Chapter 71: DO NOT READ
The screen changed to Crystal Palace.
A mid-block, compact and patient, ten men behind the ball in two tight lines. Their fullbacks held their width until the last possible moment before stepping. Their wide players stayed high even in the block, waiting to break the instant the ball turned over.
Ten Hag ran three clips without commentary and let the room watch.
「CLUB TRAINING MISSION ACTIVATED」
「MISSION: Crystal Palace Cup Preparation」
「OBJECTIVE 1: Identify 3 Palace pressing triggers」
「OBJECTIVE 2: Complete 5 pressure-release passes in reduced-load drill」
「OBJECTIVE 3: Maintain tactical sharpness without full-intensity workload」
「REWARD: +10 TP」
「BONUS OBJECTIVE: Zero tactical corrections」
「BONUS REWARD: +10 MP」
Demien didn’t glance at the reward line. His eyes stayed on the screen.
First clip: Palace’s midfielder jumped the moment the opposition center-back carried one stride too long, arriving at full speed before the touch had settled.
*Trigger one.*
Second clip: Palace’s fullback stepped out hard to press the winger, and the whole channel behind him opened up for three full seconds before the covering center-back slid across.
*Trigger two.*
Third clip: Palace’s striker curved his press toward the goalkeeper, cutting the back-pass lane — and left the central channel open behind him, if the keeper was brave enough to find it before the curve closed.
*Trigger three.*
He had all of them before the last clip finished playing.
-----
**Reduced-Load Tactical Drill**
Outside, the groups split again.
The main group ran full patterns on the far pitch, eleven shapes moving at match speed.
Demien was routed the other way, into a smaller grid — six against four, touches limited, cones marking the channels.
He let out one slower breath. His eyes went once to the far pitch, where Garnacho was already sprinting a channel at full tilt.
Then he stepped into the grid and didn’t look over again.
The staff had built the four pressing players to move like Palace — two of them angling their runs the same way the clips had shown, jumping the carry, curving the press.
The first ball came into Demien from the center-back lane. He checked his shoulder before it arrived, felt the first presser jumping the carry behind him, and played the release into the free man before the second presser could close.
「MISSION PROGRESS」
「Pressure-Release Passes: 1/5」
The next ball came in tighter. He curled the pass around the pressing angle into the fullback lane, the ball bending away from the trap.
The one after that, he bounced first time through the gap between both pressers, and Mount took it between the lines already facing forward.
Then a first-time switch, struck flat and early, reaching the far side of the grid before the pressing shape could slide across.
Then the last one — he took the ball, held it, held it, let the second presser commit his full weight, and slipped the disguised pass inside the moment the man’s balance tipped.
The presser pulled up and put both hands on his head.
「MISSION PROGRESS」
「Pressure-Release Passes: 5/5」
「Palace Pressing Triggers Identified: 3/3」
「Tactical Corrections: 0」
The coach running the grid stopped play once the whole session — for a player on the far side of the shape whose starting position kept drifting. Not for Demien. Not once.
On the touchline, Ten Hag stood with his arms folded, watching the grid. Then he looked down at his assistant’s tablet, said something short, and looked back up.
-----
Across on the main pitch, Garnacho beat his marker again and finished low across the keeper into the far corner.
Martial timed a run onto a cutback and buried it first time.
Mount and Amrabat strung a one-two-three passing sequence through the middle of the shape, quick enough that one of the coaches clapped once, short and sharp.
Demien watched it between reps in his own grid, a water bottle hanging from one hand.
Palace might be their match to start. All of them were playing like they knew it.
He turned back to his grid and asked for the next ball.
-----
The staff called the session in. Demien finished his final stretch on the mat, toweled off his face and neck, and only opened the mission panel once the whole thing had ended.
「DAILY TRAINING MISSION COMPLETE」
「Recovery Protocol: Completed」
「Technical Sharpness: Maintained」
「REWARD: +8 TP」
「BONUS REWARD: +5 MP」
「CLUB TRAINING MISSION COMPLETE」
「Palace Pressing Triggers Identified: 3/3」
「Pressure-Release Passes: 5/5」
「Tactical Corrections: 0」
「REWARD: +10 TP」
「BONUS REWARD: +10 MP」
-----
**Monday, September 25, 2023**
**Carrington Training Centre**
Monday brought fewer cameras outside the gate — one van instead of two — but the building inside had tightened.
