Chapter 11: Matchday
Alex Walker sat cross-legged on the edge of his new apartment’s modest sofa, a cup of espresso growing cold on the coffee table in front of him. The apartment wasn’t much, but it was enough—a far cry from the penthouse suites he’d stayed in during his playing days in Madrid and Manchester, but also a world away from the cold, damp loneliness of his final days in England. Lecce, with its orange-tinged sunsets and palm-lined streets, had its charm.
The living room was small but neat, painted in beige and white with Mediterranean touches: a wrought iron coffee table, ceramic tiles on the floor, and a framed photograph of the city’s old town hanging above a modest flat-screen TV. His luggage still sat by the entrance, half-unpacked, with a few shirts hanging on the back of one dining chair. On the far end of the room, a sliding glass door led out to a tiny balcony where one could see the tiled rooftops and church domes of Lecce’s historic center. The hum of scooters and distant conversations floated up like a reminder that life outside kept moving.
But in Alex’s world, time felt frozen. Tomorrow was his first match in charge.
He rubbed his palms together nervously, then leaned back into the sofa, eyes flickering to the notifications that only he could see. The system was currently calculating match probabilities.
[SYSTEM ALERT]
[Match Prediction Model Activated]
[Match: Cagliari vs Lecce]
[Venue: Unipol Domus, Cagliari]
[Date: 26th November 2024]
[Win Probability:]
[Cagliari: 41%]