Chapter 27: First Match In Europe IV - HAMADI MAGIC
Jan Wouters sat with his arms folded, elbows tucked tight, coat zipped high against the biting cold. But his focus wasn’t on the weather. His sharp eyes, honed by decades in the trenches of professional football, were locked onto the pitch, tracking every movement of Number 37.
Utrecht wasn’t just holding on anymore. They were dictating. The game had a new pulse, and it beat through that boy, the Kenyan kid wearing red and white like he’d been born into it.
Every pass, every turn, every pocket of space that opened and closed. Amani was at the center of it all, weaving silk into a game that had started as pure scrap metal.
Wouters’ brows knit together. The feet were perfect. The decision-making was sharper than most academy players, twice his experience. But something didn’t quite match.
It wasn’t his touch. It was his frame.
The kid was lean, almost too lean, but there was something else. His face was still soft around the edges, none of that hardened look you expect from 16-year-olds who’ve spent years grinding in European academies.
His limbs were long but not yet fully filled out, the way young trees stretch skyward before their trunks catch up. And though he stood taller than some of his teammates, there was a youthfulness to how he carried himself, a rawness under all that elegance.
Jan leaned toward Mr. Stein, voice low like he was afraid the truth might get out. "Carlos... why’s your wonderkid built like that? Most of these lads are sixteen, maybe seventeen. He looks like he still argues with his mum about bedtime."
Stein didn’t answer right away. His attention was fixed on the pitch, just as Amani, under pressure from two AZ midfielders, slid a pass through the tightest of seams with the outside of his left boot.
The ball kissed the grass like it was drawn by a magnet, curling into the exact path of Utrecht’s striker before AZ could even process the danger.
The move didn’t lead to a goal, but it didn’t have to. It was a statement.