The Palace match board was already mounted in the corridor when Demien walked past it, magnetic markers set in a rough shape, half the names already placed.
He read it in passing without stopping.
Out on the main pitch, the shape work made the picture even clearer. Garnacho held the left channel. Martial led the line. Mount and Amrabat rotated through the middle with Casemiro anchoring behind them, the whole pattern run again and again against a mannequin block set up like Palace’s mid-block from the clips.
Demien warmed up with the managed group on the near pitch — activation runs, band work, and a handful of limited tactical reps at three-quarter speed.
In one of those reps, the ball came into him with two pressers converging from the exact angles Palace used.
He’d seen this trigger on a screen yesterday. He felt it now — the first presser jumping early, the second curving in behind.
One touch to draw them both a half-step further. One pass, threaded flat between them before either could adjust.
The coach watching didn’t stop play. He just nodded once and pointed for the drill to continue.
At the gate on the way out, a reporter called through the barrier. "Demien — does the hat trick change the manager’s plans for tomorrow?"
Demien walked past without breaking stride, the same as every player in front of him had, the same as every player behind him would.
Nobody had the lineup. Nobody was getting it.
-----
**Tuesday, September 26, 2023**
**Old Trafford**
**Evening**
The team bus rolled toward Old Trafford with the floodlights already blazing white against the darkening sky.
Fans stacked three deep behind the barriers, scarves lifted overhead, phones raised the second the bus came into view. Stewards guided it through the gate in short waves, and the crowd noise built in long rolling swells that reached the windows even through the glass.
Demien sat with his headphones down around his neck, looking out through the window.
"ANOTHER HAT TRICK, DEMIEN!"
"WALTER! WALTER!"
A kid on his father’s shoulders held up a phone with both hands, tracking the bus window where Demien sat.
None of them knew yet. The crowd didn’t have the team sheet. They just had Turf Moor still fresh in their heads, and three days wasn’t long enough for a hat trick to cool.
The bus hissed to a stop.
Garnacho stepped down first, bag high on his shoulder, moving quick, his jaw set the way a player’s jaw sets when he already knows the night belongs to him.
Martial followed, focused, eyes forward, not giving the crowd a single glance.
Mount adjusted his bag strap and jogged the last few steps toward the players’ entrance.
Demien came down last, his own bag over one shoulder, walking at his own pace.
He already knew where his name sat on the sheet. He’d known since the shape work on Monday, since the board in the corridor, since the recovery wing on Sunday morning. Nothing outside the bus knew it yet, and he carried it through the noise without letting any of it reach his face.
-----
Inside, the tunnel ran polished and quiet.
Staff badges caught the light as people moved past. Kit crates sat stacked along one wall, and through the open dressing-room door ahead, red shirts hung in their row, names facing out.
Beyond the tunnel mouth, a slice of the pitch showed green and lit under the floodlights, the noise of the filling stadium rolling down the corridor in waves.
Near the production area, a camera operator took the printed squad sheet from a media officer, scanned it top to bottom — and stopped.
He read one line again. Then he leaned toward the sound tech beside him and lowered his voice.
"He’s not starting." He tapped the page once. "Walter’s on the bench."
The sound tech took the sheet out of his hand and read it himself.
"After a hat trick?"
"Bench," the camera operator said. "Look."
-----
Demien walked out past the bench area during the warm-up, and the fans in the lower rows nearest the tunnel called his name first, the way they had before he’d even kicked a ball for the club.
"DEMIEN! DEMIEN, OVER HERE!"
He raised one hand toward them without stopping.
Out on the pitch, the starting group moved through their rondos at full intensity — one-touch, tight circle, the ball snapping between them with a sharpness his own sessions hadn’t been allowed to reach all week.
Garnacho nutmegged someone in the circle and the whole group howled.
Demien watched it for two steps’ worth of walking.
Then he kept going toward the bench.
-----
The stadium announcer’s voice rolled out over the speakers, deep and unhurried, the way it had for decades.
"And now — your Manchester United starting eleven!"
The first name boomed through the stands and the crowd roared it back.
Then the next. Then the next, each one landing to its own wave of noise, the sound stacking higher with every name that wasn’t his.
Demien stood near the bench area in his warm-up top, hands loose at his sides, listening to every one of them without moving.
The starters finished. The announcer moved to the substitutes, reading through them quicker, the crowd’s response dropping to polite applause.
His name came last.
Not with the starters
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