Harbinger Of Glory

”Just like it felt before,” Leo said with an infectious grin as he jogged over to the opponent’s penalty box.

”Oi, what are ya doing here?” James McClean said as Leo got there, but Leo waved him off like he had always done before, while the others around offered him fist bumps and pats on the back, with the opponent captain even giving him a slight nod.

Then Ezra broke from the small cluster near the edge of the box and came straight for him, arms open, and pulled him into a hug that had clearly been waiting since the final whistle of whatever game Leo had last played.

”Welcome back,” Ezra said, directly into his ear while Leo patted his back twice and pulled away.

”It’s okay, no need to get sobby, or Jake might not let you hear the end of it when he gets back,” Leo offered before shoving Ezra away slightly.

His gaze, though in the next moment, aligned with Will Keane’s, with the veteran forward standing with the ball tucked under his arm at the penalty spot.

He didn’t say much.

He just looked at Leo for a moment, then down at the ball, then back up.

”You want it?” he suddenly said.

Hearing that, Leo raised an eyebrow before a half-second passed, where he seemed to be deciding whether the question was serious and when he judged it to be serious, he nodded.

Seeing Leo’s reply, Keane looked at the ball again and then tossed it to Leo, who caught it and turned toward the spot, still wondering why Keane had given the ball to him but not that he didn’t have an idea what that might be.

The stands reacted immediately as they watched Will Keane leave the penalty box for Leo.

”Keane’s given him the ball. Keane’s given the penalty to Leo—”

”Is he serious? We need this. This is not the time for—”

”Let him take it. Let the kid take it.”

The debate ran in both directions simultaneously, and neither side was entirely wrong, and through all of it, Leo crouched down and placed the ball on the spot with the care of someone who had done this a hundred times in training and probably a thousand times in his head.

After he was satisfied, he stepped back and measured the distance the way keepers hate to watch outfield players measure distance, calmly and without any apparent doubt.

”He’s just come on for the first time in a while, but Wigan have already thrown the responsibility of this penalty onto the shoulder of this teenage boy. Score this,” the main commentator said quietly, ”and Wigan might have just clinched the game. Miss it, and Bristol City will sense everything they need to sense in the final minutes.

The referee’s whistle came through sharp and clean across the DW, and twenty-five thousand people stopped making noise at roughly the same moment, which in a football stadium is one of the stranger things you can witness.

The silence wasn’t total, but it was close enough to give doubts.

Leo stood at the end of his run-up and looked at the goalkeeper, who also stared at Leo like he was trying to invade his mind but before the staredown could go any further, the former moved, at a snail pace causing the keeper to stutter a bit and when his foot connected with the ball, the result was something that took a moment to fully register because of the ball moved slowly.

The penalty rolled with such unhurried precision toward the bottom right corner that the goalkeeper, who had already committed his dive to the left, actually stopped halfway through the motion and tried to reverse it, his body twisting back toward the right in something between athleticism and desperation.

But it was never going to be enough.

The ball crossed the line as the net accepted it, and the DW Stadium came apart.

”Leoooooooo!!!!,” the commentator said, and then stopped, because sometimes the name said was better left as the whole sentence.

”Cool, collected and calm as you’d like. Out for the better part of two months, but with his few couple minutes on the pitch, he’s managed to add another goal to his tally for the season. Sceptical at first, but you can’t teach the level of confidence this boy has.”

”Damn, that could have gone awry,” Leo muttered as his chest pounded like a ceremonial drum.

It might have looked like confidence to others, but that shot was a prayer in and of itself, and the teenager didn’t get much time to think.

The Wigan players swarmed him, but all who watched keenly enough could see they were being careful, though it was hard to be keen for the Wigan fans who were busy celebrating the broken deadlock.

”It’s 1-0 now in the 87th minute. Can they see this out, or will the barrage Bristol is about to throw make Wigan cave in?”

The referee eventually shooed the Wigan players back to their own half for having their celebration spilt comfortably past the time allowed for such things.

And it was as expected because Bristol City went at Wigan with the entirety of their attacking arsenal and plethora.

The ball went long immediately, bypassing midfield entirely, aimed at the space behind the Wigan defensive line.

It dropped in Leo’s vicinity, but it was still some metres away from the latter.

And looking to take advantage of the ball, the Bristol City striker came with it, aggressive, physical, reading the flight early and committing his jump.

Leo, on the other hand, read it differently.

He watched the striker’s momentum, then let him commit, and at the last moment simply didn’t contest it.

Instead, Leo stepped to the side and let the striker launch himself at a ball that he had already decided he wasn’t his to fight for, and the striker, having anticipated resistance that never came, went through the air and came down directly into Leo instead.

The whistle went, and the ball was awarded to Wigan.

Leo sat on the turf for a moment, more from the impact than anything else, and the referee came across, spoke briefly to the Bristol City striker, and produced a yellow card from his pocket.

The striker said something in response that probably wasn’t complimentary, but the referee didn’t change his mind.

Leo got up slowly after that and took the free kick himself, short and simple, and the game moved on.

What followed across the remaining minutes was less football and more craft.

Leo, paired with Whatmough deep in the Wigan defence like his early days, made himself available for the simple ball and then did the most basic yet valuable possible things with it.

A five-yard pass to the left.

A body shift that made a Bristol City midfielder pull out of a press too early.

A turn away from pressure that bought two seconds where one was needed.

He played the game at the tempo that suited Wigan and forced Bristol City to cope, and in all this, the clock moved.

The ninety minutes finally arrived, and the board followed soon, showing six additional minutes after it was held up, but those might as well have been seconds because a while later, the final whistle came, signalling relief all over the DW, which further erupted into cheers.

”There it is. Full Time,” the commentary judged. ”3 draws on the bounce, but Wigan wins this one, which also coincides with the day Leo returns. This boy might well be the catalyst or the Harbinger for the change that has happened at the club and is about to happen!”