Football: Maxed Out The Wrong Stat

The session wound down.

Players drifted off the pitch in groups, drinking water, peeling off bibs. The B Team's goalkeeper sat on the turf and stared at the goalmouth as if replaying the second goal from a different angle might explain it better. Beasley, the defensive midfielder who'd been through-balled twice, was talking quietly to a teammate and saying something with his hands that suggested he still hadn't quite accounted for the geometry.

Daniel watched them go and then turned back to the pitch, where Mateo was walking toward the sideline at an unhurried pace.

"Jes," Daniel said, keeping his voice low. "Why didn't Dortmund hold onto him? Those two passes alone, there's no way a Dortmund scout watches that and lets him walk."

Old Jes considered the question. "Maybe they had too much going on. Big squad. Lot of movement."

It was a reasonable non-answer and they both knew it. The truth, which Old Jes didn't know and wouldn't have believed was that the player who had just threaded two balls through a compact defensive structure with eerie precision had, as of this morning, been a technically unremarkable trialist who'd spent three months grinding cone drills alone while everyone else trained around him. The system that had made those passes possible had activated few hours ago. Dortmund had seen none of this.

What mattered now was that Daniel had seen it.

Benedict reached Mateo first, hand extended.

"Quality," he said simply. For a striker, there was no more honest compliment. A midfielder who could put it on a plate like that, who could find you in behind without telegraphing it, without the ball bouncing awkwardly, without you having to check your run because the weight was wrong, that was the kind of player you built your movement around. "I mean it. That second one especially."

"Good run," Mateo said.

"I was jogging," Benedict said, and laughed.

Ben Kehi came over next, clapping him on the shoulder. "That outside-of-foot through the gap, I didn't even see the lane. How long have you been working that pass?"

Mateo thought about how to answer that honestly. "It comes naturally," he said, which was, technically, not a lie.

Ben Kehi nodded like this was an acceptable answer. On a football pitch, some things just were what they were.

What Mateo noticed, standing among these Schalke players, was the difference in temperature from this morning. At Dortmund, he'd been furniture - present, functional to nobody, ignored. Here, after twenty minutes and two assists, he was being looked at differently. Not with awe. Just with the uncomplicated respect that players extend to other players who've shown them something worth watching. It was a small thing, and he didn't want to make too much of it, but it was real.

"Mateo!" Old Jes was calling from beside the technical area, beckoning.

"Well?" Old Jes said, spreading his hands as Mateo reached him. "What do you think?"

Mateo looked around the ground. The U18 training facilities were decent, not Dortmund's level, but solid. The squad had quality in it; Ben Kehi was clearly a real player, Benedict knew where the goal was, and the defensive structure had been organised even if he'd picked it apart. Schalke 04. Bundesliga. His flight to Brazil was at seven.

"I'm interested," he said.

Old Jes looked faintly relieved, though he covered it quickly.

Daniel, who had been standing nearby pretending not to listen, stepped forward. "Do you have representation? An agent?"

"No."

"Right." Daniel turned and raised his voice across the technical area. "Hank!"

His assistant - young, blond, perpetually slightly out of breath, came jogging over.

"Take him to the administration building. Contract."

Hank blinked. "What type?"

This was the moment Daniel had been working through in his head since the second goal hit the net. An apprentice contract was within his authority to sign and could be done today, right now, within the hour. But an apprentice contract carried no real buyout clause, it was the kind of deal that kept a player nominally tied to a club while leaving them practically available to anyone who made the right offer. If word got around about those passes and it would, because word always did - Mateo would have options within days. An apprentice deal wouldn't hold him.

A professional contract was different. It had teeth. But it required Manager Jennis's signature, and Jennis was the kind of man who needed a reason before he committed the club to anything.

Old Jes had already taken out his phone.

"Give me two minutes," he said.

Daniel relaxed.

Old Jes and Jennis had been in the game together for over twenty years. They'd come up through scouting at the same time, reading the same pitches, driving to the same reserve fixtures in the same miserable weather. Jennis had eventually moved into management - more adaptable, more political, while Old Jes had stayed in the field. They trusted each other's eye in the way that only came from two decades of being proved right together.

The call connected on the third ring.

"Jes." Jennis's voice was dry and unsurprised. "What have you found?"

"A midfielder. Seventeen. Genuine passing quality - the kind I haven't seen in a youth player in a long time. I'm at the U18 training ground now. Daniel's seen him play."

A pause. "Where was he before?"

"Dortmund trialist. Released this morning."

Another pause, longer this time. "Dortmund released him and you want a professional contract."

"I want a professional contract," Old Jes confirmed.

Jennis was quiet for a moment. Old Jes did not fill the silence.

"Alright," Jennis said finally. "Have Daniel bring him over. I'll have the paperwork ready."

Old Jes hung up and looked at Daniel with the expression of a man who has just successfully cashed in a significant favour and intends to say nothing about it.

Daniel turned to Hank. "Professional contract. Take him to Jennis's office."

Hank nodded and looked at Mateo. "Follow me."

Mateo fell in beside Hank and they walked toward the main building. Behind them, Old Jes and Daniel were already talking tactics, Daniel sketching something in the air with his hand that probably involved the ten-position and what a reliable passer there would do to their shape in the German Third Division.

Mateo walked and looked at the ground passing under his feet.

A professional contract. That was what the system had asked for. Seven days. He was doing it in one afternoon.

He wondered what the reward was. Another attribute card, he'd max out shooting this time and not be interrupted. Or something else entirely. The system had been unpredictable so far; it had given him a passing stat he hadn't wanted and a mission he hadn't expected, and both had led him here. He was beginning to suspect that unpredictable and the system were going to be synonymous for a while.

The main building's door swung open ahead of him.

He stepped through it.