Bishal woke before the alarm.
For a long moment he lay still, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, trying to place himself.
The light was wrong.
The sounds were wrong.
The air smelled different, faintly of salt and old stone and someone else’s cooking from a floor below.
Then the events of the previous day reassembled themselves and he remembered.
Portugal.
The empty arrivals hall.
The taxi driver who admired Gandhi.
The room with the parking lot view.
He sat up slowly.
His body was stiff from the flight and the strange bed, but underneath the stiffness was something else.
Readiness.
The trial started today.
The bathroom was at the end of the hall.
He showered in water that took too long to warm and then became too hot without warning, dressed in his training gear, and sat on the edge of the bed with the phrasebook open in his hands.
The words looked back at him, neat rows of Portuguese and English, nothing like the sounds he had heard on the street the night before.
Bom dia.
Good morning.
Obrigado.
Thank you.
O meu nome é Bishal.
My name is Bishal.
He repeated them under his breath, feeling the shapes of the words in his mouth.
They felt awkward, his tongue too thick for the softer consonants.
After ten minutes he closed the book.
The bookmark slipped out and he caught it before it fell.
Go find out.
He put it back between the pages and went to find breakfast.
The bakery on the corner was already busy.
Old men stood at the counter drinking small cups of coffee and reading newspapers.
A woman behind the glass case was arranging pastries with quick, practiced movements.
The smell of fresh bread was so strong it made his stomach tighten.
He pointed at a pastry that looked familiar.
The woman said something in Portuguese.
He nodded, hoping for the best.
She put it on a plate and added a coffee without being asked.
The coffee was small and dark and nearly took the roof of his mouth off.
He drank it anyway.
When in Portugal.
The walk to the training ground took twenty minutes.
The streets were narrow and clean, the buildings white and yellow, the morning light still soft at the edges.
A few cyclists passed him.
A woman watered plants on a balcony.
The town felt unhurried, as though it had been here long enough to know there was no point in rushing.
The training complex appeared at the end of a narrow road.
It was not what he had expected.
He had imagined something larger, more imposing, the kind of facility that matched the weight of the word Europe.
Instead it was functional.
A main building with offices.
Several pitches stretching away toward the hills.
A car park half full.
It looked like a workplace.
Which, he supposed, was exactly what it was.
A receptionist directed him toward a smaller building behind the main pitch.
She spoke in Portuguese first, then switched to English when she saw his expression.
“Trial players,” she said.
“Go through.
Someone will meet you.”
The room she sent him to was small and functional.
Chairs along the walls.
A noticeboard with schedules pinned to it.
Seven other players were already there, sitting separately, none of them talking.
The silence was the particular silence of men who were all thinking the same thing and none of them willing to say it.
A tall player near the window had dyed blond streaks through dark hair and white tape wrapped around both wrists.
He sat with one leg stretched out, his posture suggesting he had been here before and was not particularly worried about the outcome.
A Brazilian, Bishal guessed, or perhaps Angolan.
Somewhere that produced players with that particular confidence.
Beside him, a much quieter figure sat reading what looked like a letter.
African, tall, with the build of a central defender.
He did not look up when Bishal entered.
He did not look up at all.
The others were harder to place.
Two looked Portuguese, young and nervous and slightly overwhelmed.
Another had the pale complexion of someone from further north, perhaps Germany or Holland.
A goalkeeper, judging by his hands.
Bishal found a chair near the door and sat down.
The tall player with the blond streaks looked across at him.
“India?”
“Yes.”
The Brazilian nodded, as though this confirmed something he had already guessed.
“Long flight.”
“Very.”
“I am Diego.” He pointed at himself with one taped thumb.
“You?”
“Bishal.”
“Bishal.” Diego tried the name carefully, got it almost right.
“Striker?”
“Yes.”
Diego smiled.
It was not an unfriendly smile.
“Everyone here is striker.”
Before Bishal could respond, the door opened.
The man who entered was not tall.
He was not physically imposing.
But the room changed the moment he walked into it.
Conversations that had not even started died in people’s throats.
The quiet defender looked up from his letter.
Diego straightened slightly in his chair.
Rui Fonseca had the face of a man who had not been surprised by anything in years.
