The Etihad Stadium was a massive, concrete cauldron of noise and nervous energy.
The slate-grey Manchester sky had stopped pouring rain, leaving the turf slick and glistening under the blinding glare of the towering floodlights.
Over fifty thousand fans had packed into the stands, their sky-blue scarves held aloft, their voices unified in a deafening, echoing chorus of traditional club anthems.
The atmosphere was electric, buzzing with the monumental significance of the evening.
It was the dawn of a new era.
It was the very first Premier League match under the highly anticipated and scrutinised reign of Pep Guardiola.
Out on the pitch, the Manchester City squad was going through their final pregame warm-ups.
The stadium speakers pumped out heavy bass tracks to get the blood flowing, but for Natán, the music, the chanting fans, and the freezing August chill were nonexistent.
He didn’t have his eyes on the Sunderland players warming up on the opposite half of the pitch.
He wasn’t studying the movements of their goalkeeper, nor was he visualising the geometry of the penalty area.
His dark, intense eyes were fixated on the touchline.
He was staring at his own coach.
Pep Guardiola stood near the technical area, clad in a sleek, tailored dark suit over a black t-shirt, his arms crossed over his chest.
He looked calm, almost terrifyingly serene, as he watched his multi-million-pound squad prepare for battle.
Natán jogged in place, bringing his knees up high, his jaw clenched so tightly his teeth ached.
He didn’t get what this old man’s game was.
The psychological whiplash of the past five days had left Natán’s head spinning in a vortex of confusion, frustration, and deep-seated indignation.
Pep had spent the entire week tearing Natán apart.
Pep had essentially told him that his entire footballing philosophy was useless in this new, rigid system.
And then Pep had casually walked up to the tactical whiteboard and written Natán’s name in the starting eleven.
It was manipulation, and Natán didn’t like it one bit.
He didn’t appreciate the tough love.
He didn’t appreciate the grand narrative of the master tactician moulding the stubborn prodigy.
To Natán, it felt arrogant and disrespectful.
He was not a lump of clay to be molded; he was a finished product who had single-handedly carried a Spanish club to European qualification and scored game-winning goals in the Euros.
He was being angered by it.
A hot rage burned deep in his chest, a stark contrast to the freezing Manchester air.
As he transitioned into a series of short, explosive wind sprints, kicking up chunks of wet grass behind him.
He wasn’t playing tonight for the badge on his chest.
He was motivated by spite.
He was going to go out there and destroy Sunderland, not to prove that Pep’s system worked, but to prove that Pep was crazy.
He wanted to score just so he could look over at the touchline and essentially tell the bald mastermind, ‘I did this my way.’
The sharp blast of the fitness coach’s whistle signaled the end of the warmup.
The players grabbed their water bottles, taking final, quick sips before jogging down the retractable tunnel toward the home dressing room.
Fifteen minutes later, the atmosphere in the narrow, concrete tunnel beneath the stadium was suffocatingly tense.
The two teams stood side-by-side, waiting for the referee’s signal to walk out onto the pitch.
The Sunderland players, clad in their traditional red and white stripes, looked like giants.
Men like Younès Kaboul and Lamine Koné were center-backs built for English football.
But Natán wasn’t intimidated by their size.
He was standing near the back of the City line, bouncing lightly on the balls of his neon-green boots, his chest heaving with anticipation.
His eyes were locked onto the man standing directly across from him in the opposing line: Patrick van Aanholt.
Van Aanholt was Sunderland’s starting left-back.
He was fast, experienced, and physically imposing.
He would be Natán’s direct opponent for the next ninety minutes.
Natán stared at the Dutch defender with a dark, predatory hunger.
He didn’t blink.
He just stared, visualizing the exact sequence of step-overs, body feints, and explosive accelerations he was going to use to ruin the man’s evening.
The referee picking up the match ball and the two lines of players began to march forward, emerging from the dark tunnel into the blinding, roaring cauldron of the Etihad.
The noise was deafening.
