Open Play: Ladies, Goals, The Everything System in-between

Monday, March 4th. Stade Gaston Gérard.

The weather in Dijon was miserable. Rain had been falling since morning, turning the pitch into something unpredictable. The exact type of environment that leveled playing fields, nullified technical superiority, and forced teams into ugly dogfights.

Dijon Métropole were sitting in seventeenth place, desperately clawing for survival. They didn’t care about a lot of things. They didn’t care about the 5-0 thrashing of Alsace. They needed points, and they were prepared to bleed for them.

The hostility inside the stadium was raw. Fans hurled insults as the SC Valois bus pulled in.

"Short passes!" Henri barked in the away dressing room, clapping his hands as the squad geared up. "The ball will stick in this mud. Do not try sweeping diagonals. We play direct, we play physical, and we do not let them drag us into a brawl."

---

Piii.

The match began exactly as feared.

Dijon turned the game into a chaotic wrestling match. Within ten minutes, the referee had already issued two yellow cards to Dijon midfielders for horrific late challenges on Klaus and Baini.

The mud made dribbling nearly impossible. Bachra Goza, attempting to use his footwork on the right wing, found the ball sticking in puddles. He was flattened by the Dijon left-back twice in rapid succession.

"Keep it simple!" Luc roared through the freezing rain, wiping mud from his face. "Play to feet!"

Minute twenty-two.

Dijon launched a desperate attack down the left, forcing Zack Florez into a heavy clearance that barely made the halfway line.

Hugo Blanc read the flight of the ball before it landed. The teenager tried to control the wet ball, he positioned his body, using his chest to cushion the impact and drop the ball cleanly to the grass.

A Dijon midfielder charged at him.

Luc was thirty yards away.

"TES. Echo Pass. Now."

[System Notification]

[Echo Pass — Activated]

[Use remaining: 0]

[Effect: Spatial awareness locked onto designated playmaker. Read the pass before it happens.]

It wasn’t a conscious thought. It was instantaneous neural connection. A fraction of a second before Hugo even swung his leg, Luc knew exactly what the teenager was going to do. He saw the angle of Hugo’s hips. He felt the trajectory of the pass before the leather was even struck.

He didn’t wait for the ball to move. He exploded into a diagonal sprint, cutting across the blind spot of the massive Dijon center-back.

The defender reacted to the visual cue of the ball being kicked. By then, Luc had already been long gone.

Hugo’s pass was a low, driving ball that skipped aggressively off the wet surface, slicing through the mud and into the exact space Luc had already occupied.

Terrifyingly synchronized. It looked like telepathy.

Luc collected without breaking his stride. The second center-back came lunging from the side, a desperate attempt to unbalance both man and ball.

The Physical Anchor absorbed the glancing shoulder impact. Luc stayed upright. He breached the penalty area.

He didn’t chip or bother to finesse it. He drove his laces straight through the heavy, wet ball before the keeper could set his feet.

The ball rocketed through the freezing rain and into the top corner.

Goal.

1-0.

Luc jogged toward the corner flag, breath forming little clouds in the cold air, waiting for Hugo.

The teenager arrived, wiping rain from his eyes, a grim, satisfied expression crossing his face.

"You moved early," Hugo said, slapping Luc’s hand. "You knew where I was putting it before I kicked it."

"We’re on the same wavelength today," Luc replied, tapping his temple.

Hugo held his gaze for a second longer than usual. The prodigy said nothing more. He simply turned and jogged back toward the center circle, already processing the next phase of play.

---

The match restarted with an urgency that immediately erased any lingering warmth from the celebration.

Dijon Métropole had just conceded on their own turf, in front of a hostile, freezing crowd that demanded a better performance for every dropped point in their relegation battle. The weather had intensified into a blinding, turning the Stade Gaston Gérard pitch into a treacherous quagmire. The ball no longer rolled, it skipped unpredictably across hidden puddles or died instantly in thick patches of turf.

SC Valois was up 1-0, but the lead felt terrifyingly fragile.

