You See as Much as You Know (3)
“When he steps in showing you the sole of his boot, you can't just ignore it and play the pass anyway.”
“Got it.”
“You're pulling your foot away as you pass — that's why there's too much on it, right?”
“I said I got it.”
Castro's bait, snapped up whole — Pedri spent the entire halftime slumped in the seat beside me, muttering away without a single pause. That he didn't know how to change his running lanes in behind, or that the defender had blocked off his options and left him no choice. It's fine, I understand you perfectly. Even after several patient replies and a few wordless signals, Pedri's jaw showed no sign of stopping. If anything, he turned his string of grievances on me next.
“You hardly ever pass to me, but I give you plenty.”
Hard to argue with that. But what could I do about the difference in the talent we'd each been handed?
“And today the second-wave pressing is brutal, but you keep charging forward every single time. The same movement repeats like clockwork, so the pressure funneling onto me just keeps getting worse — and by the end, distributing the ball properly was nearly impossible.”
“Mm.”
“Not everyone was blessed with your dribbling. You should… try meeting your teammates halfway, you know.”
That one I hadn't considered. Pedri's point had merit. A thought crept in that maybe I'd been piling too heavy a load on the boy. Had I been clinging to my runs in behind without even realizing it? Dropping into the second line and trading passes, moving as one organism — that would have been every bit as good. I'd simply forgotten for a while: Pedri and I were both adept at syncing up in tight spaces.
Right. There were, unmistakably, parts of my game that called for a little repentance.
“You've seen Valencia's Rodrigo play, haven't you? Look at how well he links up. His finishing is sorely lacking next to yours, but there's a reason he starts for the Spanish national team.”
“……”
“So stop fixating on slicing the line open in one move — mix in a pattern where you drop in and help out.”
…They say one kind word can settle a debt of a thousand gold pieces, but this Chihuahua was hopeless at paying anything back. I understood exactly what he was getting at, yet my mood had soured too much for it to land. What I couldn't fathom was why, of all things, he had to hold me up against the opposing team's striker. Before long my facial muscles twitched of their own accord, dragging the skin around my brows downward.
For the first ten minutes after the restart, I committed myself to linking up from the second line. Pedri's flippant yammering had gotten under my skin, but folding the sting of the moment away and looking at it coldly — every word of it had been true.
Even so, with no proper attacking chance coming our way, nothing showable materialized on the pitch. Valencia pressed ferociously from the instant they lost possession, and our defenders kept hoofing the ball toward the flanks. With Nicolás on the left and Ramírez on the right both on the short side, a vicious cycle had taken hold — the opposition winning the ball straight back, time after time.
“Nico! You have to pick him up!”
The goalkeeper roared, pointing at Valencia's right winger and De la Bella battling for the ball. The man in question wore number 20: Ferran Torres. I'd heard in the video sessions that he was young, but watching De la Bella find the one-on-one uncomfortable, it was clear the kid's ability was anything but ordinary.
He crept forward, inch by inch, up the line. When Nicolás, recovered into the defensive zone, cut off the lane toward the middle, De la Bella stopped backpedaling and committed to the duel. The gap he had deliberately left open straight ahead looked designed to bait a footrace.
Pop— Ferran Torres turned the trap inside out. Tilting his upper body toward the front, he slipped the ball straight between the defender's legs and darted clean past.
It was the worst possible outcome. From Las Palmas's point of view, we had lost De la Bella and Nicolás — the two men meant to cover that space — in a single stroke.
“Yes!”
“Torres—!”
The away end's roar surged through the stadium. Íñigo, our central midfielder, threw himself at it at once to block the route at the edge of the box, but Ferran Torres wasted no time sliding a forward pass into the penalty area. The recipient was Valencia's forward Rodrigo Moreno — the very man Pedri 'couldn't stop admiring.'
The moment he took it, Rodrigo fended off the center-back with his left arm. With the ball parked safely on his right foot, he wriggled his heavy frame and ground through a stretch of patience. Right on cue, Ferran Torres was bursting into the heart of the box. Fortunately, Javi Castellano charged in and claimed the space in front of him.
“Rodrigo!”
With every visible option shut down, Valencia's right back came steaming up the line calling for it. Rodrigo soon swung the ball out of the box to the left flank. An excellent choice, from Valencia's standpoint — the men responsible for Las Palmas's left side had all sauntered up toward the box chasing Ferran Torres.
Boom— a perfect crossing opportunity, and the opposing full-back instantly switched it to the far side of the box. Aythami and the opposing attacker wrapped themselves around each other at the landing spot, neither managing a proper jump, both forcing little more than their heads onto the ball. At a moment like that, where the ball went mattered far more than whose head it clipped.
It spilled across to the left once more. Off an awkward pace and height, Valencia's striker loaded spring into his body and hurled himself at it.
Pop— the ball flicked off the side of his head and skimmed past the goalkeeper's knee. Saving it would have been lovely, but it was far too close to expect a reaction.
“Eyee—!!”
“You really think you're winning this?! You're miles off!!”
Thirteenth minute of the half. The equalizer went in, and the stadium erupted with the away fans' roar. From near the halfway line, I watched the Valencia player milking his celebration, waving his jersey at the traveling support in full bloom of ecstasy. Number 19. The scorer was… Rodrigo Moreno.
“…Tami! Aythami!! You all right! Get your head back in it!”
Over the bedlam, Pepe and assistant head coach Ríos bellowed one after another. The message: full-backs, open up the spacing — make proper use of the flanks when we build.
