The group gathered in front of the short-passing training equipment.
This section of the pitch was known as the high-precision passing zone.
The equipment itself was called the moving target rig.
Three tracks ran across the passing area at ten, fifteen, and twenty meters.
Each track carried a moving ring, one meter across.
The test was simple.
Pass from near to far, aiming at each ring in turn.
If the ball went cleanly through, the sensor inside the ring logged a completed pass.
Thirty attempts total.
Ten at each ring.
“Ethan, do you need to warm up first?” Coach Montella asked.
Without a proper warm-up, touch and accuracy could be night and day.
“No need, Coach.
I’ll go straight in.”
Ethan looked completely relaxed.
Montella shrugged and switched on the equipment.
The kid probably thinks the rings are standing still, he thought.
He had set the machine to its lowest setting.
But the rings were already gliding along their tracks.
Hitting them now was far harder than hitting a stationary target.
“Hey, what do you think?
Out of thirty, how many does Ethan hit?”
The Fiorentina players watched Ethan step into the passing zone and started murmuring.
“Level one isn’t that hard, but for a kid his age it’s no joke.
Fifteen out of thirty?
Twenty?
Either would be solid.”
“Wait, why isn’t he kicking?
Level one can’t be too hard for him, can it?”
Montella noticed too.
“Ethan, are the rings moving too fast for you?”
“No.
Too slow.
Can you speed them up?”
Montella was mildly surprised but said nothing.
He turned and set the machine to level two.
The players exchanged glances.
Level one felt slow to him?
Level two doubled the ring speed.
It was also the setting the team used most in training.
So Ethan’s passing really might be decent.
Asking for that speed meant he genuinely trusted his accuracy.
“Coach, can it go faster?”
Nobody expected Ethan to find level two slow as well.
Montella froze.
There was no joke in them.
The players couldn’t hold back.
“No way.
Is this kid serious?”
“Level two is too slow for him?”
“Level three is twice as fast as level two!”
“And across the whole squad, apart from Valero in a hospital bed, only David Pizarro and Aquilani can pass the level-three test.”
Pizarro and Aquilani nodded quietly.
Under Montella’s 4-3-3 possession system, both were key attacking midfielders.
Their technique and passing ranked among the best in the squad.
By the team’s short-passing standard, a player needed at least twenty completed passes out of thirty to pass the test.
Right now, only those two technical players could complete it at level three.
And only after a full warm-up, with their touch at its sharpest.
Now Ethan, with no warm-up at all, wanted to try level three.
It sounded like a joke.
But when Montella set the machine to level three, Ethan spoke again, completely serious.
“Coach, honestly, I think it can still go faster.”
This time Montella’s patience cracked.
“Ethan, why don’t you try it first?”
The players shook their heads.
“Ethan’s lost it.”
“He hasn’t even handled level three, and now he wants level four?
Level four is the machine’s maximum.
Nobody in this squad has ever passed it.”
“Is he just showing off?”
Ethan had made a good first impression.
Plenty of them didn’t want to see the young kid embarrass himself in public.
But his repeated demands had gone beyond anything they expected.
Right now, he just seemed arrogant.
Montella’s patience was gone.
He sighed and set the machine to level four, the setting no one in the squad had ever completed.
At level four, the rings moved along their tracks at ten kilometers per hour.
At that speed, the ten-meter ring might still tempt someone to try.
But the rings at fifteen and twenty meters, moving that fast, looked impossible.
Milan Badelj, the tough defensive midfielder whose technique was a little rough, stared at the rig and muttered, “At level four, forget twenty out of thirty.
I’d be lucky to clip the ten-meter ring twice.”
Montella watched Ethan, hoping the brutal speed would scare some sense into him.
Instead, Ethan’s eyes showed no fear at all.
He looked completely at ease.
Has this kid lost his mind?
Even if he was faking confidence, a speed like this should have made him flinch.
Montella was stunned and confused.
Then Ethan met his gaze.
“Coach, as a new player, I’m honored to show what I can do in front of you and my teammates.”
“Since I’m demonstrating my specialty, I don’t want to hold anything back.
I’ll show my passing at its absolute best.”
“So what I say next might sound strange, but I mean every word.”
“If level four is the fastest this machine runs, I’ll start now.”
“If it isn’t, I’d like to try the highest setting.”
With the Platini model active, Ethan’s short passing had reached the ceiling of modern football.
His confidence was absolute.
If he was going to show his strength, he would show it openly.
More importantly, Ethan knew exactly what he needed to establish himself at Fiorentina and earn real minutes as soon as possible.
He had to make his best quality as visible as possible, as fast as possible.
This was the perfect moment.
The training ground went still again.
Everyone looked at Ethan with shock and tangled emotions.
Call him arrogant, but the words he’d just spoken were serious.
Even sincere.
Yet taking them at face value felt absurd.
From his tone, level four didn’t seem to impress him at all.
A setting no one in the squad could pass, and he acted like he could handle it without breaking a sweat.
Who could believe that?
The players were lost.
“Where does this kid get his confidence?
Level four didn’t even shake him, and he wants faster?”
“Level four is the max!
Nobody in this squad has ever passed it.
There is no higher setting!”
The chatter swirled.
Then Captain Pasqual spoke quietly.
“No.
There is one more.”
“Level four isn’t the highest.
The highest is level five.”
“It’s just so difficult that it hasn’t been used in years.”
“In the last thirty years, only one Fiorentina legend ever mastered level five.”
Pasqual’s words stunned everyone.
Before anyone could ask more, the machine clicked and whirred back to life.
Every eye locked onto the short-passing rig as it revealed its most terrifying setting.
The rings weren’t just faster than level four.
They surged and braked, changing speed as they traveled.
Worse, they tilted backward at random moments, making the target vanish entirely.
The Fiorentina players stared in disbelief.
This was level five?
Who the hell could actually pass through that?