Lean, sharp featured, with a permanent crease between his eyebrows that suggested deep and continuous dissatisfaction.
He carried a notebook under one arm.
Not a clipboard, not a tablet, just a simple spiral notebook with a black cover and pages that looked well used.
He surveyed the room without speaking.
Then he said something in Portuguese, rapid and impatient.
When nobody responded, he switched to English.
“I am Rui Fonseca.
I am responsible for trial players.
You follow me.
We start now.”
He turned and walked out.
The players scrambled to follow.
Outside, the training pitch was immaculate.
The grass was cut so perfectly it looked like carpet.
The lines were fresh chalk, still bright white in the morning sun.
Across the complex, another group was already training.
The first team, Bishal realised.
Their movements were sharper, faster, the ball moving between them with the particular rhythm of players who had been doing this together for years.
At the centre of that group stood a man in his fifties, grey haired, arms folded.
He was watching the session with the stillness of someone who did not need to move to be in control.
Coach Mateus.
The head coach.
The man whose opinion would ultimately matter.
Mateus did not look in their direction.
Not once.
Fonseca gathered the trialists near the touchline.
He did not give a speech.
He did not explain the drills or outline the schedule or offer any words of encouragement.
He simply pointed at the pitch and started talking, rapid Portuguese that Bishal understood almost none of.
The other players began moving into position.
Bishal followed, copying what they did, watching their movements for clues.
The first drill was simple.
Passing in triangles, receive and move, the kind of thing he had done a thousand times.
But the pace was different here.
The passes arrived harder.
The movement was sharper.
Everything happened half a second faster than he expected.
He made his first mistake within five minutes.
A pass came to him and he took an extra touch to control it.
In India, that extra touch would have been fine.
Normal, even.
Here, by the time he looked up, a Portuguese midfielder had already closed the space and taken the ball.
The move broke down.
Fonseca’s whistle cut through the air.
“Too slow.”
That was all.
Two words.
The drill resumed immediately, no time for embarrassment, no space for apology.
Bishal felt his face burn.
Not because of the mistake, but because of how casually it had been corrected.
As though being too slow was simply a fact, like the colour of his boots or the length of his hair.
Not something to be angry about.
Something to be fixed.
The session continued.
Every drill was the same pattern.
Fonseca explained in Portuguese, the Portuguese players understood, the rest of them copied.
Bishal learned to watch Diego, who seemed to know what he was doing even when he pretended not to care.
The quiet African defender, who Bishal now knew was called Kiala, moved with an economy that suggested years of experience.
The two young Portuguese players made the same mistakes Bishal made but were corrected in their own language, which somehow felt fair and unfair at the same time.
The practice match came at the end of the session.
The trialists were split into two teams, four against four, with neutral players on the wings.
Bishal positioned himself up front, where he belonged, where he had always belonged.
Fonseca pointed at him.
“Left back.”
Bishal stared.
“I play striker.”
The assistant coach looked at him.
The look was not angry.
It was not even particularly interested.
It was the look of a man who had been asked this question many times and had never understood why anyone thought it was worth asking.
“Today, left back.”
“Left back.”
“Problem?”
The word hung in the air.
Diego, jogging past, caught Bishal’s eye and raised an eyebrow.
Kiala was already moving into position, unconcerned.
Bishal shook his head.
“No.”
He ran to the defensive line.
The game started and he was immediately lost.
Left back was not a position he had played since childhood, and never seriously.
The angles were different.
The movement was different.
Everything he knew about space and timing had to be recalculated from a new starting point.
Twice he lost his runner.
Once he was caught too far forward and had to sprint back, lungs burning, while the winger he should have been marking delivered a cross that nearly led to a goal.
Fonseca watched all of it.
The notebook stayed under his arm.
He did not write anything down.
He did not need to.
Then, slowly, something shifted.
A reserve winger received the ball near the flank.
He shaped his body to go outside.
Most defenders would have reacted to the first touch.
Bishal read the hips instead.
The hips always told the truth.
He moved before the touch came, stepping into the space where the ball would be, and intercepted it cleanly.
One moment.
One good moment.
He played a simple pass inside and returned to his position.
Fonseca’s expression did not change.
But the notebook came out from under his arm and something was written in it.
A single line.
