Natán practically power-walked down the sleek, brightly lit hallways of the City Football Academy, his wet sneakers squeaking loudly against the pristine linoleum flooring.
After the catastrophic fist-bump-handshake disaster with the social media manager and the terrifying run-in with Pep Guardiola in the corridor, he just wanted to get to the locker room, change into his dry training kit, and forget this horrific morning ever happened.
He pushed through the heavy double doors of the first-team changing room, shivering slightly as the hyper-efficient air conditioning hit his soaking wet clothes.
The massive, circular room was already buzzing with activity.
Players were lacing up boots, taping ankles, and joking loudly over the thumping bass of a hip-hop track playing from the corner speakers.
As Natán slouched toward his designated locker, looking like a drowned rat, the room momentarily quieted down.
Kevin De Bruyne, sitting in his stall while expertly wrapping his ankle with athletic tape, looked up.
The pale Belgian playmaker raised an eyebrow, his expression a mask of deadpan, dry wit.
“He finally shows up,” Kevin announced to the room, his voice cutting through the music.
“And it looks like he swam the English Channel to get here. We were starting to think you retired to become a professional cyclist, mate.”
A few players chuckled, well aware of the viral video of Natán fleeing on his bicycle that had been circulating in the group chat all morning.
Natán didn’t even have the energy to formulate an excuse in his broken English.
He just slumped onto the padded bench in front of his locker and let out a long, heavy, utterly exhausted sigh, as if to say, long story.
David Silva, sitting two stalls down, looked over with a warm, fatherly smile.
The veteran Spanish midfielder, who had taken Natán under his wing since the teenager arrived in Manchester, noticed his countryman’s haggard appearance.
“¿Te han dado más vacaciones que a nosotros?” Silva asked in rapid, fluid Spanish, his tone light and teasing.
(You got more vacation than us?)
Natán unzipped his dripping wet jacket, tossing it into the laundry bin with a dull thud.
He shook his damp hair, looking over at Silva with a weary shrug.
“No lo sé,” Natán replied, rubbing his tired eyes.
“Pep me dio vacaciones.” (I don’t know. Pep gave me vacation.)
“Well, you’re here now,” Silva chuckled, patting him on the shoulder as he walked past.
“Hurry up. The boss wants us in the tape room in five minutes. And he doesn’t look like he’s in a patient mood today.”
Ten minutes later, the entire Manchester City squad was filed into the state-of-the-art tape room.
The space was designed like a small, luxurious movie theater, with tiered rows of plush, black leather reclining seats facing a massive, wall-to-wall projection screen.
The lights were dimmed to pitch black, save for the glaring, clinical white light of the projector casting complex tactical diagrams across the screen.
Pep Guardiola stood at the very front of the room, holding a laser pointer.
He was already operating at a manic, terrifyingly intense frequency.
For the next forty minutes, Pep launched into a relentless, hyper-detailed masterclass on positional play, spatial geometry, and the rigid structural demands of his complex tactical philosophy.
He spoke rapidly, pacing back and forth across the front of the room, his laser pointer darting across the screen like a frantic firefly.
He talked about half-spaces, third-man runs, the crucial importance of numerical superiority in the first phase of build-up, pressing triggers, inverted fullbacks, and the concept of Juego de Posición.
It was a brilliantly dense, overwhelmingly complex lecture that required total, unwavering mental focus to digest.
Natán didn’t hear a single word of it.
Slouched deep in his comfortable leather seat in the back row, heavily hidden behind the massive shoulders of Yaya Toure, Natán had completely zoned out.
He was physically present, but his mind was currently thousands of miles away.
The drone of Pep’s raspy voice, echoing passionately about defensive high lines and midfield pivot rotations, slowly morphed into a dull, unintelligible hum in Natán’s ears—like the muted, wa-wa-wa sound of adults talking in a Charlie Brown cartoon.
He found himself staring blankly past the projection screen, his dark eyes fixated on the small, narrow window near the ceiling of the tape room.
His mind helplessly drifted back to the Plaza Hotel.
He thought about the warm, salty breeze playing with the hem of Kylie’s white linen sundress.
He remembered the exact way her dark, striking eyes had looked at him when he had struggled to explain his feelings.
And, most vividly of all, he thought about the soft, devastatingly tender pressure of her lips against his.
The memory sent a sudden, phantom rush of heat straight to his chest.
He wondered what she was doing right now.
Was she awake?
