Heaven and Earth (4)
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
I pushed myself up and brushed the bits of sheared turf from my hips. A few paces away, the defensive midfielder who had hauled me down was listening to a stern verbal warning from the referee.
“He grabbed you straight around the waist,” someone muttered. “And all he gets is a little talking-to?”
“…Nothing we can do about it.”
I brushed it off outwardly as if it were nothing, but a faint pang of regret lingered in the back of my mind. If the referee had flashed yellow right there, the rest of the match would have opened up considerably.
“One more foul like that, and you're going into the book. Understood?”
“Yeah.”
The exchange between the referee and the defender drifted into my ears, little more than an empty platitude promising a card next time.
It was hardly a satisfying resolution, but I didn't have the luxury of dwelling on spilled milk. Right now, Ramírez, Pedri, and Castro needed to conjure something out of our attack. Pushing my frustration aside, I broke into a run, surging up toward the attacking third.
While the referee oversaw the restart, players from both squads moved into their tactical assignments, plugging every pocket of space across the pitch.
Fweeeet—!
The whistle pierced the air, and Íñigo struck the free kick. Sent floating from just shy of the halfway line, the ball arced straight into the heart of the penalty area.
Castro threw his shoulder into the center-back who had already staked out the landing spot, but a glance at their frames made it obvious he stood virtually no chance in an aerial duel.
“Guh—!”
Sure enough, Castro lost his balance mid-air and crumpled onto the turf.
Having cleanly won the contest, the opposing center-back snorted and shook his head, while the cleared ball ricocheted out toward the edge of the box. Ramírez and the opposing full-back bolted in pursuit of its flight.
Matching the rapid tempo of the play, I sprinted diagonally across the right flank.
“Ramírez!”
Before the two collided in earnest, I shouted his name to mark my position. Ramírez leaped into the air with everything he had, twisting his neck to redirect the bouncing ball.
Thwack—
Glancing off the back of his head, the ball spun toward the right edge of the penalty box, dropping cleanly into the running lane I had carved out. Given Ramírez's height, it was a remarkably resourceful piece of service.
I cushioned the ball down with the instep of my boot, killing its spin, and instantly mapped the positions of the defenders charging out from the box. Under normal circumstances, picking an angle to break through demanded dozens of tactical calculations, but with the box packed tightly after the set piece, I needed to settle on just one target.
Who do I feed on?
The nearest opponent was eight strides away—the defensive midfielder frantically sprinting out of the area.
Number 5, Igor Zubeldia.
A Basque native with pale skin and a sturdy, compact frame, he was bearing down on me, his thick arms pumping—the very arms that had wrapped around my waist moments ago. I hadn't gone looking for it, but the stage for payback had assembled itself in the blink of an eye.
Now, I needed absolute, razor-sharp focus.
My first two strides served purely to build speed; on the third, I regulated the touch distance to keep the ball within an exact radius. From the fourth stride onward, I elevated the tempo and fractured the rhythm into micro-beats, squeezing more touches into a fraction of a second while shortening my stride length.
The rapid, piston-like cycling made my thighs burn, but keeping the ball glued close while contracting my strides left no other option.
Just as my sixth stride was about to plant, Zubeldia's forward momentum closed the distance. What had been eight strides shrank to less than six in an instant.
A collision was half a step away. Judging by the angle of his thighs, he had zero intention of checking his run.
[Height: 180 cm. Right-footed. A well-rounded, hexagonal player without any glaring weaknesses.]
Five strides behind him, center-back Robin Le Normand and left-back Nacho Monreal were closing in fast. That was enough. I shoved Flores's scouting notes and the wider tactical board completely out of my head.
What mattered right now was that my instep and hamstrings were already primed to dismantle whatever he threw at me.
Their choices intersected on the grass.
Zubeldia lashed his right foot forward without hesitation, and I torqued my left knee and ankle to slip past the challenge. The rhythm control over those preceding six strides paid off instantly; the ball stayed miraculously glued to my left instep.
All that remained was to shepherd my body past him, following the path of the ball toward the right space outside the box. But the margin was razor-thin.
I dropped my center of gravity low and drove my left shoulder into the line of his advance. Knowing full well he would attempt an intentional body block or clip me with a foul, I braced myself with a preemptive counter-lean.
Thump—!
Predictable to a fault.
Left foot, right foot—and just as I lifted my left leg again, the meat of his thigh slammed hard into the side of my left knee. The sheer force overwhelmed my lower body, and rather than resisting, I let my momentum go limp.
Fighting against a tackle with that kind of reckless force was an idiot's errand.
“Hey, you piece of—!”
“Red! That's a red card!”
Amid a barrage of jeers cascading from the stands, the referee shrilled his whistle and halted play on the spot. While I checked the joints and ligaments in my left leg, a bright yellow card flashed up against the sky.
Personally, I didn't mind it at all.
Whether I beat a defensive midfielder to win a penalty or forced him to chop me down and pile up yellow cards was merely a matter of tactical preference. It was a slow, deliberate process of grinding them down piece by piece.
Fifty-three minutes in: two fouls drawn, one card issued. That made three marks against his name already.
“Woooo—!!”