Bishal could not read it from where he stood but he could see the movement of the pen.
The session ended an hour later.
The trialists stood near the touchline, breathing hard, shirts soaked through.
Across the complex, the first team were still training.
Mateus was still standing in the same position, still watching, still not looking at them.
Fonseca addressed the group in Portuguese.
Bishal understood none of it except the final word, which was “tomorrow,” and the gesture toward the changing rooms, which needed no translation.
As they walked off, Diego fell into step beside him.
“Left back,” Diego said.
“I noticed.”
“He does this.
Fonseca.
Puts people where they don’t want to be.
Wants to see if you complain.”
“I didn’t complain.”
“I saw.” Diego grinned.
“That’s why he wrote in the notebook.”
The changing room was basic but clean.
The trialists changed in silence, too tired for conversation.
Kiala was the first to leave, slipping out without a word.
The two Portuguese boys followed, talking quietly to each other in their own language.
The goalkeeper sat on the bench for a long time, staring at his gloves.
Bishal unlaced his boots slowly.
His legs were already beginning to stiffen.
The kind of stiffness that came from using muscles in ways they were not used to being used.
Diego pulled a shirt over his head and spoke through the fabric.
“You eat at the accommodation?”
“Yes.”
“It’s terrible.
There’s a place in town.
Near the square.
The food is real.
You want to come?”
Bishal considered it.
He was tired.
He was sore.
He had not called his mother yet.
But the thought of eating alone in his room, staring at the parking lot, was suddenly less appealing than it had been that morning.
“Okay.”
Diego nodded, satisfied.
“Good.
You can explain to me why India doesn’t play in the World Cup.
This has been bothering me.”
“India doesn’t play in the World Cup because we’ve never qualified.”
“This is a bad reason.”
“It’s the only reason.”
“Then you need better reasons.” Diego stood and stretched, his wrists cracking audibly.
“Come.
The food first.
Then we solve Indian football.”
The café Diego led him to was small and tucked between a pharmacy and a shop that sold fishing equipment.
The menu was handwritten in Portuguese.
The owner was a large man with a stained apron and the particular confidence of someone who knew his food was good and did not need to convince you of it.
Diego ordered for both of them, rapid Portuguese that sounded almost native.
When the food arrived, it was simple and perfect.
Grilled fish.
Potatoes.
A salad with olive oil.
Bishal ate and felt something in his chest loosen slightly.
“So,” Diego said, chewing.
“The coach.
Fonseca.”
“What about him?”
“He’s not mean.
People think he’s mean.
He’s not mean.
He just doesn’t care.”
“That sounds like the same thing.”
“It’s not.
Mean means he wants you to fail.
He doesn’t want you to fail.
He just doesn’t care if you do.
You have to make him care.” Diego pointed his fork at Bishal.
“Today, you made him care.
A little.
The interception.
He wrote it down.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve been here three weeks.
He only writes when something surprises him.”
The meal continued.
Diego talked about Brazil, about the club in São Paulo where he had come from, about the girlfriend who had promised to wait and then changed her mind after two months.
He talked easily, the way people talked when they had been alone for a while and were grateful for company.
Bishal listened and ate and let the food and the conversation fill the spaces that the day had carved out.
By the time he returned to his room, the streetlights were on and the parking lot was dark.
He sat on the bed and picked up his phone and stared at the screen.
His mother would be asleep now.
It was too late to call.
Tomorrow, he told himself.
Tomorrow after training, when he had something better to report than confusion and sore legs and a single interception that might not have meant anything at all.
He opened the phrasebook instead.
The bookmark was still there.
Go find out.
He was finding out.
Slowly.
Painfully.
One day at a time.
The church bells rang in the distance.
The same bells that had rung the night before.
He was beginning to recognise their rhythm.
That was something, at least.
That was a small kind of progress.
He switched off the light and lay in the dark and thought about left back.
About Fonseca’s notebook.
About Diego’s voice explaining that the coach was not mean, just indifferent.
About the long road from not caring to caring, and the small interception that might have been the first step along it.
Tomorrow.
More drills.
More Portuguese he did not understand.
More chances to prove that he belonged here, or to prove that he did not.
He closed his eyes and let the exhaustion take him.
The fan in this room did not click.
He missed the clicking.