Natán took a deep breath of the cold air, feeling the familiar, intoxicating spike of adrenaline flood his veins.
The spite fueled him.
The anger sharpened his focus.
He shook hands with the Sunderland players, his grip firm and aggressive, refusing to break eye contact with Van Aanholt.
The teams broke off into their respective halves.
Natán took his position on the far right touchline, his boots painting the chalk, exactly as Pep had demanded.
He stretched his calves one final time, waiting for the whistle.
The referee blew the whistle, and the 2016-2017 Premier League season officially began.
Sunderland, kicking off, immediately adopted a deep, cynical defensive block.
David Moyes, the Sunderland manager, had clearly instructed his team to sit back, absorb pressure, and try to frustrate Guardiola’s possession-based system.
They launched a long, hopeful ball deep into the City half, entirely bypassing the midfield in an attempt to win a cheap throw-in.
Nicolas Otamendi, City’s fierce Argentine center-back, met the dropping ball with a commanding, aggressive header, sending it flying back into the midfield.
Fernandinho, the Brazilian enforcer, anticipated the second ball brilliantly, throwing his body into a heavy challenge against Jack Rodwell to secure possession.
The crowd roared in appreciation of the early physical dominance.
Manchester City had the ball, and the grand tactical experiment was underway.
City began to circulate the ball.
Back and forth across the defensive line.
Stones to Kolarov.
Kolarov back to Stones.
Stones shifting it right to Bacary Sagna.
It was methodical, patient, and highly calculated, designed to stretch the Sunderland defensive block and pry open the microscopic gaps in the half-spaces.
Natán remained wide.
He remembered the lecture.
Open your hips.
Receive on the back foot.
Come short for the ball.
Five minutes into the match, Manchester City finally managed to pin Sunderland deep into their own defensive third.
Kevin De Bruyne, operating in the right half-space, looked up, assessing his options.
Natán saw the visual cue.
He didn’t wait for the ball to magically arrive at his feet.
He actively checked his run, darting backward toward De Bruyne, coming short for the ball.
De Bruyne zipped a firm, grounded pass directly to him.
Natán received the ball perfectly on his left foot, utilizing his open body shape to instantly pick it up on the half-turn.
Patrick van Aanholt had followed him tight, pressing hard against Natán’s back, trying to prevent him from turning and facing the goal.
But Natán was too quick.
As the ball arrived, instead of stopping it dead, he let it roll slightly across his body, using Van Aanholt’s aggressive momentum against him.
He dropped his shoulder violently to the right, throwing the defender off balance, before spinning sharply to his left.
It was a fluid, devastating piece of skill that eliminated the left-back from the equation.
Natán burst forward into the empty space, driving diagonally toward the penalty area.
The crowd rose to their feet.
But this was the Premier League.
Before Natán could even register his next passing option, a massive, red-and-white blur entered his peripheral vision.
Lee Cattermole, Sunderland’s notoriously brutal defensive midfielder, had come sliding across the wet turf like a freight train.
Cattermole clattered into Natán with terrifying, unyielding force.
He won the ball cleanly, but the momentum of his follow-through wiped the nineteen-year-old winger out.
The referee waved play on.
It was a hard, fair, English tackle.
Sunderland cleared the ball up the pitch.
Natán scrambled to his knees, wincing as a sharp pain radiated down his leg.
He looked toward the referee, throwing his arms up in disbelief, accustomed to getting foul calls for those types of tackles in the Euros.
Before he could even get fully to his feet, a sharp, piercing voice echoed from the touchline just ten yards away.
“Pass the ball quicker!” Pep Guardiola shouted, gesturing frantically.
“You held it too long! If you drop into the midfield, you play one touch or two touches! Do not carry it into traffic!”
Natán snapped.
The adrenaline, the pain from the tackle, and the week-long accumulation of spite boiled over.
He whipped his head around to glare at his manager.
He didn’t care that there were fifty thousand people watching, or dozens of television cameras capturing his every expression.
