The Next Big Thing
Chapter 182: Talent

Chapter 182: Talent

The locker room was empty now. Silent. Still.

It wasn’t the peace of victory. It was the heavy, suffocating quiet of humiliation.

Under the harsh white lights of the Manchester City locker room, a single man remained seated, hunched over a cluttered desk in the adjoining manager’s office. The door was ajar, allowing a sliver of the sterile room’s light to spill across the abandoned benches and discarded kits—blue shirts draped over hooks like surrendered flags, shin pads lying forgotten on the floor, and the unmistakable scent of sweat, turf, and something else—defeat.

Inside the office, the man was a blur of chaotic energy.

Pep Guardiola.

His usually immaculate shirt was wrinkled, sleeves rolled up past his elbows. His bald head was tilted down, eyes fixed on the mess of papers before him—tactical sheets, player ratings, match analysis notes—now torn, crumpled, scribbled on, discarded. He was mumbling to himself, his Catalan accent punching through the silence with sharp, clipped words as he scrawled across yet another page.

"Verticality... no rhythm... no compactness between the lines... Rodri too slow to reset—why, why, why?!" he spat, slashing red ink across a page. He threw the pen down and clutched at his temples.

"Five-two," he muttered, shaking his head violently, as if the numbers themselves offended him. "Five-two at home. To Leicester." He stood up suddenly, knocking over his chair.

Another page was scrunched and hurled against the wall.

"Stupid mistakes—naïve defending! Mendy, Walker, Eric, Stones—where’s the aggression?! Where’s the bloody desire?!"

He began pacing the narrow space behind the desk, like a man possessed. The muttering never stopped.

"Midfield too passive, no pressure on the ball. Jesus dropping too deep, Sterling drifting too wide, nobody in the bloody box when the cross comes in!"

He kicked a pile of papers under the table, sending them scattering like fallen leaves. His eyes were bloodshot, tired. Haunted.

"And Kevin—Kevin, what are you doing there?!" he shouted at no one, holding his arms out as if De Bruyne might materialize in front of him to explain himself.

He stopped. A deep, guttural sigh escaped his lips.

"No, no, no, no, no..." he whispered, dropping his head into his hands. The room seemed to shrink around him. The noise of the stadium was long gone now—only the faint hum of the hallway air conditioner remained.

The television, mounted silently on the wall across the office, flickered in the background. Pep hadn’t noticed it was on. He hadn’t noticed anything but his own fury. But now—now his gaze lifted.

It started with a sound. The voice of a commentator echoing faintly through the feed.

"And here comes the counter—ohhh, look at this lad!"

Pep’s brows furrowed. He squinted at the screen.

It was a Premier League game. Their noisy Neighbours again for the matter. The kind ESPN buried in the late hours. But something about the image pulled his attention. A small boy—no, a teenager, perhaps—had just received the ball at the edge of midfield.

The ball came to him fast, chest high, awkward. But the boy’s touch was sublime. He cushioned it with his instep like velvet, let it drop, and in the same motion spun to face the oncoming defender.

Pep stepped closer.

The boy looked up—quick glance, no hesitation—and then he drew his leg back to strike.

The defender lunged to block it.

But the ball... the ball didn’t go where it should have.

It twisted. Curved. Not like a standard through ball. It arced like a question mark carved into grass—bending around two defenders, slicing through a narrow lane of space between the center backs, and arriving precisely—precisely—at the feet of a charging striker.

And not just any striker.

Cristiano Ronaldo.

Ronaldo, from the footage. Pep recognized the way he burst forward like a greyhound released from a trap.

The keeper rushed out—big, brave—but Ronaldo was quicker.

The crowd on the TV erupted.

"RONALDO!—OH IT’S JUST WIDE!"

The ball had clipped the outside of the post.

Pep should have been watching the finish. Should have analyzed the run, the shot, the angle. But he wasn’t. His eyes were locked on the boy.

The camera panned back to him.

He was just standing there.

Still.

Watching the ball roll out of play with a face full of quiet frustration—not disappointment in Ronaldo, but in the fact that it hadn’t ended in a goal. The way great players think. The pass had deserved the goal.

The boy’s hands clenched at his sides.

He didn’t smile. Didn’t celebrate the pass. He simply looked down and muttered something, biting his lip, the emotion raw and real.

Pep leaned in, one hand on the desk, eyes wide now, expression unreadable again—but for different reasons.

His heart was pounding.

"Who is that boy?" he whispered, voice dry.

The lad looked young—no older than sixteen or seventeen. Thin. Wiry. But not weak. His movement was fluid, confident. He carried himself like someone who had done this before, like a boy used to the weight of responsibility.

A talent.

Not just potential—no, Pep had seen thousands of players with potential. This was different. This was... instinct. Awareness. Courage. Technique. Vision.

"That’s..." Pep muttered again, almost breathless now.

He backed away slowly from the TV, as if struck.

"That’s... talent."

He sat back down, staring blankly at the screen now, the paper storm around him forgotten.

His team had been humiliated earlier. Torn apart by Vardy and Leicester. He had been screaming, searching, drowning in tactical overanalysis, trying to put together pieces of a puzzle that no longer fit. He had been angry. Furious.

But now, in the middle of that storm of frustration, he had seen something.

Hope.

He reached for his laptop, pushed the mess aside, and began typing furiously.

he muttered. "Who was that boy? I need that name."

The world could keep talking about the 5–2 loss. The analysts could dissect the game, the press could call it a disaster, and his players could stew in their own guilt.

But Pep’s mind was already elsewhere.

That pass.

That boy.

Something had shifted.

That was talent.

