I need a favour before we start, send some power stones and I’ll upload the next chapter.
I’m going to upload it anyway, I just need to edit the second half.
Rico had taken Anne’s words to heart.
He knew he would have to do something special to get the attention of the national teams.
He needed to perform so that the global heavyweights would look foolish for not immediately picking him.
The stage was set for him to make a monumental impact.
Nobody in the entire country expected Fulham to win today.
The pundits, the bookmakers, and the rabid press all unanimously thought Manchester United would win.
They were playing at Old Trafford, the legendary Theatre of Dreams was a theatre of Nightmares for Fulham who hadn’t managed to win a single match in the history of the Premier League era.
The atmosphere was suffocatingly tense, echoing with the aggressive clatter of boots on concrete.
Rico stood near the back of the line, his six-foot-four frame dwarfing the players around him.
He knew he just had to be calm and play his game.
When Manchester United’s legendary captain, Roy Keane, glanced over to try and size up the eighteen-year-old rookie, Rico smiled “You’re smaller than I thought you would be.” Roy Keane turned looking pissed as Rico had already ruffled his feathers.
As they emerged from the tunnel into the floodlights of the stadium, a deafening roar from 67,000 fanatical Manchester United supporters washed over them.
Rico could feel the eyes on him.
Every camera lens, every opposing player, and every single fan in the stadium was fixated on the kid who had confidently declared he was going to win the Ballon d’Or.
As Rico took his position in the centre circle, stretching his legs, the referee blew his whistle, and the game finally began.
From the referee’s opening whistle, Manchester United established a suffocating early control over the match.
On paper, Sir Alex Ferguson’s squad was undeniably the vastly superior side, loaded with international superstars and legendary veterans.
Knowing the attacking threat they possessed, Fulham was forced to stay deep and maintain a rigid defensive shape.
They absorbed wave after wave of relentless red pressure, shifting their defensive blocks side to side to deny United any dangerous space.
However, the pressure was immense.
Barely ten minutes into the match, a loose clearance fell perfectly to Paul Scholes on the edge of the penalty box.
Scholes didn’t hesitate.
He wound up and unleashed a terrifying shot but Rico got his massive body in the way, bravely blocking the ferocious strike as it deflected violently off his side as it went out for a corner.
As the players filed into the penalty area, Rico was given the assignment of marking Rio Ferdinand, United’s towering center-back.
Ryan Giggs stepped up to the corner flag and whipped a dangerous cross into the heart of the box.
Ferdinand went to attack it, but Rico overpowered him and won the header cleanly as the ball went flying high up the pitch.
Luís Boa Morte chased after the clearance, but Gary Neville slid in and safely knocking it out for a throw-in near the halfway line.
Sensing the need to alleviate the relentless United pressure, Fulham took their sweet time organising for the restart.
Boa Morte eventually picked up the ball to take the throw-in.
Scanning the pitch, he threw it toward Rico who cushioned it with his chest.
Before the ball even hit the damp grass, Rico hit a breathtaking cross-field pass.
The ball soared over the head of Mikael Silvestre, dropping perfectly into the stride of Bjarne Goldbæk as he ran onto it down the right flank.
Goldbæk got control of the ball, accelerating as he went to run down the wing.
He drove hard toward the corner flag, but Silvestre recovered, launching into a desperate slide tackle that stripped Goldbæk of the ball just before he could reach the byline.
The ball deflected off the United defender and went out for a corner for Fulham.
As the players jostled for position in the crowded penalty area, Rio Ferdinand sidled up right next to Rico.
The veteran English defender looked up genuinely surprised by the physical mass of the teenager standing next to him.
Ferdinand leaned in, narrowing his eyes.
“Man, how tall are you?” Rico, perfectly fluent in English but unwilling to give the United center-back the satisfaction of a conversation, “Eu não falo inglês,” Rico replied in rapid Portuguese, intentionally looking confused.
Ferdinand frowned, thrown off, just as the referee blew his whistle.
Goldbæk whipped the corner in as Rico darted past Ferdinand into the open space as he leapt uncontested, and won the header, but he injected too much power as the ball sailed over the net.
Manchester United’s midfield started pressing Rico whenever he got the ball, and they initially had some success.
Rico was still getting accustomed to what was called a foul in England, occasionally losing possession before furiously hunting the ball back.
But once Rico fully understood the game’s physical threshold, it became incredibly easy.
In the twenty-fifth minute, the game was broken wide open.
Edwin Van Der Sar bypassed the defense, playing a pass directly into Rico’s feet.
Instantly, Ruud Van Nistelrooy sprinted to press him from behind.
Sensing the pressure, Rico executed a Cruyff turn sending Van Nistelrooy lunging the wrong way.
The Dutch striker scrambled, turning around and trying to press the teenager again.
