Since receiving permission to practice free-kicks, Allen’s afternoons at Melwood had suddenly gained a renewed sense of purpose.
He no longer spent hours standing idly on the touchline, watching the older boys run passing drills.
But progress was agonizingly slow.
Thud.
Another football crashed directly into the wooden dummy wall and bounced harmlessly away.
Allen let out a long, heavy breath, resting his hands on his hips.
It had been two full months since he began his dead-ball training.
Whether he was taking free-kicks in actual junior matches or practicing alone at Melwood, he had not scored a single goal.
Well, technically, he had scored twice, but his cold, analytical mind dismissed them entirely.
One had taken a massive deflection off a defender, and the other had been a complete miskick that miraculously squeezed past a blind-sided goalkeeper.
They were statistical anomalies born of pure luck, not repeatable skill.
Do I genuinely lack the biomechanical aptitude for this?
Allen thought, shaking his head.
For a brief, fleeting second, the pragmatic side of his JSOC brain suggested abandoning the project entirely.
It might be a waste of operational time.
You already excel in open-play combat.
But the thought vanished almost instantly.
Jack Vance was not a man who surrendered to tactical limitations.
If he had never chosen to pursue football, he wouldn’t have cared.
But since he had committed his reincarnated life to becoming the apex predator of the sport, he refused to accept any glaring weaknesses in his arsenal.
In the hyper-competitive theater of professional football, a diverse skill set was a matter of survival.
Furthermore, his deep-seated, military pride simply would not allow him to fail.
He marched to the wooden wall, gathered the loose footballs, and set them back on the twenty-eight-yard line.
He took three deliberate steps backward and prepared to strike again.
“Bloody hell, the boy is a machine,” Steven Gerrard muttered, pausing his own training to watch Allen from across the pitch.
“Tell me about it,” Michael Owen sighed, shaking his head.
“He’s completely obsessed.”
Over the past two months, both Gerrard and Owen had witnessed Allen’s terrifying dedication firsthand.
They had tried everything to break him out of his frustrating cycle—joking with him, arguing with him, and practically begging him to come play a simple game of two-touch.
Nothing worked.
The seven-year-old was entirely consumed by the wooden wall.
But Allen’s manic obsession had a profound, unintended consequence on his friends.
Both Owen and Gerrard were elite prodigies in their own right.
Watching a seven-year-old push himself to the brink of physical exhaustion every single day triggered their own deep-seated competitive pride.
“If that tiny psychopath is going to kill himself training, then I am not stopping either!” Owen grumbled.
He grabbed a ball and furiously sprinted toward the agility cones, attacking the slalom course with renewed, violent intensity.
Gerrard watched Owen go, chuckled softly, and picked up his own ball to resume his long-range passing drills.
It was a familiar routine.
Allen’s terrifying work ethic was inadvertently elevating the standard of the entire homegrown trio.
Standing on the touchline, Director Harrison watched the three prodigies push each other to their limits.
He wasn’t alone.
“Well, Kevin?
What do you think?” Harrison asked, a proud, satisfied smile crossing his face.
“You’ve been watching the boy for a few weeks now.
Was I right?”
The man standing next to Harrison chuckled softly, keeping his eyes locked on Allen.
“The boy is brilliant.
He’s not just a talent…
he’s a phenomenon.
I’ve never seen an English player with that kind of natural instinct.
He plays like he was literally engineered for the sport.”
“And compared to you?” Harrison asked teasingly.
“Compared to the great Kevin Keegan?
The God of Anfield?”
The man was indeed Kevin Keegan, the legendary, Ballon d’Or-winning icon of Liverpool FC.
(Author’s Note: Kevin Keegan is arguably one of the greatest players in English football history, famous for his relentless work ethic and immense success at Liverpool in the 1970s.)
“Compared to me?” Keegan laughed, raising his chin slightly.
Despite standing only five-foot-eight, the man radiated a massive, undeniable aura of absolute greatness.
“Come on, Gérard.
The lad is good, but he’s still green.
You can’t compare him to me just yet.”
Harrison shook his head in amusement.
“Kevin, I think you’re forgetting one minor detail.
The boy is seven years old.
When you were seven, what were you doing?
If you stepped on the pitch right now against him as a seven-year-old…
are you absolutely certain you would win?”
Keegan paused.
He realized Harrison was right.
When Keegan was seven, he was nowhere near this level of tactical refinement or technical discipline.
Keegan laughed softly, rubbing the back of his neck in slight embarrassment.
He didn’t verbally concede the point—a true champion’s pride rarely allows for complete surrender—but his silence was an admission of defeat.
Harrison knew exactly how to handle Keegan.
He had personally mentored the legend decades ago, shaping him from an unpolished prospect into a European superstar.
It was out of deep respect for his former mentor that Keegan had quietly returned to Melwood to observe the new prodigy.
(Author’s Note: In reality, Keegan was famously signed by Bill Shankly.
For the sake of the story’s narrative flow, I have adapted the timeline to make Harrison his early mentor.)
“Alright, Kevin, I won’t beat around the bush,” Harrison said, his tone turning entirely serious.
“You know exactly why I called you back here.
George is a brilliant kid.
He has the talent, and he clearly has the work ethic.
I firmly believe he is the future of Liverpool, and the future of the England national team.”
Harrison turned to look his former pupil directly in the eyes.
“But he needs help.
He needs your experience,” Harrison said quietly.
“I am getting old, Kevin.
I don’t know how much time I have left in this game.
But before I meet my maker, I want to see Liverpool conquer Europe one more time.
I want to see England back at the absolute pinnacle of world football.
If I can see that, I will die a happy man.”
Keegan’s expression softened.
Hearing his beloved mentor speak with such quiet, desperate finality struck a deep chord within him.
He owed Harrison everything.
If Harrison had not intervened early in his career, Keegan might have spent his life rotting in the amateur leagues, rather than lifting European Cups at Anfield.
Keegan looked back out at the pitch.
He watched Allen furiously resetting the footballs, completely undeterred by his repeated failures against the wooden wall.
“Don’t worry, old friend,” Keegan said softly, his eyes narrowing with sudden, intense focus.
“Leave the boy to me.
I promise you, I will forge him into the deadliest striker this world has ever seen.”
Harrison smiled, clapping a hand heavily onto Keegan’s shoulder.
With the boy’s future officially secured in the hands of a legend, Harrison turned and walked back down the touchline, ready to resume his duties managing the rest of the academy.
The God of Anfield had returned to forge his successor.