He was so deeply lost in his own romantic daydream, staring vacantly at the ceiling tiles with a small smile on his face, that he didn’t realize the lecture was finally coming to an end.
“…and that is exactly how we will break down the low block,” Pep’s voice suddenly cut through the fog, growing sharper and louder as the lights in the room abruptly flicked on, blindingly bright.
Natán flinched, sitting up straight and blinking rapidly, trying to look as though he had been fiercely concentrating the entire time.
Pep clicked the projector off, fixing the squad with a demanding stare.
“For the scrimmage today, we will implement this shape immediately. David, you will operate in the left half-space. Kevin, the right. And Natán…”
Natán’s head snapped to attention at the sound of his name, his heart skipping a beat.
“…you are starting on the right wing,” Pep finished, his dark eyes locking directly onto the teenager for a split second before he clapped his hands loudly.
“Let’s go. On the pitch. Five minutes.”
The Manchester City squad trotted out onto the immaculately manicured grass of the main training pitch.
Despite the summer date, the air was bitterly cold and damp, the misty rain leaving a slick, fast surface on the turf.
The session began, as it always did, with the grueling, highly structured physical warm-up led by Lorenzo Buenaventura, Pep’s notoriously demanding head of fitness.
For thirty agonizing minutes, the players were subjected to a relentless battery of core stability workouts, dynamic stretching, short shuttle sprints, and agonizing plank holds designed to awaken their central nervous systems and prevent muscular injuries.
Natán absolutely hated this part of training.
He was a pure footballer; if a drill didn’t involve a ball at his feet, he saw it as an entirely pointless form of medieval torture.
He laid on a yoga mat near the back of the group, currently tasked with holding a rigid, low plank position for sixty seconds.
But Natán was incredibly lazy when it came to gym work.
He had relied entirely on his freakish natural genetics, his youth, and his explosive muscle fibers to carry him this far.
Whenever Lorenzo paced down the line of players, barking encouragement and correcting postures, Natán would instantly stiffen up, maintaining a perfect, flat-backed plank with a look of intense concentration.
But the absolute second Lorenzo turned his back to walk in the opposite direction, Natán’s body instantly gave out.
He slumped down, letting his stomach rest comfortably on the wet grass, letting out a quiet, dramatic sigh of relief.
He would lay there for ten or fifteen seconds, catching his breath and watching the veterans like Fernandinho and Kompany sweat it out.
As soon as he saw Lorenzo pivoting back in his peripheral vision, Natán would rapidly pop back up into the plank, his face tight with fake exertion.
He repeated this shameless, slacking cycle for the entire thirty minutes, doing approximately half the actual work of his teammates while completely avoiding detection from the coaching staff.
Finally, Lorenzo blew his whistle, signaling the end of the physical conditioning.
The squad eagerly broke off into smaller groups, and the balls were finally brought out.
It was time for Rondos.
To Pep Guardiola, the Rondo was not just a warm-up game; it was the sacred, foundational heartbeat of his entire footballing ideology.
It taught speed of thought, spatial awareness, passing angles, and extreme technical precision under suffocating pressure.
Natán immediately jogged over to join the Spanish-speaking circle, happily slotting in alongside David Silva, Jesus Navas, Nicolas Otamendi, Nolito, and Sergio Aguero.
Two academy players were thrown into the middle as the defenders, tasked with chasing the ball like frantic dogs.
As soon as the drill started, Natán’s entire demeanor changed.
The laziness from the stretching mats completely vanished.
With a ball at his feet, he was an absolute maestro.
The ball zipped around the tight circle at a terrifying, blinding speed.
Pop.
Pop.
The sound of the firm, crisp passes echoed across the wet turf.
Natán was just messing around, totally in his element.
He didn’t even look at the ball.
He kept his head up, casually chatting with Silva as the ball came to him.
He exclusively played one-touch, executing a series of incredibly arrogant, yet mechanically perfect, no-look passes.
He would flick the ball with the outside of his boot, seamlessly redirecting the momentum away from the lunging defenders.
His touches were so incredibly soft, yet the passes had perfect weight, dying exactly on the foot of his teammates.
The drill escalated in speed, the academy boys in the middle growing increasingly frustrated and aggressive in their tackling.
The ball was fired into Natán with heavy pace.
Instead of controlling it or laying it off safely to his right, Natán spotted Jesus Navas stepping slightly out of rhythm across the circle.
In a split second of pure, cheeky improvisation, Natán opened his hips, feigned a pass to Silva, and instead rapidly chopped the ball with his left heel, executing a lightning-fast, perfectly weighted backheel pass directly between Jesus Navas’s open legs.
