Harbinger Of Glory

The referee was already gesturing at the Wigan players before Reyes had finished turning away from the Yellow Wall.

His arm swept them back toward their half with the efficiency of a man who had a schedule to keep.

”Settle down, settle down,” he said, moving through them.

The players went past him, still buzzing with Ezra grabbing Reyes by the back of the neck as they jogged back, only for the latter to pull away sassily.

While that went on, the referee turned his attention towards something else, beckoning the exiting Dortmund substitutes to clear the pitch faster.

”And the referee is keen to get things moving again,” the commentator said.

”Can’t blame him. That celebration added a good two minutes. I guess that is what a player like Reyes, scoring, will do to your schedule.”

”Worth it though,” the co-commentator said, and left it there.

As the exchange was made, Fullkrug placed the ball at the centre circle and tapped it back to restart, and what followed was not the Dortmund that had been playing before the equaliser.

The conservatism, the comfort of a side managing a lead, was gone, and in its place was a Dortmund that moved with the urgency of a team that had been reminded it could lose.

They stepped forward, moving the ball through their shapes with a directness that hadn’t been there in the first half, and suddenly, Wigan were not playing the same game they had been playing.

Leo chased.

It wasn’t only him, but it was him mostly.

He tracked back, closed down, pressed the nearest man, turned and chased again, and the ball kept moving away from him, and the ugly part of it was that none of it was working.

Dortmund were moving it too quickly, and Wigan were running and running and not winning anything back, and the legs that had been fine ten minutes ago were beginning to feel the volume of it.

”Twenty minutes left here in Dortmund,” the commentator said after a while, ”and for the past ten of them, Wigan have barely touched the ball. Dortmund have gone up a level since the equaliser, and Wigan are chasing shadows right now, and that is not a sustainable situation. Dawson will be looking at his.....” he stopped himself suddenly as a movement on the pitch caught his eyes, ”And here they come again.”

Ryerson had the ball on the right, and Reus, who Terzic had placed on that side specifically, called for it and received it in stride, already moving inward.

He came at Leo with the ball, who Leo set himself, but Reus stepped over it once, shifted it across his body and back with the la croqueta.

It was patient and so smooth that Leo’s feet went with the first movement and couldn’t correct in time, and before he could manage, Reus was past him and switching it immediately to Sancho on the left.

”Reus,” the commentator said.

”Quality. Absolute quality from the Germans. Leo tried to hold his ground, but Reus just moved him out of the way, and the ball is with Sancho now, and Darikwa has to be alert here.”

Sancho came at Darikwa with the specific patience he brought to every one-on-one, letting the fullback commit, and then he cut inside, only to face Max Power, who came across to cover, but that didn’t faze the English winger.

Sancho dropped his shoulder and sidestepped the challenge without breaking stride.

”Is he going to shoot?” the commentator said, but Sancho looked up and lobbed the ball toward the far post instead, a lofted, weighted ball that dropped out of the sky toward Brandt, who let it fall to his feet and played it back across the face of goal first time, low and dangerous.

Waiting on the end of it was Fullkrug arriving at the near post with clinical timing, but before he could pass the ball into the back of the net, O’Shea got there.

He threw himself at it and cleared it with his shin, not cleanly, not elegantly, but sufficiently, and the ball went away from goal, and the Dortmund fans behind the net dipped as one in the deflation of a moment that had looked like everything and become nothing.

”O’Sheeaaaa!!” the commentator said, ”gets something on it. That was vital. Fullkrug was right there, and O’Shea has thrown his body in the way and cleared it and......”

He stopped again as the ball fell to Leo, who had already scoped out the state of the pitch and seen that Dortmund had pushed forward for that attack, and what was left behind them was space and four defenders who were still turning to recover their shape.

”Can Wigan break here?” the commentator said, his voice dropping into something tighter, and before he could manage his next word, Leo drove forward, not waiting.

He came through the middle with the ball at his feet, where the Dortmund players scrambled to occupy.

Before he could make his next decision, Carlo on the left flank called out to him before starting his run, and Leo didn’t wait too long.

The ball went past Ryerson, who slid to cut it off and got nothing but grass, and Carlo collected it in his stride and pushed it ahead of him.

Then he looked up and played it across the face of the Dortmund defence into the box, a ball weighted for the run rather than the man, and Kobel came off his line two steps, three steps, and then stopped, reading the flight of it and deciding he wasn’t going to get there before stepping back and setting himself.

The ball missed everyone, until it found Ezra instead, arriving at his feet on the right side of the box, where Meunier cut across to close him down, but instead of facing him, Ezra checked away from the challenge.

He pulled the ball back instead to Reyes, who had run from midfield and was arriving at the edge of the area.

Reyes ran onto it.

Until the last second, when he let it go, stepping over it, while from beside him, Sabitzer came sliding in with both feet and caught him.

Reyes went down, and before the referee could bring the whistle up, Leo was already on the ball.

”It’s been left to Calderon, but is there a finish here?” the commentator said as Leo curled it, with hisr ight foot along the grass.

The ball started toward the goal, but then it began bending left and away from the goalkeeper and the goal.

It continued to bend, even away from the defenders who had stopped and were watching it curve, and it looked for a moment like it was bending too far, going past the far post, until they realised it was never a shot when Carlo appeared.

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