Harbinger Of Glory

When Tiehi entered the pitch, he quickly found Leo and handed him a piece of paper he’d gotten from Dawson.

”Go higher,” it read when Leo took it.

With Reyes out of the way, Dawson wanted him closer to the forwards, with Tiehi taking up a deeper midfield role to help protect the defence.

The change would give Leo more freedom to receive between Burnley’s lines, where his movement and quick decisions could do the most damage.

The match resumed, and Leo moved into the number ten role.

At first, it was not quite what he wanted.

Burnley dropped deeper, keeping their midfield close to the defence and leaving him little room to turn.

Whenever he tried to drift into a pocket of space, a midfielder followed him or a defender stepped forward to close the gap.

Wigan still had the ball often enough, but Leo wasn’t seeing as much of it as he needed.

For him, possession was more than a chance to make a pass.

The more often he received the ball, the more control he had over the tempo of the attack.

He could draw opponents out of position, find runners on either side and decide when to speed things up.

Without regular touches, he was left searching for opportunities instead of creating them.

So he started looking for them elsewhere.

He moved away from the centre-backs, dropped a few steps into midfield, then slipped behind Burnley’s central players whenever their attention turned to the ball.

He watched the spaces open and close, waiting for the moment when the defensive line and midfield no longer moved together, and it finally arrived in the seventy-ninth minute.

A pass found Leo between the two lines, just outside the penalty area.

He received it with his body angled towards the goal but didn’t turn.

Instead, he quickly checked the movement ahead and bent a curling pass with his weaker right foot to the far side of the attack, where Carlo was starting to accelerate into space.

The ball travelled diagonally across the pitch, bending away from the nearest defender, and Leo didn’t wait any longer.

As the pass left his foot, he bolted in the opposite direction, sprinting past Fletcher, who was dragging a Burnley defender with him.

With the ball in tow, Carlo looked up and, instead of going at his right back, lifted his leg and bent the ball around the defender, sending it into the space near the box and the byline.

Leo chased and had Dara O’Shea charging across to close him down, trying to force him towards the corner and prevent a cross.

With bodies in the middle, the cutback was expected.

Leo lifted his left leg over the ball, then brought it down sharply as though he intended to knock it forward and send a cross into the area.

Still, a few yards out, O’Shea bought it and slid across the turf, stretching his leg to block what he thought was the delivery.

But Leo had never intended to strike the ball.

He pulled his foot away at the last moment, shifted his weight and touched the ball with his right, taking it beyond the sliding challenge.

A second touch with his left kept it tight to the line as he slipped through the narrow space O’Shea had left behind.

As Leo went by, O’Shea looked up from the ground and raised both hands, appealing for a goal kick as the ball moved towards the byline.

For a fraction of a second, the Burnley defence seemed to expect the move to end there, but Leo had other ideas.

Ignoring the incessant ’goal kick’ calls, he steadied himself, looked towards the far side of the penalty area and lifted a measured ball across the face of goal.

It sailed over the defenders and into the space behind them, where Ezra arrived at speed, the winger’s run perfectly timed.

He met the delivery with a full-blooded volley, swinging through the ball before the defenders could turn.

”Ezra Thompson!!!!”

With no one in its way, the strike flew past James Trafford, who had already begun moving across his goal, and crashed into the back of the net.

Wigan had broken the deadlock.

The away end erupted as Ezra wheeled away from goal and sprinted straight towards Leo, who had barely finished watching the ball hit the net before his teammate arrived and threw an arm around him.

The travelling supporters’ noise grew louder as the rest of the Wigan players rushed over, surrounding the pair near the corner flag.

”WHAT A FINISH!” the main commentator shouted. ”Ezra has absolutely leathered that! Trafford had no chance!”

His partner was shaking his head, almost laughing at the replay appearing on the screen.

”Everyone’s going to talk about the volley, and rightly so, because that is a fantastic strike. But they’re looking at the wrong thing if they ignore what Leo Calderon has just done. Look at the disguise on that first movement.

He makes O’Shea think the ball is going forward, gets him to commit, and then he’s out the other side. From there, the delivery is perfect. Ezra still has to finish it, but Leo has made that goal possible.”

Dawson stood just outside his box, clapping firmly, his expression finally loosening after a tense afternoon.

Near the corner flag, Whatmough arrived and pulled a couple of his teammates into a brief huddle.

”We go again,” the captain said, raising his voice over the noise. ”Come on, lads. Keep your heads. Don’t dip in focus now.”

The players nodded, still catching their breath from the celebrations.

Ezra gave Leo another quick embrace before the group began to break apart.

”A very long afternoon it has been here, but Wigan have finally scored. Leo with the service and Ezra with the finish. I guess Reyes might have to start considering Leo as a rival in his position!”

Reyes sat on the sidelines, watching with furrowed brows as the broadcast cameras found his face, but soon enough they returned to the game as Burnley prepared to restart.