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Chapter 22: Volume 1, - 22: Professionalism

Chapter 22: Volume 1, Chapter 22: Professionalism

At 05:30 on Tuesday morning, before the alarm on Rayan’s phone could disturb the quiet apartment, the indigo system interface was already glowing softly within his vision.

Monday—Day Nineteen of the Foundation Challenge had passed without drama. Rayan had completed a recovery session, attended every class and spent the evening preparing for Tuesday’s mathematics assessment. Nothing important had happened.

Now, a new directive waited above him.

[SPECIAL PROTOCOL GENERATED]

[Protocol: Professional Standards Day.]

[Objective: Develop reliable organisational habits.]

[Today’s progress will be measured through operational discipline rather than technical volume.]

[Required Actions:]

[1. Complete an equipment inventory at least eight hours before the academy call time.]

[2. Arrive at the training facility at least forty-five minutes before the scheduled call time.]

[3. Complete the full twenty-minute activation routine before pitch access.]

[4. Meet the assigned post-session nutrition window.]

[5. Record tactical observations and physical-condition notes before sleep.]

Rayan sat up and rubbed both hands across his face. His green Sporting training kit had been folded neatly over the back of his chair. Fresh socks rested beside his shin guards, and his cleaned boots were already inside his bag. He had prepared everything at nine-thirty the previous evening, despite wanting to collapse into bed after studying.

’No technical reward today?’

The thought left him faintly disappointed. He was ten days from the end of the Foundation Challenge, waiting for the result of a retention review and only hours away from an important school assessment. Packing equipment and eating at the correct time felt painfully ordinary compared with weak-foot modules or competitive objectives.

Still, he pushed the duvet aside and placed his feet on the cold floor.

The spectacular parts of football had never been his problem. The ordinary parts were what he had repeatedly failed to respect.

By 07:15, morning fog still hung over the grass at Alcochete.

Rayan stepped off the early academy shuttle forty-eight minutes before the official call time. The main building was almost silent, save for the distant hum of a floor-polishing machine and the smell of coffee drifting from the staff area.

He entered the under-16 changing room and found Bernardo sitting near his locker with headphones covering both ears. Bernardo gave him a brief nod before returning his attention to his phone.

Rayan sat at his assigned place and unpacked carefully. Boots beneath the bench. Training top and shorts folded beside him. Shin guards, tape and water bottle placed within reach. Once everything was prepared, he moved towards the open floor near the showers and began his activation routine.

He rolled the tension from his calves, opened his hips through slow controlled movements and completed the ankle exercises designed to protect his weaker left side. Nothing about the process felt impressive. Nobody was watching, and no ball was involved.

Ten minutes before the call time, the changing-room doors opened and the rest of the squad entered in a noisy wave. Bags landed on benches, players shouted across the room and someone immediately complained that he had forgotten his headphones on the bus.

A panicked voice rose near the far lockers.

"What do you mean you don’t have it?" Duarte demanded. "Check your bag properly."

Tiago, a reserve fullback competing for more minutes, was emptying his duffel bag across the bench. Shin guards, used tape, spare socks and two water bottles fell onto the floor. His official navy training shirt was nowhere among them.

"I left it on the drying rack," Tiago said, his face losing colour. "I thought I packed it this morning."

"You packed your bag this morning?" Bernardo asked, removing one headphone.

Tiago looked towards the door. "My mother can bring it. She can be here before the pitch session."

The door opened before anyone could answer.

Coach João Tavares entered carrying his magnetic tactical board beneath one arm. His gaze travelled across the scattered equipment before settling on Tiago’s plain white undershirt.

"Tiago."

"Coach, I left my training shirt at home. My mother can—"

"You will collect a spare top from the kit room," Tavares interrupted calmly. "Then you will report to the analysis room and review the previous three matches until eleven."

Tiago stared at him. "Coach, the Derby is on Saturday. I need the session."

"Then you should have prepared for it."

"It was one shirt."

Tavares’s expression did not change. "It is never only the shirt. It is whether the staff can trust you to manage a responsibility without someone checking behind you. Today, the answer is no."

Tiago’s shoulders dropped.

"Analysis room," Tavares repeated. "You will train tomorrow after bringing a complete kit."

Tiago gathered his belongings with shaking hands and left without another word.

Rayan remained seated, looking at the equipment arranged neatly beside him. The system’s directive no longer felt like meaningless administration. Tavares had not removed Tiago because a piece of cloth was important. He had removed him because reliability was important.

A player who could not be trusted to prepare his own bag was harder to trust with a defensive runner in the final minutes of a close match.

Professionalism was not separate from football.

It determined who was allowed to play it.

The squad stepped onto Pitch 2 at 08:30 for an eleven-against-eleven tactical possession game.

Tavares divided the available players into two teams. The likely Derby starters wore green bibs, while the substitutes and fringe players wore orange. The exercise focused on progressing through a high press before maintaining possession inside the opposition half.