“Man, shut up!” Natán screamed back at the touchline, the English words tearing from his throat in a raw, defiant shout.
He expected Pep to explode.
He expected the legendary manager to scream back, to sub him off immediately, to destroy his career for such public insubordination.
Instead, Pep Guardiola actually smiled.
It wasn’t a mocking smile.
It was a small, genuin smirk that briefly flashed across the manager’s intense features before he turned his attention back to the pitch, casually crossing his arms over his chest.
Natán just threw his hands up in the air, and utterly exasperated.
He didn’t get this guy.
He had just told one of the most decorated managers in the history of the sport to shut up, and the man had smiled at him like a proud father watching his toddler throw a tantrum.
It was maddening.
Grumbling a string of highly explicit Catalan curses under his breath, Natán sprinted back into his position on the right wing, determined to take his confusion and rage out on the Sunderland defense.
The rest of the first half devolved into a grueling, incredibly frustrating tactical war of attrition.
Sunderland was playing with ten men behind the ball, their defensive lines incredibly compressed, leaving virtually no space between the midfield and the defense.
City dominated possession, hovering around seventy-five percent, but finding a killer pass through the dense forest of red and white shirts was proving to be a monumental challenge.
Natán was trying desperately to execute Pep’s instructions.
He was coming short constantly.
But every time Natán received the ball with his back to goal, he was immediately, violently swarmed.
Cattermole, Kaboul, or Jack Rodwell would snap at his ankles, pulling his shirt, throwing heavy shoulders into his spine.
It was a physical battering unlike anything he had ever experienced in Spain.
The English referees let the game flow, ignoring the constant, cynical little fouls that were slowly bruising Natán’s calves and testing his patience.
In the twenty-second minute, after a particularly long, sterile period of City passing the ball sideways across the defensive line, Natán decided he had had enough of coming short and getting kicked.
He saw John Stones, the ball-playing center-back, look up with the ball at his feet.
Natán recognized the trigger.
He immediately spun on his heel and made a blindingly fast, explosive darting run in behind the Sunderland defensive line.
He burned past Van Aanholt, leaving the defender trailing in his wake.
The space was there.
The passing lane was wide open.
If Stones played the ball over the top, Natán was in on goal.
He sprinted pointing frantically at the grass in front of him, screaming for the ball.
Stones looked at him.
Stones saw the run.
And then, adhering to the strict, risk-averse principles of maintaining secure possession during the build-up phase, Stones simply turned and passed the ball sideways, five yards to Kolarov.
Natán pulled up, his boots skidding on the wet grass.
He threw his head back, letting out a roar of frustration that was drowned out by the crowd.
He had made the perfect run.
He had done exactly what Pep had demanded during his post-training lecture—”Nobody can catch you, but you need to make the run!”—and he had been ignored.
He trudged slowly back into his rigid positional shape on the right touchline, his hands resting heavily on his hips.
He watched as City kept passing it around.
Kolarov to Silva.
Silva to Fernandinho.
Fernandinho back to Stones.
It was hypnotic, repetitive, and deeply boring.
But then, in the twenty-eighth minute, David Silva found a precious pocket of space in the midfield.
El Mago received the ball on the half-turn, slipping brilliantly away from Rodwell.
He took two rapid touches forward, his head up, constantly scanning the geometry of the pitch.
Natán, realizing the play was suddenly accelerating, came closer to the ball.
He checked his run, moving diagonally toward the center of the pitch to offer a passing option.
Patrick van Aanholt, terrified of Natán’s pace, tracked him aggressively, sticking closer than a shadow, breathing heavily right down the back of Natán’s neck.
Silva saw the tight marking and fired the ball across the wet grass aiming directly for Natán’s feet.
It was a pass designed to be controlled instantly, a bullet meant to break the lines.
Van Aanholt braced himself, leaning his heavy weight into Natán’s back, preparing to physically dominate the teenager the moment he tried to take a touch.
The Dutch defender anticipated the impact, dropping his center of gravity.
But Natán didn’t touch the ball.
