“Tomás, that turn was really beautiful!”
Rashford’s shot hadn’t gone in, but it earned the U16 side their first corner of the match.
Melle Mullensteen, one of the tallest players on the squad, jogged up from the back for the set piece.
He tapped Tomás on the shoulder.
“We have a genius back home in the Netherlands, Davy Klaassen. He turns the exact same way you do. Sharp. Elegant.”
Klaassen?
It was the first time Tomás had heard the name.
“Actually, I feel like you two have similar personalities too,” Mullensteen added.
Sensitive, perceptive, almost to a fault.
“Is he a midfielder too?” Tomás asked.
“That’s right.” Mullensteen smiled.
That’s interesting.
Tomás felt a flare of pride over his new skill.
The comparison made him want to go head-to-head with Klaassen someday, to see who actually received the ball better.
He knew that probably wouldn’t be easy.
The road to professional football was brutal.
Even the greatest prodigies couldn’t guarantee making it all the way, let alone the odds of the two of them crossing paths in the Premier League.
Tomás and Mullensteen walked toward the box, chatting and laughing.
By this point, the U16 side was playing with confidence.
Whatever happened from here, competing this closely with a U18 side—when it easily could have been a 10-0 blowout—was already a victory.
The U16s were playing with the weight off their shoulders.
The U18 side, however, was not in a good headspace.
As the undisputed midfield core, Tomás stepped up to take the corner.
He planted his foot and looked toward the box.
This is my real cheat code.
The one that lets the weak beat the strong.
Inside the box, the reception odds for each of his teammates lit up in his vision.
The tallest players had surprisingly low odds of getting on the end of it cleanly.
Tosin Kehinde, a winger barely under six feet, had better odds than anyone.
Looks like Tosin is the one the U18 side left exposed.
Even in the professional game, corner routines weren’t always watertight.
And this was a semi-professional match.
Seizing the moment, Tomás stepped back, ran up, and struck the ball.
It sailed up in a high, looping arc.
“Too high!”
“Those U16 lads can’t hold their own out there.”
The spectators hoping for something special from Tomás sighed.
The U18 defenders exhaled, relieved.
Tomás’s passing had put them under pressure all match, and watching him line up the ball had made them tense.
Then the ball dropped at the far post.
Eyes went wide.
A U16 player was lurking right where the ball fell.
Tosin himself looked surprised.
Did Tomás have X-ray vision?
How did the ball even end up here?
The angle was tight. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
If it had been a good angle, he wouldn’t have been left unmarked.
Pass or shoot?
Tosin didn’t have much time to think.
A player who doesn’t want to score isn’t much of a striker.
He killed the ball on his chest and volleyed it toward the net.
The connection was clean.
It didn’t go in, hitting the outside of the netting, but Tomás, Rashford, and the rest of the U16s applauded anyway.
At a moment like that, you take the shot.
The box was packed with defenders.
Given Tosin’s passing ability, trying to square it across would have just handed possession away.
Shooting from a tight angle was the right call.
Hit the frame, and there was a chance it trickled in.
The crowd on the sideline, sighing in disappointment a second ago, murmured in appreciation.
The praise for Tomás started up again.
“How did he even see someone was back there?” Ed Woodward asked, turning to Nick Cox.
Cox, who watched United’s first-team matches closely, knew top players rarely aimed corners that deep.
This had clearly been a deliberate search for the back post.
Judging by Tomás’s confidence, it was no accident.
With that many bodies in the way, and Tosin not exactly towering over anyone, how had he spotted him?
Teams didn’t practice routines for a spot like that.
Corners had patterns, but never fixed positions when the opposition was actively defending.
But Tomás hadn’t targeted a general area.
He had targeted an exact spot.
“That’s talent,” Cox said.
“Like he has a bird’s-eye view looking down at the pitch. In football, they call that ‘Eagle-Eye.’ Totti has it. Messi has it.”
“Totti? Messi?” Woodward stared at him.
Those names carried weight.
“Personally? I don’t think his Eagle-Eye is any worse than Totti’s or Messi’s,” Cox continued, his voice tight with excitement.
“What Tomás is missing right now is the passing ability to match it. Once his passing catches up to his vision, I can’t imagine how good he’ll be.”
Woodward and John Murtough traded a bewildered look.
The three executives running the assessment hadn’t even noticed the conversation had shifted from whether Tomás deserved a professional contract to how high his ceiling actually was.
A contract was a foregone conclusion now.
They just needed to hand him the maximum £1,000-a-week deal for a seventeen-year-old and be done with it.
The match rolled on.
The U18s continued to dominate possession.
But every so often, the U16 side launched a counter-attack, with Tomás orchestrating it each time.
It made things difficult for the older squad.
Attack, get countered.
Because of Tomás, they could never fully lock the U16 side down.
Every time they lost the ball, they were forced to retreat and reset instead of winning it straight back.
The back-and-forth made the U18 players increasingly anxious.
Imagine Tomás running the show againts any other U16 team.
He’d be tearing them apart.
U18-level matches often ended in blowouts once one side’s confidence broke.
Their mentality cracking here was unacceptable.
“Is Tomás feeling the pressure?” Paul McGuinness muttered, frowning.
His whole purpose today was assessing Tomás.
He was satisfied with what he had seen.
The U18 side’s performance, though, left him unimpressed.
Still, the U18s were the stronger team.
Finally, in the 80th minute, Joe Rothwell headed home a corner to level the score.
1 – 1
“The U16 lads have hit their physical limit.”
“They were past their limit ages ago. They’ve never played a match this intense before.”
For the U18s, this was barely more than a low-intensity practice run.
But for the U16 side, who had never played at a semi-professional pace, this was the most exhausting match of their lives.
Most of the U16 players had hit their limit by the 70th minute.
They had only kept pushing because they could see a win in front of them.
As the team’s sole playmaker, Tomás was the one player the U18s made a point of shutting down.
He had felt like he couldn’t keep running since the 65th minute.
He kept grinding through it anyway, his teeth gritted.
Seeing all that effort undone by the equalizer in the 80th minute, Tomás felt the remaining strength drain from his legs.
His teammates slumped to the turf, gasping for air.
Tomás wanted to sit down too.
He just wanted to lie on the grass and rest, even for a second.
His chest heaved.
In a daze, he glanced at the translucent panel in his vision.
Mission: [Successor to the Red Devil Spirit] Status: Incomplete
The future is now.
You’re already a Red Devil.
A Red Devil.
A true Red Devil.
Tomás’s muscles twitched.
A fresh surge of energy pushed through the exhaustion.
He stopped and looked around.
Only Rashford and Tuanzebe were still standing.
They were exhausted too, but their natural athleticism hid it better.
Tomás was running on belief alone.
Ding!
Congratulations on completing Tom Martin’s mission, ‘Successor to the Red Devil Spirit.’ Reward: [Lion Heart] trait upgraded from LV2 to LV3.
Tomás looked over at the bench, surprised.
Am I actually graduating already?
Tom Martin gave him a satisfied smile.
Congratulations, Tomás.
You’re officially a qualified Red Devil now.
Not far off, Michael Edwards watched the boy standing among his collapsed teammates.
“This kid would be perfect for Liverpool,” Edwards muttered.
Better fit than Rashford, even.