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

Chapter 72: [72] "Emptying the Anchor"

At the SC Valois training complex.

The locker room was mostly empty. The squad had finished their light recovery session and drifted out toward the canteen or the massage tables.

Luc walked in from the showers, a towel hung around his neck.

He stopped when he saw Mateo.

The massive, tattooed captain was standing in front of his open locker. He wasn’t changing his boots or checking his phone. He was holding a cardboard box.

Luc watched quietly as Mateo reached into the top shelf of the locker and pulled down a small, framed photograph. It was a picture of Ariana and their daughter, taken on the pitch during the final game of last season. Mateo wiped a smudge of dust off the glass with his thumb.

He placed it carefully into the box.

Luc walked over to his own locker, two spaces down. He opened the metal door, the click sounding unnaturally loud in the quiet room.

"You’re packing early," Luc said.

Mateo didn’t turn his head. He reached in and pulled down a spare pair of shin guards. "The logistics team needs the locker cleared by Sunday morning. The Saudi club wants me in Riyadh before the second of January for the medical."

"Right."

The reality of the transfer window was suddenly very tangible. The cardboard box was a physical manifestation of a team losing its anchor.

"Many years I’ve been in this building," Mateo said, his voice a low rumble. "I know the exact sound the boiler makes when it’s going to fail. I know which showers run cold. I know what this club has looked like at its lowest. And I’m leaving before its peak."

He turned and looked at Luc.

"It was dying before August, Yankee. Way before Henri panicked and bought you. Before Valérie decided to treat us like a hostile corporate takeover."

"It’s not dying anymore," Luc said.

"No. It’s not." Mateo leaned against the metal frame of his locker, folding his massive arms across his chest.

"We are going to beat AC Nord on Saturday. You are going to win your wager. You’ll score two," Mateo said simply. It wasn’t a prediction. It was a command.

Luc sat on the wooden bench, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. "Henri hasn’t announced who gets the armband when you leave."

Mateo laughed. "He doesn’t have to announce it. Everyone in this room already knows."

"Ekberg is the vice-captain," Luc pointed out. "Hadj has seniority."

"Hadj doesn’t want to talk to referees, he just wants to tackle people. Ekberg is too quiet." Mateo pointed a thick finger at Luc. "You’ve orchestrated many of our plays. You shouted Cillian, Bastien and Hugo into proper players. The team listens to you because you don’t ask them to do anything you aren’t already doing better than them."

The weight of the captaincy was different from the weight of the wager. The wager was personal. The armband would have its own collective pressure.

[System Notification]

[Observation: A King requires a crown. The armband is the crown of this locker room.]

"If Henri offers it," Mateo said, his tone turning completely serious. "You take it. You don’t play the humble rookie, you’ve never been humble so don’t start now. You take it and you lead them."

"I’m a striker," Luc said. "I’m going to be selfish."

"You haven’t been selfish since you arrived," Mateo countered. "You passed to Idriss at Parc des Royals when you had the shot. You let Bastien take the glory against Lyon B. You’re already leading them, Yankee. The armband just makes it official."

Mateo picked up the cardboard box. It looked ridiculously small in his massive hands.

"Saturday is my last game in front of the home fans," Mateo said. "I want to walk off that pitch knowing I left the house in order."

"You will," Luc said, looking up to meet the captain’s eyes.

"Good." Mateo gave a single, firm nod. "Now get dressed. Juliette will have my head if you catch a cold before the final match of the year."

Mateo walked out of the locker room, the heavy double doors swinging shut behind him.

Luc sat alone in the silence.

He looked at Mateo’s empty locker. Bare metal. Stripped of years of history. The shelf where the photograph had sat still had a faint rectangle of clean paint surrounded by the rest of the locker’s old look, the ghost of a frame that had been there for longer than Luc had been a professional footballer... probably.

The boiler Mateo mentioned made a sound somewhere behind the wall.

Luc put on his training jacket and stood in front of his own locker.

His shelf had one thing on it. A printed wager tally that Hugo had made as a joke in October, laminated badly, the edges already peeling. Beaumont 9 — Fontaine 10 was printed across the top, the number crossed out in pen and updated by hand every matchday since. The current figures read 13 — 14, Luc’s number underlined twice.

Hugo’s handwriting. The kid who couldn’t walk past a tactical problem without solving it.

Luc took it down, folded it, and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket.

Mateo was right about everything. He usually was, which was an annoying quality in a captain and an even more annoying quality in a man he respected.

He pushed through the double doors and walked toward the exit.

Henri was in the corridor outside his office, reading something on his phone like he was receiving information he wasn’t sure he wanted.

He looked up as Luc passed.

"Saturday’s lineup," Henri said. "I’ll post it Friday morning. But you should know, I’m starting you and Idriss together up top again."

"And Hugo?"

"Full ninety, if he responds well to the Friday session."

Luc kept walking. "Good."

"Beaumont."

Luc stopped.

"We need the goal."

"Don’t you mean a minimum of two goals, Coach," Luc corrected.

Henri smiled. "I was talking about your wager."

"Who cares about the wager. Let’s focus on scoring the goals to help the team."