As the high-speed pass reached him, Natán executed a moment of pure, improvisational street-football genius.
He widened his stance, opening his legs at the exact millisecond the ball arrived.
He didn’t even look down.
He let the ball run cleanly through his legs.
Van Aanholt, whose entire physical momentum was predicated on tackling the ball the moment Natán touched it, was caught entirely flat-footed.
He was bamboozled.
The ball zipped through Natán’s legs, passing directly between Van Aanholt’s open legs as well.
A double dummy nutmeg.
The stadium collectively gasped, a sound of pure shock rippling through the fifty thousand fans.
Before Van Aanholt could even process what had just happened to him, Natán had already spun 180 degrees.
Utilizing his terrifying, explosive acceleration, Natán left the physically paralyzed defender entirely in the dust.
He chased after the ball, which was rolling perfectly into the massive, empty expanse of green grass behind the Sunderland defensive line.
He was all alone.
It was just Natán, the ball, and Vito Mannone, the Sunderland goalkeeper, who was frantically rushing off his line to try and close the immense distance.
The noise in the stadium crescendoed into a deafening roar.
The fans were on their feet, fully anticipating the net to bulge.
Natán drove into the penalty area, his eyes locked onto the keeper.
Mannone went down early, sprawling his massive frame across the wet grass in a desperate attempt to block the inevitable low, curling strike.
Natán saw the keeper go down.
His arrogance, fueled by spite and the adrenaline of the magical dummy, took over his decision-making process.
Instead of opening his body and sliding the ball comfortably into the bottom corner, Natán killed his momentum.
He slipped the toe of his neon-green boot directly under the bottom of the ball, leaned back, and executed a delicate, looping Panenka chip.
The ball floated gracefully over the sprawling form of Vito Mannone.
The goalkeeper could only watch in helpless horror as the ball sailed over his head.
But Natán had leaned back just a fraction of an inch too far.
The ball floated over the keeper, over the crossbar, and landed harmlessly behind the goal.
A collective groan echoed around the Etihad Stadium.
The fans slumped back into their seats, unable to believe he had missed such a golden opportunity.
Natán landed heavily on his feet.
He stared at the empty net in disbelief.
He had executed the hardest part perfectly, only to bottle the finish.
He grabbed the collar of his sky-blue jersey, pulling it over his face, letting out a muffled scream of rage.
He could feel the burning glare of Pep Guardiola from the touchline, and it made him want to dig a hole in the pitch and bury himself.
He had tried to be a smartass, and he had failed spectacularly on global television.
The game dragged on.
The psychological weight of the missed Panenka sat heavily on Natán’s shoulders, making his legs feel like they were cast in lead.
As the clock ticked past the thirty-fifth minute, Natán’s frustration morphed into a dark, simmering exhaustion.
He was tired of not getting the ball when he made runs.
He had kept making explosive darts in behind, only to be ignored by his teammates prioritizing safe possession.
When he came short, he was relentlessly fouled, kicked, and shoved by the physically imposing Sunderland midfield.
His shins throbbed, his lungs burned, and the game was still locked at a miserable 0-0 stalemate.
Sunderland won a defensive throw-in deep in their own half.
The ball was tossed down the touchline toward Fabio Borini, the hardworking Italian forward who had dropped deep to help relieve the pressure.
Natán, operating on exhausted, spiteful instinct, decided he was entirely done with Pep’s rigid positional instructions.
He abandoned the high-and-wide right-wing position entirely.
He sprinted back into his own half, tracking the play with a sudden, violent burst of defensive energy.
Borini received the ball with his back to goal, trying to shield it to buy his team some time.
Natán arrived like a heat-seeking missile and barged into the Italian striker with terrifying physical force.
It was a shoulder-to-shoulder challenge, legal but undeniably aggressive.
Borini, totally unprepared for the raw power of the lithe teenager, was sent flying off the ball, tumbling face-first into the wet grass.
The crowd roared in appreciation of the , dogged determination.
Natán had won the ball back purely through grit and aggression.