"Rayan," Tavares called. "Orange team. Left wing."

Two days earlier, being placed among the reserves in front of an academy evaluator would have felt like a personal insult. Rayan would have interpreted the orange bib as proof that the coaches did not respect him and spent the session attempting to force his way into their attention.

This time, he pulled the bib over his head and jogged towards the touchline.

He looked across the orange team. Several players were younger or had received limited competitive minutes. Their centre-forward was quick but impatient, and the two midfielders often moved towards the same space whenever the team tried to build possession.

"Keep the midfield staggered," Rayan called, clapping his hands. "One comes towards the ball. The other stays beyond the pressure. Don’t both drop."

The midfielders looked towards him, surprised by the instruction.

The match began with the green team pressing aggressively. Duarte Faria closed from Sporting’s right side whenever the orange team tried to play towards Rayan, while the starting midfielder behind him blocked the pass inside.

Rayan’s first reception came with Duarte already moving towards him.

Rather than waiting for the defender or attempting to prove he could beat him, Rayan returned the ball to his fullback with one touch and immediately sprinted down the line. The fullback played inside instead, but Rayan’s movement dragged Duarte backwards and created enough space for the orange midfielder to turn.

"Good!" Rayan shouted. "Keep it moving!"

The orange side escaped the press and moved the ball towards the opposite flank.

During the next sequence, Rayan received under pressure again. He scanned before the pass arrived, recognised the covering midfielder approaching from inside and cushioned the ball backwards rather than turning into two opponents.

"Man on!" he warned the fullback. "Inside is free!"

The fullback moved the ball before Duarte could adjust.

Rayan communicated throughout the session. He warned teammates when pressure approached, directed the midfield line to shift and tracked the starting right-back whenever the green team recovered possession.

"Drop!"

"Hold the width!"

"Turn, you have time!"

His football remained simple, but it gave the weaker team structure. The orange players stopped chasing the ball individually and began protecting the spaces around one another.

Midway through the session, the green side attempted to trap them near the left touchline. Duarte pressed Rayan from the front while the right-back moved high behind him, closing the passing lane towards the orange fullback.

Rayan checked over his shoulder before the pass arrived. He allowed the ball to travel across his body, touched it inside with his right foot and returned it towards the central midfielder.

Duarte followed the pass.

Rayan immediately accelerated into the space behind him.

The midfielder recognised the movement and clipped the ball down the touchline. Rayan reached it before the right-back, carried possession into the final third and played a low pass towards the edge of the penalty area.

The orange striker attempted a first-time finish but sent it over the crossbar.

Rayan did not complain about the miss. He pointed towards the striker and clapped.

"Again. Make the same run."

From the sideline, Tavares watched with his notebook open. He offered no praise, but Rayan noticed him writing twice during passages in which Rayan had not touched the ball.

The orange team did not dominate, but neither did it collapse. They retained possession for several long periods and forced the likely starters into hurried challenges. When the final whistle sounded, the score was level.

Tavares gathered the players near the halfway line.

"The orange team had less individual quality," he said. "They remained competitive because several players communicated before problems developed instead of complaining afterwards."

His gaze briefly settled on Rayan.

"That is part of being reliable. Recovery block, then showers."

Rayan turned towards the training building without waiting for further recognition. He had not scored, assisted or beaten Duarte in a dramatic duel.

Yet he had helped a weaker team function.

---

Later that morning, Rayan sat inside a quiet classroom at school with a mathematics paper turned face down on his desk.

The official assessment began at 12:15.

His pulse quickened when the teacher instructed the class to turn over their papers. The opening questions covered linear equations, followed by geometry and functions. None were identical to the exercises Idris had given him, but the methods were familiar.

Rayan worked carefully through the first page. When he reached a question involving the equation of a straight line, his old instinct urged him to rush towards the final answer.

He stopped.

’Show every step.’

He identified the gradient, calculated the intercept and wrote the complete equation before continuing. When the timer passed thirty minutes and several students began turning pages, anxiety tightened inside his chest.

He forced himself not to look around.

The assessment was not asking him to finish before everyone else. It was asking him to solve the problems correctly.

Rayan completed the final question with four minutes remaining. He used the remaining time to review his signs, correcting one negative value before placing his pencil on the desk.

When the papers were collected, he could not tell whether he had achieved the twelve-out-of-twenty target Idris believed he needed. But he had not panicked. He had not abandoned the method.

For the moment, that had to be enough.

At 14:00, Sofia sat inside the administrative office of the medical clinic, using her lunch break to review appointment records.

Her phone rang.

The school’s name appeared on the screen, and her body stiffened immediately. For years, calls from Rayan’s school had rarely carried good news.

"Senhora Duarte?" a man asked when she answered. "This is Director Mendes."

"Yes," Sofia replied, already bracing herself. "Is something wrong with Rayan?"

"No. I am calling with an update."

The sound of papers shifting came through the phone.

