Football: Maxed Out The Wrong Stat

The thirty-minute training match ended without fanfare.

One assist. Zero shots. Zero defensive contributions. As a formal assessment, it was the kind of performance that made coaches check their watches and assistants quietly start packing the cones away.

Noss. George found Mateo on the sideline and said a few words, something about effort and potential and the game having many paths and Mateo nodded at the appropriate moments and felt nothing in particular. George was a decent man doing a diplomatic job. That was fine. There were no hard feelings.

The other players filtered off the pitch in pairs and small groups, cleats clicking on the concrete path back to the dressing rooms. Mateo stayed where he was.

When the last of them had gone, he unzipped his bag.

He’d packed it before leaving the dormitory this morning - every last thing, including his passport and his return ticket. The dormitory was back inside the main building, and the training ground sat near the club’s front gate, and there wasn’t much point making the trip twice. He’d known how today was going to end.

He changed out of the Dortmund training kit and folded it neatly on the bench. The jersey, the shorts, both of them. He hadn’t been given club-issue boots so those he kept, they were his from home, worn down at the outer edge of the left sole from three months of outside-of-foot contact drills. He pulled on his own kit, slung his backpack over one shoulder, and walked out.

The security guard at the gate didn’t look up.

Mateo pulled a bread roll from the front pocket of his bag and ate it as he walked. He had a bottle of water in the other hand. The morning air was still cool, the sky the kind of pale blue that promised warmth later. Flight was at seven. It wasn’t even eleven yet. He had time.

If the system hadn’t activated, he thought, this would have felt worse. Leaving a place you hadn’t been wanted in, with nothing to show for three months, that had a specific texture to it. He’d experienced the shape of it briefly, just before the system came online, and he hadn’t enjoyed it.

But the system was awake now. And the system had given him a mission. And somewhere in Germany, that mission still had six days left to run.

One day, he thought, looking back once at the Dortmund crest above the gate, you’re going to wish you’d paid more attention.

Then he turned and kept walking.

He’d gone maybe thirty metres when a voice stopped him.

”Leaving already?”

The English was fluent and unhurried. Mateo turned.

An old man was standing on the pavement beside a parked car that had seen better decades. He wore plain clothes - nothing expensive, but his hair was combed back neatly and his shoes were polished to a mirror shine. He was watching Mateo with the calm, evaluating expression of someone who has already made a decision and is waiting to see if the other person will catch up.

Mateo looked at him, then looked around to confirm no one else was nearby, then took another bite of his bread.

”Don’t know you,” he said, and stepped around him.

”Schalke 04,” the old man said. ”Are you interested?”

That one landed.

Mateo stopped. He turned back around and looked at the old man properly this time. Took in the polished shoes. The calm. The lack of a sales pitch.

”What does that mean?”

”It means their training is probably still running, and you have a flight at-” the old man glanced at his watch, ”-seven this evening, which means you have time. I can drive you there. You try out. See what happens.”

Mateo considered this. The mission had six days. A professional contract. He’d been thinking airport, then São Paulo, then figure it out from there, but the system hadn’t given him a geography restriction. It had just said a professional contract within seven days.

”I don’t know anyone at Schalke,” he said. ”Why would they give me a look?”

”Because I’ll ask them to.”

”And what are you getting out of it? Referral fee? Because I don’t have-”

”No fee.” The old man was already moving towards the driver’s side of the car. He spoke over his shoulder. ”No fee, no kidney, no pyramid scheme. Get in.”

Mateo stood there for a moment. The bread roll was nearly gone. He wrapped the last piece in its paper, put it in his bag, and followed.

Up close, the inside of the car matched the outside, old but fastidiously maintained. A camera bag sat on the back seat. A laminated press pass was clipped to the sun visor. In the glove compartment, when the old man nodded him towards it, there was a scout’s accreditation card from the Bundesliga registration body.

”You’re a scout,” Mateo said.

”Part-time. Also part-time reporter. Both amateur, if I’m being honest.” The old man pulled out of the kerb without looking at the mirror, apparently confident no one would be behind him. ”The reporter badge gets you onto training grounds. Scout badge gets you into offices. Between the two you can go most places.”

”You work for Dortmund and you’re taking me to Schalke.”

”I’m retired from Dortmund. Technically.” The old man allowed himself a small smile. ”And Schalke is two kilometres away. You’d walk it in twenty minutes.”

Mateo looked out the window. The streets of Gelsenkirchen moved past at the car’s meditative pace. 2010. No smartphone. No way to kill time except to think or talk. He’d been running on adrenaline and repetition for three months and now, with nothing between him and an evening flight, his brain was finally slowing down and noticing things.

”You saw the pass,” Mateo said. It wasn’t a question.

”I was there, yes.”

”Everyone else thought it was a fluke.”

The old man said nothing, which was answer enough.

”I played forward in Brazil,” Mateo said. ”School level. Nothing structured. I never actually trained as a midfielder.”

”I know. It’s obvious.” The old man said it without cruelty. ”Your positioning off the ball is all wrong. You don’t know where to stand when you don’t have it. But the things you did with it when you had it-” He let that sentence end itself.

”Passing isn’t what I want to do,” Mateo said. ”I wanted to be a goalscorer.”

”Most people do.” The old man pressed the accelerator, the engine produced a sound like mild protest and then settled back to its default speed. ”But the game uses you the way the game uses you. You don’t always get to choose.”

Mateo said nothing to that. He looked at the Schalke badge beginning to appear on the stadium infrastructure around them, blue and white, and thought about the system’s mission counter sitting quietly at six days remaining.

The car rolled on.