He didn’t pause to celebrate the tackle.
Natán instantly pivoted, transitioning from defense to attack in the blink of an eye.
He drove the ball forward, his head down, his legs pumping furiously.
Patrick van Aanholt, desperate to make amends for the earlier humiliation, stepped up aggressively to meet him near the halfway line.
The Dutch defender widened his stance, preparing to dive into a heavy slide tackle.
Natán didn’t even attempt a complex skill move.
With a heavy, audacious touch, he simply kicked the ball ten yards past Van Aanholt’s left side, while he simultaneously sprinted around the defender’s right side.
It was a classic, playground-style ‘knock-and-run.’
Van Aanholt was caught entirely flat-footed.
By the time the defender pivoted his hips to turn and chase, Natán had already generated maximum velocity.
Van Aanholt, realizing he was utterly beaten for pace and desperate to stop the counter-attack at any cost, decided to cynically take the yellow card.
As Natán drew level with him, tearing down the touchline, Van Aanholt leaned his entire body weight sideways, attempting to throw a massive shoulder check directly into Natán’s chest to send him flying into the advertising hoardings.
But Natán saw it coming.
He was tired of being bullied.
As Van Aanholt initiated the contact, Natán dropped his center of gravity, braced his legs, and shoved his own shoulder violently back against the incoming defender.
The collision was spectacular.
Two elite athletes colliding at full sprinting speed.
The impact sounded like a car crash.
Because Natán had braced himself and anticipated the hit, he absorbed the shock far better than the Dutchman.
Van Aanholt bounced off Natán’s muscular frame, losing his balance entirely and crashing heavily into the wet turf.
Natán, however, was also knocked severely off balance by the immense force.
He stumbled forward two steps, his arms pinwheeling desperately as he tried to maintain his footing, before gravity ultimately claimed him.
He went down in a tumbling, spectacular heap, sliding across the wet grass.
The referee blew his whistle sharply, pointing aggressively down the pitch.
Foul.
City’s ball.
The Etihad crowd erupted into a chorus of boos directed at Van Aanholt, mixed with loud, passionate cheers for Natán’s incredible, aggressive run.
Natán didn’t stay down to milk the contact or complain to the referee.
The adrenaline was pumping far too heavily.
He scrambled right back up to his feet, ignoring the burning scrape on his knee.
Kevin De Bruyne, displaying the genius-level situational awareness that made him one of the best midfielders in the world, had already sprinted over to the spot of the foul.
He didn’t wait for the Sunderland defense to organize themselves.
De Bruyne placed his hand on the ball to stop it rolling, and instantly took a quick free-kick, sliding a precise, grounded pass down the right flank.
Natán took off like a sprinter out of the blocks, running onto the perfectly weighted pass just outside the corner of the penalty area.
The Sunderland defense was in disorganised panic.
Van Aanholt was still struggling to his feet near the halfway line.
Younès Kaboul, the massive French centre-back, was forced to break the defensive line and sprint out to the wing to help cover the gaping hole Natán was exploiting.
Kaboul arrived like a runaway train, his massive frame casting a shadow over the lithe Spanish winger.
The center-back dropped his hips, preparing to execute a heavy, suffocating block.
Natán received the ball, instantly isolating Kaboul in a terrifying one-on-one scenario.
The stadium held its collective breath.
Natán slowed his momentum drastically, bringing the ball to a near standstill beneath his boots.
He stared Kaboul directly in the eyes.
And then, he initiated the dance.
He executed a rapid, blindingly fast stepover with his right foot, his boot blurring over the top of the ball.
Kaboul hesitated, his weight shifting slightly backward.
That hesitation was all the invitation Natán needed.
He chopped the ball slightly inside, dropping his left shoulder aggressively.
He opened his hips wide, his eyes selling the illusion.
Every single biomechanical cue in his body screamed that he was about to execute his world-famous trademark move: curling a delicate, sweeping finesse shot into the far, top-left corner of the net.
Kaboul bought the fake entirely.