A clean, humiliating nutmeg.
“¡Olé!” Aguero screamed at the top of his lungs, throwing his hands in the air as the rest of the circle erupted into loud, mocking laughter.
Jesus Navas turned bright red, cursing violently in Andalusian Spanish as he swatted at the air in frustration, while Natán just offered a cheeky grin, his dark eyes sparkling with pure mischief.
Following the Rondos, the squad was split up by position for specialized, high-intensity drills.
The defenders went off with the assistant coaches to work on playing out from the back, while the attackers and midfielders converged on the penalty area for shooting drills against the goalkeepers, Willy Caballero and Joe Hart.
The drill was simple: receive a pass on the edge of the box, take one touch to set, and finish with lethal precision.
Aguero was a machine, blasting low, driven shots into the bottom corners with terrifying consistency.
De Bruyne was firing absolute rockets that nearly broke the back of the net.
But Natán wasn’t interested in simple, fundamentally sound finishing today.
He was feeling particularly adventurous, absolutely buzzing with creative energy.
When it was his turn, he received the pass on his left foot.
But instead of wrapping his instep around the ball, he completely altered his body angle, striking underneath the ball with the three outside toes of his left boot.
A perfect, audacious trivela.
The ball spun wildly in the air, defying physics as it curled outward before viciously bending back in, clipping the inside of the far post and nestling into the net, leaving Cabellero completely rooted to the spot.
A few players murmured in appreciation, but Natán was just getting started.
On his next repetition, he drove into the box.
Caballero rushed out to close the angle, making himself massive.
Instead of picking a corner, Natán waited until the absolute last millisecond and executed a delicate, incredibly disrespectful chip shot—a Panenka in open play.
The ball floated lazily over the diving keeper in a slow-motion arc, gently dropping over the goal line.
But his final trick was the most insulting.
Surging into the box from the right side, he feinted a massive, powerful shot.
Caballero bought it entirely, instinctively spreading his legs.
Instead of shooting, Natán effortlessly rolled the sole of his boot over the top of the ball, dragging it softly and sending a slow, trickling shot directly through Caballero’s open legs.
Another nutmeg.
Caballero scrambled on his hands and knees, turning his head just in time to see the ball cross the line.
The veteran Argentine keeper stood up, his face purple with rage.
“¡Hijo de puta!” Caballero roared, pointing at the giggling teenager.
“¡Haz eso en un partido real, niñato!” (Do that in a real game, you little brat!)
Natán just laughed, jogging back to the line, feeling absolutely invincible.
His technique was flawless, his confidence was sky-high, and he felt like he was entirely untouchable.
To end the rigorous training session, Pep blew his whistle loudly, summoning the squad to the center circle.
It was time for the ultimate tactical crucible: a high-intensity, six-on-six scrimmage on a severely condensed, incredibly tight pitch.
Small goals, no goalkeepers, maximum touches, and an excruciatingly high demand for speed of thought.
Pep stood on the touchline, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes narrowed into calculating slits as he watched his players take their positions.
Natán was placed on a team wearing bright yellow training bibs, alongside Kevin De Bruyne, Fernandinho, Nicolas Otamendi, Bacary Sagna, and Sergio Aguero.
They were up against the blue bibs: David Silva, Gael Clichy, John Stones, Yaya Toure, Nolito, and Jesus Navas.
The whistle blew, and the intensity instantly skyrocketed to match-day levels.
The first few minutes were a frantic, claustrophobic blur of flying tackles, rapid one-touch passing, and heavily contested physical duels.
The condensed pitch meant there was absolutely zero time to dwell on the ball; if you took more than two touches, you were immediately swarmed by three aggressive defenders.
Natán, operating wide on the right touchline, received a zipped pass from Fernandinho.
Instantly, Nolito and Toure collapsed on him, attempting to trap him against the white chalk.
But Natán’s feet were a blur.
He dropped his left shoulder, feinting inside, before executing a lightning-fast step-over that completely froze Nolito.
With a sudden burst of terrifying acceleration, Natán chopped the ball past Toure, wriggling out of the double-team and bursting into the open space.
The yellow team cheered.
Natán drove forward, drawing Stones out of the defensive line, before slipping a perfectly weighted, disguised reverse pass into the path of Sergio Aguero.
Aguero didn’t even need to break stride.
He took one touch to set and lashed the ball into the small, empty net.
