Open Play: Ladies, Goals, The Everything System in-between

Chapter 48: [48] "Neji Part 1"

The whistle hadn’t finished sounding before Phocéen’s shape declared its intentions.

Their pale blue kits spread out across the pitch in a 4-3-3 with Neji anchoring the midfield center, and from the first thirty seconds it was clear that he didn’t intend to run anywhere unless the ball demanded it.

He stood.

He received.

He turned.

He was already two passes ahead of anyone else on the Valois side of the pitch

Minute four.

Cillian pressed Neji high, it was a brave and stupid decision that Coach Henri hadn’t sanctioned.

Neji didn’t panic, he just received the ball with his back to Cillian, let the press arrive, and used Cillian’s own momentum against him with a single-touch he flicked it over his shoulder to the left center-back.

The flick created fifteen yards of space behind Cillian’s abandoned position.

Phocéen’s right winger exploited it immediately, Owusu sprinting to catch him, just barely winning the footrace to cut off the angle for any pass.

The clearance was ugly and went straight out for a Phocéen throw-in.

Luc watched Neji jog to his next position. Unhurried. Already setting his feet for the next phase of play.

"He doesn’t press because he almost never has to. Every ball comes back to him." Luc thought.

The first fifteen minutes were a war of possession that SC Valois was losing.

Phocéen dominated possession without urgency. Neji recycled the ball through the thirds, always choosing the right destination, never the aesthetic one.

Fresko drifted across the front line, making late diagonal runs that Hadj tracked obsessively.

The danger wasn’t obvious... Yet.

Phocéen weren’t pushing. They were compressing. Making the pitch feel smaller than the markings suggested, forcing Cillian and Mateo to chase shadows, burning legs on a Saturday evening in November with the wager ticking behind by every second they chase.

Minute sixteen.

Neji received in the half-space between Cillian and Mateo, both men converging on him.

Two-on-one press. It was textbook. Exactly what Henri had drilled into them this week.

Neji took one touch inside his right boot, let Cillian commit to the poke, then backheeled the ball into the gap between the pair before either had completed their closing run.

Fresko arrived onto the pass at full sprint, already inside the SC Valois defensive third.

Ekberg read the run. He was composed as he stepped across, and showed Fresko the outside instead.

Fresko accepted it though, played the ball wide to their right winger, who crossed it first time.

Blažek caught it at the near post. A firm save with his two hands.

But the stadium had woken up. Twenty-eight thousand understanding that Phocéen weren’t here to be polite.

---

Minute twenty-two.

Luc had been quiet. Not invisible, just quiet, waiting for his chance to rearrange the game’s entire logic.

He dropped deeper than Idriss, pulling his center-back marker six yards out of the defensive line.

The gap it created behind the center-back was small. Maybe three yards wide or so.

Hugo would have spotted it in half a second.

Cillian was good. But Cillian, yet again ,was no Hugo.

Luc shouted his name from thirty yards. Cillian received the ball from Mateo, looked up, and played it directly to the center-back he hadn’t noticed was three steps out of position.

The center-back cleared it.

The opportunity was lost.

[System Notification]

[Observation: The gap existed for 2.7 seconds. Hugo would have needed 1.1. Cillian needed 4]

"Thanks for the math, TES."

---

Minute thirty-one.

Phocéen scored.

The build-up was routine enough to be insulting. Six patient passes, recycled through Neji’s feet twice. On the third receipt, he played a ball into Fresko’s feet, who had drifted centrally between Hadj and Ekberg.

Fresko held it up under Hadj’s pressure, bought himself one extra second, then flicked it back to Neji who had continued his run forward.

Neji arrived at the edge of the box in space that SC Valois hadn’t covered because nobody had tracked his run.

He placed it instead of blasting it... typical of him.

Low to the far post. Under Blažek’s dive.

1-0.

The pale blue end of the stadium erupted. Phocéen’s bench poured onto the technical area for two seconds before their manager waved them back, irritated by the display.

Neji jogged back to his position without celebrating, as if scoring was just another task in the sequence.

"I’m starting to hate this piece of shit!"

Plus something else Mateo shouted that Luc didn’t fully follow, but the intent was clear.

Tighten up. Press earlier. Don’t let him receive and turn.

The locker room instruction had been specific: track Neji’s runs into the box, not just his possession in the midfield. They had forgotten it the moment the ball moved.

Minute thirty-eight.

Luc decided Cillian wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Luc was waiting for Cillian to see what Hugo would have seen.

So he started doing Hugo’s job himself.

He dropped completely into midfield, leaving Idriss alone up top, and received the ball from Ekberg twenty yards inside the Phocéen half.

Neji immediately stepped forward to press.

"Good."

Luc played the ball back to Mateo, spun, and sprinted through the channel Neji had just vacated by stepping up.

Mateo read the movement. His pass was a bit heavy and driven low and hard into the space rather than to Luc’s feet.

Luc ran onto it at full stride, thirty yards from goal, two center-backs scrambling to adjust.

He didn’t shoot.

He cut the ball back along the edge of the penalty area to Idriss, who had peeled off the last defender’s shoulder exactly as they had drilled.

Idriss took it first time.

The shot was clean. Low, and well-placed.

The Phocéen keeper, a 6-foot-3 giant who’d conceded only six all season, got down fast and stopped it with his wrists.

But the rebound came straight back to Idriss’s path.

He hit it again.

The second shot clipped the outside of the post and rolled out for a goal kick.

Idriss stood with his hands on his head.

The stadium groaned. It was the loudest sound Stade Valois had made all night.