My Footballing Legend

They found themselves in a quiet bar location by the harbour, a bar that Laurence had found in his first month waking up in this new life. He forgot—if only momentarily—that Neymar was seventeen and looked sixteen. The bartender raised an eyebrow when they entered.

"Juice for him," Lawrence said before the man could even ask.

Neymar looked somewhat disappointed.

"Orange," he muttered, as he sat down.

Laurence ordered himself a small beer and took a pen from his jacket pocket, then took a napkin from the dispenser. There were only a couple of elderly men in there watching a replay of the World Cup quarter-finals on mute.

Laurence laid the napkin flat and began his drawing.

"You ever heard of Manchester City?" he asked.

Neymar tilted his head. "The English club? They're okay."

Laurence smiled. "In about a decade, they'll be monsters."

He drew 3 dots on the napkin—2 midfielders and a forward.

"Usually what teams do when they lose the ball is drop. Regroup. Safe. In this situation, they invite pressure to come. They concede control. We do not have the defence to take that for ninety minutes, every week."

Neymar was nodding slowly, sipping his juice.

"We're not Barcelona," Laurence continued. "We can't just pass around everyone. But we can force chaos. Win the ball back straight away. And that means you—yes, you—are allowed to press to create panic not to tackle." 

He drew a quick triangle.

"This is the third man run. The ball goes from you"—he pointed to the first dot—"to the midfielder. While that transfer happens the striker makes his blindside run behind the line. He is not involved in the pass. He is the third man. The one they can't see coming."

Neymar frowned at the napkin and then back at Laurence. "You want us to do this... every time?"

"No," Laurence said. "I want you to know when to do it. That's the difference between a good system and great one. It's not merely movement - it's decision-making."

Neymar looked down at the ink lines again.

"And if I get it wrong?"

"Then I tell you," Laurence said. "And if you keep getting it wrong, I make you run until you no longer smile."

Neymar laughed again, picking the juice back up. "I still don't understand half of what I am looking at."

"You don't need to yet," Laurence said. "Right now, I need to believe that there is a shape under underneath the chaos. The others will follow you. So if you believe it, even when it falls apart, they will too." 

Neymar leaned back and quietly stared for a moment.

Then, quietly, "You see the game differently, mister. You see the game as a puzzle." 

Laurence chuckled, sipping his beer. "Maybe. Or maybe I just watched too much football alone at night." 

They sat together for a while in silence, the napkin between them drawn with a jumbled mess of arrows and dots. The television played on, replaying Spain lifting the World Cup trophy again - David Villa beaming; Iker Casillas crying. 

Neymar tapped the napkin with one finger.

"Okay," he said. "I'll try."

_____

The last preseason friendly was on a warm Sunday evening at Estadio Francisco Artés Carrasco, against Segunda side FC Cartagena. A fairer test—not too tough to analize, not too easy to fool. A mid-block opponent, compact, experienced. Exactly the kind of opposition Tenerife would need to beat or at least not lose against if they were to stand a chance of surviving La Liga. 

Laurence stood in the small away dugout, hands on the plastic barrier, staring out at the pitch. 

He had kept the starting eleven quite close to what he imagined for the opening of the season. Ricardo León and Kitoko anchoring the midfield block. Neymar starting on the left wing, Omar on the right, and Natalio as a half-striker, half decoy. Casemiro again was on the bench watching and learning, 

The whistle blew, and straight from the first minute, it felt different. 

The lines were more compact. 

The back four shape was disciplined. The two in the midfield pressed one in a co-dependent movement. Even Neymar, the one used to roaming free radius, tracked back, pressed, and only moved across once the fullback went. Finally, after weeks of drilling, it was beginning to click...

In the twelfth minute, Tenerife executed the move they had practiced over and over again during training.

Ricardo León intercepted a hopelessly lazy horizontal pass in midfield and got the ball as far as Omar, who had tucked into a more central role. Omar took one touch, looked up and played a pass not to Natalio, but through him—a dummy that pulled the centre-back with him. Neymar, the third man running, came flying in from the blindside and connected perfectly with the through ball.

It was one-on-one, he finished calmly.

1-0.

Laurence didn't celebrate. He just exhaled slowly.

The sequence was almost perfect.

That was the glimpse.

But football was still football.

In the seventy-sixth minute, Cartagena equalized. A floated free-kick, poor punch from the keeper, and a scrappy rebound bundled over the line. Sloppy. Frustrating. But not a tactical collapse—just a bad moment in a game where most of the time was controlled.

The full-time score was 1-1.

The opening match would be against Real Zaragoza at home. No giants yet—just a team like them. Hungry. Trying to find footing. A winnable fight… if Tenerife could hold shape and hold nerve.