Rico calmly feinted a second Cruyff turn, drawing Van Nistelrooy in, but Rico pushed the ball forward with the outside of his swinging boot.
Ruud bought the fake, twisting his body the wrong way as Rico effortlessly drove forward into the gaping midfield space.
Paul Scholes stepped up from the defensive line, launching himself into a tackle.
Rico executed a roulette, spinning 360 degrees on the ball, leaving Scholes tackling thin air as he kept driving forward.
As the United defence scrambled to close him down, Rico struck an outside-of-the-boot through ball that curled around both Wes Brown and Gary Neville.
Boa Morte perfectly timed his run and without breaking stride, Morte drilled a low cross across the face of the six-yard box.
Louis Saha read the play, sliding past his marker and tapping it cleanly past a helpless Tim Howard to make it 1-0.
The away end erupted into bedlam.
As the team rushed toward the corner flag, Boa Morte ignored the goalscorer.
He turned and pointed right at Rico as he had manufactured that entire chance out of nothing.
Manchester United tried to attack but Fulham defended incredibly well.
United simply couldn’t break them down.
To alleviate the defensive pressure, Rico kept carrying the ball aggressively up the pitch.
The frustrated United players had no tactical answer, resorting to fouling the teenager every single time he broke their lines to stop his momentum.
In the thirty-eighth minute, Rico was hacked down near the halfway line.
Rico dusted himself off and stood over the ball.
Wanting to maintain possession, he played a quick pass backwards to Steed Malbranque before darting into an open pocket of space to get it right back.
As soon as Rico received the return pass, Roy Keane tried to press but Rico ball-rolled it with the sole of his boot, dragging it back before placing the ball right through Roy Keane’s legs.
Rico seamlessly ran past him, but Keane turned and tried to cynically kick at Rico’s calves.
Rico’s absorbed the impact and kept powering through the foul as Keane had to wrap his arms around Rico’s waist and dragged him backward to the turf just to stop him.
The referee blew his whistle, awarding the free kick.
Rico didn’t complain.
He just popped up, grabbed the ball, and took a quick free kick while the United defence was out of position.
He played a weighted ball through to Steed Malbranque, who had intelligently run past a retreating Paul Scholes.
As Wes Brown desperately stepped up to close the gap, Malbranque poked it straight into the path of Louis Saha.
Saha went to shoot it with venom, but Rio Ferdinand threw his body in the way blocking the shot as it went flying right at Rico.
Rico waited for the ball to come to him, as it gave Roy Keane the exact time he needed to fiercely get across and steal the ball, looking to launch a United counter-attack.
Furious at his own mistake, Rico immediately put his head down and sprinted after the United captain.
He caught up to Keane in mere seconds.
The two collided, shoulder-barging each other as they sprinted down the touchline.
It was a pure test of strength, but Rico was an athletic anomaly.
He got the better of the veteran, bullying Keane off the ball as he tried to backheel the ball past Keane to keep the play moving, but it clipped Keane’s shin and ricocheted out for a throw-in.
Rico picked up the ball and backed up several paces, holding the ball high above his head as if he was going to launch a long throw deep into the penalty box.
Reacting to the threat, the United and Fulham players dropped deep, packing the penalty area but Boa Morte dropped closer to the touchline.
Rico quickly threw it short to Morte, who laid it back off to Rico with a deft one-touch pass.
Rico shaped up his body, selling the illusion that he was going to cross it into the box with his right foot.
Gary Neville took the bait, flying in for a desperate slide tackle to block the cross.
Rico dinked the ball perfectly over Neville’s outstretched legs, bypassing the tackle.
Suddenly, Rico had oceans of time on the edge of the box.
Ryan Giggs frantically sprinted over to press him, but it was far too late.
Rico looked up and crossed a vicious ball directly to the back post, bypassing the crowded center of the box.
Steed Malbranque had timed his run to perfection, arriving at the back post, as he got the better of a sleeping Paul Scholes, easily tapping the ball into the empty net to make it 2-0 right before the referee blew his whistle, concluding the first half.
A/N) I know some of you suggested high numbers, but look what I think.
I don’t want to spoil why because I’ll be spoiling what happens.
There are two I know for sure.
2004.
2006.
It depends on his nation.
Like everything depends on his nation.
Let me give you an example of how his nation dictates this story.
2010, Messi won the Ballon d’Or even though Sneijder did a treble.
Rico does a treble and then loses the Ballon d’Or.
So then the next season is the Copa America.
And Rico is like he’s going to do it x2.
If Rico is Brazilian and they win, and he does it with Madrid, he gets it.
But if English, I can see them giving it to Ronaldo instead, because he doesn’t have the Copa America.
It goes the other way too.
I’m not going to give you an example because I already gave you an example.
Both nations are compelling because they suck.