God Of football

Chapter 758: Desperate Paris.

Kai Havertz stood at the centre circle, one foot resting lightly on the ball.

Around him, the noise rippled like a storm, a thousand drums and voices crashing together, like praise.

The referee glanced left, glanced right, signally both teams to get ready, and then blew.

Havertz, hearing the referee’s whistle, didn’t need any invitation and rolled it back with a snap of his boot.

The leather skidded across the turf and met Ødegaard’s stride as the second half of the second leg began.

”And we’re off again!” Darren Fletcher’s voice rang in tandem with the roar.

”Arsenal leading here in Paris, and forty-five minutes away from writing history, forty-five minutes from a Champions League final. It is all to fight for at the Parc des Princes”

The Arsenal captain didn’t rush, despite the Paris players who were galloping towards him like mad bulls.

Instead, Ødegaard opened his body, let the ball kiss his instep, and surveyed the field as though he had all the time in the world.

His eyes cut from one flank to the other, weighing the chase of blue shirts closing in, before a neat swivel of his boot spread it wide to Rice.

McCoist chuckled, breathless already.

”You can see the plan straight away. Arsenal don’t want to panic; they don’t want to get dragged into PSG’s tempo. They’ll pick their passes, they’ll control it. But Paris, Darren, look at ’em, they’re hunting. They are out for blood like sharks in desperate waters.”

The camera zoomed downfield, where Hakimi was already tearing forward, shoulders low, teeth grit, like a sprinter who’d been waiting for the gunshot.

In the midfield, Vitinha shadowed Ødegaard’s every step as even Kvaratskhelia, normally gliding, pressed furiously as if chasing ghosts.

Yet the ball, calm as a metronome, ticked from one red shirt to another.

From Havertz dropping to connect with Rice, and Timber trying his best to stretch out the play.

The home crowd hated it, jeers rising with every safe pass.

”And that’s the game within the game, Ally,” Fletcher said, almost shouting over the wall of whistles.

”Paris want chaos. Arsenal are answering with calm. But somewhere, somewhere in this half, that balance is going to break.”

Ødegaard tapped it forward once more, and Izan drifted into view, already demanding the ball with the calm arrogance of a player who’d bent the first half to his will.

”Martin, Martin!” Rice called for the ball as Pacho approached Odegaard from behind, but the Norwegian was already on it, switching the ball to his left before swiping it behind with his leg to cause Pacho’s aggressive press to falter.

”Lovely stuff by Odegaard,” Ally McCoist called as Odegaard raised his head, looking for options, but the only viable one was Saka, who had dropped to form a triangle with Odegaard and Timber down the flank.

With that, the captain released the ball to Saka, who halted it for Timber like the latter was going to take a free kick, but the ball was soon floating in the sky, diagonally cutting the pitch as it went to the left flank.

And then, like the flick of a switch, the atmosphere shifted because the ball was going in Izan’s direction.

It was as though the stadium itself inhaled, holding its breath, as the spectating crowd watched Izan take the ball onto his foot like it was an extension of his body.

The young Spaniard barely had time to steady himself before Hakimi came storming in, a blur of speed and precision, arm already raised, shouting for support.

And support came in an instant.

Lucas Beraldo, fresh legs and eager energy, tore across from the left, while Vitinha, lurking in the shadows, curved his run with a hunter’s patience, circling, waiting for the single misstep that would leave Izan exposed.

The trio closed in, sharp edges of a tightening triangle as they tried to suffocate Izan or get him to think twice about whatever idea he had.

The commentators’ voices sharpened, their words tumbling over each other as the trio closed in further.

”Straight into the walls here, look at that press, he’s got nowhere to go!”

It looked suffocating, a cage snapping shut.

But Izan’s body told a different story.

He leaned as though to pass, hips twisting, weight shifted, inviting the trap.

And Paris believed it.

Their shoulders dropped, eyes darting to cut the lanes, waiting for the inevitable release.

They thought the walls were keeping Izan locked in.

What they didn’t see, what no one truly understood until it was too late, even with his repertoire, was that those walls weren’t built to keep him trapped.

They were built to keep everything else out.

Because with a snap of his boot, he scooped the ball high across his body, spun, and in one fluid motion exploded forward.

The ball clung to his stride as if magnetised, rolling with him but never straying.

Gasps rippled across Paris as the commentary fractured.

”Oh, he’s through! He’s through!”

Hakimi, first to react, lunged, but Izan had already slipped past, his acceleration like a sudden break in gravity.

Beraldo chased in desperation while Vitinha sprinted to recover, but with every stride the gap stretched, the distance becoming a chasm.

It wasn’t just pace, it was inevitability, the feeling that resistance itself couldn’t slow him down.

The roar of the crowd swelled, rising into a deafening wall of sound, pushing him forward, pulling him further away from the jaws snapping at his heels.

And yet, just when it seemed Izan would vanish into open grass, he did something unthinkable.

He stopped.

Not fully, but enough.

He forced a sudden chop with his left foot, a sharp deceleration that dragged him back down to earth.

The three defenders, who had been stretched and shredded by his pace, suddenly found themselves back in his orbit, closing in like wolves regrouping for a second bite.

Only this time, it wasn’t desperation that flickered in their eyes; it was confusion.

Why had he slowed?

Why had he turned? Why was he inviting them back into range?

The commentary dipped into disbelief.

”Wait, what’s he, why’s he holding it up? He had them gone! He had them!”

The crowd leaned forward, tens of thousands of hearts pounding in unison, suspended in the tension of a trick no one yet understood.

Izan stood there, ball under his spell, three of Paris’s finest collapsing around him again, as if he had offered them a second chance, no, a second trap.

The moment hung like a blade in the air, sharp, gleaming, and ready to fall.

And then— Then Izan twitched.

A single step-over, quick and deliberate, followed, his leg sweeping across the ball like a brushstroke.

Hakimi and Beraldo flinched, weight shifting, eyes searching for the trigger, but Izan nudged the ball to the left, just enough to bait them, then snapped back in one breathtaking motion.

The reverse elastico.

The ball shot like lightning, bending one way then the other in a blur, and in the same split-second, it slipped cleanly through Lucas Beraldo’s legs.

The Brazilian spun, helpless, chasing a shadow.

But Izan wasn’t done.

The ball was already at his feet again, and with the faintest flick, he cut across Vitinha, sliding it between the midfielder’s legs too.

Two nutmegs in the space of a heartbeat, yet to the crowd it felt slowed, stretched into bullet time.

Each touch was so precise, so impossibly clean, that every pair of eyes in the stadium caught it, as though Izan had dumbed down reality just for them, just so they could witness it.

The Parc Des Princes exploded, fans leaping, mouths wide open, as hands clawing at the sky.

”Oh, lovely. He’s through one! Through two! That is outrageous!”

Hakimi, desperate, grabbed at Izan’s shirt, fingers tugging, but the Spaniard only shrugged him off, legs pumping harder, carving his run from the byline.

He curved inwards at the last second, slashing towards the box, the defenders snapping at his heels like sparks off a flame as he glanced up and did a quick scan.

But his numbers weren’t there.

His teammates had slowed when he had dragged back into Paris’s trap.

Havertz was just arriving, still outside the box, but there was no time for halts now.

So Izan made the choice himself.

He curled his foot around the ball and let it fly.

It was a painter’s strike, whipped towards the far post with the kind of perfection that makes the air itself carry it.

The ball spun away from Donnarumma’s gloves, destined for glory.

But the giant stretched, fingertips brushing it, just enough to deflect.

The shot rattled against the post with a metallic clang, ricocheting wide across the goal as the crowd erupted anyway.

A deafening roar tore through the stadium, red and white shirts bouncing in disbelief, Izan breaking into a smile even as he slowed his run.

But the danger wasn’t gone.

The ball spun loose to the right side of the box, begging for a finish.

And there was Bukayo Saka.

The number 7’s body coiled, one step in, eyes locked on the ball with a glint that said it all.

He was ready to let his frustration fly.