Pep Guardiola had seen talent in abundance. He worked with it, cultivated it, even helped redefine it. His Manchester City side was a garden brimming with rare blooms—each player a specimen of elite athleticism, control, flair. But this? This was something else. This was... unfamiliar. Unexpected.

He rewound the footage.

The camera zoomed in on the boy’s face after the assist—a face still kissed by youth, barely any facial hair, cheekbones taut with frustration rather than celebration. The pass—the way he curled that ball in between two defenders as if he had bent time itself—stuck in Pep’s mind like a haunting melody. There was no theatrics. No big wind-up. No desperate lunge. Just vision, calm, execution.

Pep leaned back, staring at the screen as the commentator replayed it again: "He’s just a kid. But what a ball—what a ball! That’s world-class. That’s De Bruyne-esque!"

And there it was.

De Bruyne.

In Pep’s entire treasure trove of players, only Kevin could deliver a cross like that. A ball that asked no questions of its recipient, only answered them. Every other name in his squad—world-class, sure, but not that. Phil Foden, Riyad Mahrez, Jack Grealish, Ilkay Gündogan, Bernardo Silva, Kalvin Phillips, Rodri, João Cancelo, Kyle Walker, Rúben Dias, Nathan Aké, John Stones, even Aguero—they all had their specialties, their unique contributions. But a ball like that? Only Kevin. Always Kevin.

And now, a teenager had just done it with the ease of someone flicking a light switch.

Pep’s intrigue deepened into fascination.

Who was this kid?

But Pep wasn’t the only coach being haunted by genius.

Sixty minutes into a volatile match at Old Trafford, Erik ten Hag stood on the edge of his technical area like a general watching the tide of battle shift. His team, Manchester United, had been a mess in the first half. Disjointed. Sloppy. Defensively naive. The backline— Maguire, Lindelöf,—had looked more like a collection of strangers than teammates. Even Pogba had been unusually off pace.

Yet somehow, they had survived the half.

And now—something had changed.

It wasn’t tactical.

It was... one player.

Number 19.

David.

Ten Hag narrowed his eyes as he watched the teenager glide across the midfield. He wasn’t tracking back much. That hadn’t changed. He wasn’t throwing himself into tackles or rushing into defensive duels. That hadn’t changed either. The defense was still shaky, still looked like a thin sheet trying to cover a broken bedframe. But the game itself—the feel of it—had changed.

Because David had come alive.

He wasn’t taking anyone on, wasn’t doing stepovers or sprinting past players with dramatic flair. No. It was subtler than that. It was cleaner. Smarter. More surgical.

He was becoming the conductor.

Every pass from David seemed to accelerate United’s momentum. A first-time layoff into space. A through ball threaded so precisely that even Bruno, usually the architect of such wizardry, had turned his head and nodded. A switch from right to left, inch-perfect, landing softly at Rashford’s feet. There were no wasted touches, no hesitation. He received the ball with confidence, released it with purpose.

And the opposition knew it.

Ten Hag could see it in their hesitation. Every time David got the ball, they paused. No one rushed him anymore. Not after he gave a pass that nutmegged their holding midfielder in the 53rd minute and nearly released Ronaldo with a no-look flick. That moment had changed the tone. Now the opponents were cautious hands behind backs, waiting. David had earned their respect. Their fear.

And it wasn’t just the passing.

It was where he was doing it from.

Bruno Fernandes had been pulled deeper, forced into damage control duties with the defense leaking like a cracked hull. Someone needed to orchestrate further forward—and David, still only seventeen, had stepped into that void without being asked.

Ten Hag felt it in his gut: this was a turning point.

Not just for the match—but for the boy.

David had been raw before—moments of brilliance drowned in hesitance. But now? Now he played like he belonged. As if he’d always been meant to wear that shirt, to wear that number. As if the pitch wasn’t grass beneath him, but home.

He didn’t need to dribble past anyone—his movement bypassed them.

He didn’t scream for the ball—it just found him.

And with every pass, every calmly ignored tackle, every split-second decision, he was growing taller in the eyes of the fans.

Ten Hag stole a glance toward the crowd. They were murmuring—restless, but not angry. Expectant.

He checked his watch: 63:47.

United were pushing now. You could see it in their shape, their urgency. Sancho was drifting inward more. Rashford had begun making smarter diagonal runs. Even Antony, usually isolated on the wing, had started popping up in pockets near the box.

Because David kept finding them.

This was football. Not chaos. Not individual brilliance alone. But harmony. Rhythm. Precision.

It was Bruno’s job—yet here was this kid, doing it better than Bruno had all game.

And still, he never smiled.

Ten Hag whispered to himself, a grin ghosting his lips. "It’s only a matter of time."

He turned to his assistant, Mitch van der Gaag, and said in Dutch, "Let them play five more minutes. Let’s see if he finishes what he started."

Back on the pitch, David received the ball again—this time just outside the center circle. A defender closed in. David didn’t panic. He opened his body and turned with one fluid movement, letting the ball roll across his chest and onto his left boot. A pass—short, angled—split two midfielders and put Casemiro in space for the first time in the half.

Casemiro looked surprised—but played on.

Ten Hag couldn’t take his eyes off number 19.

David had begun to look... inevitable.

He wasn’t merely playing the game—he was rewriting it.

And Ten Hag, who had seen countless talents rise and fall, knew exactly what this meant. Sometimes, you didn’t need 90 minutes. Sometimes, just a ten-minute stretch told you everything.

David had written his name into this match.

Now it was time to underline it.

The 67th minute ticked by.

Ten Hag stepped closer to the touchline.

The crowd sensed something. You could hear it in their voices, in the way the singing softened into tension. That collective inhale before a crescendo.

David passed it sideways to Bruno—who turned, but then passed it back to David. He had seen what Ten Hag had seen.

They trusted him now.

Time to win it he thougth.