New Novel
Chapter 3: Volume 1, - 3: The Gap Between Dreams and Talent

Chapter 3: Volume 1, Chapter 3: The Gap Between Dreams and Talent

The morning frost had melted into a slick, deceptive sheen across the grass of pitch number two, turning every sharp turn into a gamble.

"Left foot, Rayan! Do not turn your hips before the ball arrives!"

Coach Tavares’s voice clipped through the chilly morning air like a starter pistol. Rayan adjusted his stance mid-stride, trying to swallow the dry copper taste of exhaustion. They were forty minutes into a grueling technical circuit designed to test positional transition under pressure, and his thighs were already burning.

The drill was simple on paper, yet humiliating in practice. A player stood in a three-meter grid marked by yellow cones. A fitness coach fired a heavy, low pass from twenty yards out. The player had to receive the ball on the half-turn with their weak foot, shield it from a passive defender, and immediately zip a crisp, diagonal ball into a mini-goal positioned at a forty-five-degree angle.

The ball hissed toward Rayan. He lunged forward, trying to cushion it with the instep of his left boot.

Instead of settling into the grid, the ball struck the edge of his sole and leaped forward like a startled rabbit. Rayan scrambled to recover, his hips twisting awkwardly as he tried to drag it back before the defender could step in. By the time he managed to steady it, the window had closed. He swung his left leg anyway, trying to force the pass, but his connection was hollow. The ball bobbled lazily across the turf, stopping two yards short of the mini-goal.

"Reset!" Tavares called out, his pen scratching against the clipboard. "Body shape, Rayan. You are fighting the ball. Let it glide across your line."

Two grids down, Duarte Faria made it look like ballet.

The ball fired toward him at twice the speed. Duarte didn’t tension his leg; he opened his hips perfectly, letting the momentum of the ball carry it across his body with a single, seamless touch that left his defender completely out of the play. Without looking up, he snapped his left ankle through the ball, sending a sharp, perfectly straight pass into the center of the mini-goal with a satisfying ping.

"Excellent, Duarte. Perfect rhythm," the assistant coach noted.

Rayan wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt, his chest tightening. It wasn’t just that Duarte was faster; it was that his fundamentals were locked into his muscle memory. Every touch was deliberate. Every weight transfer was mathematically sound. Rayan looked down at his own boots, feeling a familiar, heavy frustration settling into his muscles. He was trying twice as hard, running twice as fast, yet every motion felt jagged, forced, and dangerously clumsy.

"Transition! Small-sided game, eight against eight!" Tavares shouted, blowing his whistle twice. "Two touches maximum. If you hold the ball, you lose it. Let’s go!"

The squad rapidly split into two colors. Rayan pulled a neon orange bib over his green training top, taking his position on the left flank of the defending unit. Duarte, wearing green, immediately occupied the opposing right wing.

From the first whistle, the dynamic was clear. Duarte didn’t stay wide; he dropped into the half-spaces, drifting inside to create numerical advantages. The green central midfielder won the ball and immediately looked up, spotting Duarte’s diagonal run between the lines.

"Rayan, squeeze the space!" the center-back yelled from behind.

Rayan lunged forward to intercept the line of pass, but Duarte was already a step ahead. He checked his run, took the ball on his chest, and used Rayan’s own forward momentum against him, flicking it over his head with a deft touch. Rayan spun around, his boots skidding on the slick grass, but Duarte had already laid the ball off and sprinted into the penalty box to receive the return. The attack ended in a powerful shot that rattled the crossbar.

Three minutes later, it happened again. Duarte picked up the ball out wide, facing Rayan face-to-face. He shifted his weight left, then right, his upper body swaying in a hypnotic rhythm that kept Rayan completely static.

’Don’t dive in,’ Rayan told himself, his teeth clenched. ’Stay on your toes.’

