The bus ride back to the hotel was silent except for the low hum of the air conditioning unit fixed above the driver’s seat.
Alejandro sat near the back, his knees pressed against the padded fabric of the chair in front of him.
His right foot, now stripped of Harrison’s oversized boot, throbbed with a dull, steady heat where the skin had peeled away along the joint.
Harrison was two rows ahead, scrolling through his phone with his earphones plugged in.
Davies sat near the front door, his head leaned back against the headrest, eyes shut tight.
Corrigan wasn’t on the bus.
He had remained behind at the administration block with the Sporting Lisbon representative.
Alejandro pulled his phone from his tracksuit pocket.
The battery bar read seventy-two percent—he had plugged it into the wall socket at the hotel before leaving for the morning pitch.
The screen displayed a stable international roaming signal from the Portuguese network, but the FA portal was blocked behind a secure staff login.
He opened his call log and tapped his father’s number.
The call rang four times before David picked up.
The background noise was quiet—no whirring pneumatic wrenches from the garage, no background hum of the TV from the Lewisham flat.
“Alejandro?”
“Dad,” Alejandro said, keeping his voice down so it wouldn’t carry over the engine rumble.
“Do you know anything about a third-party representation agreement with Solihull?”
A brief pause followed on the line.
“A what?” David asked.
“Third-party representation,” Alejandro repeated, leaning his forehead against the cool glass of the window.
“Solihull filed a notice with the Football Association this morning.
They’re saying my international transfer clearance is blocked because you never signed a release form for the agency before I left London.”
“What agency?” David’s tone grew sharp, the casualness evaporating instantly.
“Marcus Vance?”
“They didn’t give me a name,” Alejandro said.
“Davies just told me the youth secretary at Solihull froze my registration history.”
David let out a heavy breath that whistled slightly through the phone speaker.
“Vance came to the yard three months ago,” David said, his voice dropping into a flat, steady register.
“He brought a stack of white papers while you were at evening training in Peckham.
He told me it was a standard parent notification form for the academy registry.”
“Did you sign it?”
“No,” David said directly.
“I told him I wasn’t signing anything without reading the fine print first.
He said he’d drop a copy in our postbox the following Tuesday.”
Alejandro shifted in his seat, his bare toes digging into the rubber floor mat.
“Did he?”
“I never saw that paper again,” David replied.
“He told your uncle he emailed it to the house address, but our internet was cut off that week because we were behind on the BT bill.
I thought he cleared it directly with the Solihull chairman.”
Alejandro closed his eyes.
The missing signature hadn’t been a deliberate refusal or a tactical move by his father.
It was simply a misplaced sheet of paper lost between an unpaid broadband invoice and an agent who had taken a shortcut to lock in a youth player’s rights.
“If Vance didn’t log the signed copy with Solihull,” Alejandro said quietly, “they can claim I’m still registered under their scholar bracket until I turn nineteen.”
“Which means Sporting Lisbon can’t register you on a free transfer,” David added.
He knew the registration mechanics from his own playing days in the lower leagues.
“They’d have to pay a youth development fee to Solihull.
And Sporting won’t pay fifty grand for a lad who just walked in off the street without a formal contract.”
The bus slowed down, turning into the cobblestone driveway of the hotel.
Davies stood up from his seat, grabbing his leather washbag from the overhead rack.
He glanced down the aisle toward Alejandro, his expression completely unreadable, before stepping off the vehicle.
“What time does the FA desk open?” David asked over the line.
“Ten o’clock tomorrow morning, UK time,” Alejandro said, stepping off the bus into the bright Portuguese heat.
“That’s nine o’clock here.
Corrigan needs the cleared status before the Sporting board meets at eleven.”
“I don’t have a printer at the flat,” David said flatly.
“And the library on Bermondsey Road doesn’t open until nine.”
Alejandro walked toward the stone fountain in the hotel courtyard, stopping under the shade of a low orange tree.
“Can you go to the garage?
They have a scanner in the main office, don’t they?”
“The boss locks the office when he goes out for the morning supply run at eight-thirty,” David said.
“He won’t be back until eleven.”
“Dad—”
“I’m not letting them mess this up for you because of Marcus Vance’s sloppy paperwork,” David interrupted.
His voice wasn’t angry; it was cold, focused, and practical.
“Listen to me carefully.
Call Davies.
Tell him to get Solihull’s youth secretary to email the original PDF directly to the estate agent’s office on the corner of lower Peckham Road.
The manager there played youth football with my brother.
He’ll let me use his terminal.”
Alejandro pulled the phone away from his ear for a second, staring at the screen as if checking whether it was still his father speaking.
“You can get there by eight?” Alejandro asked.
“I’ll be standing at their front door when they unlock the shutters at seven-thirty,” David said.
“I’ll sign the physical copy, scan it back to the FA portal myself, and CC the Sporting administrator.”
A beat of silence hung over the international connection.
“Dad,” Alejandro said softly.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” David grunted.
“We still don’t know if Solihull will accept a retroactive signature or if they’ll demand compensation for the release fee.
Just make sure your leg is rested for tomorrow.”
“My foot is fine,” Alejandro said.
“It isn’t fine if you’re running like a duck because of a raw blister,” David retorted, the old coach’s eye showing through once more.
“Put some zinc oxide tape on that toe before you go to sleep.
And don’t walk around barefoot on the tile floors.”
The line clicked off as David hung up to make his own calls.
Alejandro walked into the hotel lobby, the cool marble floor slick under his flip-flops.
Harrison was standing near the reception desk, holding two glass bottles of orange juice and a small white tub from the hotel pharmacy.
He walked over and handed the tub to Alejandro without saying a word.
Alejandro looked down at the label printed in Portuguese: Fita de Óxido de Zinco.
Zinc oxide tape.
“Davies told me to give it to you,” Harrison said, unscrewing his juice cap.
“He said if your skin peels off during tomorrow’s light session, he’s making you run the shuttles in your socks.”
“Did he say anything about Corrigan?” Alejandro asked, taking the tape.
“Corrigan’s still at the stadium,” Harrison replied, leaning against the wooden front counter.
“Word is, Sporting’s legal guy wants to see the original FA clearance stamp before they even draft the preliminary youth contract.
No stamp, no offer.”
Alejandro nodded, slipping the tape into his pocket.
He walked up the carpeted stairs to his second-floor room, the quietness of the hotel pressing against his ears.
He sat down on the edge of the mattress, pulling out his phone once more.
He drafted a short message to Sean Davies, forwarding the Peckham estate agent’s email address exactly as his father had instructed, then pressed send.
The double gray ticks appeared instantly on the screen, but they didn’t turn blue.
Outside the window, the Portuguese sun reached its peak, casting sharp, square shadows across the courtyard below.
The clock on his bedside table showed 1:14 PM.
Nearly twenty hours remained until the Football Association desk opened its ledger in London, leaving the unsigned document floating somewhere between an empty office in Peckham and an administrator’s desk five hundred miles away.