The week before the final trial was the longest of Bishal’s life.
Not because the days were longer.
They were the same length they had always been, the same twenty-four hours of Portuguese sun and Atlantic wind and the particular grey light that came through his window every morning.
They were longer because every hour contained a week’s worth of tension.
Every session was a trial within the trial.
Every mistake felt magnified, every success felt temporary.
Fonseca pushed them harder than he had pushed before.
The sessions grew longer and more complex.
The drills multiplied.
The corrections came faster, sharper, with less patience.
By Tuesday, two of the trialists had stopped coming.
A midfielder from Eastern Europe and one of the young Portuguese boys.
They simply did not show up one morning, and nobody mentioned their names again.
“That happens,” Diego said, shrugging.
“Some people decide the dream is not worth the cost.”
“What cost?”
“Pride.
Sleep.
The ability to walk without pain.” He stretched his arms over his head.
“The usual things.”
Tuesday’s session ended with a practice match that left Bishal on his knees near the touchline, breathing hard, his lungs burning with the particular fire that came from pushing past exhaustion into something beyond it.
Fonseca had positioned him in midfield again, and he had run more than he had ever run in a single session.
Covering the defence.
Supporting the attack.
Tracking runners who moved like shadows, always half a step ahead.
He made mistakes.
Several of them.
A pass that arrived too late.
A tackle that missed.
A moment of hesitation that allowed a striker to turn and shoot.
Fonseca noted all of them.
The notebook came out and the pen moved and Bishal watched it happen and felt each mark like a small weight added to his shoulders.
But he also made good decisions.
An interception near his own box that prevented a certain goal.
A through ball to Diego that split the defence.
A recovery run that tracked a winger forty yards and ended with a clean tackle and the ball at his feet.
At the end of the session, Fonseca walked past him without speaking.
But he did not write anything down.
Which was, in its own way, a kind of feedback.
Wednesday was worse.
The rain came in from the Atlantic during the night and stayed through the morning.
The training pitch was soft and heavy, the ball skidding unpredictably across the wet grass.
Fonseca did not adjust the session.
He did not mention the rain at all.
He simply stood on the touchline with his notebook in a plastic cover and watched them struggle.
Bishal slipped twice in the first twenty minutes.
The first time he got up quickly, ignoring the mud that streaked his shirt and the sting in his knee.
The second time he was slower, the fatigue from the previous days making itself known in his bones.
He pushed himself up with his hands and kept running.
Diego was struggling too.
The Brazilian’s usual confidence had been replaced by a grim determination.
He was not joking.
He was not laughing.
He was just working, his face set in an expression Bishal had not seen before.
During a water break, Diego stood beside him and stared at the rain.
“This is the test.”
“The rain?”
“Everything.
The rain.
The fatigue.
The weeks of not knowing.
He wants to see who stops.”
“Nobody is stopping.”
“Two already stopped.”
“They do not count.”
Diego looked at him and something shifted in his expression.
Not quite respect.
But something close.
“No,” he said.
“They do not count.”
The session ended with a tactical briefing.
Fonseca gathered the remaining trialists in a small room beside the changing area and drew diagrams on a whiteboard.
Movements.
Defensive responsibilities.
The system they would play against the under twenty three team.
It was the most information he had given them since the trial began.
“You are not strangers anymore,” he said.
“You have trained together.
You have played together.
You know each other.
This is your advantage.
The under twenty three team has better players.
But they do not know each other the way you know each other.
Use this.”
It was the closest thing to encouragement he had ever offered.
That evening, Bishal called home.
His mother answered, her voice warm and familiar.
She asked about the food and the weather and whether he was sleeping properly.
He told her about the rain and the training and the final trial on Saturday.
He did not tell her about the two players who had left.
He did not tell her about the exhaustion that sat in his bones like a permanent weight.
His father came on the line.
“Your mother says you have a big match.”
“Yes.”
“Saturday.”
“Yes.”
There was a pause.
Then his father said, “Do you remember what I told you before you left?”
Bishal closed his eyes.
