By the time we finished, it was evening. I sent Jamie home to rest. "Get some sleep," I said. "Tomorrow is the biggest day of your life."

He nodded and left. I stayed at the training ground, staring at the pitch, at the cones and markers still scattered across the grass. I was about to play a 17-year-old kid, who had learned a role in a single day, in the most important game of the season. It was insane. It was reckless. It was either genius or madness.

Frankie Morrison found me there. He sat down next to me on the bench. "You really going to do this, Gaffer?"

"Yes."

"You know it's crazy, right?"

"Yes."

"You know if it goes wrong, you'll be finished, right? Terry will sack you. The fans will turn on you. You'll be a laughing stock."

"Yes."

He was silent for a moment. Then he smiled. "Good. Because if you're going to go down, you might as well go down swinging. And this, Gaffer, this is one hell of a swing."

I smiled back. "Thanks, Frankie."

"Don't thank me yet. Thank me if it works."

The next day, an hour before kick-off, in the tense and silent atmosphere of the away team dressing room, I announced the starting lineup. The players knew what was coming. We had trained the formation. We had practiced with Jamie. But saying it out loud, making it official, making it real, was different.

I named the ten regular players. And then, I named the eleventh. "And playing as our Libero," I said, my voice calm and steady, "is Jamie Scott."

Silence. Not the silence of confusion. The silence of weight. The silence of understanding what this meant. We were playing a 17-year-old kid, in the biggest game of the season, in a role that most of them had never even heard of until two days ago.

Kev broke the silence. "Gaffer, you're sure about this?"

"Yes."

"He's seventeen."

"I know."

"And we're playing him in a formation we learned two days ago."

"I know."

Baz leaned forward. "And if it goes wrong? If he makes a mistake? If we lose?"

I looked around the room. "Then we lose. But we lose fighting. We lose trying something brave. We lose on our terms. Not Marcus Chen's terms."

The players looked at each other. Then, one by one, they looked at Jamie, sitting in the corner, his face pale but determined.

Big Dave stood up. He walked over to Jamie and put his hand on the kid's shoulder. "We've got your back, Jamie. Just like in training. You do your thing. We'll do ours."

One by one, the other players nodded. They had seen Jamie in training. They had seen his composure, his passing, his intelligence. They had seen the role work. But training was one thing. The biggest game of the season was another.

Frankie Morrison just shook his head, a slow and sad smile on his face. "You're either a genius, Gaffer," he said, his voice a low and gravelly whisper. "Or you're a madman. And I honestly, for the life of me, have no idea which one it is."

He was right. I was either a genius or a madman. And the fate of our season, of our dream, of our very existence, was now resting on a tactical gamble of a lifetime, and on the young and untested shoulders of a 17-year-old kid making his senior debut.

I stood up and addressed the team.

"Listen to me," I said. "I know this seems crazy. I know you're confused. I know you're scared. But I need you to trust me. Jamie has trained for this. He knows the role. He knows the formation. And he's ready. We are going to play a brand of football that our opponents have never seen before. We are going to dominate the centre of the pitch. We are going to press high. We are going to create chances. And we are going to win. But only if you trust me. Only if you trust Jamie. Only if you trust each other."

I looked around the room. I saw the fear, the anxiety, the doubt. But I also saw something else. I saw a flicker of defiance. A spark of anger. A glimmer of hope.

"This is not just a football match," I said. "This is a statement. This is us telling the world that we do not give up. That we do not quit. That we do not let the rich and the powerful and the cynical have the final say. This is us fighting back. And we are going to win."

The players nodded. Slowly. Reluctantly. But they nodded.

As the players walked out onto the pitch, a wave of noise from the home crowd hit us, a wall of sound that was a mixture of hope, of expectation, of a deep and arrogant sense of entitlement.

They thought they had won. They thought the game was a formality. They thought we were a joke, a team of amateurs who had been betrayed, who had been broken, who were there to be humiliated.

I looked at my players. I looked at their faces. I saw the fear, the anxiety, the doubt. But I also saw something else. I saw a flicker of defiance. A spark of anger. A glimmer of hope. They were scared, yes. But they were also ready. They were ready to fight. They were ready to follow me into the fire.

And then, I looked at Jamie Scott. The 17-year-old kid who was about to play the biggest game of his life, in a role he had learned in a single day, in a formation he had never played before.

He was not scared. He was not anxious. He was not doubtful. He was a picture of calm, of focus, of a deep and slightly terrifying self-belief. He looked at me, and he gave me a small and almost imperceptible nod. A nod that said: 'I'm ready, Gaffer. Let's do this.'

And in that moment, I knew. I knew that I had made the right decision. I knew that this was not a gamble. This was a plan. A brilliant and audacious and slightly insane plan. But a plan that I believed in. A plan that my players believed in. A plan that was about to shock the world.

The referee blew his whistle. The final and most important game of the season had begun. The underdog's gambit was on. And the world was about to find out if I was a genius, or if I was just a fool.

***

END OF ACT 4 OF VOLUME 1

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