Harbinger Of Glory

4 and a half hours later, Carlo’s Vantage pulled up outside Leo’s building, and Leo got out and grabbed his bag from the back seat.

”Dawson really should have made us take that flight,” Leo muttered, stretching a bit.

”Anyway, thanks for the lift,” he said, only for Carlo to shake his head.

”Thank you for the goal.”

Leo looked at him.

”I didn’t assist you.”

”No,” Carlo said, smiling.

”But you did assist everything that made it possible!”

Leo said nothing to that as Carlo drove away.

After staring out until the car vanished out of sight, Leo turned and walked toward the entrance of his building with his phone out, listening to the voice note Noah had sent.

Noah’s voice came through with the energy of someone who had been waiting to say this since the final whistle.

Four one. At Stamford Bridge.

In your third Premier League game. Leo, I’ve been in this business a long time, and I want you to understand what I’m telling you right now.

You are doing what very few can.

That made Leo smile a bit before he continued to listen.

The world is starting to catch up with that fact.

It’s only a matter of time before your status is completely undeniable.

The note ended, and Leo laughed, quietly, to himself before he went inside.

He dropped his bag and settled onto the couch, taking his time to finally catch his breath.

After that, he opened WhatsApp to reply and found a second message from Noah, sent a minute after the voice note.

A little gift from the game.

Below it was a screenshot of Leo’s Instagram account.

Leo looked at it and then exited WhatsApp and went to Instagram directly, because the number in the screenshot hadn’t looked right and he needed to see it with his own eyes.

As he clicked on his account, he found his profile at 800,000 followers, and for a moment, all he could do was stare.

The number ticked up as he watched. 801. 802.

The last time he had checked it had been 210,000 but in just one night, he had managed to get almost triple of that number in just one night.

”Wow,” he said to himself while he watched it for another moment, the number moving upward and looking like it wasn’t going to stop any time soon.

”Wow,” he said again.

He set the phone on the cushion beside him and looked at the ceiling and let the evening be what it was.

And he was right in letting the evening be what it was because the next morning’s coverage had one subject and it had no competition.

Every major sports station, every back page, every football podcast that recorded through the night had arrived at the same place by the time the country woke up.

The articles were endless, and the titles were nothing to scoff at.

Chelsea’s 4-1 Battering By The Latics

Wigan Score Four To Fell The London Bridge

The Pride Of London Crushed: How Did This Happen?

18-Year-Old Leads Wigan To Historic First Top-Flight Win At Stamford Bridge

The scoreline was impossible to ignore.

A newly promoted Wigan Athletic side had walked into Stamford Bridge and left with four goals and three points.

And once the shock of the result settled, people started asking the next question.

How had Wigan done it?

Andwho was that boy that had inarguably facilitated the win?

The articles about his background arrived through the morning in waves.

Who Is Leo Calderon And Where Did He Come From?

These were the kind of articles that came through, and they answered their own question with the same information, assembled from various sources and told with varying degrees of accuracy, but the core of it was consistent.

Manchester United’s name kept getting dragged into the conversation, whether anyone at Old Trafford, or Carrington for that matter, liked it or not.

Leo Calderon had spent years in their academy before being released at seventeen, another young player deemed not quite good enough to keep.

And that meant Wigan picked him up for free, built around him.

And now, after dismantling Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, he was becoming one of the stories of the Premier League season.

Unsurprisingly, Manchester United supporters took the news exactly as supporters tend to take these things.

Poorly.

There was no shortage of anger and no shortage of sarcasm either.

Every replay of the match seemed to reopen the same wound, not because Leo was succeeding but because he was succeeding somewhere other than Manchester United.

GoreUnited: We had this player in our academy. We let him leave on a free. No loan, no buyback clause, nothing. Someone at that club needs to explain themselves.

Minuteman: Leo Calderon reminds me of what we always wanted a central midfielder to be after Pogba left. The vision, the range of passing, the ability to affect a game without necessarily being the focal point. We had him, and we let him go.

Can’tbebothered: I cannot stress this enough. Manchester United released Leo Calderon on a free transfer.

He is now 18 years old, has scored in back-to-back Premier League games from midfield, assisted 2 goals in 2 games, and played centre back at Stamford Bridge while running the game. On a free. We let him leave on a free.

Cybersage: The United scouting department saw this player every day for at least two years and decided he wasn’t worth keeping. Let that sit with you.

Zeronblack: Someone in the Carrington youth setup is watching this morning, and I genuinely feel sorry for them. Actually no, I don’t. Let them burn.

The non-United reactions carried the delight of people watching a club known for its resources and its history produce a spectacular own goal of the non-football variety.

JB5:Manchester United academy: developing world-class players for other clubs since forever apparently

BigDonjulio: West Ham fans are healing from the Declan Rice sale, but even they’re looking at this United situation and going ”at least we got paid”

Veera: The fact that there’s no buyback clause is what gets me. Even if you’re not sure about a player, you put a buyback in. It’s basic business. They didn’t even do basic business.

Lloydiswater: Comparing him to Pogba is interesting, but I think the more accurate comparison is what they needed Pogba to be. The version they imagined when they signed him. Leo is that but real.

The backlash moved through the morning and showed no particular signs of stopping.

Each new article about Leo added another layer to the same wound.

And somewhere at Carrington, people carried on with their day, opening laptops, attending meetings and preparing reports, all while the football world spent the morning revisiting a decision that had been made years earlier.

Leo Calderon had become impossible to ignore.

Which meant the question that followed him everywhere was becoming impossible to avoid too.

How had Manchester United let him go?