Chapter 6: Chapter 6: The loan
On the morning of Monday the eighth of July, Garcia went into the kitchen and asked.
His mother was at the counter putting breakfast together, and she had been watching him more closely all week, ever since the night in the living room. His father sat at the table with a cup in front of him, quiet in the way he usually was in the mornings.
Garcia took the chair across from him and decided not to build up to it. Building up to it would only turn it into a pitch, and he did not want to pitch his own parents.
"I want to start my own football agency," he said. "I’ve worked out how to do it. I need money for the registration and review fees, and I’ll pay it back."
The spoon in his mother’s hand stopped against the side of the pan with a small clink. She turned around.
"Football," she said, and the word came out flat. "You want to go back to football."
"Yes."
"Garcia." She set the spoon down. "Football is what did this to you. The job, this whole house full of your things in boxes, all of it. You finally get out of that world, and now you want to walk straight back into it?"
"I didn’t get out of it," Garcia said. "I got thrown out of it. That isn’t the same thing."
"And what happens when it throws you out again?"
"Then at least it’ll be my own name it throws out, not somebody else’s."
He kept his voice level, because raising it would only frighten her again, and he had done enough of that already.
"Mum, I know football. It’s the one thing I’m actually good at. Sitting in this house every day, waiting for an agency to answer an email they’re never going to answer, is worse than trying and failing. I’d rather build something and watch it collapse than sit here and disappear quietly."
His mother did not answer straight away. She looked at him, then at her husband, worry plain on her face.
His father had not said a word yet. He turned his cup slowly on the table, and when he finally spoke, he did not ask about clients, business plans, or whether the industry would ever take Garcia back.
"How much?" he asked.
Garcia told him the figure.
The kitchen went quiet.
It was not a large amount. That was the humiliating part. A year ago, Garcia could have spent more than that on flights and hotels for a player meeting. Now he was sitting at his parents’ kitchen table asking for it like a boy who had broken something and needed help fixing it.
His father looked at him for a long moment.
"I’ll lend it to you," he said. "Not give. Lend. You pay it back when the agency makes money. If it doesn’t make money, we’ll talk then."
"That’s all I’m asking for," Garcia said. "A loan. Not a gift."
His father did not nod yet.
"One more thing," he said. "If this is about getting revenge on the people who threw you out, I want no part of it."
Garcia held his gaze. "It’s not about revenge."
His father kept looking at him.
Garcia looked away first.
Then he corrected himself.
"It’s not only about revenge."
That answer did not seem to please his father, but it did seem to satisfy him more than the lie had.
"Good," his father said. "Then remember which part matters."
Garcia understood what he meant.
Revenge could push him out of bed, but it could not build an agency. Anger could get him started, but it would not convince a parent to trust him, negotiate a contract, or find a player before anyone else did.
"I’ll remember," Garcia said.
"Then it’s a loan."
His mother let out a breath she seemed to have been holding for the whole conversation. She still did not like it, and she did not pretend to.
"Eat something first," she said, turning back to the pan. "If you’re going to chase football again, you’re not doing it on an empty stomach."
Garcia almost smiled. "Okay."
The next day, Tuesday the ninth, Garcia put the money to work.
The first thing he paid for was a cheap virtual office address. He was not putting his parents’ home on football paperwork, and he was not giving clubs a reason to judge the agency before it had even opened. The address was modest, but it was clean and commercial, which was enough for now.
After that, he opened the company registration service and worked through the form.
Company name. Director. Registered office. Business activity. Ownership.
He checked every line twice, entered the payment details, and stopped with his thumb over the confirm button.
The money behind the card was his father’s.
That made the fee feel heavier than it should have.
Garcia held there for another second, then pressed confirm.
The page loaded.
Company Formation Submitted.
Status: Registered.
For a while, he only stared at the confirmation.
G11 Sports Management Ltd was no longer just a name in his notebook. It was a legal company now.
That did not make it powerful. It did not make it respected. It did not make anyone in football answer his calls.
But it gave him a starting line.
After three months of closed doors, Garcia could work with that.
On Wednesday the tenth, Garcia moved to the football side, which meant logging back into the agent platform he had not opened since the day everything ended.
For a few seconds, he only sat there with the login page in front of him, fingers resting on the keyboard. The last time he had used this account, his name still belonged inside a working agency structure, with players assigned to him and meetings filling his calendar. Now he had a registered company with no clients, no income, and his father’s loan sitting behind its first payment.
Garcia entered his details and logged in.
His old profile loaded, plain and almost boring, but the words on it landed harder than they should have.
Agent Profile
Name: Gabriel Garcia
Agent ID: GG-2071-8842
Licence Status: Active
Current Affiliation: Previous Agency
Agency Authority: Suspended pending affiliation update
His licence was still active, which was the first good thing the page had given him. The licence belonged to him, not to the agency he had worked under, so it had not disappeared with his job. His authority to operate through an agency, however, was suspended until he updated the affiliation and linked his licence to a valid company.
