The wind picked up, driving cold rain beneath the lip of the Vallecas stand.
Chavarría walked past Alejandro near the center line, spitting a mouthful of muddy water into the grass.
His face was slick with sweat and red from the effort of switching flanks.
“Don’t give him the inside line again,” Chavarría snapped, not looking at Alejandro as he adjusted his captain’s armband.
“You stay tight on their right-back.
If I have to cover your side, I’m leaving the middle completely empty.”
“Got it,” Alejandro muttered, wiping wet hair out of his eyes.
“And stop bobbling your passes,” Chavarría added, his tone clipped.
“This isn’t an academy exhibition.
We drop points here, the win bonus is gone.”
Alejandro didn’t answer.
His legs felt heavy, the damp cotton of his socks pulling down against his ankles.
The physical drain of covering the entire left corridor was already setting in, every sprint back into defense burning through his calf muscles.
On the touchline, Pérez stood with his arms folded tightly inside his jacket, staring at the pitch like a statue.
He didn’t offer a word of encouragement.
He just flicked two fingers toward the left wing, reinforcing the directive: Stay wide.
Track back.
Across the field, Getafe’s right-back was already pushing higher up the pitch, eyeing the gap behind Alejandro.
Every minute meant money.
Every failure pushed him closer to that scribbled €1,800 contract sitting on the apartment table—or a ticket out of Spain entirely.
II
By the 78th minute, the score remained stuck at 0-0.
Alejandro tracked Getafe’s full-back forty yards down the line, lunging in to intercept a low cross.
The impact rattled his shin guard, but he managed to poke the ball out of the box toward Oscar Valentín.
Rayo hit back on the counter.
Valentín released the ball quickly into the open central space.
Alejandro didn’t hesitate this time.
He exploded forward, sprinting seventy yards with the last reserves of his energy, outpacing his marker down the left flank.
He called for the ball, his voice raspy in the cold air.
Valentín laid it off into his path.
The touch was smooth.
The defender jockeyed two yards back, expecting the inside cut Alejandro was known for.
Instead, Alejandro faked the cut, dropped his shoulder, and smashed a flat, low cross across the face of the six-yard box—a textbook delivery aimed perfectly at Camello’s runs.
It was the ideal pass.
The kind of delivery Hale End coaches used to film for review modules.
Camello made the run, but he read the trajectory late.
He lunged forward, stretching his boot out, but missed the ball by an inch.
The leather skipped across the wet grass, sliding harmlessly out for a throw-in on the far side of the pitch.
Camello didn’t apologize.
He just dropped to his knees, punching the turf in frustration before turning to yell at the assistant referee for a non-existent corner.
On the touchline, Marcus Vance stood near the press barrier, frantically waving three fingers in the air, trying to get Alejandro’s attention—reminding him of the €3,000 threshold.
Alejandro stood near the box, hands resting on his hips, his lungs burning.
He had executed the play correctly.
He had done exactly what Pérez demanded.
And the scoreboard still read zero.
III
The final whistle blew after four long minutes of stoppage time.
0-0.
A hard-fought point for Rayo, but the home crowd offered only a scattered, half-hearted applause as the players trudged off the field, covered in dark gray mud from head to toe.
Alejandro walked slowly toward the tunnel, his head down, unstrapping his wet shin guards.
His ankle throbbed continuously now.
Was a single clean cross and a solid defensive shift enough to convince a scout from Real Valladolid to pitch a three-thousand-euro salary?
Or had he just looked like another disposable squad player surviving on the fringes of La Liga?
As he stepped out of the drizzle and into the concrete tunnel, a young ball boy pulled on his sleeve.
“Jesse?” the kid asked, holding out a crumpled plastic cup in one hand and a heavy, textured paper card in the other.
Alejandro stopped.
“Yeah?”
“A guy in a dark coat gave me five euros to hand you this before you go into the dressing room,” the boy said, shoving the card into Alejandro’s hand before running back out toward the pitch to grab the stray match balls.
Alejandro turned the card over in his fingers.
It wasn’t a standard business card.
It was a thick, matte-black card with silver foil lettering along the edges.
There was no phone number.
No personal name.
Just a crest embossed in the center—the recognizable lion rampant of a club based in the West Midlands of England—and a single line of crisp, printed text beneath it:
Aston Villa FC — Academy Scouting & Recruitment.
Handwritten in blue ballpoint ink on the back were six short words:
Don’t sign with Rayo.
Tuesday.
Alejandro stared at the heavy paper, his fingers wet from the rain.
Behind him, Marcus’s voice boomed down the narrow corridor, heavy footsteps echoing against the concrete walls.
“Ale!
Hey!
I talked to the Valladolid representative in the lounge!
Get out here!”
Alejandro slid the card deep into the inner pocket of his shorts, pressing his back against the cool concrete wall of the tunnel as Marcus rounded the corner with the €1,800 contract draft sticking out of his coat.