In the twenty-sixth minute, Klaus Becker received a heavy pass from Zack Florez. The German veteran attempted to shield the ball, but a Dijon midfielder arrived with subtlety, driving his cleats straight into Klaus’s shin guard. The sharp, cracking impact echoed over the howling wind. Klaus went down, his massive frame splashing into the muck.

The referee blew his whistle, awarding the foul, he reached into his pocket for only a yellow card.

He was letting the game devolve into a brawl. He had deemed the pitch conditions too bad for strict officiating, establishing a dangerous precedent that rough challenges were simply a byproduct of the weather.

Dijon accepted the unwritten invitation.

They abandoned any remaining pretense of technical football. They bypassed their midfield entirely, launching desperate, towering long balls into the Valois defensive third, hoping for favorable bounces in the mud. Every aerial duel became a brutal collision of elbows and foreheads.

Luc spent the next ten minutes isolated at the top of the formation. The two Dijon center-backs had clearly decided that if they couldn’t win the ball from him, they would simply ensure he didn’t leave the stadium without bruises. Every time he attempted to chest down a clearance, he felt a knee drive into his hamstring or a forearm press into the base of his spine.

He absorbed the punishment. Held the ball. Waited for Hugo or Bachra to arrive. Laid it off. Absorbed another hit.

It was grueling, thankless labor.

Then came the thirty-eighth minute.

Bense Baini attempted to carry the ball out of the defensive third, his boots sinking deep into the sludge near the center circle. As he tried to execute a pass to Zack, the heavy, waterlogged leather stuck in the grass, dying three yards short of its intended target.

The Dijon player, a blistering fast player fighting for his career, pounced on the error. He intercepted the dead ball, knocking it ten yards ahead of himself, bypassing the Valois midfield entirely.

He had a clear sprint toward the penalty area.

Leo Hernandez, operating as the left-sided center-back, realized the catastrophic danger immediately. The massive guard of the Valois defense broke from the structural line, his eyes locked onto the advancing attacker. Leo possessed a terrifying, imposing physicality, but he was not exceptionally quick, and the mud was also not doing him any favours.

He calculated the trajectory of the winger. He calculated the distance to the edge of the penalty box. He knew that if the attacker crossed the eighteen-yard line, it was a guaranteed shot on Blažek.

Leo made the only decision a seasoned, old-school defender could make. He decided to take the man and the ball, permanently ending the threat.

The center-back launched himself into a sliding tackle. On a dry pitch, it would have been a firm, aggressive, but entirely legal challenge. He aimed his leading foot squarely at the leather.

But the Stade Gaston Gérard pitch was a lubricated slip-and-slide.

The moment Leo’s hip hit the wet turf, all friction vanished. His momentum carried him forward significantly faster and further than he anticipated. His leading boot missed the ball. His cleats rode up over the slippery surface of the grass, catching the sprinting Dijon player flush on the side of the knee.

The crunch was audible.

The player was launched into the air, flipping violently before crashing hard into the muck, clutching his leg and screaming in genuine agony.

The Dijon fans rained down a torrent of venomous insults, throwing plastic cups and crumpled matchday programs against the protective netting. The entire Dijon bench emptied, their manager sprinting onto the pitch, pointing furiously at the crumpled form of his player.

The referee didn’t hesitate. He didn’t consult his linesman.

He reached into his back pocket, sprinting toward the scene of the collision, and pulled out a straight red card, thrusting it high into the air.

Leo Hernandez sat up slowly in the mud. He looked at the red card, then down at the winger rolling on the turf. The veteran defender didn’t argue. He didn’t throw his hands up in feigned innocence or crowd the official. He knew exactly what he had done, and he knew the mechanics of the mistake didn’t matter. The outcome was a sending-off.

"Damn it!" Luc bellowed, sprinting back from the attacking half. He utilized the Captain’s Aura to its absolute limit, projecting his voice to cut through the ensuing chaos. Several Valois players had already started to swarm the referee, their tempers flaring. "Klaus! Get them back! Do not earn a stupid yellow!"

Klaus Becker immediately stepped between Bachra Goza and a shoving Dijon midfielder, physically hauling the teenager backward by the collar of his wet jersey. "Back away! Let him walk!" Klaus roared, enforcing Luc’s command.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!