1-0 to the yellow bibs.
“Great ball, Natán! Brilliant!” Aguero shouted, pointing at the young winger in appreciation as they jogged back to the center.
Natán felt a massive surge of pride swell in his chest.
He grinned, casually wiping the sweat from his forehead.
He had just orchestrated a beautiful goal against the first-team defense.
He was absolutely flying.
His dribbling was unplayable, his vision was sharp, and he felt like the undeniable star of the scrimmage.
But as the game restarted and the blue team gained possession, the fatal flaws in Natán’s game—the exact flaws Pep had spent hours analyzing on tape—began to glaringly show themselves.
Silva orchestrated the play for the blues, pinging passes around the tight grid with effortless grace.
The blue team shifted the ball to the left flank, forcing the yellow team to rapidly slide over and press.
De Bruyne was shouting instructions, pointing frantically, while Fernandinho snapped at heels like a rabid dog.
But Natán?
Natán was just standing there.
Positioned out wide on the right flank, completely detached from the intense defensive struggle happening ten yards away, Natán was simply walking.
He had his hands resting lazily on his hips, his breathing completely calm.
He wasn’t tracking back.
He wasn’t dropping into the midfield to close the passing lanes.
He was just loitering by the touchline, waiting for his teammates to win the ball back so he could attack again.
He was operating under the arrogant assumption that his only job on the football pitch was to provide moments of offensive magic, and that the dirty, exhausting work of defending and pressing was beneath him.
“Natán! Tuck in! Close the gap!” De Bruyne screamed, his face red with exertion as he tried to cover the massive, gaping hole Natán had left in their defensive shape.
Natán half-heartedly jogged a few steps inside, but the effort was entirely cosmetic.
Silva easily exploited the space, threading a gorgeous through-ball past Natán’s ghost-like pressing, finding Nolito who tapped it into the net.
Pep Guardiola didn’t say a word.
He just stood on the sideline, his jaw clenched so tightly the muscles rippled beneath his skin, his intense gaze fixed entirely on the young Spanish winger.
The game restarted.
Fernandinho aggressively won the ball back with a crunching tackle on Toure.
The yellow team immediately looked to transition into a counter-attack.
De Bruyne picked up his head, the ball glued to his feet, scanning the pitch for a forward pass.
Natán was standing perfectly still, hugging the right touchline.
He raised his hand, pointing directly at his own feet, demanding the ball to be played directly to him to his feet.
He didn’t make a run.
He didn’t sprint diagonally behind John Stones to stretch the defensive line.
He didn’t drop deep into the half-space to drag the fullback out of position.
He just stood there, completely static, waiting for the ball to be delivered to him on a silver platter so he could start his dribbling routine.
De Bruyne, visibly frustrated by the total lack of off-the-ball movement, ignored Natán entirely and instead launched a long, difficult diagonal pass toward Silva on the opposite wing.
The pass was intercepted by Toure.
“Move!” De Bruyne barked at Natán, throwing his arms up in exasperation.
“Give me an option behind!”
Natán frowned, genuinely confused by the criticism.
He was the best dribbler on the pitch; why wouldn’t they just give him the ball at his feet?
He was wide open.
The problem, he deduced was that his teammates just weren’t finding him fast enough.
For the remaining ten minutes of the scrimmage, this exact pattern repeated itself ad nauseam.
When the ball miraculously managed to find its way to Natán’s feet, he was electric.
He would execute breathtaking skills, dancing past tired defenders, hitting the post with a curling effort, and linking up beautifully with Aguero in the final third.
But the absolute second the ball left his vicinity, Natán effectively ceased to exist as a football player.
He became a spectator, walking around the pitch, totally disconnected from the structural mechanics of the team.
He was static in transition, lazy in defense, and entirely predictable in his movement, constantly demanding the ball to feet and absolutely refusing to make the grueling, lung-busting sprints behind the defensive line that actually created space for others.
Finally, Pep blew the whistle sharply three times.
“Okay! Good! Training is over!” Pep shouted, his voice echoing across the misty, rain-soaked facility.
“Inside for recovery! Good work!”
The players, completely exhausted, hunched over with their hands on their knees, gasping for air.
Slowly, the squad began to heavily trudge off the pitch, pulling off their sweaty bibs and heading back toward the warmth of the locker room.
Natán pulled his yellow bib over his head, wiping the sweat and rain from his eyes.
He felt pretty good.
He hadn’t pulled any muscles, he had nutmegged two players, and he had looked incredibly dangerous in the scrimmage.
