Chapter 35: Chapter 35: One Route I
The agreement was signed, but the room did not feel any lighter.
Alan still had the Northgate emails open on his phone, and he kept glancing down at the screen between sentences, the way a man does when the thing in his hand has not finished happening yet.
Three clubs. All League Two. All of them had come the right way, forwarded through the Northgate programme rather than from some voice on the end of a phone, and all three wanted the same thing.
A one-week trial-training block. Jamie in with their academy group for seven days.
Jamie sat forward at the table, trying not to look as eager as he was and failing at it.
Garcia saw the problem before anyone said a word.
Getting them to ask was the hard part. Now I can still ruin it.
Three doors had opened. Pick the wrong one, and he could bury the boy before G11 had finished its first week.
Alan turned the phone around and slid it across.
"Read them yourself," he said. "All three."
Garcia took it and read.
The first was from Walsall. The bigger name of the three, a badge people had heard of, and the email matched none of that weight.
From: Academy Recruitment, Walsall FC Following the Northgate programme, we would like to invite the player to join our Under-18 group for a one-week assessment. Please confirm availability and we will forward dates.
Short. General. It did not say what they had liked, where they saw him fitting, or what they wanted to look at. It could have been sent to any boy with a right boot and a pulse.
The second was from Calder Rovers. A smaller club, a plainer badge, and a longer message.
From: Academy, Calder Rovers FC Our staff watched the Northgate final and were impressed by Jamie’s recovery speed and the way he handled repeated pressure down his side. We’d like him in for a full week with our academy group — training, position-specific work at right-back, and an internal match on the Friday so we can assess him properly in a back four. Schedule and safeguarding details to follow on confirmation.
Garcia read that one twice.
The third was from Crewe Alexandra.
From: Recruitment, Crewe Alexandra FC We’re bringing in a number of players from the Northgate programme for a week’s look. Happy to include Jamie. Further details to follow.
He set the phone down on the table, face up, so all of them could still see it.
Jamie was looking at the first one.
He had not said anything, but his eyes kept going back to the top of the screen, to the name with the weight on it, and they stayed there longer than they stayed anywhere else.
Garcia understood it. He let it sit.
Walsall was the badge that meant something to a boy who had been let go by Millwall and was still carrying it around like a bruise. A bigger name felt like the answer to that. It felt like proof. After being released, walking into the club with the better reputation felt a lot like getting your own back.
Alan noticed where his son’s eyes were too. He did not correct him.
He just waited, because the wanting was normal, and a sixteen-year-old was allowed to want it for a moment before anyone told him the truth.
Then Alan put the question on the table.
"Which one," he said, "gives him the best chance?"
Garcia did not answer straight away.
He knew what this moment was. It was the first real decision he had made since the boy’s name went on his books, and Jamie and Alan were both about to find out whether they had signed an agent or a man chasing a nicer badge to feel like himself again.
"The best chance isn’t always the biggest name," he said. "It’s the club that already has a reason for wanting him. The one whose staff know what they’re looking at before he walks in, and where he isn’t just one more body in the group."
Jamie’s jaw set, but he did not argue yet.
Garcia picked the phone back up and went through them again, slowly, in plain words.
"Walsall looks the best on paper. But read what they actually wrote." He turned it so Jamie could see. "Nothing. ’Join the Under-18s for an assessment.’ They didn’t say what they liked about you, what they want to test, or where they’d play you. That’s the email you send when you’re filling numbers."
He scrolled down.
"Crewe’s worse for you, not better. They’re pulling in a load of Northgate lads at once. You’d be one of six right-backs they half-watch for a week, and the ones they already fancy get the attention." He shook his head once. "You can be the best player there and still leave with nobody able to remember your name."
Then he stopped on the middle one.
"Calder watched you. Properly." He tapped the line. "They didn’t ask for ’the right-back.’ They named it. Your recovery speed. The way you held up under the pressure they kept sending down your side. Somebody at that club sat through the whole match and wrote down the exact thing you’re actually good at." He looked at Jamie. "That’s the one that wants you for a reason."
Jamie did not like hearing it. It showed in his shoulders.
But he listened.
The decision created a new problem, and Garcia felt it the moment the room went quiet.
One week. That was all Jamie had before he walked into a club’s academy and trained alongside boys who already knew each other, in an environment that was nothing like the neutral trial at Northgate.
He could not fix that with willpower, and he could not coach it himself.
He remembered the skill sitting in the shop.
The Training Manual would not choose the club for him. That choice had come from the emails and plain sense, and the system had nothing to do with it. But the week after the choice, the preparation, was exactly the kind of thing it was built for.
He opened the shop on his phone, away from the table, and bought it.
[SKILL PURCHASED]
