Talent

Everton's Finch Farm Training Ground. Set on the outskirts of Liverpool, it is the ground where Everton's youth development has been rooted for years. Countless local boys have been seen off from here on their way to the professional game; Rooney started on these pitches and dazzled all of English football. Youth coach Lynn stood at the sideline. On the pitch, ten boys of the right age were warming up, running through their stretches with practiced ease. The car pulled into the training ground car park. The four of them got out and walked toward the youth pitch. David walked fast, unable to wait any longer; he had gotten everything ready on the way over. On the drive he had already found out all the details: Du An had never touched a football and owned no boots, while Ethan had trained and played on his own for years and had an old set of gear. Even so, David had still gone out of his way to buy each of them a brand-new pair of boots. He pulled the two pairs out of his sports bag and held them out to the brothers. “Put these on. Quickly.” Ethan dropped down at once and changed, deft and quick, delight shining in his eyes. Du An was silent for a second, then took the boots and changed just as fast. Lynn noticed their arrival, called a halt to training, and walked over. His eyes passed over the two unfamiliar boys and settled on David. “New trials? What's the situation—positions, what's their base like? You're in such a hurry. The lads I called over aren't up to much.” David nodded. “They'll do.” He raised a hand and pointed at Ethan. “This kid plays street football all year round, mainly a winger. Speed and dribbling... should have something about him, I'd say.” He looked at Ethan, who nodded with a smile. Who didn't have a Premier League dream tucked away somewhere? Then David looked at Du An and paused briefly. “This one... a complete beginner, never played properly in his life... I've only seen him play once. Defender??” Lynn's brows knitted at once, his eyes full of disbelief. A boy with no foundation at all, coming to trial at Everton's academy without ever having touched a ball—that made no sense. What was David doing? Before he could voice his confusion, Dalglish spoke up beside him. “Put him in as a holding midfielder.” Lynn turned to Dalglish. He hadn't noticed him at first; now he was more baffled than ever. He was puzzled about Du An's background. What sort of family did this boy come from, that Dalglish would come along to Everton's academy with him? Dalglish looked at Du An beside him. “You don't need to push forward or organize, and you don't need to score. Just pick one of their midfielders and follow him everywhere. Don't let him play comfortably. Do that one thing well and that's enough.” Only then did Lynn find a chance to cut in, staring at Dalglish blankly. “Kenny? I didn't know you'd be coming to Finch Farm.” Dalglish smiled faintly. “Nothing better to do. Thought I'd watch the kids trial.” Lynn pressed down his astonishment and asked, following the opening: “Since you're taking a personal interest, why not take these two fine prospects to Liverpool's academy?” The words had barely landed when David stepped forward and cut in with a laugh. “Heh, no chance of that.” “These are boys I scouted myself. Their roots are at Everton, so they're our future. There's no way we're handing them to Liverpool.” He raised a hand and patted Lynn on the shoulder, hurrying him along. “All right, all right, enough chatting. Get the trial set up. Let's finish early today—I've got a date with Jenny tonight and I can't be late.” Lynn shrugged helplessly. He blew the whistle. “Everyone over here. We're playing a training match.” The boys warming up on the pitch all turned to look, eyeing the two strange faces at the sideline with curiosity. And Dalglish set them all talking. “Oh, that's Kenny!” “God, what's he doing here?” Du An was a little nervous. He looked down at the new boots on his feet; the moment they pressed into the grass, the feel of it was impossibly clear and real. He didn't understand football. But he remembered what Dalglish had said: don't let your opponent play comfortably. Yet, once the match actually began, Du An felt the vast gulf between professional academy football and a street pitch. The boys in Everton's academy sides had trained formally for years; their movement, their shielding of the ball, their transitions between attack and defense were all fully formed professional academy patterns, on an entirely different level from street football. Ethan pushed up the flank and took his teammate's first pass. The drawbacks of years of street football were exposed in an instant. His first touch was slow, his footwork fussy and redundant, with no sense of shielding the ball or holding his position; the defender opposite had quick feet and stepped in with barely a moment's hesitation, cleanly taking the ball away. The instant he won it, the other side broke—both wings surging forward, the middle packing in. The whole sequence flowed like water. The entire defensive line was pulled apart in a heartbeat. Du An held fast to his instructions and marked his man for all he was worth. He chased with everything he had, but the shortfalls of a complete beginner were plain to see: his opponent stopped and changed direction constantly and threw in plenty of body feints, and a simple sway of the body was enough to make Du An misjudge the play, tangle his footwork, and throw his balance completely off. He watched helplessly as his man broke free and slid a cross across; the space in the middle was wide open, and the striker lashed a shot home. After that, the pace of the match kept climbing, and the academy players' competitive edge showed in full. Because it was a trial, Ethan saw a lot of the ball; his teammates passed to him again and again, but every time he took it on he was easily contained, and he lost it just as easily. The flank was completely dead, unable to generate any real drive forward. Du An chased and defended with all his effort, but he could never keep up with the rhythm of the other side's attacking and defending. The middle was threaded through again and again, the defending full of holes. Impatience began to show on the faces of several of the academy players; their willingness to pass dropped sharply and their play grew increasingly perfunctory. Their displeasure with the two newcomers was plain. At the sideline, Lynn folded his arms, shaking his head again and again, brows locked tight. He turned to David beside him. “This is the talented prospect you were talking about? Sloppy technique, defends by just running head-down, positional awareness basically zero, completely unable to keep up with the pace.” David was still fairly confident. “Wait a bit. Du An has never trained. This is normal.” Kenny Dalglish stood in silence, his gaze fixed on Du An the whole time, in no hurry to pass judgment. A man who had read thousands of players saw the details others missed. On the pitch, Du An kept up a high-intensity effort, constantly correcting his defensive position; even though he was repeatedly caught out, he never once stopped running. A teammate passed the ball his way, and he took it hastily; the ball just grazed his toe. Three faint points of light suddenly lit up in Du An's vision. Arranged left, center, and right, the bead—transparent through and through save for a single thread of blue—took on another trace of blue the instant it touched the football. His heart stirred, and he understood at once. It was the football! That blue before had come from the football! As the faint blue light rose, that all-encompassing perception swept over him again. The spatial layout of the whole pitch, the running lines of the players, the gaps and the blind spots—it was as if it all spread out in his mind. Who was pushing forward, who was dropping back, where the opponent would turn next, where the pass would land. Right now, he could vaguely anticipate all of it. His ability to adapt on the pitch was magnified beyond all limits in that moment.