Thomas moved before Mancini’s halftime speech could begin.
He crossed the dressing room and sat down next to Icardi, who was hunched in his corner, water bottle in hand, radiating frustration like heat from a furnace.
The Argentine saw Thomas approaching and didn’t wait for him to speak, he hooked an arm around Thomas’s neck and pulled him close, lowering his voice.
“You saw it, right?
From the bench.
Tell me you saw it.” “Saw what?” “Hernanes’s assist.
The first goal.” “He had a great first half.
Two goals.
Berni says they call him the Prophet.” Icardi made a face, the expression of a man who’d been forced to compliment someone he wanted to strangle.
“That counter-attack.
I was in the better position, central, closer to goal, clear lane to the penalty spot.
Palacio was out wide, slower, further from the target.
Hernanes could see us both.” Icardi’s voice was barely above a whisper, but the intensity was unmistakable.
“He chose Palacio.” Thomas had seen it.
From the bench, the geometry of the situation had been obvious, Icardi’s run was the higher-percentage option by a considerable margin.
Hernanes had made the political choice, not the smart footballing one.
“Your position was better,” Thomas confirmed.
“If you’d received that ball, you’d have been through on goal.” “Exactly.
But he still gave it to Palacio.” “And Palacio scored.” “That’s not the point!” Icardi caught himself, glanced around the dressing room, and lowered his voice again.
“It’s the same thing, but it’s not the same thing.
I need goals, Thomas.
I need twenty-plus goals this season.
I can feel the Golden Boot is there, I know I can win it.
But not if the creative players keep feeding someone else.” Thomas understood the dynamics perfectly.
Palacio had transferred from Genoa in 2012 for ten and a half million euros.
In his first two seasons, he’d scored twenty and nineteen goals respectively, carrying Inter’s attack almost single-handedly through the club’s worst years.
He was the senior figure in the Argentine group, respected by everyone, and his status meant that newcomers like Hernanes instinctively deferred to him on the pitch.
And Icardi, younger, hungrier, objectively more lethal, was paying the price.
Thomas also knew something Icardi didn’t.
Something from his previous life that he kept locked away behind a careful expression.
Icardi would win the Golden Boot this season.
Twenty-two goals.
The youngest top scorer in Serie A history.
Palacio would finish with eight, his influence fading, and would eventually leave the club.
The future belonged to Icardi.
That knowledge made Thomas’s decision simple.
Not a gamble, a certainty.
“If I’m on the pitch,” Thomas said, “I’ll find you.
Every time.
No hierarchy.
Just the best pass to the best option.” Something shifted in Icardi’s expression.
Not trust.
But the beginning of it.
A crack in the wall of professional scepticism that every striker builds around himself.
“You say that.
But whether you play today, whether you play at all this season, that’s not something either of us controls.” “I know.
But I’m going to try.” Mancini entered the dressing room, and the conversation ended.
The manager’s halftime speech was brief and pragmatic: stay compact, don’t get ambitious, protect the two-goal lead, stick to the counter-attacking shape that had worked so effectively.
“No heroics.
No ego.
We play the second half the same way we played the first.
Understood?” The squad filed out into the tunnel.
Thomas waited until the crowd of players had thinned, then fell into step beside Mancini.
“Coach.
Ten seconds of your time.” Mancini glanced at him sideways.
“Go on.” “I’d like to play in the second half.” The words landed simply, without decoration.
Thomas kept his voice steady, his eyes level.
Mancini stopped walking.
In twenty-five years of coaching — Inter Milan, Manchester City, Galatasaray, the Italian national team setup, he could count on one hand the number of young players who had walked up to him mid-match and asked for minutes.
It simply didn’t happen.
Young players waited to be noticed.
They hoped.
They prayed.
They caught the manager’s eye during warm-ups and tried to look eager without looking desperate.
They didn’t ask.
Mancini had seen the opposite a hundred times: the nervous drop of the eyes when he scanned the bench, the slight flinch when his gaze lingered, the unconscious throat-clearing that signalled a player who was terrified of being called upon.
Even Mario Balotelli, the most fearless teenager Mancini had ever promoted, a kid who’d go on to score in a Champions League semi-final at nineteen, had never once approached him during a match and requested playing time.
And yet here was Brenner.
Eighteen years old, barely able to string a sentence together in Italian, standing in the tunnel of the Stadio Olimpico and asking for minutes as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Mancini studied him for a moment.
Something stirred in his memory.
1982.
Bologna to Sampdoria.
He’d been eighteen himself, exactly the same age and he’d spent his first months on the bench, watching from the sideline while the senior players occupied the positions he knew he could fill.
The frustration had been physical, almost painful.
Like an itch he couldn’t scratch.
Like something alive inside his chest, clawing to get out.
He remembered the feeling with perfect clarity.
The desperate need to play.
The certainty — irrational, unjustified, but absolute, that if he could just get on the pitch, he could make a difference.
He saw that same certainty now, in this kid’s eyes.
“Give me a reason,” Mancini said.
“I’m in good form.
I’ve been training hard, and my passing has improved.
I can contribute.” “How much time do you want?” “Ten minutes.
Ten minutes is enough for me.” Mancini almost smiled.
The audacity of it.
The quiet, controlled audacity of a young man who had no right to be this confident and was being it anyway.
“If we go up 3-0,” Mancini said, “I’ll put you on.
I can’t promise how much time, but you’ll get your chance.
Follow my instructions to the letter.” Thomas nodded once.
“Thank you, Boss.” He jogged back toward the bench, heart hammering, face carefully neutral.
Behind him, Mancini watched him go.
For a moment, just a moment the fifty-year-old manager from Jesi wasn’t standing in the tunnel of the Olimpico.
He was standing in the tunnel of the Stadio Luigi Ferraris in Genoa, thirty-two years ago, wearing a Sampdoria shirt that was too big for him, burning with the need to prove that he belonged.
He shook the memory off and walked out to the technical area.
The second half was about to begin.