But Duarte’s foot moved too quickly. A sharp chop inside left Rayan completely off-balance. In a desperate attempt to avoid being left behind completely, Rayan reached out, grabbing a handful of Duarte’s green bib and throwing his shoulder into the winger’s chest.

Duarte went down with a loud groan, the ball rolling harmlessly out of bounds.

Tweeet!

The whistle blew instantly, loud and sharp. The entire pitch came to a sudden, freezing halt.

"Orange number seven! Stand up!" Tavares walked onto the pitch, his eyes locked onto Rayan, who was standing over Duarte with his fists clenched, his face flushed red with humiliation.

"He was leaning into me, Coach," Rayan protested, his voice tight. "It was just a shoulder charge."

"It was a lazy foul born out of frustration," Tavares corrected, stopping three feet away from him. He pointed a finger down at the turf. "Anger cannot replace positional intelligence, Rayan. When you lose your discipline because a player beats you technically, you become a liability to this team. If you cannot stop him with your positioning, pulling his shirt just tells the entire stadium that you have given up. Go back to your line. Five extra laps around the perimeter after the session."

Duarte got up slowly, brushing the loose grass off his shorts. He didn’t mock Rayan this time; he just gave him a brief, pitying look that felt far more destructive than any sarcastic comment in the dressing room could ever be. He simply walked back to his position, completely unbothered, while Rayan stood in the center of the pitch, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.

The metal gates outside the Alcochete complex were cold against Rayan’s back as he waited for the regional bus. His legs felt like lead weights after the extra laps, and every muscle in his back ached from the tension of the morning.

"You look like you just survived a car crash."

Rayan looked up. Rafa was leaning against the concrete wall a few yards away, a half-empty sports drink in his hand. He was wearing his official Benfica academy tracksuit, his kit bag slung neatly over one shoulder. Because the Benfica junior training grounds were only a short distance away, they often caught the same cross-district transit back toward the city center on Saturday afternoons.

"It was just a heavy fitness day," Rayan said, forcing his voice into a casual, breezy tone as he adjusted his bag. "Tavares wanted us to do high-intensity intervals at the end. I actually felt really sharp today. Driving down the line, putting in crosses. Standard stuff."

Rafa took a slow sip of his drink, his dark eyes studying Rayan’s face for a long moment. He noticed the slight tremor in Rayan’s hands and the dirt stain on his shoulder from where he had been shoved to the turf, but his expression remained completely neutral.

"Good," Rafa said quietly, turning his gaze toward the horizon where the bus was finally appearing. "The mid-season block is always brutal. Our fitness coach had us doing defensive transitions for two hours straight. If you aren’t perfectly positioned, you’re dead by the hour mark."

"Yeah," Rayan muttered, looking down at his sneakers. "Exactly."

Rafa didn’t press further. He didn’t bring up the rumor about the Porto wingers, and he didn’t ask how many minutes Rayan had actually played in the tactical match. He simply stepped onto the bus first, tapping his card against the reader and leaving the seat next to him open. It was a quiet mercy that Rayan appreciated more than he could express. Rafa knew the reality, but he had enough respect not to force Rayan to admit it aloud.

By seven o’clock that evening, the small kitchen in Olivais was completely overwhelmed by the smell of toasted garlic bread and cheap cheese.

"If anyone touches this slice, I will report you to the school board for theft," Joca declared, pointing a plastic spatula at a large pepperoni pizza resting on the counter. He had his phone held high in his left hand, the camera lens tracking the steam rising from the crust. "Look at that cheese pull. This is cinematic. This is content."

"Put the phone away, Joca, you’re going to drop it in the sauce," Inês said, sitting at the kitchen table with three heavy textbooks open around her. She tapped her pen against a notebook page covered in colored sticky notes. "And more importantly, someone needs to actually read the introduction for the history presentation. It’s due on Tuesday, and currently, our entire section on the Age of Discovery consists of Joca’s notes about how Vasco da Gama had ’immense aura.’"

