“Relax.”
Ramalho said it flatly.
He sat behind his desk, offering no performance and no warmth.
“I just want to set your expectations.” He folded his hands over the scattering of scouting reports.
“Because you came in late, you missed the registration windows for the state championship and the Copa Libertadores.
Both are closed to you.
You won’t play in either.”
Léo nodded.
“Serie A is a different matter.
Registration opens before the first round.
That gives you approximately four weeks.” Ramalho held Léo’s gaze.
“Four weeks to make enough of an impression that I can justify putting you on a matchday squad.
That’s your window.
Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Ramalho leaned back, the leather chair groaning in the quiet office.
“I heard you were on the back pitch at eight this morning working set pieces.”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he repeated.
“Go find Milton.”
The five-on-five session took place on a smaller side pitch marked by temporary neon cones.
Six players to a side, including the keepers.
The squads sorted themselves by an unspoken hierarchy—veterans clustered together, younger players mixed in where they fit.
To an outsider, it looked random.
In reality, the lines of authority were rigidly drawn.
Ramalho stood at the touchline with his clipboard.
He called the session with the relentless, staccato rhythm favored by Brazilian coaches, the commands cutting through the sound of cleats on turf:
“Curto!
Curto!”
“Ritmo—presta atenção!”
“Joga, joga—”
“Abriu!
Open it up!”
Léo found the ball in the first minute.
He trapped it, held the play, laid it off, and drifted into open grass.
He had always possessed an unnatural ability to find pockets of space.
But right now, he wasn’t just playing; he was calculating.
He was reading the tempo.
This squad ran differently than anything he had experienced in the States.
The transitions were blistering, built on years of shared positional understanding.
He was in the middle of processing a passing lane when Lúcio arrived from his blind spot.
The veteran center-back drove an elbow into Léo’s ribs with unhurried, mechanical precision.
It wasn’t hard enough to crack a bone, but it was hard enough to steal the air from his lungs.
Léo hit the grass hard.
He lay there for a sharp, gasping second, then looked up.
Lúcio was already stepping over him toward the loose ball, looking entirely unbothered.
“Pô,” Léo wheezed.
“Cara, this is nothing.” Lúcio didn’t even look down.
“Wait until you’re in a real match.
The referee isn’t even watching you right now.”
He was right.
Nobody blew a whistle.
Play surged on without them.
Léo spat a blade of grass off his lip, dragged himself up, and sprinted back into the drill.
At the edge of the pitch, Milton Cruz crossed his arms.
“He’s going to hate Lúcio by the end of this.”
“That’s fine.” Ramalho didn’t take his eyes off Léo.
“What I’m worried about—”
“I know what you’re worried about.”
“He punched a federation director.”
“That was different.” Ramalho tapped his pen against the clipboard.
“That was injustice.
This is just football.
He knows the difference.”
“I hope so,” Cruz muttered, watching Lúcio violently shoulder Léo off the ball for the third time in as many minutes.
“Because Lúcio walking home in the dark is a real concern.”
“Léo is a good kid,” Ramalho said.
Lúcio wasn’t being subtle.
He was teaching.
Every brutal contact had a distinct, calculated purpose.
A sharp nudge to the hip forced Léo onto his weaker foot.
A heavy forearm across the chest disrupted a first touch.
A perfectly timed shoulder barge arrived a fraction of a second before Léo could accelerate.
It was a masterclass in professional dark arts, delivered without a syllabus.
Léo couldn’t have articulated what he was learning, but his muscles were absorbing the data—how to drop his center of gravity, when to shield, how to brace for an impact without crumbling.
By the fifteenth minute, Léo started giving it back.
He turned sharply into Lúcio’s space, deliberately catching the massive defender across the solar plexus with a hard elbow.
Lúcio folded an inch, grunted, and straightened back up.
“Getting there,” Lúcio murmured.
Then he immediately shoulder-barged Léo straight into the dirt.
Two minutes later, the ball rolled toward Léo at the top of the box.
Lúcio closed the gap from his left, coming in fast.
Léo took a soft touch to control the spin.
He let Lúcio read it.
He watched the veteran set his feet and commit his weight to the angle.
At the last possible millisecond, Léo nudged the ball outside with his right foot, shifting his shoulders just enough to sell the lie.
Lúcio took the bait.
Léo’s right ankle snapped inward.
The ball whipped back.
Lúcio scrambled to adjust.
He was thirty-four years old.
A 2002 World Cup winner.
He had over eighty Champions League appearances under his belt.
He didn’t fall for cheap feints, and his brain calculated the correction in a fraction of a second.
But Léo was already gone.
He pivoted cleanly off his right foot, rotating a full hundred and eighty degrees, dragging the ball tightly with his left heel in a single, blurring sequence.
It was a move impossible to track from a defensive stance because it ended exactly where it started before vanishing in the opposite direction.
By the time Lúcio’s body processed the visual data, his cleats lost their grip.
Lúcio wiped out, hitting the turf hard.
The session paused.
It was the specific, heavy stillness that descends on a training pitch when something unbelievable happens.
A beat of total silence, followed by Wellington letting out a low, breathless curse.
Léo stood over Lúcio, his arms loose at his sides.
“Are you all right?” Léo asked, deadpan.
“Did you twist something?
You should be careful at your age.
I hear the hips go first.”
Lúcio stared up from the grass.
A slow, dangerous grin spread across his face.
He recognized the exact moment a kid decided to stop taking a beating and start handing it out.
“Don’t get comfortable,” Lúcio growled, taking the hand Léo offered.
“You’ve got two more years of learning before you can talk to me like that.”
Ramalho’s office faced north, away from the floodlights of the training pitches.
It was always cooler than the rest of the facility, the corners cast in deep afternoon shadow.
Lúcio sank into the chair across the desk, looking massive and entirely out of place in the cramped room.
“Well?” Ramalho asked.
Lúcio took his time answering.
“The little guy is good,” Lúcio said.
Ramalho waited.
“Not just good.” Lúcio leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees.
“With the core strength he has now, and what he can already do on the ball…
he could start for any club in the top five leagues today.
I don’t mean compete for a spot.
I mean start.”
Ramalho raised a single eyebrow.
He had known Lúcio for a long time.
It took a lot for the veteran to offer praise, let alone that specific degree of it.
“He lacks match experience,” Lúcio clarified.
“Real experience.
Late in a tight game, when your legs are filled with lead and the opposition is pressing your throat, and you have to make three perfect decisions in six seconds.
He hasn’t suffered through enough of those situations yet.
It shows in his positioning when he gets tired.
But the instincts?
They’re already there.
They don’t usually arrive at seventeen.
Usually, you have to grind them into a player over years.”
“And if he gets that experience?”
Lúcio went quiet.
Outside the window, the automatic sprinklers engaged over the main pitch, hissing against the grass.