He assumed his first day back under the new manager was a resounding, unmitigated success.
He began to jog off the pitch, already thinking about a hot shower.
“Natán,” a sharp, raspy voice called out behind him.
Natán stopped, turning around.
Pep Guardiola was marching briskly across the wet grass, heading directly toward him.
The rest of the coaching staff and players continued into the building, leaving the manager and the nineteen-year-old completely alone in the center of the massive, empty training pitch.
The gray Manchester sky loomed heavily overhead, the drizzle slowly turning into a steady, freezing rain.
Natán smiled politely, expecting a pat on the back, or perhaps a compliment on the brilliant reverse pass he had played to Aguero.
“Míster.”
Pep did not smile back.
He stopped two feet away from Natán, his intense, dark eyes boring directly into the teenager’s soul.
He looked profoundly agitated, radiating a manic, vibrating energy that made the hair on Natán’s arms stand up.
“I hate the most,” Pep began in Catalan, his voice a low, dangerous rumble that commanded absolute, terrified attention.
“When you don’t want the ball. I hate it.”
Natán’s smile instantly vanished, replaced by a look of sheer, profound confusion.
His brow furrowed deeply.
“I… I do want the ball, boss. I was calling for it all game.”
“No,” Pep snapped, taking a step closer, aggressively tapping two fingers against his own temple.
“You want the ball when it is convenient for you. You want the ball when it is easy. I watched the tapes, Natán. I watched hundreds of hours of your tape. Last season, you didn’t come back and try to get the ball. You wait for it to come.”
Natán swallowed hard, the cold rain suddenly feeling like ice against the back of his neck.
Pep grabbed Natán by the shoulders, completely ignoring the rain, turning the boy so he was facing the empty pitch.
He pointed out toward the right wing where Natán had been operating.
“Look at the space,” Pep commanded, his voice rising in volume and intensity.
“You stand on the chalk. You put your hand up. And you wait. Like a statue. Like you are watching a movie! This is not football, Natán. This is waiting!”
Natán opened his mouth to defend himself, to argue that staying wide stretched the defense, but Pep cut him off instantly.
“You have permission to lose the ball,” Pep said, his tone suddenly shifting from pure anger to a deep, intense, desperate passion.
He gestured wildly with his hands.
“I do not care if you try to dribble and you lose it! I do not care! Come deep, get the ball from the center-backs if you have to! You have permission to make mistakes with the ball!”
Pep grabbed Natán’s shoulders again, shaking him slightly, forcing the teenager to make unbroken eye contact.
“You have permission to run behind the line,” Pep continued, his eyes burning with an almost fanatical light.
“Nobody can catch you! You are too fast! If you run behind a defender, he is dead! He cannot stop you! But you need to make the run! You cannot just wait for the ball to be played directly to your feet! You must attack the space before the ball is even kicked!”
Natán stood completely frozen, the sheer magnitude of Pep’s tactical demands crashing over him like a tidal wave.
A legendary manager was telling him that everything he did without the ball was completely, utterly useless.
“And you do all of that,” Pep said, taking a step back, his voice dropping to a harsh, resonant whisper that echoed loudly in the quiet rain, “by just moving off the ball. Not standing still and waiting for something to happen. If you stand still, the defense wins. If you move, if you drag them out of position, if you sprint into the empty spaces… you destroy them.”
Pep let out a heavy breath, the intense, manic fire in his eyes slowly cooling into a look of absolute, unyielding expectation.
“I know how good you are with the ball, Natán,” Pep said softly, his voice finally carrying a trace of warmth.
“The whole world knows. But if you want to play for me, if you want to be the best player in the world… you must learn how to play without it. Do you understand me?”
Natán stared at the manager.
The arrogance, the lazy habits, laid bare on the wet Manchester grass.
He didn’t offer an excuse.
He looked Pep Guardiola dead in the eye, the fire of genuine, elite competitiveness finally igniting deep in his chest.
“I understand, Míster,” Natán said firmly, his voice steady despite the freezing rain.
“Good,” Pep nodded sharply, adjusting the collar of his sweater as he turned on his heel to walk back toward the academy building.
“Because tomorrow, you are going to run until your lungs bleed. Go inside.”
Natán stood alone on the empty pitch for a long moment, the relentless English rain soaking him to the bone.
His legs were heavy, his ego was bruised, and he was completely, utterly exhausted.
The vacation was truly, definitively over.
And Natán couldn’t wait for tomorrow.