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

Chapter 73: [73] "The Noise Machine"

Thursday.

The press room at the Valois facility was packed to its absolute limit.

Camera shutters fired like a continuous string of firecrackers. The heat from the television lighting rigs made the small, windowless room feel like an oven. Every sports journalist in France... it seemed, had descended on the club for the final pre-match press conference of the year.

Luc sat at the raised table next to Coach Henri. He wore his club tracksuit, zipped to the collar. His face was a mask of utter composure.

The Composure stat he had earned from surviving Antoine Giroux’s studio was working perfectly alongside the others he had earned across the half of the season. The noise, the flashing lights, the shouted questions... they all felt slightly muted, processed through a calm filter before reaching his brain.

"Luc! Luc! Over here!" a reporter from L’Équipe shouted, waving a digital recorder. "Fontaine plays Bretagne at noon on Saturday. You play at six. Does knowing his final tally before you even step on the pitch give you an advantage?"

Luc leaned into the microphone.

"It doesn’t change the dimensions of the pitch or the weight of the ball," Luc said smoothly. "I have to score against AC Nord regardless of what happens at noon. I don’t play against television screens. I play against the defenders in front of me."

A ripple of hurried typing followed his answer.

"But you are one goal behind!" a journalist from a Parisian tabloid yelled from the second row. "If Fontaine scores a brace, you mathematically need a hat-trick to tie! Surely the pressure is suffocating?"

"I scored a hat-trick not too long ago," Luc replied deadpan. "It wasn’t suffocating then, was it?"

The room chuckled nervously. The journalists were still trying to figure out how to handle this brutally calm version of Luc Beaumont. They missed the viral soundbites of August, but they couldn’t ignore the gravity of a man sitting on thirteen league goals.

Henri fielded the next few questions. He defended AC Nord, calling them a proud team that would fight hard, offering the usual managerial platitudes to avoid providing the opposition with bulletin-board material.

Then, a veteran reporter in the front row stood up. He didn’t shout. He just waited for the room to quiet down.

"Luc," the reporter said. "Let’s assume the worst. Let’s assume you lose the wager. Your public promise was that you would leave Ligue Alpha. Will you honor that?"

The room went dead silent. The clicking of cameras stopped.

Henri shifted uncomfortably in his seat, leaning toward his microphone, but Luc held up a hand to stop him.

Luc looked directly at the veteran reporter.

[System Notification]

[Objective active: Control the narrative.]

"I don’t deal in assumptions," Luc said, his voice carrying easily through the silent room. "I deal in execution. I made a promise in August. I don’t back down from my words. But you’re asking me to plan a funeral while I’m still breathing."

He paused, letting the silence stretch for two full seconds.

"AC Nord is coming here on Saturday to play a football match. I am stepping onto that pitch to win a wager. I suggest you all bring your calculators. You’re going to need them."

Luc stood up, pushing his chair back. He didn’t wait for the press officer to officially end the session. He had given them exactly enough to print, and nothing they could use against him.

Henri followed him off the stage, there was a sudden eruption of shouted questions chasing them down the hallway.

"Calculators?" Henri muttered as the heavy doors shut out the noise. "Really?"

"They wanted a headline," Luc said, adjusting his tracksuit jacket. "I gave them one."

Henri sighed, rubbing his tired eyes. "Just don’t get injured in training tomorrow. If I have to play Cillian as a false nine on Saturday, I’ll resign."

"I’ll be fine," Luc promised.

He walked toward the exit of the media wing.

---

Outside the media wing the corridor was quiet, the controlled chaos of the press room sealed behind the heavy doors and a long hallway.

Luc’s phone lit up before he reached the exit. Four messages in the time it had taken him to walk fifty feet.

Valérie:

"Calculators." Brilliant. Sales of match tickets have gone up 12% in the last few minutes. — V

Rose:

I watched the press conference livestream. The calculator line. I actually screamed.

Zara’s one-word contribution followed eleven seconds later:

Theatrical

Then, a few seconds after that, a second message from Zara:

But effective

Luc put the phone away without replying to any of them.

The talking was officially over. There were no more cameras to face, no more microphones to speak into.

---

He found Hugo in the video room, his ankle elevated on the chair opposite him even though it no more required elevation, a printout of AC Nord’s last four defensive shapes spread across his knees.

AC Nord. Zero wins all season. One draw. Fourteen losses from fifteen. A squad assembled from the discarded and the forgotten, playing in a league that had already decided what they were.

Relegation fodder.

"You’re preparing a tactical breakdown for the bottom of the table," Luc said from the doorway.

"You told me once that the Garonne result was because we didn’t take the preparation seriously," Hugo said, not looking up. "So."

Luc dropped into the chair beside him and pulled one of the printouts toward him.

Their goalkeeper was 38 years old. Their center-back pairing had a combined total of eleven clearance errors in the last six matches. Their holding midfielder pressed without a system, just instinct, which made him simultaneously aggressive and exploitable.

"Their right channel," Hugo said, tapping the paper. "Their left back gets forward and doesn’t track back. Similar issue as Montclair, different team."

"Almost every team in this league has the same full back issue," Luc said.

"That’s because most of them can’t defend the overlap and that’s fine by me." Hugo put the printout down. "You’re scoring on Saturday."

"Mateo said the same thing. So did Coach."

"Mateo is usually right about the football stuff."

Luc looked at the ceiling and exhaled. No words could have any effect on how he played.

There was only the grass, the ball, and the final ninety minutes of the year.