Chapter 66: Chapter 66: Repeat It
(Garcia POV)
Garcia stood at the barrier and watched the thing happen that mattered more than the goal.
Out on the pitch, Jamie was bent over with his hands on his knees, chest heaving, the Tranmere shirt stuck dark to his back and mud caked up one side of his socks. Around him his teammates were clapping each other, pulling off shin pads, the ordinary noise of a side that had just won.
And a few yards from Jamie, the development staff member was talking to Mercer with a tablet in his hand.
Garcia could not hear the words. He did not need to.
He saw Jamie hear part of it, though. The boy was crouched down untying his boots, and his fingers slowed on the laces. His head came up half an inch, listening.
Then he dropped it again and went back to the knot, pretending he had caught nothing, because he did not yet know whether what he had heard was good news or a new weight.
Garcia kept his own face flat. He did not walk over. He did not raise a hand.
He filed the moment away the way an agent files everything, and stayed exactly where he was.
Jamie came off with the squad, and the reactions were small, which was how Garcia knew they were real.
Liam knocked into his shoulder as they walked.
"Cross was finally useful," Liam said, grinning. "Only took you two goals to get me one that counts."
Another boy said something Garcia didn’t catch, and Jamie almost smiled.
Ryan, the other right-back, said nothing at all. But as he passed, he gave Jamie a short nod, one small movement, and Garcia watched Jamie take that in more than the joking.
A nod from the boy whose place you had taken was worth more than a hug from a friend.
Nobody carried Jamie off. The match was over, and the academy had already moved on to the next judgement, and every one of those boys knew it.
Near the touchline, Mercer pulled the group in and kept it short.
Garcia drifted close enough to hear, standing at the rope like any parent.
"Clean sheet," Mercer said. "That’s the first thing. Second half we stopped letting their eight turn, and the midfield started arriving on time. That’s why we won it, not one moment."
He mentioned the goal as part of the pattern. The switch, the pin, the run, the finish. He did not stand Jamie up and shine a light on him.
Then, as the boys broke, he said one thing to Jamie directly, in passing, without stopping to make it special.
"Good first start. Now do it again."
Garcia watched it land.
Jamie’s throat moved as he swallowed. He nodded once, tight, and said nothing.
It had sat on him heavier than a longer speech would have, and Garcia could see the boy already knew why. Surprising people once was the easy part. Doing it again, when they were watching for it, was the whole job.
Alan was waiting by the exit, and he did the thing that told Garcia everything about him as a father.
He did not lead with the assist.
"You alright?" Alan asked. "Legs okay? You went down hard on that last one."
"I’m fine, Dad." Jamie shrugged, tired, short with it, his mind clearly still back on the pitch.
Alan looked at the mud on him, the heavy way he was carrying his bag, the way his eyes kept flicking back toward the coaches by the technical area.
He did not push. He put a hand on the back of Jamie’s neck for a second, gave it one squeeze, and let go.
"Proud of you," he said quietly, and then stopped himself before it became a speech, because he could see Jamie did not have room for one right now.
That restraint, Garcia thought, was probably where Jamie got his.
Garcia stepped in after Alan, and he did not tell Jamie he had been brilliant.
He could see the boy half wanted it. After a first start and an assist, of course he did.
"Good ball for the goal," Garcia said instead. "That’s a right-back’s ball. Not luck."
Jamie waited, like there was more coming.
"That’s it, really." Garcia shrugged. "They’ve had a proper look at you now. Next week’s the one that counts."
"I know."
"Do you?" It was not unkind. "First game, everyone’s surprised. Second game, they’re checking if it was real." He let that sit a second. "You want to get boring. Nobody surprised anymore. That’s the job now."
Jamie’s jaw tightened, and he nodded slowly.
Garcia watched something shift behind the boy’s eyes. He was starting to see Garcia as more than the man who had talked him through a fence and into a building.
He was starting to see the man who would keep reminding him the door could still close.
That was fine. That was the job too.
While Alan sorted Jamie’s bag, Garcia let his eyes go to the technical area, and he read the machine without moving toward it.
A staff member zipped the GPS vests into a bag and slung it over his shoulder. Another sat on the bench with a tablet, thumb moving, checking something against a list. A third leaned in and made a short note beside a line near the top of a sheet, where Garcia knew Jamie’s name would be.
Garcia did not go and ask what any of it meant.
He knew exactly where the line was. During club hours, on club grass, Jamie belonged to Tranmere’s development process, and Garcia’s job was not to meddle in it after one U18 match.
His job was to protect the long road, and the fastest way to poison a club relationship was to hover over the numbers like a man who did not trust them.
So he let them work, and he stayed at the rope.
The prompt sat quietly at the edge of his vision, the way it always did.
[Golden Eye: Weekly Uses Remaining — 0 / 3]
[Skill Progress: 16 / 30 Valid Uses]
He had spent the three this week already, across the match and the days around it, and there was nothing left to scan.
He closed it with a thought before it could sit there, because Jamie and Alan were coming toward him now.
Every academy afternoon was two jobs stacked on each other. The one everyone could see, watching his client play. And the one nobody could, learning the room, filing the players, feeding the private picture of the market that G11 was quietly building one match at a time.
He was not there to poach anyone. He was there to see everything.
They walked toward the car park together, and the match started to leave Jamie the way it always does.
The adrenaline drained out of him with every step, and the tiredness came up underneath it. He got quieter. His shoulders dropped.
Alan tried one light thing.
"That ball for the goal, though." He gave a small laugh. "I nearly came over the barrier."
Jamie made a sound that was almost a laugh, but his mind was somewhere else, and Garcia could guess exactly where.
Now do it again.
Garcia did not fill the silence. Forcing a speech into it would have cheapened the whole afternoon. He let the quiet do its work and cool the thing down.
His phone buzzed against his leg as they reached the cars.
He glanced at it. Rafi.
Jay’s repeat action is coming quicker than I expected. Genuinely. But the workload’s starting to bite him now, and I don’t want to guess on my own. You need to see the next session yourself.
Garcia read it twice.
Two players. Two problems, running at once, in two completely different directions.
Jamie was inside a club, being measured every day, trying to prove that one good match was not a fluke.
Jay was outside every club, with no shirt and no floor under him, trying to become so obviously good that Norway could not pretend not to see him in October.
Success had not made Garcia’s life simpler. It had just given him more fires.
He paused before he replied, thumb hovering.
He looked down at Jamie’s boots, still crusted with the mud of the game he had just helped win. Then back at Rafi’s message on the screen.
The contrast did not need words. One of his players had a badge on his chest today. The other was fighting to earn the right to trial for one.
Alan noticed the change in his face.
"Everything alright?"
"Another player." Garcia locked the phone and gave him the small, honest version. "Needs a lot of work, quick. Most of it’s on me."
Alan looked at him for a second, and Garcia saw the understanding arrive.
For weeks, to Alan, Garcia had been the man handling Jamie, and only Jamie. Now Alan realised it was not one trial at a time anymore. There was a whole agency behind the calm, and it had more than one life resting on it.
"Appreciate you coming down," Alan said. "You didn’t have to."
"Wouldn’t have been anywhere else."
He dropped them home, and then he sat in the car outside for a minute with the engine off before he pulled away.
He took the notebook out of the door pocket and opened it on his knee.
He wrote two names on the same page.
Jamie Holt.
Jay Cole.
Under Jamie, one line. Repeat the performance.
Under Jay, one line. October readiness.
He looked at the two of them sitting there, side by side, and felt the size of it.
He wanted to build G11 into something real, something that lasted. But the agency was still one man and a borrowed bedroom and a coach he could not pay, and the number of fires starting to burn was already bigger than the thing that had to put them out.
Then his phone lit up again.
Rafi. An attachment this time. A short clip from the session.
Garcia set the notebook on the passenger seat and pressed play.
The video loaded, and before Jay even touched the ball, Garcia sat forward.
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