Striker of The Gods

The immense house stood like a sleeping colossus under the Turin afternoon, gates half-open as though the building itself had exhaled and forgotten to close its mouth. Caos paused before the final step. Something brushed his shoulder—not wind, not memory, but the quiet pressure of being seen before he could announce himself. That is to say that anticipation already had fingers and knew exactly where his collarbone lived.

He pushed the heavy door anyway.

Inside the entrance hall smelled of old wood polish, distant coffee, and something faintly metallic like medal ribbons left too long in a drawer. Alessandro Del Piero appeared from the side corridor wearing a simple gray cashmere sweater and the kind of calm that arrives only after twenty-five years of being loudly loved and then quietly missed.

Del Piero:

I was expecting you sooner, ragazzo. Not today sooner in the cosmic sense. That day you scored the backflip penalty I felt the timeline bend a little. Stupid, maybe. But timelines do bend when children start rewriting what a goal can mean. Sit. Or don’t sit. You never looked like someone who obeys furniture.

Caos remained standing, ball still tucked under his left arm like a second heart.

Caos:

This is still fun this way. The thing is, I cannot forget what you wrote me in that letter. You said: “As microscopes grow more ruthless the universe must become smaller to hide. As telescopes lengthen their necks the galaxies flee faster.” I read it until the ink felt personal. Maybe I’m delusional with my own goals. Just like the galaxies running. Just like when you turn quickly to catch sight of the back of your own skull it’s already gone. Shankara says the Knower can never become the known. You wrote something close to that without ever quoting scripture. That impressed me more than any free-kick you ever took.

Del Piero gave the smallest laugh not mocking, more like a man recognizing his own handwriting on someone else’s skin.

Del Piero:

You remembered the letter. Most people remember only the curl on the TV, never the envelope. Good. That means you’re dangerous in the correct direction.

Tell me honestly does the princess still make the chaos inside you feel… orderly? Or is love just another trick move that looks beautiful until the defender reads it?

Caos:

Love is not a trick. It’s the moment before the trick when everyone including you believes the ball will go one way and then it simply doesn’t exist in space anymore. Leonor is worse. She makes me want to stop dribbling altogether. Just stand still and be seen. That terrifies me more than any red card. The thing is, to be alive is already a dare. To be loved while doing it feels like cheating the referee. Yet I keep asking for extra time.

Del Piero walked to the window. Outside, the city moved in its ordinary beautiful hurry. He spoke without turning.

Del Piero:

I was expecting you to be here since that day. Not this day the day you first made a stadium sound religious instead of angry. I thought: finally someone who understands that scoring is not the point. Humiliating time is the point. Making forty thousand people forget what minute it is that’s the only blasphemy worth committing on grass.

But now you come asking about princesses. About hearts that wear crowns. So tell an old man who already lost count of his own trophies: what do you do when the girl you love carries a whole country on her shoulders and still chooses to look at you?

Caos:

You wait. Not politely. You wait like a storm waits patient, purple, full of charge. You learn her silences have grammar. You memorize which pause means fear and which means “I choose you anyway.” And when she finally speaks your name in public you do not celebrate like a child. You bow your head like a soldier who just received the only order that ever mattered.

The thing is… I still don’t know how to conquer a princess. I only know how not to conquer her. And strangely that seems to be working.

Del Piero finally turned. His eyes still the same left-foot eyes that once bent reality thirty yards out held something softer now. Almost paternal. Almost.

Del Piero:

Then keep not conquering her. The moment you try to possess what already chose you, the magic reverses. The ball stops listening. The crowd goes quiet for the wrong reasons.

You want my advice?

Train loneliness the way you train elastico chops. Master it until it becomes a weapon. Only then is love safe to hold. Because if she ever leaves or if duty takes her you won’t shatter. You’ll simply become chaos again. And chaos always finds another net.

Caos finally let the ball drop to the floor. It rolled half a meter and stopped perfectly still, as though ashamed to move in the presence of two men who once made spheres disobey physics for a living.

Caos:

You talk like someone who already said goodbye to greatness and discovered it was mutual.

Yet here I am. Still hungry. Still writing training routines at three in the morning. Still trying to explain to a future queen that I would burn every Ballon d’Or just to watch her read in peace on a Sunday.

Is that madness or is that finally understanding the game?

Del Piero: (quiet, almost smiling)

Both.

And that, ragazzo mio, is why the universe keeps running away from the telescopes.

It’s afraid we’ll finally catch it and love it anyway.

Silence stretched between them, comfortable as old boots. Outside Turin kept breathing. Inside two men who had once terrified goalkeepers now stood terrifyingly gentle with each other.

The ball waited between them, patient as scripture.

To be continued…