He leaped sideways, throwing his massive body into the air, fully extending his legs to try and block the anticipated curling shot toward the far post.
Vito Mannone, the goalkeeper, also bought the fake, taking a desperate step toward his right to cover the far corner.
But instead of wrapping his foot around the ball to curl it, Natán snapped his hips back and put his laces straight through the centre of the ball, and smashed it.
He didn’t aim for the far corner; he smashed it, aiming for the near post, the exact side the goalkeeper had just vacated.
The ball through the humid Manchester air, whistling past the sprawling Younès Kaboul.
Mannone didn’t even have time to raise his hands.
The ball smashed violently into the back of the net.
For a fraction of a second, there was a stunned silence.
And then, the Etihad Stadium descended into pandemonium.
1-0 City.
Fifty thousand fans erupted into a singular, deafening roar of pure ecstasy.
The noise was a physical entity, shaking the concrete foundations of the stadium.
Natán didn’t run to the corner flag to do a choreographed celebration.
He didn’t perform a backflip or slide on his knees.
The overwhelming release of frustration, exhaustion, and spite overtook him.
He just sprinted aimlessly toward the nearest sideline, his mouth wide open in a scream, the veins bulging visibly in his neck.
He ripped his sky-blue jersey by the collar, beating his fist against the City crest over his heart, screaming into the roaring crowd.
He had done it.
He had taken all the nagging, all the humiliation, and all the tactical suffocation, and he had turned it into a moment of pure, undeniable brilliance.
His teammates swarmed him.
Sergio Aguero arrived first, leaping onto Natán’s back and dragging him to the turf in a joyous, suffocating embrace.
Kevin De Bruyne slid in next, ruffling Natán’s dark hair violently, shouting incomprehensible Flemish praise into his ear.
David Silva, Otamendi, and Fernandinho piled on, creating a massive, chaotic mountain of sky-blue shirts near the touchline.
Natán was buried under the weight of his teammates, laughing and gasping for air, feeling the immense, crushing pressure of the past week finally begin to lift from his shoulders.
But amidst the chaotic celebration, Natán failed to see the reaction taking place just a few yards away in the technical area.
Pep Guardiola was not standing calmly with his arms crossed.
When the ball hit the back of the net, Pep had exploded.
He leaped entirely off the ground, throwing both fists violently into the air.
He turned to his coaching staff, grabbing Mikel Arteta by the shoulders and shaking him enthusiastically, a massive, brilliant smile splitting his face.
He turned back toward the pitch, clapping his hands furiously above his head, roaring his approval into the Manchester night.
He wasn’t happy because Natán had scored a beautiful goal.
He was the happiest person in the entire stadium because Natán was finally learning.
The goal hadn’t come from Natán standing statically on the wing waiting for service.
It had come because Natán tracked back defensively.
It had come because Natán used his physical aggression to win the ball from Borini.
It had come because Natán made an explosive, darting run into empty space to receive De Bruyne’s quick free-kick.
Pep had spent the entire week deliberately aggravating his ego, all to provoke this exact, specific reaction.
It was a masterclass in psychological management, and Pep was thrilled that the teenage prodigy had finally taken the bait.
If Natán was going to be great, he needed to play like this.
But Natán didn’t see any of that.
As he finally extracted himself from the pile of celebrating teammates and jogged back toward the center circle, his chest puffed out with arrogant pride, he intentionally avoided looking at the touchline.
He was convinced he had just won their silent, psychological war.
The match restarted, but the dynamic had entirely shifted.
The goal had shattered Sunderland’s rigid, cynical defensive game plan.
Forced to chase the game and find an equalizer before halftime, the Black Cats had to abandon their deep block and push bodies forward.
This left massive, gaping acres of space behind their defensive line, and Natán, fueled by the adrenaline of his spectacular goal, became a terror.
For the final ten minutes of the first half, Natán subjected Patrick van Aanholt to a masterclass in psychological and physical torture.
Every time Natán touched the ball, the stadium buzzed with electric anticipation.
