Football: Maxed Out The Wrong Stat

September 2010.

The Dortmund training ground sat under a generous late-summer sky, the kind of clear, warm afternoon that made even cone drills feel bearable. At the far end of the pitch, separated from the main group, a lean teenager with dark skin and black hair was running slalom poles for what felt like the ten-thousandth time.

Because it was, very nearly, exactly that.

”Nine hundred and seventy-three.”

”Nine hundred and seventy-four.”

He counted under his breath, not for anyone’s benefit, just to keep the tally honest. His touch wasn’t clean. His weight transfers were a fraction late. But every rep was deliberate. His eyes stayed on the ball the whole time.

On the other side of the training pitch, a cluster of Dortmund U18 players sat in a loose circle, water bottles in hand, watching him.

[I genuinely don’t know where he finds the motivation. The final assessment’s tomorrow — he’s already done.]

[Has to be the last day of his trial and he’s still out there grinding cones. Give it a rest.]

[Say what you want, he’s worked harder than anyone in this squad. I’ll give him that much.]

[Sure, and it still won’t matter. Steven, you want to take his place over there? No? Didn’t think so. This bloke’s nowhere near your level. You’ll be in the first team before Christmas.]

[Steven, when you sign your senior contract, first round’s on you!]

[Obviously. First round AND second round, come on.]

The blonde teenager they were talking about - Steven, the U18’s standout forward, accepted the flattery with a quiet smile and said nothing. He glanced across the pitch at the dark-haired kid working the poles and felt something he couldn’t quite name. Not respect, exactly. More like the mild discomfort of watching someone work this hard for something that wasn’t going to happen.

He looked away.

On the far pitch, the count continued.

”Nine hundred and ninety-seven.”

”Nine hundred and ninety-eight.”

”Nine hundred and ninety-nine.”

”One thousand.”

The teenager came to a stop, chest rising. He planted his hands on his knees for a moment, then straightened up and walked to the sideline, dropping onto the grass with his back against the advertising hoarding.

He closed his eyes.

”Hey! Silva! Finished already? Come carry the water over, yeah?”

A voice from the group. Ham, the squad’s starting defensive midfielder, called across with a grin, fully expecting to be ignored. It was just something they did. A bit of sport.

They weren’t expecting what came next.

The teenager’s eyes opened. He turned his head slowly and looked directly at Ham.

That was all it took. Ham’s grin disappeared. He found something very interesting to study on the ground near his boots.

[Ham. Don’t. Remember what happened to Fries.]

[That’s right. His finishing might be amateur-hour but he’s an absolute nightmare in a fight. Fries and James both ended up on the treatment table. Leave it.]

[Ham, you’re on your own if you push it.]

Ham said nothing. He took a long drink from his water bottle instead.

The kid’s name was Mateo Silva. He was seventeen years old, and he was Brazilian.

He’d arrived at Dortmund three months ago as part of a Brazilian Football Confederation exchange initiative, ten teenagers, ten European clubs, three months each. The idea, on paper, was exposure and development. In practice, for most of the boys involved, it was a polite way of letting them find out the hard way that the gap between them and elite European football was enormous.

Mateo had found out in his first training session. Subbed off inside five minutes. His positioning was all wrong, his first touch unreliable, and his sense of space, the intuitive reading of where teammates and defenders were at all times was the kind of thing that either got trained into a kid between ages nine and fourteen, or it didn’t get there at all.

It wasn’t there.

Since then, he’d essentially been invisible at Borussia Dortmund. Fed, housed, and ignored. The coaches gave him cones to work with and left him to it.

Today was the last day.

The squad was already mentally writing his farewell. The head coach would put him on for a few minutes in the training match - for the cameras, for the administrators and then Noss. George would shake his hand, wish him well, and that would be that.

Mateo sat against the hoarding with his eyes closed.

What the rest of them didn’t know was that at this particular moment, something else was happening entirely.

[System activation in progress.]

[Congratulations. 100,000 basic slalom-cone dribbling repetitions completed.]

[Football Performance System - now online.]

[Novice Gift Package received. Live Attribute Panel active.]

Mateo kept his face completely still.

Here was the thing about Mateo Silva: the person currently sitting in this body hadn’t been born into it. The original Mateo, the real one - had been watching a Champions League final on TV three months ago, in a different life entirely. He’d launched himself off the sofa when the equaliser went in, slipped on an energy drink can he’d forgotten was on the floor, and that was that. Lights out. End of story.

When he’d woken up, he was seventeen years old, dark-skinned, thin as a rail, and standing in a Brazilian training kit on a plane to Dortmund.

He’d had a system from the start, apparently. A Football Performance System. Locked, at first. The only condition for unlocking it: complete 100,000 basic slalom-cone dribbling repetitions.

So that’s what he’d done. For three months, every morning before training, every evening after, every spare moment in between. In rain. In the dark. By himself, in the corner of the pitch, while the rest of the squad ran actual drills.

One hundred thousand repetitions.

Done.

He opened the attribute panel and read it carefully.

ATTRIATEO SILVA,

Age - 17

Attribute - Score

Offence - 69

Dribbling - 64

Passing - 63

Shooting - 65

Heading - 68

Set Piece - 66

Curve - 66

Speed - 80

Kicking Power - 75

Jumping - 74

Physical Contact - 72

Stamina - 88

Defence - 58

Tackling - 65

Overall Rating - 67

Mateo stared at the numbers.

Sixty-seven overall. With that reading, he couldn’t get into the youth academy of a mid-table Brazilian state league club, let alone Dortmund’s U18. He’d known he wasn’t good. He hadn’t quite realised how not good.

Novice Gift Package available. Open?

Right. That. He reached for it.

[Congratulations. You have received: 1× Max Level Attribute Card. Apply to any single attribute to raise it to maximum immediately.]

Mateo felt the anxiety drop out of his chest.

One attribute, maxed out. That changed things.

Shooting. Obviously. A maxed-out shot on a 67-rated player turned him into a genuine goal threat overnight. He was a forward or trying to be, so it made complete sense. He navigated to the attribute screen, found Shooting, and moved to confirm-

”Silva!”

Coach George’s voice, from the other side of the pitch. Then footsteps.

Mateo didn’t look up, still trying to finalise the selection in the system interface.

”Silva! Oi—” The assistant coach, Geoffrey, reached him and gave him a firm shove on the shoulder.

The system lurched. Mateo’s focus broke. His hand, or whatever the mental equivalent of a hand was in this interface slipped sideways across the panel.

[Max Level Attribute Card applied.]

[Passing raised to maximum.]

[Training Points activated.]

Mateo opened his eyes. He looked at Geoffrey. He looked at the pitch, where the rest of the squad were getting into position for the session. He looked at the system readout still hovering at the edge of his vision.

Passing. He’d maxed out passing.

He was a forward.

He stood up, brushed the grass off his kit, and walked onto the pitch.

Right, he thought. Brilliant.