It was the fourth-fifth minute as Ken rushed to the corner and called over Kota, intending to take it short and quick before their opponents could set up.
He had reached the right corner, with the goal several metres diagonally across the pitch to his left, and from where he stood he could see the entire penalty area opening toward the goalmouth, Haruki stationed between the posts while the Blues tried to pick up their marks.
Ken raised his head and scanned the field, just before passing it short, he noticed the keeper being crowded.
Haruki had moved toward the near post, the one closest to Ken’s corner, because Yamato and Ryo had positioned themselves between the goalkeeper and the defenders in that area, trying to block his view of the incoming cross.
Renta hovered around the penalty spot, ready for anything that dropped loose, while Kaito and Sho stayed farther outside the box in case the Blues cleared the ball and attempted to counter.
On the opposite side of the goal, Aoi had been left closer to the far post, keeping an eye on Ryo while also watching the space behind him.
The arrangement wasn’t deliberate enough to be called a proper set-piece shape, but Ken noticed that Haruki’s attention was fixed almost entirely on the near post side because that was where the greatest concentration of players had gathered.
If the ball came in normally, Haruki would have to fight through the bodies to see it, and if Ken played the corner short, the goalkeeper would naturally take another step toward the near post to protect against the angle.
Kota came closer, expecting the short pass.
Ken placed his foot beside the ball and looked toward him before turning his attention back toward the goal.
Haruki was still near the near post, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as Yamato moved across his line of sight, and Ken suddenly wondered whether the goalkeeper was too far over to recover if the ball were struck with enough curl.
It was a difficult angle, and the wind wasn’t helping, but Ken had already made up his mind.
He took four steps back from the ball and Kota stopped and looked at him, realizing that the plan they had intended to execute had changed.
At the same time, Ken took two more steps backward, giving himself a better angle and the players inside the box began reacting almost immediately, expecting the ball to be delivered toward them. Visit novelping(.)com for the full chapter.
Ken took slow steps towards the ball, planting his left foot beside the ball before wrapping his right foot around its outside, trying to generate enough spin to send the ball away from the near post and then bend it back toward the opposite side of the goal.
The contact wasn’t perfect, but there was enough curl as the ball rose with considerable spin and travelled across the goalmouth, clearing the first line of players before beginning to curl inward.
Haruki immediately recognized what Ken had attempted and started retreating, his body twisting as he tried to judge the flight, but the crowd between him and the ball made the decision difficult.
For a moment it looked as though the ball might simply bend beyond the far post, but then it dipped sharply and began bending inward, heading toward the space just inside the opposite post.The players seemed to react at once as they realized what Ken had done, several voices rising over each other as the ball continued its strange flight toward the far post, Haruki stretched across the goal and dove to get his hands on the ball but his fingers tips missed it, just as it dropped.
The ball dropped and was heading inside for a goal but Aoi appeared as it reached the goalmouth and at the same time, the ball was heading inside, Aoi threw himself across the line and his body went almost completely horizontal as he stretched his right leg toward the descending ball, his boot catching it a fraction of a second before it crossed the line.
The clearance smashed against the inside of the post and ricocheted back across the goalmouth before spinning away toward the edge of the penalty area.
The crowd was silent for a split second before the Rec exploded.
An Olympico, who could’ve thought that one would see a boy attempt it.
Ken stood near the corner flag, frozen, staring toward the goal with his hands slightly apart as though his body had not yet caught up with what his eyes had seen, while Aoi remained on the ground.
The defender had been stationed near the far side of the penalty area, but when he saw the ball curling behind Haruki and toward the far post, he abandoned his mark and sprinted toward the goal line.
He reached the far post just as the ball descended, throwing himself across the line and extending his right leg toward it.
For a moment the players closest to the goal simply stared at what had happened, because from their angle the ball had looked destined to go in, and even Haruki turned toward Aoi with the expression of a goalkeeper who knew he’d been beaten and couldn’t quite believe someone else had rescued him.
Aoi pushed himself off the ground as Ryusei rushed toward the loose ball and cleared it away from danger, sending it bouncing toward the touchline.
The Olympico attempt had been inches from working, he shook his head and started to jog back to position.
The noise around the fence hadn’t settled, and several of the younger boys were still arguing about whether it had actually gone in before Aoi cleared it, while the older players were already discussing the attempt itself, replaying the flight with their hands and trying to explain how close it had been.
Tatsuya had moved closer to the touchline, he was still holding the ball beneath his arm, and turned to focus on Ken, he had noticed him and marked him as one of the stand-out players so far, but that corner silenced any doubt.
It wasn’t simply of what he had done, a player could get lucky, arrive in the right place, receive the right pass, or benefit from a mistake, and nobody watching Amateur football for long would confuse one good moment with genuine quality.
The corner confirmed what Tatsuya had suspected about Kenta being able to read the game to some degree, because when everyone else had been chasing the ball, Ken had been looking at where the next pass would go.
When the Blues pressed, he was moving to spaces where the pass can be made.
When the Reds lost possession, he was often the first player turning to cover the danger rather than chase the ball.
He wasn’t the fastest player on the pitch, nor the strongest, nor the most naturally gifted dribbler, but the longer the match continued, the more difficult it became to ignore him because he kept to the basics while being involved in every facet of the game and this meant he had the raw qualities of becoming a true number six.
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