My Ultimate Gacha System-Chapter 324 - 311: The Week of Reckoning

The day passed with structure rather than event. A light gym session in the spare room — thirty minutes of mobility work and resistance bands, nothing that would compromise Friday’s training. Meal prep that took most of the early afternoon — chicken, rice, vegetables in three containers that went into the fridge in a row. He reviewed Genoa’s tactical footage on his laptop for ninety minutes in the afternoon, pausing on sequences showing their defensive block and where the lines compressed and where space opened on the outside channels when pressure was applied centrally.

His phone sat on the counter on silent through most of it.

At just after six it vibrated once with a group message notification and he unlocked it. The message was from Gasperini and had been sent to the full squad group.

Training tomorrow 10 AM. Sharp. Focus is top four. Nothing else. See you there.

Seven thumbs-up emojis appeared underneath it in quick succession — Koopmeiners first, then De Roon, Tolói, Hateboer, Ederson, Scamacca, Lookman — and the rest of the squad followed in the next couple of minutes.

Demien added his own thumb and set the phone back on the counter.

He went to bed at ten.

Saturday, May 17, 2023 Centro Bortolotti Training Complex, Zingonia 9:41 AM

The Coppa Italia trophy was in the main cabinet near the entrance of the training complex building — the cabinet that held photographs and the older trophies from decades past — and it had been cleaned and polished overnight so the silver caught the light from the overhead strip when players walked past it on the way to the changing room.

Hateboer touched it on the way past without breaking stride. Scalvini glanced at it and kept walking. Tolói stopped in front of it for about three seconds before moving on without saying anything, and Ederson walked past it the same way he walked past the kit room and the physio notice board, which was with his head slightly down and his earphones in.

Demien looked at it as he passed and the engraving was already familiar from two days of it sitting on his kitchen table, and he kept walking.

The changing room was quieter than usual. Boots on bench surfaces, tape being pulled from rolls, the specific sound of shin guards being clipped into place — all of it happening without the music that normally ran through the room before sessions. Nobody had turned it off. Nobody had decided not to turn it on. It had just stayed quiet and nobody filled it.

Koopmeiners sat in his space taping his left wrist with precise overlap and his jaw was set while his eyes tracked nothing in particular. De Roon finished changing before most of the squad and stood with his arms folded near the door, not waiting for anyone specifically but not moving either. Scamacca stretched his quads one at a time against the bench with his hand on the wall for balance, and his expression was the focused kind rather than the anxious kind.

Demien laced his boots and straightened up, and the room had the atmosphere of people who understood what the week in front of them required. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

Training Pitch 10:03 AM

Gasperini waited at the center circle with his hands in the pockets of his grey training jacket, and the squad gathered around him without instruction because thirty training sessions in this configuration had made the morning meeting automatic.

He looked around the group once before speaking.

"Wednesday night was historic," he said, and his voice was flat and direct without performance. "You should be proud of that. It goes in the books and nobody takes it away." He paused for one second. "The season is not finished." He looked around again and several players met his eyes. "We’re fourth. Milan are two points behind us in fifth. We beat Genoa away on Saturday, we’re in the Champions League regardless of what happens on the final day. We don’t beat Genoa—" he paused again, "—we go into Parma at home needing a result with Milan breathing down our necks. That’s not where I want to be. That’s not where any of you want to be."

He took his hands out of his pockets and crossed his arms. "Genoa are fighting relegation. They will play like it. They’ll sit deep, they’ll defend with numbers, and they’ll hit you on transitions when you push too high. Do not get frustrated. Do not force it." He tapped the ground with his foot once. "Be patient. Be disciplined. One goal might be enough. But only if we don’t give them anything cheap at the back."

He uncrossed his arms. "Tactical prep now. Then we work."

He walked toward the assistant coaches who had already set up the session and the squad broke into its working groups, and the warm-up began in the kind of focused silence that meant everyone had heard him clearly.

