Harbinger Of Glory

Back at the accommodation wing, Carlo pushed the door open and stepped into the room.

Leo was on his bed, half-lying against the wall, scrolling through his phone with that blank, unreadable look he always wore when he was deep in something.

Carlo didn’t say a word at first.

He walked straight over and shoved his own phone right in front of Leo’s face.

Leo blinked, pulled his head back a little, then focused on the screen.

Whatever he saw made him exhale through his nose, a tired sort of sigh.

”Why that reaction?” Carlo asked, pulling the phone back just enough to look at him.

Leo pointed at the screen.

”You might want to switch the language. I can’t read any of that.”

Carlo frowned, glanced at the phone, and muttered, ”Ah. Right.”

He quickly backed out of the app, dove into settings, and changed it to English.

”My bad.”

He reopened the Instagram post and handed it over again.

Now the caption was clear.

It sat under a picture of Baldini: a formal statement from the Italian U21 account, officially announcing that the coach had been relieved of his duties.

Leo raised an eyebrow, nothing more.

Carlo nudged him with his elbow. ”That’s all you’ve got?”

Leo didn’t even look up. ”What do you want me to do?”

”I don’t know. Jump around or something,” Carlo said, exasperated.

”A lot of guys who fell out of his good books are probably celebrating right now.”

Leo finally looked at him properly. ”Out of his graces?”

Carlo nodded.

”When he took over from the previous coach last year, he stopped calling up certain players. Not because they were bad. He just didn’t like them. Simple as that.”

He shrugged like it was the most normal thing in the world while Leo shook his head, unimpressed.

Carlo walked over to his own bed on the opposite side of the room and sat down, still scrolling through the announcement.

”The post also says Marco’s the interim coach while they look for someone to take the job.”

He snorted the moment he finished the line.

”Someone more suitable than Marco? Sure.”

He shook his head and tossed the phone beside him.

Leo didn’t comment.

He was already back to scrolling through whatever he was reading.

The rest of the day moved like normal on the surface, but the atmosphere around camp was completely different.

No one had to explain why.

Every hallway, every table in the cafeteria, every stretch of the training ground had at least two or three players whispering about the same thing.

Baldini.

Some tried to sound neutral, but most didn’t bother hiding how they felt.

A few joked that it was about time.

Others talked more quietly, saying he never listened, never changed anything, even when the team obviously needed it.

A couple mentioned matches where they’d warned him about tactical issues, and he brushed them off.

The general feeling was relief, not shock.

It wasn’t chaotic or anything.

Just… released tension.

Like everyone had been carrying something they weren’t allowed to talk about, and now the lid was off.

While the players were scattered around the facility, Marco sat across from Piatelli in his office.

The blinds were half-open, letting in a soft stripe of late afternoon light across the desk.

Marco looked a little tired, but alert in that way he got when he was trying to keep track of a lot of moving parts.

Piatelli leaned back in his chair, hands folded. ”So,” he said, ”how bad is the noise?”

Marco gave a small shrug.

”About what you’d expect. Everyone’s talking. Some are trying to pretend they’re surprised. Most aren’t even doing that.”

He paused, thinking. ”I heard from a few of the senior U21 boys from before. They’re… not celebrating, but they’re not mourning either. More like they feel something overdue finally happened.”

Piatelli nodded once, slow and unsurprised.

”And the rest?” he asked.

”Pretty much the same,” Marco said.

”No one’s panicking. No one’s acting like the sky’s falling. They’re just letting themselves say what they didn’t say before. I think some of them feel lighter now.”

Piatelli let out a short sigh, almost a hum.

”His sack was a long time coming.”

Then he smiled at Marco, not a teasing one, just a simple father-to-son expression.

”How do you feel about all this?”

Marco shook his head right away.

”I still feel like an assistant,” he said, half-laughing.

”I still have a lot of things to deal with.”

Piatelli chuckled under his breath while Marco went on, leaning back in his own chair.

”At least I’m lucky I didn’t get the team after it had broken. They’re in a good place. Good squad, good attitude. I can work with that. Maybe even win something with them.”

Piatelli’s eyes warmed a bit.

”You should,” he said, nodding at him. ”You absolutely should.”

Marco smiled slightly before rising to his feet.

”I should go prepare for tomorrow’s session,” he said, getting a nod from his father before turning towards the door, while Piatelli returned to his work just after his son exited the room.

The next morning’s training hit with a sharper edge than usual.

Balls zipped across the grass, players calling out quick passes, little instructions, warnings, all the usual stuff you heard when people were actually switched on.

Marco stood near the halfway line, hands cupped around his mouth as he directed play, cutting in with corrections whenever he needed to.

At one point, Carlo drove forward instead of slipping a pass, and the defenders collapsed on him immediately, forcing the play to a halt right then.

”Stop,” Marco called out.

Everyone froze as he stepped onto the pitch and walked straight to Carlo, who was already trying not to look annoyed.

”Turn around,” Marco said.

Carlo did, and behind him, there was a pocket of empty space wide enough for an entire midfield to run through.

”That’s what you opened up,” Marco said.

”Our opponents, if they are any good, which they mostly are, won’t be polite about it. You lose that ball there and they’re gone.”

Carlo wiped sweat from his forehead and nodded.

”Got it.”

Marco clapped him once on the shoulder and stepped back off the pitch, before gesturing for the session to continue.

On the sideline, the boys waiting for their turn had seen the whole thing.

”He actually listens to Marco,” one of them said, eyebrows raised.

”When Baldini spoke, he barely turned his head.”

The guy next to him scoffed.

”I mean, can you really blame him? Think back on the sessions then and look at the session now. It’s fast, man. Way faster than before.”

”Yeah, I’m itching to get on.”

Before they could continue with their chatter, their attention snapped back to the pitch when Marco shouted, ”Good, escape!”

Leo had the ball at his feet, back to Carlo, who had tried to close him down.

Leo shifted once, twice, then released the pass at the perfect moment, right before Carlo’s foot got close enough to make it messy.

The ball moved again, then again, then again.

The team with Leo in the middle switched into a rhythm that felt almost unfair.

One-twos, third-man runs, little disguised touches.

They weren’t even trying to score in this drill.

They were just keeping the ball, circulating it, making the other side chase until their legs felt like rubber.

Carlo tried to press again, lunging to cut off Ruggeri’s touch, but Ruggeri slid the ball right through his legs.

Clean and Carlo stopped mid-step, groaning.

Then had to start running again because the ball was already twenty meters away.

He wasn’t the only one suffering.

His teammates were cursing under their breath, chasing shadows.

It wasn’t anger, just pure frustration at how hard it was to get a single foot in.

Someone on the sideline shook his head at Leo after he got the ball again.

”He plays like they printed him out of La Masia. And I heard he hadn’t even played regular football until the middle of this year.”

A laugh came right after.

”Yeah, I heard that too. I think it was Carlo who was talking about that, and you know what, it could be that he did play in La Masia. His last name sounds kind of Spanish if you squint.”

They all looked toward Leo as the drill finally ended.

Marco blew the whistle and called their batch’s session to a close.

Leo walked off calmly, peeling the bib over his head, then crouched to unlace his boots like nothing unusual had happened, even though everyone else had just spent fifteen minutes trying and failing to get near him.

”Bro’s just chill like that,” another player said as Leo slid his slides on.

”Made Carlo’s team chase until their last breaths, but didn’t even break a sweat.”

”Which team does he play for anyway?” another player said right after the former finished.

”I mean, he isn’t really proactive enough outside of sessions that we could ask, and I do not know if it is because of the language barrier or something else.”

”Well, he does hang out with Carlo and Udogie as well as a few of the other boys.”

Another player, lacing up his boots, stood to his feet, while glancing over at Leo.

”We searched normally on Google but didn’t get much, so we had to go to the transfermarkt website, and it turns out he plays for a team in the Championship. Wigan, if my pronunciation is correct.”

”Well, I don’t think he is staying there for long if they stay in the Championship,” another muttered, as Marco called for Leo on the other side.