"During the past two weeks, Rayan’s attendance has been complete. His repeated morning lateness has stopped, and his teachers confirm that he submitted the outstanding history and Portuguese assignments before the deadline."

Sofia sat back slowly. "He submitted everything?"

"He did. His academic position remains vulnerable because of the earlier absences, and we will need to see the result of today’s mathematics assessment. However, the change in his behaviour has been significant enough that I believed you should know."

A cautious smile appeared on Sofia’s face.

"Thank you for calling, Director Mendes."

After the call ended, she remained still for several seconds, looking through the office window towards the grey Lisbon sky.

---

At 16:30, the public library near the school was almost silent, illuminated by rows of soft fluorescent lights.

Rayan sat at a long wooden desk with Idris opposite him and Bia beside him. The mathematics assessment had ended hours earlier, but the official result would not be available until later in the week. Idris had already forced Rayan to reconstruct the questions he remembered so they could estimate where he might have lost marks.

"Based on what you described, you should have passed," Idris said. "Whether you reached twelve depends on the final geometry question."

"I corrected the negative sign before the end," Rayan replied.

"Then stop changing your memory of the answer every five minutes."

Bia covered a laugh with one hand before pulling Rayan’s history notebook towards her. "The test is finished. Staring at the desk won’t change the mark. You still have a history response due tomorrow."

Rayan looked down at the paragraph he had written. "Does this introduction make sense?"

"It makes sense, but you repeated the same point twice." Bia marked one sentence with her pink highlighter. "Remove this line and connect the railway expansion directly to industrial employment."

Rayan leaned closer and rewrote the paragraph. "Like this?"

"Better."

He studied the revised sentence, then glanced towards her. "You didn’t have to stay after your own test."

Bia stopped highlighting. "I know."

"I just don’t want you wasting your afternoon helping me."

"Helping someone is not automatically a waste of time," she replied quietly. "You don’t have to behave as though accepting help is a public admission that you’re useless."

Rayan looked down at his notebook.

"I don’t think I’m useless."

"You act as though everyone will think that the moment you struggle with something."

Her words landed uncomfortably close to what the system had shown him on Sunday. On the pitch, he tried to impress authority figures because he feared that ordinary football would reveal he did not belong. In school, he resisted asking for help because he feared that difficulty made him look weak.

Bia tapped the page with her pencil. "Nobody expects you to be excellent at everything, Rayan."

He met her eyes. For a moment, the constant pressure surrounding the Derby, the retention review and the Foundation Challenge became quiet.

"Thanks," he said.

A small smile appeared on her face. "You’re welcome. Now finish the paragraph before Idris assigns another practice test."

Without looking up from his laptop, Idris said, "I already have."

At 21:30, Rayan completed the final requirement of Professional Standards Day.

He sat at his bedroom desk with his training journal open and recorded three observations beneath the date.

’Preparing equipment early removes avoidable panic.’

’Communication can improve a team even when individual quality is lower.’

’Pressure is easier to manage when the correct method is already organised.’

He added a brief note about the tightness in his calves and the slight irritation in his left groin, then closed the journal.

"Interface," he whispered.

The indigo display appeared in the dark room.

[PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS DAY COMPLETED]

[Equipment Preparation: Complete.]

[Punctuality Benchmark: Complete.]

[Pre-Activation Routine: Complete.]

[Post-Session Nutrition Window: Complete.]

[Tactical and Physical Log: Complete.]

[Technical Attribute Gain: None.]

[DEVELOPMENT RECORDED]

[Professionalism Proficiency: +4.2%.]

[Training Discipline Proficiency: +1.0%.]

[Competitive Composure Proficiency: +0.9%.]

[Reliability Pattern: Improving.]

[No permanent attribute increase recorded.]

There was no new skill and no dramatic rise in his overall ability. Even so, Rayan felt a quiet sense of satisfaction.

He was becoming someone the coaches did not need to supervise through every basic responsibility.

His phone vibrated on the bedside table.

The message came from Sporting’s academy player portal.

SPORTING CP ACADEMY — LISBON DERBY SQUAD

Fixture: Sporting CP U16 vs SL Benfica U16

Date: Saturday

Kick-Off: 11:00

Venue: Pitch 1, Academia Cristiano Ronaldo — Alcochete

Player: Rayan Duarte El Mansouri

Squad Number: 11

Status: Selected — Matchday Squad

Role: Substitute

Reporting Time: 08:15

Rayan read the message twice.

He would have to prepare properly, arrive early and remain ready even if he spent most of the Derby waiting beside the technical area.

The system appeared one final time.

[THIRTY-DAY FOUNDATION CHALLENGE]

[Day 20 of 30 Complete.]

[Academic Assessment: Completed — Result Pending.]

[Lisbon Derby: Four Days Remaining.]

[Current Date Sequence:]

[Tuesday — Day 20.]

[Wednesday — Day 21.]

[Thursday — Day 22.]

[Friday — Day 23.]

[Saturday — Day 24.]

Rayan placed the phone down and pulled the duvet over his shoulders.