait — I think I've heard of him."
"Yohan Lee? Can we just call him Giovanni Lee?"
The crowd was already captivated by his flashes of brilliance. He still looked raw at times, and he lost nearly every physical duel — but the talent more than compensated.
His first touch stood out most of all. Knowing he couldn't win a shoulder-to-shoulder battle, he would receive the ball and, in a single touch, redirect it into open space, slipping free of the press. Sassuolo's players kept guessing wrong and getting left behind.
His passing was just as sharp. The accuracy of his long balls, the anticipation behind them — both well above the standard — and those wide switches that opened the pitch were a thing of beauty. Neither too low nor too high, dropping perfectly for the receiver. The kind of pass that drew involuntary gasps from the stands.
There was something of Lorenzo in the way he played, and the crowd began etching the name Yohan into memory.
Of course, the rough edges still showed. Clumsy moments, unfinished ideas. But for a kid his age, the performance already deserved every bit of praise it was getting. Fans erupted whenever he got on the ball, and even when a dribble broke down they roared encouragement. When a key pass found its mark, the nearest sections of the stands unleashed every superlative they had — monster, genius, the works. And if a Sassuolo player so much as clipped him with a tackle or a foul, those same fans lost their minds, screaming abuse at the offender.
This feels good…
The running track between the stands and the pitch put enough distance between them that Yohan couldn't make out the words. But he knew they were cheering for him, and that was enough.
He had always understood the home advantage in theory. Living it was something else entirely — more powerful than he had expected. A faint smile touched his lips as he sprayed the ball in every direction.
Even so, Roma couldn't find a third against Sassuolo's high line. The visitors were burning through their stamina to recover quickly, snuffing out chances before they fully formed. And Roma's two forwards were finishing with a despairing lack of composure — every shot sailing wide or over.
Then the bad news arrived.
Thuuump! Thwack—!
Sassuolo scored the equalizer — no, the pull-back goal. They carved open a deep-sitting defensive line with a sequence of combination play so fluid it looked like something a big-club side had been rehearsing for years, and the net bulged.
It was the kind of goal that, even from the opposition, made the eyes light up.
Yohan let out an audible gasp of admiration — and Miguel smacked him across the back of the head.
"Hey, you little bastard. Planning to get their autographs next?"
"S-sorry."
From that goal onward, the atmosphere shifted.
The midfield battle that had been evenly contested was swallowed whole by Sassuolo, and Roma's attacking sequences fell apart. The visitors' already high defensive line began pressing aggressively into the middle third, intercepting pass after pass. The match tilted into something close to half-court siege.
Yohan felt it too. The pressure had become crushing.
Two-nil and two-one felt completely different to the players living them. The chasing side almost always found a second wind — and Sassuolo had found theirs. Falling behind at home, to a club of lesser stature no less, was a matter of pride. Every Sassuolo player was on fire, and Roma could do little more than scramble to contain the onslaught.
About twenty-five minutes remained.
That was when Manager Ferraro played his counterpunch.
There will be a substitution. Number 19…
He pulled the lead striker and pushed Guidotti up as the lone target man, tasking him with post play and dummy runs to drag defenders out of position. Then he moved the attack-minded Miguel into a wing-forward role and slotted the substitute into Miguel's old spot. One of the high-work-rate central midfielders was pushed forward to right wing-forward. Rich's defensive responsibilities were dialed way back, and he was paired with Yohan — reshaping the side into a 4-2-3-1.
The final instruction was clear: attack through the triangle of Yohan on the left of midfield, Miguel at left wing-forward, and Lorenzo as the attacking midfielder — the three players currently showing the sharpest edge.
The beauty of Italian football had always been its mid-match tactical fluidity. In a country that was a hotbed of systems and schemes, those shifts came thick and fast. Even a manager as straightforward as Ferraro was only considered stubborn by Italian standards — set against other leagues, he was a chameleon with more plans than most.
And this particular judgment call paid off immediately.
From Sassuolo's perspective, the most dangerous sector of the pitch — the left side — suddenly became devastating.