"He did have immense aura!" Joca protested, sliding a piece of pizza onto a paper plate. "The man sailed around Africa with no Google Maps. That’s pure aura."

"It’s historically inaccurate prose," Idris muttered from the sofa, where he was trying to clean a smudge off his glasses. "Rayan, do you have a ruler? Mateus changed the margin sizes on the shared document, and now the entire bibliography looks like a poem."

"In the drawer next to the sink," Rayan called out from the living room, where he was sitting on the floor with his back against the coffee table.

The television was alive with the bright, flashing colors of a custom character screen in EA Sports FC. Mateus was sitting on the edge of the sofa, a bag of chips tucked under his arm, controlling the playlist on the small Bluetooth speaker. A heavy, bass-driven instrumental track beat softly against the walls.

"Alright, let’s see the monster you’ve created," Mateus laughed, leaning forward as Rayan clicked the ’Attributes’ tab on the screen.

On the television, a digital version of Rayan stood in an idealized version of the Sporting kit. The virtual face was perfectly symmetrical, the hair styled into flawless curls, but it was the numbers on the right side of the screen that made Mateus snort.

Pace: 97

Dribbling: 95

Shooting: 92

Passing: 89

Overall Rating: 94

"Ninety-seven pace?" Joca yelled, leaning over the sofa with his phone still recording. "Bro, you ran a forty-meter sprint last week and almost got overtaken by a heavy wind. Who is this? This isn’t Rayan, this is prime Cristiano with a different surname."

"It’s a projection," Rayan said, trying to laugh along as he tapped the controller to save the settings. "It’s where I’ll be after the summer training camp. The engine just hasn’t caught up to my vision yet."

"If your vision involves ninety-two shooting, you might want to check your prescription," Mateus joked, nudging Rayan’s shoulder with his foot. "Last weekend’s ball is currently orbiting the moon."

The group erupted into a chorus of groans and laughter. It was the standard, easy banter of five people who had known each other since the fifth grade, completely devoid of the sharp, competitive edge that defined every interaction at Alcochete. They were just laughing at a video game.

But as Rayan looked at the digital avatar on the screen. Flawless, dominant, and entirely fictional, the laughter felt like sandpaper against his skin. The joke hit a raw nerve that had been exposed all morning. He turned the console off abruptly, tossing the controller onto the sofa cushion.

"I’m going to get some more soda from the kitchen," he muttered, standing up.

"Hey, don’t leave your bag in the middle of the hallway, Rayan," Inês called out from the table as he walked past. "I almost tripped over your dirty shin guards when I came in."

She reached down to slide his heavy Sporting kit bag closer to the wall, but as she pulled the canvas strap, the main compartment spilled open. A stack of crumpled kit laundry fell out, followed by a folded sheet of heavy, official white paper with the green Sporting CP crest stamped at the top.

Inês picked it up to tuck it back inside, but her eyes instinctively caught the bold print at the top of the page: MID-SEASON PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT — UNDER-16 TECHNICAL DIVISION.

Rayan froze at the kitchen threshold, his hand stopping halfway into the refrigerator door.

Inês’s eyes flicked down the page, her analytical student brain scanning the structured columns of text before she could even register that she was looking at something private. Her expression shifted instantly from casual amusement to a quiet, startled concern.

"Rayan..." she began softly, her finger tracing a line of text.

Before she could finish the sentence, Rayan moved. He crossed the short distance between them in two long strides, his hand darting down to snatch the paper out of her grip with a force that almost tore the edge. He folded it twice, his knuckles turning white, and stuffed it deep into his jacket pocket.

"Don’t touch my stuff, Inês," he said, his voice coming out much sharper and harder than he intended.

The room went entirely quiet. The music from the speaker seemed suddenly too loud. Joca lowered his phone, his thumb sliding off the record button, while Idris and Mateus exchanged a brief, uncomfortable glance from the sofa.