The session was ninety minutes and it moved quickly. Possession rotations to open — sharp triangles, quick combinations, two-touch with pressure arriving immediately after release, no comfort. Positional work with the coaches walking between groups to correct distances and angles. Set-piece practice from corners and free kicks from both sides, the defensive shape rehearsed against a designated attacking group until the positioning was automatic.

The eleven-versus-eleven came last and Gasperini stopped it four times in forty minutes — twice for defensive shape when the defensive line split, once for a pressing trigger that had been too slow, once when Scamacca’s run had pulled him out of the central channel that needed to be occupied. Each stoppage was short. The correction was specific and single-pointed and play resumed immediately.

The pace was high but nothing reckless was attempted because the match was two days away and a strained muscle in training was not a risk anyone was willing to take, and the tackles that went in were firm but controlled and nobody said anything when they weren’t.

At ninety minutes Gasperini raised his hand and the whistle came.

"Recovery session tomorrow," he said while players reached for water. "Ten AM. Then bus to Genoa at noon. Get in early."

He turned and walked toward the building and the squad dispersed.

Monday, May 18, 2023 Team Bus — Zingonia to Genoa 12:17 PM

The motorway south toward Genoa ran through flat country before it hit the hills and the traffic was light at midday on a Monday, and the bus moved smoothly while most of the squad sat with headphones in and the blinds pulled down on the sunlit side.

Demien was three rows from the back beside Ederson, and a tablet was open between them on the fold-down tray showing Genoa’s defensive setup — their 3-5-2 block sitting deep with the wingbacks tucked in until transition, the three center-backs staying compact, the space that appeared wide when pressure moved centrally.

"They’ll compress here," Ederson said quietly while his finger traced the central channel on the screen. "Both fives drop when the ball enters the midfield line. That’s when the outside channel opens." He moved his finger to the right flank. "But it’s only there for two seconds. If you hold it a second too long they recover."

"Lookman needs to make the run early," Demien said. "Before the ball arrives."

"Before the ball," Ederson agreed.

Demien looked at the screen for a moment. "Their set pieces are the concern," he said. "They’ve scored from eight corners this season. More than anyone in the league from dead balls."

"Musso’s good in the air," Ederson said.

"He is," Demien said. "But their runs off the primary delivery are what causes the problem. They bring two men short to block and then a third makes a run off the back of the block." He tapped the screen showing a diagram from the scouting report. "If Tolói loses his runner once it’s a problem."

Ederson studied it and nodded. "I’ll mention it to De Roon before warm-ups," he said.

The bus continued south and the hills began appearing in the distance while the road narrowed and the gradient changed, and somewhere toward the front of the bus Scamacca had fallen asleep with his head against the window and his headphones still in, and Koopmeiners was reading something on his phone with his earphones in and his legs stretched out into the aisle.

Stadio Luigi Ferraris, Genoa 3:08 PM

The Ferraris was old in the way that certain Italian grounds were old, which meant the stands rose steeply and close to the pitch and the concrete absorbed decades of noise and gave it back during matches in a specific compressed roar that had nowhere to dissipate, and even with ninety minutes still to kickoff the home sections were already filling with blue-and-red scarves and the noise coming from the curva at the south end was audible from the car park.

The away section was in the upper tier of the north stand — smaller, louder per head than any neutral count would suggest, blue and black against the concrete — and when the bus pulled into the secure entrance Atalanta’s supporters in that section had already been inside for an hour.

Away Dressing Room 5:31 PM

Shirts hung in their numbered rows and the kit men had set everything out before the squad arrived — shorts folded flat beneath each shirt, boots placed below the bench in pairs, tape dispensers on the shelf above each space.

The team sheet was up on the board by the door.

ATALANTA STARTING XI (3-4-2-1)

Musso

Tolói — Scalvini — Djimsiti

Hateboer — De Roon — Ederson — Mæhle

Lookman — