Chapter 13: Chapter 13: The Approach
TWEET.
The referee held the whistle and waved both arms wide.
Players stopped. Some bent forward with their hands on their knees. Others straightened slowly and turned toward the touchline with the specific expression of someone waiting to find out if the day had meant anything.
A coach near the halfway line clapped twice and called the group in. The sound of studs on the hard surface followed as both teams walked off slowly, conversations starting up between boys who had been trying to hurt each other’s chances forty seconds ago.
Garcia did not watch the pitch. He watched what happened next, because this was the moment that separated one kind of football professional from another.
The club scouts moved toward the session organizers and coaches. That was the official channel — the one that produced names, contact numbers, and formal introductions. One scout had his phone up before he had even left the roped-off area. Another was talking to a coach near the corner flag, pointing back toward the pitch with a rolled-up programme.
The agents moved differently.
They drifted toward the parents and guardians along the fence, smiling, making conversation feel like it had arrived by accident. Two of them had already found Tyler Grant’s family on the far side. One was talking to Callum Price’s mother — the same woman who had slapped the fence rail in the fourth minute.
Garcia stayed where he was and looked for Elliot Ward.
Ward was standing at the edge of the Blue group with his boots already unlaced, his head down, his arms loose at his sides. His father was near the car park gate with his arms folded and his eyes somewhere else.
Nobody had gone near him.
Nobody had gone near Jamie Holt either.
Jamie was standing with a man Garcia had not noticed during the match — middle-aged, flat cap, grey jacket, a bag over one shoulder. Not a parent who had spent years on touchlines and knew the rhythm of it. A father who had brought his son to something and was not yet sure what to make of what he had watched.
Both of them standing there. The whole touchline moving around them like they were not there at all.
Garcia watched Elliot for a moment.
Ward had his boots in one hand and was standing at the edge of the Blue group, slightly separate, not talking to anyone. His father was near the car park gate with his arms folded and his eyes somewhere past the fence. Neither of them was expecting anything from the afternoon.
Four stars. A striker with that movement profile was not something to leave alone indefinitely. He needed to speak to Elliot. He would speak to Elliot before the day was gone. But Elliot had been on the pitch for the full match, which meant the window on him stayed open a little longer. Jamie was sixteen, already picking up his bag, already starting to drift toward the exit with the posture of a boy who had decided the day had not gone the way he needed it to.
And five stars was not a number Garcia was going to see again quickly.
Move.
He checked where Oliver was.
Oliver had reached Grant’s group and had his hand extended toward a man Garcia took to be the boy’s father. He was not tracking anything else on the field.
Garcia closed the notebook, slid it into his jacket pocket, and walked.
He reached them near the far gate.
Jamie had his boots in one hand and his bag over the other shoulder. He was looking at the ground the way a boy looks at the ground when he is pretending not to mind something that he does mind. His kit was still on under a tracksuit jacket he had pulled over the top of it, and there was a mud stripe across one shin that had dried pale against the blue.
The father looked up first.
Garcia kept his pace easy and his hands visible, because a man who walked toward a stranger’s son with his hands in his pockets was not a man who got a second sentence.
"Mr. Holt?"
The father’s eyes settled on Garcia’s face and stayed there. "Who are you?"
"Gabriel Garcia. I’m an agent, independent. I watched Jamie’s time at right-back today and I wanted to talk to you."
The man’s expression did not change exactly, but something behind it drew back. "You’re not with a club."
"No."
"Just an agent."
"Yes."
The father looked at his son briefly, then back at Garcia. Jamie had stopped walking and was standing slightly behind his father’s shoulder, watching Garcia with the careful attention of a boy who had learned not to get ahead of conversations like this one.
"He was only on for twenty minutes," the father said. "Nobody from the clubs has come over."
"I know."
"So what is it you think you saw?"
Garcia did not rush into it. He had one thing to offer and it was the only thing that mattered right now.
"In the sixty-ninth minute," Garcia said, "the Red right-winger drove at Jamie on the outside. Got half a step on him and turned his hips. Most full-backs at this level lunge. Jamie recovered and blocked the cross before it came in. The winger had the yard and your son closed it."
The father said nothing.
"Two minutes after that," Garcia continued, "a Red midfielder shaped for a through ball into the channel. Jamie moved before the pass was played. Not after it — before. He cut it off and laid it back to the centre-back in one touch. The attack was dead before most people registered it."
Something shifted in Jamie’s face. Not a smile. Just a change in the stillness of it.
"And in the seventy-third minute," Garcia said, "he had the space to play forward under pressure and chose the safe ball backward instead. That was wrong, and he knows it was wrong."
Jamie looked at the ground for a second. Then back up.
The father studied Garcia for a moment that stretched longer than it needed to. "You actually watched him."
"Yes."
"Why? He wasn’t the most noticeable player out there."
"No," Garcia said. "That is exactly why."
The father let that sit for a moment. He shifted the bag on his shoulder and glanced once at the main group of players still milling around the pitches, at the agents still working the fence line, at the scouts disappearing toward the car park with their phones pressed to their ears.
"He’s been released once already," the father said. It came out flat, not as an accusation, just as a fact that Garcia should probably know before he continued.
"Where from?"
"Millwall academy. Eighteen months ago."
Garcia kept his expression steady. Millwall. That fits. An academy that did not release casually had decided something about Jamie’s ceiling before he had finished growing into his body.
"I know what a release means," Garcia said. "I’m not here because a club sent me and I’m not here to tell you Jamie is finished because someone made that decision. I’m here because of twenty minutes of right-back play that most people on this touchline are not equipped to understand properly."
The father looked at him.
Jamie opened his mouth slightly, as though he was about to say something, then closed it again and looked at his father instead.
"He’s sixteen," the father said.
"Yes."
"And you’re what, exactly? An agent with no club behind you, coming over to talk about my son after twenty minutes."
"Yes," Garcia said. "That is exactly what I am."
The directness of it seemed to land differently than a longer answer would have. The father said nothing for a moment. A group of parents walked past them toward the car park, talking among themselves, and the four of them — Garcia, the father, Jamie, and the gap between all three — stood still while the day moved around them.
"I’m not asking Jamie to sign anything today," Garcia said. "I’m not promising a trial, a contact, or a club. I’m asking for ten minutes to tell you what I saw and why I think his profile at right-back is worth developing properly. If you think I’m wasting your time after that, I’ll leave."
Jamie’s father looked at him for a long moment.
Then he said, "Ten minutes."