Inês looked up at him, her glasses slipping down her nose slightly. She didn’t look offended by his tone; she just looked deeply, painfully sorry for him. She had seen enough of the numbers. The low red bars and the cold, institutional critique to understand the weight of what he was hiding.

"Sorry," she whispered, looking back down at her history notebook. "I was just trying to move the bag."

Rayan swallowed hard, the anger leaving him as quickly as it had arrived, replaced by a hollow, nauseating shame. "It’s fine," he muttered, turning back toward the kitchen without the soda. "I’m just tired."

By midnight, the apartment was empty again. His mother had long since gone to bed after her late shift, and the only light in the living room came from the amber streetlamps bleeding through the thin curtains.

Rayan sat at his small desk in the corner of his bedroom, the door closed tightly. He pulled the crumpled white document from his jacket pocket and laid it flat on the wood surface, smoothing out the creases with the palm of his hand.

It was the preliminary evaluation sheet Coach Tavares had updated that morning. The technical metrics were laid out in a cold, unfeeling grid, rated from 1 to 10 based on national academy standards for his position.

Technical Competencies:

First Touch: 4.5 / 10 (Inconsistent directional control under dynamic pressure)

Weak Foot (Left): 4.0 / 10 (Reluctant usage; insufficient power and accuracy during transition)

Passing Accuracy (Short): 5.5 / 10 (Adequate in static scenarios; drops significantly under press)

Dribbling / 1v1 Isolation: 6.0 / 10 (Shows flash, but lacks efficiency; high turnover rate)

Tactical & Mental Competencies:

Positional Awareness: 4.5 / 10 (Fails to maintain structural width; poor understanding of half-spaces)

Composure: 3.5 / 10 (Prone to emotional decision-making when possession is lost)

Work Rate (Defensive): 5.0 / 10 (Inconsistent tracking of opposing fullback)

Rayan stared at the numbers. A 3.5 in composure. A 4.0 in his weak foot. These weren’t just low marks; they were a death sentence in a system like Sporting’s, where hundreds of boys across the country were competing for twenty spots.

He pulled up his phone, opening his Instagram app out of pure, anxious habit.

620 followers.

Five more than yesterday. A completely meaningless metric. He switched over to the official academy portal, clicking on the public roster page for the under-16 squad. He scrolled past his own small thumbnail image until he found Duarte Faria’s profile.

Duarte’s technical breakdown wasn’t visible, but his season statistics were printed clearly for everyone to see: 14 appearances, 8 goals, 6 assists. 1,120 minutes played.

Rayan looked back at the white paper on his desk. He had spent the last six months convincing himself that the gap between them was temporary. He had told himself that if he just ran harder during the warm-ups, if he stayed five minutes extra after training to kick a ball against the concrete wall, the talent gap would dissolve through sheer force of will. He had relied on his father’s beautiful, delusional theory that ’one great match’ would rewrite reality.

But looking at the document in the cold light of his bedroom, the illusion shattered completely.

The gap wasn’t temporary; it was a vast, structural chasm. Duarte didn’t just have more talent; he had a foundational understanding of the game that Rayan completely lacked. Effort alone wasn’t closing the distance because Rayan didn’t even know how to fix the things he was doing wrong. He was running blindly in the dark, while the system was moving forward at supersonic speed.

His eyes drifted down to the very bottom of the page, where Coach Tavares had written his summary notes in sharp, black ink.

Technical Staff Summary:

’Player exhibits physical application but remains technically deficient in core areas required for regional competition. Decision-making under pressure remains a critical concern. Unlikely to be retained without significant development during the upcoming evaluation block.’

Rayan let out a long, shaky breath, the paper trembling slightly between his fingers. ’Unlikely to be retained.’

He folded the document slowly, his chest completely hollow, and turned off the desk lamp. As he lay down in the dark, the words seemed to burn through the paper, leaving him entirely alone with the terrifying certainty that his time was running out.