Lorenzo, the linchpin of the new shape, was past his physical prime. But his passing remained intact, and his reading of the game — forged from years of experience and raw talent — still left most players looking ordinary. He had the technique; his body simply couldn't keep up. Yohan covered that gap.
Pushing higher in attack, Yohan linked with Lorenzo and Rich, easing the pressure Sassuolo's defense poured onto the veteran and freeing Miguel to operate. Even Guidotti was executing his dummy runs with precision, prying open cracks in Sassuolo's shape.
The match was beginning to tilt back.
"Hah… hah…"
The nerves of a first-team appearance, the pressure to perform — Yohan had mismanaged his energy badly enough that the taste of iron filled his mouth. But he could feel them pushing the opposition back, and that was enough. He wrung every last drop of strength from his body and kept covering ground.
And that effort was about to be rewarded.
Tap, tap—.
Reading Guidotti's movement, tracking Miguel's position, sweeping his eyes across the field — Yohan spotted a seam in Sassuolo's shape.
This… this might work…
The opposing fullback had stepped out to mark Miguel, leaving space between the lines. A run into that pocket could create something. And Yohan wasn't the only one who had seen it — Lorenzo would have seen it too.
Age might have slowed him, but class didn't vanish. Lorenzo sat near the absolute peak of that class. There was no way he had missed it.
Trusting that, Yohan peeled off to Lorenzo's left and surged into the opposition half.
Thock—!
Just as Yohan had expected, Lorenzo already knew the space was there. The moment Yohan drove between the Sassuolo lines, Lorenzo flicked the underside of the ball with his toe, lofting a soft, precise pass that cleared the nearest defender's head by inches and dropped short.
Tap.
Yohan cushioned it with a light touch of his left foot, settling it in front of him, then sucked in a sharp breath and pushed the ball forward. He took a gathering step, ready to shoot — but Sassuolo's players were no fools.
Thud—!
"Ghk…!"
A solid shoulder drove into his line of sight, a heavy, blunt force through his upper body. Yohan's face twisted.
He had been losing every physical contest all match. This one would be no different.
Until now he had avoided the contact, relying on craft to slip free. But this time something harder sat in him — a resolve that said he had to win it somehow.
Because the man who had just played him the ball was Lorenzo.
"Nngh…!"
Gritting his teeth with a raw, strained sound, Yohan somehow dragged his displaced body back under control. The chance was already gone, but his eyes burned with pure stubbornness as he contested the ball with the opponent who was a heartbeat from reclaiming it.
Thud—! Crack!
The duel was clumsy — almost as if Yohan were throwing himself into the contact on purpose. In those few seconds the opponent's outstretched arm caught him across the face and throat.
He didn't care.
One of the reasons he had wanted to become a footballer in the first place — the sheer will to take a Lorenzo pass and put it in the net — drove him after the ball as it slipped away. Even as his body felt like paper being torn apart, Yohan stretched out those long legs of his.
And then—
Got—
Tap.
—it…!
He reached the ball first — cleanly, legally — and claimed it as his own.
There was no time left to think.
On pure instinct, Yohan struck it with his right foot.
Thuuump—!
The ball flew hard, clipped a Sassuolo defender's outstretched foot, and deflected — slightly redirected, slightly lifted. From Yohan's perspective, it was pure fortune. A shot that might otherwise have been savable now arrowed into the upper corner of the goal.
The top-right corner. What people called the Yashin Zone.
Thwack!
—Yeeeeaaaaaahhh!!!
"Uwaaah…!!"
The instant the ball hit the net, Yohan felt his heart drop through his chest. Lorenzo came sprinting at him, grabbed his head, and the two of them smashed their foreheads together. Before Lorenzo could even get a word out, Yohan was already racing toward the stands — toward the roaring mass of fans — pounding the Roma crest on the left side of his chest and howling at the sky.
For Sassuolo, it was a gutting blow, cold water on a fire they had just lit. For Roma, who had been under the cosh, it was a goal worth its weight in gold.
Yohan knew that perfectly well. He was more worked up than he needed to be, and the ceremony unfolding now was the result.
And no matter how far gone he was, there were five faces he couldn't help but find — all the way at the far end of the stands, unmistakable even at that distance.