“Remember why I went.”
“Good.
Do not forget it.
When you are tired, when you are afraid, when you wonder if you made a mistake.
Remember why you went.”
“I will.”
“Good.
Now sleep.
You sound tired.”
The line went dead.
His father had never been good at goodbyes.
Thursday brought a lighter session.
Fonseca had apparently decided that the players needed recovery more than they needed punishment.
The drills were shorter.
The intensity was lower.
The notebook stayed in his pocket for most of the morning.
Bishal used the extra energy to study the other trialists.
Kiala was the anchor, steady and reliable, the kind of defender who did not make mistakes because he did not take risks.
Diego was the spark, unpredictable and brilliant, capable of moments that defied logic.
Tomás was improving rapidly, his confidence growing with every session.
The goalkeeper, whose name Bishal had finally learned was Marek, was quiet and focused and surprisingly good.
They were not a team.
Not yet.
But they were becoming something.
The shape of it was beginning to emerge.
After the session, Bishal walked into town to clear his head.
The streets were quiet in the late afternoon, the sun breaking through the clouds for the first time in days.
He found a bench near the square and sat down and watched the town go about its business.
A group of children were playing football in the square.
The game was chaotic and beautiful, the way children’s football always was.
No positions.
No tactics.
Just the ball and the joy of chasing it.
He watched them for a long time, remembering the streets of Bengaluru where he had learned to play, the dust and the heat and the endless arguments about whether the ball had crossed the imaginary line.
One of the children noticed him watching and waved.
Bishal waved back.
He thought about the boy in the Argentina shirt who had asked why footballers did not get rich like cricketers.
He thought about his answer, which had been true but incomplete.
Footballers did not get rich like cricketers because nobody watched them.
And nobody watched them because nobody believed they were worth watching.
The belief had to come first.
Everything else followed.
The final trial was on Saturday.
Three days away.
Three days to prove that he was worth watching.
Three days to earn the right to stay. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
He stood up from the bench and walked back toward the accommodation.
The streets were darkening, the lamps coming on one by one.
The church bells rang in the distance.
The same bells he had heard every evening since arriving, the same rhythm, the same tone.
He knew them now.
He had learned their pattern without meaning to.
Friday was the last session before the trial.
Fonseca gathered the trialists at the end of the morning and spoke to them quietly.
No diagrams.
No tactics.
Just words.
“You have worked hard.
You have improved.
You have become something more than you were when you arrived.
This is good.”
He paused, looking at each of them in turn.
“Tomorrow, you will be tested.
Not by me.
By the match.
By the other team.
By your own fatigue and your own fear.
You cannot control the result.
You can only control how you respond to it.
Play the way you have trained.
Trust each other.
Do not stop running.”
He closed his notebook.
It was the first time Bishal had seen him close it without writing something down.
“That is all.
Rest tonight.
Eat well.
Sleep.
Tomorrow we find out who is ready.”
That evening, Bishal sat in his room and prepared.
He laid out his training gear.
His boots, cleaned and polished.
His shin pads.
His water bottle.
Everything in its place.
The ritual was comforting.
It was something he had done a hundred times before, in a hundred different rooms, before a hundred different matches.
The details changed but the rhythm was the same.
He called Sohini.
“Tomorrow,” she said before he could speak.
“Tomorrow.”
“Are you ready?”
“I think so.”
“Good.
Do not think.
Just be ready.” She paused.
“I wish I could be there.”
“So do I.”
“But you do not need me there.
You need to be there.
That is enough.”
He smiled.
“You are very good at this.”
“I know.
I have been practising.” Her voice softened.
“Call me after.
Win or lose.
Just call me.”
“I will.”
He hung up and sat in the quiet room.
The parking lot was dark.
The church bells had stopped.
The world was holding its breath.
He thought about his mother’s prayers.
His father’s words.
Sohini’s bookmark, still tucked between the pages of the phrasebook.
Go find out.
Tomorrow, he would find out.
He switched off the light and lay in the dark and waited for morning.