Sleep, when it finally came in the early hours of Saturday morning, was a shallow, restless thing, a series of feverish, anxiety-ridden vignettes that offered no respite from the waking nightmare of my own making.

I saw Lewis's face, his eyes hollowed out with a despair so profound it felt like a physical presence in the room. I saw the squad, fractured and resentful, the easy camaraderie of the preseason replaced by a sullen, suspicious silence.

I saw the system, its cold, impartial numbers a constant, silent judgment on my own moral failings. I was awake long before the 5:30 am alarm, the crisis with Lewis having reached a temporary, fragile truce in the dead of night.

He had finally answered my fourth call at 2 am, his voice a hoarse, broken whisper on the other end of the line. "I'll be there," he had said, and then he had hung up, leaving me with the hollow echo of his despair and a thousand unanswered questions.

The 6k run this morning wasn't a ritual; it was a punishment, a self-inflicted penance for the mess I had created. Every jarring, painful step on the hard London pavement was a reminder of my own weakness, my own cowardice.

I had tried to be a manager, a leader, a man who made the tough, unsentimental decisions that the game demanded. But in doing so, I had betrayed the very principles I had claimed to believe in.

I had sacrificed a good man, a loyal soldier, on the altar of my own ambition. The system's cold, hard logic had shown me the path to victory, but it hadn't warned me about the cost. It hadn't told me that the price of winning was a piece of my own soul.

As I pounded the empty streets, the rhythm of my own ragged breathing a frantic, desperate drumbeat in my ears, I wondered if it was a price I was willing to pay.

The system showed the squad's harmony at a precarious 72%. It was a number, a data point, but it felt like a verdict, a judgment on my own character. I was winning football matches, but I was losing myself.

He was there, as he had promised, his presence in the dressing room a quiet, unsettling disruption to the pre-match routine. He looked terrible, his eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, his face pale and drawn.

He moved with a slow, deliberate stiffness, as if every movement was a monumental effort. He apologised to the team, his voice low and steady, his words carefully chosen. He had let them down, he said. He had let me down. It wouldn't happen again.

The players, to their credit, rallied around him, a chorus of "don't worry about it, mate" and "we've got your back" filling the tense silence. But it was forced, a performance of unity that couldn't quite mask the awkwardness, the resentment, the unspoken questions that hung in the air.

They were good kids, but they weren't fools. They knew that Lewis's personal crisis was a direct result of my decision, and their support for him was a quiet, subtle act of defiance against me.

My pre-match team talk was a desperate, rambling, incoherent mess, a pathetic attempt to paper over the gaping, festering wound at the heart of the team. I talked about unity, about togetherness, about fighting for the man next to you.

But the words were hollow, empty, a series of meaningless clichés that I no longer believed in myself. The players stared back at me, their faces a mixture of sullen resentment and a weary, cynical indifference.

They had heard it all before. And they knew, as well as I did, that it was all a lie. The decision to start Lewis was an act of desperation, a Hail Mary pass into the heart of a hurricane. The system, my rational, logical co-pilot, was screaming at me, a series of urgent, flashing warnings that I was choosing to ignore.

"Warning: Starting Lewis Grant will decrease probability of victory by 22%. Recommended action: Start Tyler Webb."

But this wasn't about winning anymore. It was about something more important, more fundamental. It was about trying to salvage a piece of my own soul from the wreckage of my own ambition. It was about showing a player who I had broken that I still believed in him, even if he no longer believed in himself.

1It was a gesture, a symbol, a desperate, irrational act of faith in a world that had no place for it. And as I watched Lewis walk out onto the pitch, his face a pale, haunted mask of despair, I knew, with a cold, sickening certainty, that it was a gesture that was doomed to fail.

I had to show Lewis that I still believed in him. It was a risk, a massive, reckless gamble that went against every logical, tactical instinct I possessed. But it was a risk I had to take. I posted the team sheet on the wall, and a stunned silence fell over the room.

Lewis Grant was starting. Tyler Webb, the returning king, the undisputed better player, was on the bench. It was a gesture of faith, a public declaration of my belief in a player who had lost all belief in himself.

I looked at Lewis, hoping to see a flicker of gratitude, of relief, of something that would tell me I had done the right thing. But his face was a blank, unreadable mask, his eyes giving nothing away.

And as the players filed out onto the pitch for the warm-up against Reading U18s, a cold, sickening dread began to creep into my heart. I had made my gamble. Now, I had to live with the consequences.

The first fifteen minutes of the match were a slow-motion car crash, a horrifying, unravelling disaster that I was powerless to prevent. My gesture of faith, my grand, symbolic act of loyalty, had backfired in the most spectacular, soul-crushing way imaginable.

***

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