Beep— the referee's whistle restarted the match. Las Palmas's defensive line still swayed unsteadily, but the risk-hedged details cracked open the one-sided flow of the game. The full-backs, spacing themselves wide, began throwing themselves into the attack, and Pedri — finally able to breathe, it seemed — went scampering between left and right.
And then, before anyone noticed, the nineteenth minute of the half. Las Palmas's center-back held the ball, glancing this way and that, reading his options. Valencia, having missed their window to press high, had dropped their line deep. Before long, avoiding the congested middle, a pass went out to the right full-back, Curbelo.
Whoosh— the opposition shifted their entire block as one, holding their spacing and their shape. Curbelo hesitated for a beat, then fed the ball up to Ramírez on the near flank.
I let out a small, pained groan somewhere behind my teeth. Curbelo's witless decision and careless attitude did not sit well with me. Ramírez was isolated before he even received the pass, wasn't he?
“Urk—!”
Sure enough, the moment Ramírez took the ball played up the line, a wall of Valencia pressure crashed into him. Two men collapsed the space and shouldered their way in, and before long he'd surrendered possession. The lone mercy was that the ball trickled out of play.
The situation was not good. Truthfully, Curbelo and I weren't so different. When you can't even lay a finger on the ball, what good are party tricks or anything else? I needed another way. Otherwise… we'd concede again.
I killed my drift toward the right flank and cut quickly toward Pedri, stationed at the heart of the second line. I couldn't scrub from my mind the sight of him holding me up against Rodrigo, but to unpick a match this grinding, I would in the end have to search for the answer alongside the player whose feet fit mine best.
“Pedri. Short.”
“Hm?”
“Let's go short.”
Mindful of the Valencia players standing around us, I'd cut the explanation short, but all Pedri offered back was a puzzled face.
“Short how? Spell it out.”
“Stick as close as you can…”
Damn it. Cupping a hand over my mouth, I leaned my snout in right beside Pedri's shoulder.
“Let's move together, glued as close as possible. Ball or no ball, keep the distance where we can help each other. If it comes to it, dropping all the way down to the third line to carry it back up wouldn't be bad either. What do you say?”
“Why?”
“The ball isn't reaching anyone. We can't go on like this. Let's just drag it up by force.”
“…If we drop to the third line, the coaches aren't going to like it.”
“Tell them I ordered it.”
“Huh?”
“Tell them I ordered it. They won't say a word to me.”
I held my ground, stoutly enduring Pedri's eyes, which brimmed to the brim with incredulity. No — wait. If anything, I was the one who ought to have been flabbergasted. Here I was, graciously offering to play the foreigner card and shoulder the blame (from Pepe and Ríos themselves, no less!) — only to be repaid with that insolent look.
“Answer quick. Yes or no.”
“…Fine.”
“Good.”
By the time the conversation wrapped, the ball had already worked its way through Aythami and Lemos to De la Bella on the left flank. We began adjusting our spacing to one another along the second line. In the middle of it, Pedri kept sneaking glances toward the bench — apparently catching an absolutely murderous look for his out-of-nowhere mid-match chitchat.
Without a moment's hesitation, I shifted up to just shy of the halfway line. The ball had been forced back into the middle by Valencia's flank pressure.
“Íñigo! Ball!”
Íñigo's pass wobbled as it grazed an opposing attacker's foot, but not enough to surrender possession.
Twenty-first minute of the half. At last, the ball arrived at my feet. Even with the dribbling restriction lifted all the way to the second line, this half had been suffocating enough that simply receiving a pass was an achievement. Before turning my body toward goal, I stole a glance around. Valencia's defense had chosen to compress their spacing and brace rather than lunge in.
I slipped a pass to Pedri, who had just peeled out of the second line. The instant he collected it, an opposing midfielder seized his jersey. A heartbeat later, the man's left hand threatened to rake across into Pedri's torso. I shouted desperately for the ball. I could not allow an attacking rhythm so barely begun to be strangled by a cheap foul.
“Pedri!”
Before I could even finish the name, the ball came back to me. It might have looked like a pointless give-and-go, but thanks to it I'd been spared a dribble all the way from the third line, and I'd bought myself a running start besides.
I dialed my focus up and poured everything into the first touch. Receiving at speed meant the ball had to settle on the softest part of my instep. The contact had to land exactly where I predicted, calibrated to the pace the ball was actually carrying… otherwise it would spill off unpredictably.
Tak— the instant it met my instep, I knew it had worked. I hadn't accounted for the touch alone, but for the motion that would follow it. The ball rolled out precisely two and a half steps — a wonderfully ambiguous distance for the midfielders in front of me to commit to.
“Cover!”
In that instant the left central midfielder released Pedri, shoveling the man-marking onto someone else. The central midfielder on the right had not yet chosen to press. Seemed he wanted to see how his teammate's gamble played out first.
I fixed my attention on the left central midfielder. He had sheared off half my running lane, resolved to grab me whichever way I turned. The angled set of his torso, the loaded forearm, even the cocked thigh of his back leg — he had packed a remarkable amount of care into so brief a moment. It would have been rude not to return the courtesy.
I eased my shoulder and elbow open by degrees, folding a little deception into the picture. Of course, just as I had read him, he was half-convinced I meant to go through the middle. Even so — eyes can be fooled.
“Parejo! Slow down!”
The flash of an instant — the gap narrowing from two steps to one. The left midfielder's thigh flinched.
Pop— I wasted no time spinning the ball, stabbing a forward pass in to Pedri, four steps away.
Good. Blistering dribble speed, upper-body trickery on top of it — the scheme, as it turned out, had come off rather nicely.