Football: Maxed Out The Wrong Stat

Raúl and Farfán left together, their voices fading down the path back toward the first-team complex.

Mateo turned toward the training pitch.

He was thinking about the training points counter, still sitting at zero in his system, still unexplained. The system had ignored every query he’d sent it on the subject. His best working theory was that it tracked something about quality of training rather than volume, but that was a guess. For now, the cones were there and the afternoon was still light, and the only productive response to not understanding something was to keep going until it became clear.

He’d taken about four steps when Daniel’s voice came from behind him.

”Silva. Where are you going?”

”To train.”

”Medical first. You signed a contract without a physical - that’s my fault, we were moving fast. Go get it done now.”

He raised his voice slightly: ”Wickliff!”

Wickliff, Daniel’s assistant, who had appeared at the edge of the technical area with a clipboard and the expression of a man who had been waiting to be needed, jogged over.

”Take him to Hoess. Full workup, fitness data, everything. Then bring me the numbers.”

”Got it, Boss.” Wickliff looked at Mateo. ”Come on then.”

The Schalke medical centre was a ten-minute walk from the U18 training ground, housed in a low building at the western edge of the complex. It served the whole club, which in practice meant the first team got priority booking, the U18 got the gaps, and everyone worked around the schedule.

”By the way,” Wickliff said as they walked, ”don’t let Hoess get to you. He says what he thinks, always. It’s not personal.”

”What does he usually think?”

”About U18 players?” Wickliff considered it. ”That we sign them too young, train them too soft, and feed them wrong. In roughly that order.”

Mateo absorbed this.

The medical centre smelled of antiseptic and rubber matting. Wickliff pushed through the main door and called into the corridor.

”Hoess! We’ve got a new signing, needs a full physical.”

A pause. Then the sound of heavy footsteps, and a large man filled the doorway of the examination room - broad-shouldered, full beard, white coat, and the particular expression of a man who has been interrupted mid-something and intends to let you know it.

Dr. Hoess looked at Mateo the way a mechanic looks at a car brought in for a second opinion, starting at the top and working down without any particular hurry.

”How old?”

”Seventeen,” Mateo said.

”When did you last do a structured fitness programme?”

”I haven’t.”

Hoess looked at Wickliff. Wickliff gave a small, preemptive shrug.

”Old Jes recommended him,” Wickliff said. ”His passing is exceptional.”

”Passing.” Hoess said the word with the measured scepticism of a man who has never personally had to make a pass and doesn’t see why it should be relevant to his work. He turned back to Mateo. ”Shirt off. Lie down on the table.”

The examination room door was open to the corridor. Mateo looked at it.

”Could we-”

”This takes twenty minutes and I have three other appointments this afternoon,” Hoess said, already pressing buttons on the scanning equipment with the efficiency of a man who considers modesty an administrative problem. ”Shirt. Table. Now.”

Mateo took his shirt off and lay down.

The machine ran its sequence. Hoess moved around it, reading outputs, making notes on his clipboard, and delivering a running commentary that was apparently addressed to Wickliff but loud enough for the entire room and possibly the corridor to hear.

”Muscle mass significantly below professional baseline for his age group.” Scratch of pen. ”Upper body in particular, no development at all. He’s been running but he hasn’t been lifting.”

”He hasn’t had formal training,” Wickliff said.

”That much is obvious.” More scratching. ”Muscle fibre composition is interesting, actually, decent slow-twitch ratio, which explains the stamina. But the fast-twitch is almost entirely undeveloped. He’s running on natural endurance and not much else.”

”Can it be developed?” Wickliff asked.

”At seventeen? Yes. But it takes time and it takes work and it takes eating correctly, which I guarantee he’s not been doing.” Hoess leaned over the readout. ”What’s his diet been like?”

”He was at Dortmund for three months,” Wickliff said. ”Club accommodation, club canteen.”

”So: whatever they put in front of him.” Hoess exhaled through his nose. ”Right. I’ll write him a meal plan. High protein, structured carbohydrate timing around training. No junk, no skipping meals.” He made another note. ”You’re responsible for making sure he follows it,” he told Wickliff.

Wickliff nodded with the expression of a man adding an item to an already long list.

Mateo lay on the table and stared at the ceiling and let the commentary wash over him. None of it was wrong, which was the most useful thing about Hoess - he wasn’t performing pessimism, he was reading data. The data was accurate. Mateo’s body, by any professional standard, was underprepared. He’d known that from the moment he’d read his own attribute panel in the system. The question was never where he was starting from. It was how fast he could close the gap.

The machine finished. Hoess handed him his shirt.

The fitness testing took another forty minutes in the room next door - sprint timing, shuttle runs, vertical jump, agility ladder. Wickliff ran the stopwatch and wrote numbers down with the careful neutrality of a man who has decided not to editorialize.

The 100-metre sprint came out at 14.1 seconds.

Wickliff wrote it down.

Mateo looked at the number. In the system, his speed attribute was an 80, which was supposed to be above average. Fourteen-one over a hundred metres was not above average by any reasonable measure.

He filed that discrepancy away. The system measured potential, perhaps, or the attribute as it existed when optimally expressed, rather than what his untrained body could produce on a Tuesday afternoon after playing two training sessions and signing a contract and having his physique dissected by a bearded doctor. Either way, it was a number to improve.

They finished just after five o’clock. Wickliff collected the data sheets, told Mateo he’d find a training schedule on his dormitory door by morning, and headed back toward the main building.

Mateo went to the dormitory, changed, and came back out.

The training ground was empty.

The afternoon session was long over. The A Team had gone. The B Team substitutes who had part-time jobs had already left. The groundskeeping staff had packed away the cones and poles and the portable goals on the far pitch had been wheeled to the side.

Mateo set up a line of poles himself, spacing them at the intervals he’d used at Dortmund, and started running the slalom.

Not because the system required it - he’d already unlocked by completing 100,000 of these. He ran them because his dribbling attribute was a 64, and a 64 was not good enough, and the cones were there and the light was still holding and there was nothing more useful he could be doing with this hour.

He counted.

He’d been going for about twenty minutes when he heard footsteps on the concrete path at the edge of the ground. He didn’t look up.

The footsteps stopped.

Wickliff stood at the fence with his bag over his shoulder, halfway between the building and the car park, watching the lone figure running poles in the fading light. He watched for a moment, long enough to be sure it wasn’t a groundskeeper checking something. Then he turned and kept walking.

He’d tell Daniel in the morning. The boss would want to know what kind of player he’d signed, not just what the numbers said, but what he did when nobody was watching.

On the training ground, Mateo counted his reps and kept running.