“I knew we'd get one from a set piece!”
“The momentum's ours! Keep pushing!!”
I couldn't help but agree with the roar echoing across the terraces.
Fifty-sixth minute. Pedri's corner swung in with vicious dip, and Mauricio Lemos, who had advanced from central defense, rose above the pack to snap a header into the right corner of the net.
An unexpected gift. The match score was leveled at 2–2, bringing the aggregate to 4–5. We only needed one more goal to drag the entire tie back to square one.
“One more! Just one more!”
“We can do this!”
“Ramírez! How about pinching inside a bit more?”
Even with a rare goal celebration at his disposal, Lemos simply retrieved the ball from the back of the net and trotted back toward our half. Instead, it was Pedri firing up the squad and Castro barking at Ramírez to calibrate his positioning.
Considering the massive flare-up in the locker room at halftime, it was deeply satisfying to see the others maintain their composure without unraveling. Actually, no. I probably shouldn't think like that. I was the villain here—cold-blooded, heartless, and cruel. My genuine apology to one of our center-backs would have to wait until the final whistle.
Yet despite myself, my eyes kept drifting surreptitiously back toward the Las Palmas backline. I really was a pathetic specimen sometimes.
Sixty-first minute. Despite several successful dribbles through midfield, the tide of the match refused to tip cleanly in our favor.
“Ah—!”
Real Sociedad's center-forward unleashed a thunderous strike from the top of the box that whistled inches past our top-left post. The collective gasp of relief that swept through the Las Palmas fans mirrored my own pounding heart.
Number 21, Martin Ødegaard.
It was entirely because of that crazy… remarkably gifted bastard. He looked like he was casually tossing out passes without a second thought, yet they dropped with uncanny precision right into the dead space behind our backline. His footwork was just as terrifying—his calves spun like a windmill before his entire torso pirouetted in a seamless turn.
Worse, our defensive line was showing subtle signs of frayed nerves again, sparking a faint itch of anxiety in my chest.
“Stay sharp! Focus on the match! Keep it calm and lock them down, dammit!!”
To score, we had to push our lines forward; but pushing our lines forward handed Ødegaard the exact canvas he needed to slice our defense to ribbons.
In the end, today's match boiled down to one brutal contest: who could inflict irreparable psychological damage on the opponent first? Either I broke someone, or they broke us.
I needed to settle on that 'someone' right now.
Sixty-sixth minute. Our goalkeeper played a short pass out, and Las Palmas began building from the back.
Aythami and Lemos exchanged measured passes, gradually inching our defensive line forward. Ahead of them, I combed through the central pocket of the second line alongside Castro and Pedri.
A single man-marker was glued to my shadow.
After their holding midfielder, Igor Zubeldia, had been beaten repeatedly, their number 8—the central midfielder on the opposite side—had just swapped duties to take over marking me.
“Íñigo!”
Thanks to the smooth interplay between Javi Castellano and Íñigo, the ball worked its way out to our left-back, De la Bella. Should I swap positions with Pedri and make a run down the left channel?
Just as I turned my head to survey the flank, an odd sensation tugged along my spine. The culprit was a fistful of fabric being pulled tight at my back.
Real Sociedad's midfielder was attempting to mark me tightly by clutching my shirt, but his grip was clumsy. It had a strange, hesitant desperation to it. Veteran defenders rarely maintained a sustained grip—they grabbed and released in sharp, rhythmic intervals—which made his awkward cling feel doubly out of place.
Right on cue, De la Bella found his lane blocked by the opposing full-back and locked eyes with Pedri.
The resulting pass was measured with perfect weight, arriving in the inside-left pocket. Without hesitation, I accelerated directly toward Pedri. Even approaching from his blind spot, his spatial awareness was so absurdly wide that I knew he could slip the ball through somehow.
“Hey!!”
Of course, turning a sliver of faith and roughly three weeks of shared training into certainty required making some noise.
Good boy.
The Chihuahua didn't disappoint. The ball slipped smoothly between his legs and rolled directly into the center of the attacking band.
Maxing out my stride, I darted across the trajectory of the rolling ball. The marker trailing behind clutched at my collar, but I paid him no mind.
Same tempo, same rhythm, different victim.
Digging my studs firmly into the turf, I executed a sharp one-hundred-and-eighty-degree pivot. Under the violent angle shift, the hand clawing at my shirt slipped away with a muffled gasp. It wasn't just inertia; the sudden snap had twisted his wrist before he could muster a shred of resistance.
Brilliant.
Six strides out from the penalty box, right in front of the D, a fair-skinned Spaniard stood waiting.
Actually, 'pale' felt far more fitting than 'fair.' Igor Zubeldia, the defensive midfielder I had battered against for the past twenty minutes. The faint, shell-shocked dread bleeding across his face brought a wave of profound satisfaction.
Whether their bench or Zubeldia himself had realized it yet, it was already too late. Unless he planned on running off the pitch entirely, there was nowhere to hide.
“Le Normand!!”
That was it. He was nothing more than a succulent piece of prey, already carrying half a red card on his shoulders.
“Cover him! Fast!”
I'm going to...
“Igor! Don't!!”
...eat you alive.