Harbinger Of Glory

Jonas kept staring at the pitch long after the celebration had begun to settle.

The players were still down there, but his attention had narrowed to one of them, as it had been for the whole game.

He watched the teenager move away from the huddle, shirt clinging to his back, expression still carrying the remnants of a smile.

A smile that was looking more sadistic the longer that Jonas stared at it.

Three goals, and as if to confirm, Jonas looked toward the scoreboard again.

3-1, he muttered to himself and then looked at the screens around Old Trafford that were being filled with the face of Leo and for once, he began to think, ’When had this all started?’

He had taken over after the club decided to summarise a lot of roles in the Youth system as one, making things a lot more centralised and quick regarding their youth development and that had all started when Manchester United began coming under heat after their defeat to Wigan in the FA Cup semi-final!

Still, if he truly wanted, he could go far beyond that.

He had seen the boy play more times than he could count in the past year.

He had watched the clips, the matches, the goals that had begun appearing with increasing regularity despite the history of his position suggesting otherwise.

He had asked for reports.

Then more reports.

He had watched games he otherwise would never have bothered watching simply because Leo was on the team sheet and at some point, curiosity had stopped being curiosity.

It had become an obsession.

The problem was that Jonas knew exactly where Leo had come from and understood what could have been, and like a lot of Manchester United fans, it was beginning to get to him.

Carrington, Manchester United’s own academy.

He could picture the reports now.

The assessments and the discussions that had eventually ended with the decision to let the boy go.

Jonas’s jaw tightened as he thought of how dumb those who had been in power previously had gotten to be to not even attempt to salvage things if they were to get better in future.

There had been a lot of measures, buy-back clauses, but they no!

Someone had looked at him.

Someone had watched him train, and someone had decided to let him go without even taking a penny for him!

And now that same teenager had come back to Old Trafford and scored three times against them.

Jonas leaned forward, elbows resting against his knees and couldn’t help but feel his heart ache, as someone who truly loved the club, when he thought about it!

"How did we get that so wrong?"

The question came quietly as he looked through the glass again, where Leo was walking back toward the halfway line with his teammates.

Even now, with United trailing by two goals, Jonas found himself thinking beyond the result.

What would Leo become in another year?

Two?

Five?

That thought bothered him more than the scoreline.

Because Manchester United had not merely lost a match to him.

They had lost the chance to even be affiliated to a player who was starting to carve out a very historic season, with a club that shouldn’t even be in the questions it was being asked of.

Jonas slowly sat back, and for perhaps the hundredth time, his mind returned to the same question.

How had they let him go?

......

Three hours later, Manchester was quiet, and there was something almost unnatural about it, especially after the afternoon that had been.

Even in a loss, the fans and people of the city would have been lively with raves about how bad the club had gotten, but the streets around Old Trafford had emptied considerably, with the crowds long gone and the usual movement of matchday traffic slowly disappearing into the young night.

Inside pubs, televisions still replayed the goals, but outside, the city had settled into a strange hush.

The result had travelled quickly.

Everyone knew, and nobody seemed particularly eager to talk about it.

Across the city, behind the glass of an apartment window, Sofia stood with her phone pressed against her ear.

She had been laughing for several seconds already.

Eventually, she pulled herself away from the window and shook her head.

"Five goals were enough to keep people fast asleep."

Another laugh escaped her as she glanced toward the dark city beyond the glass.

Then she smiled.

"Okay, I get it. I don’t want her to say that I’ve had you for too long. Goodnight, Leo."

After that, she ended the call,

For a moment, Sofia simply stood there with the phone still in her hand.

Then she turned and walked back toward the window where the lights afar looked like they didn’t even want to shine anymore.

Sofia watched it for another second before turning away, shaking her head in the process because, in some part, it was her fault.

How did she raise a nephew whose actions had become much more effective than a curfew?

....

Leo ended the call with Sofia and let the phone fall onto the bed beside him.

For a moment, he said nothing and just looked down.

The elephant in the room was not exactly an elephant.

It was Vittoria, comfortably settled across his lap, watching him with an expression that suggested she had been waiting for him to remember she was still there after his call.

Leo’s hands subtly or not so subtly found her waist and then pulled her closer to his chest.

"You know, I had trouble running sometimes today."

Hearing that, Vittoria’s eyebrows lifted as she feigned ignorance.

"Oh?" she mouthed.

"Yeah."

She leaned back slightly, studying him before leaning slightly closer.

"You looked fine from where I was sitting."

There was a slyness to the smile that followed, and at that, Leo’s eyes narrowed, though in a sort of good way, the kind of ones that Vittoria liked.

Because as she liked to say, ’It feels like you can see just me!’

Her own eyes held his gaze, her blue eyes fixed on his hazel ones.

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