He was playing with freedom.
He drove at the Sunderland defense relentlessly.
He dropped his shoulder, utilized blindingly fast step-overs, and executed backheel flicks that left the red-and-white shirts tackling empty air.
Sunderland, unable to cope with his terrifying pace and trickery, resorted to the only tactic they had left: cynical fouls.
Every time Natán beat a man, he was immediately hacked down.
Rodwell caught him with a late, raking stud down his calf.
Cattermole shoved him violently in the back while he was in mid-air contesting a header.
Kaboul deliberately stepped on his toes during a dead-ball situation.
Natán spent the final minutes of the half constantly picking being dragged up off the wet grass, his socks stained with mud, his muscles throbbing with deep, blossoming bruises.
The referee handed out two yellow cards to Sunderland players solely for fouls committed against the young Spanish winger, but the physical battering continued.
As the stadium announcer confirmed two minutes of stoppage time, Manchester City mounted one final, sustained attack.
De Bruyne and Silva orchestrated a beautiful, flowing passing sequence that forced Sunderland to concede a corner kick on the left side of the pitch.
The big men—Stones, Kolarov, and Fernandinho—jogged slowly into the Sunderland penalty area, jostling violently for position in the crowded box.
Natán didn’t enter the penalty area.
He positioned himself just outside the D, lurking at the edge of the box, waiting for any clearances or second balls to drop in his vicinity.
Kevin De Bruyne stood over the ball at the corner flag, raising both arms to signal the set-piece routine.
He took a short run-up and whipped a vicious, out-swinging cross into the danger zone.
The ball arced beautifully through the air, bypassing the chaotic scrum of bodies at the near post.
It sailed over the heads of Kaboul and Stones, missing everyone entirely.
The cross was perfect.
It was floating harmlessly toward the far edge of the penalty area, exactly where Natán was standing.
Natán watched the ball drop out of the dark Manchester sky.
The trajectory was perfect.
It was begging to be hit.
Natan swung his left leg through the air like a massive, terrifying pendulum.
He went for the spectacular, first-time volley.
It was a technique that required perfection.
If he connected perfectly, it would be a goal of the season contender, a screaming volley straight into the top corner.
But Natán was just a fraction of a second too eager.
He rushed the technique.
He didn’t keep his head down over the ball.
He snatched at it.
His neon-green boot connected with the ball with a loud, satisfying thwack, but he struck slightly underneath the centre of the leather.
The ball exploded off his foot, travelling with immense, terrifying power.
It flew through the crowded penalty area, rising rapidly as it approached the goal.
Vito Mannone didn’t even attempt a dive.
He just watched it fly.
CRASH.
The ball smashed against the very top of the crossbar, the concussive sound echoing across the silent stadium.
The force of the impact shook the goalposts, sending a shower of accumulated rainwater cascading down from the netting.
The ball ricocheted, sailing high into the stands behind the goal.
A collective gasp of disbelief ripped through the fifty thousand fans, immediately followed by a wave of loud applause for the audacity of the attempt.
Before the ball even landed in the cheering crowd, the referee brought his whistle to his lips and blew sharply three times.
The first half was over.
The Etihad stadium erupted into a standing ovation, the fans roaring their approval as the players began to slowly trudge toward the tunnel.
It had been a dominant forty-five minutes of football.
Natán stood at the edge of the penalty area, his chest heaving as he stared at the vibrating crossbar, his hands resting heavily on his hips.
His shins ached, his shoulder throbbed from the early Cattermole tackle, and his lungs burned from the sprinting Pep Guardiola had demanded.
He had scored a brilliant goal.
He had terrorized the Sunderland defence.
He had justified his starting position.
But as he watched the crossbar slowly stop shaking, he was furious at himself for rushing the volley and missing the clear-cut one-on-one earlier in the game.
He dropped his head, spitting a mouthful of water onto the wet grass.
“Merda,” Natán muttered bitterly in Catalan, shaking his head in disgust as he began the long, grueling walk toward the dressing room.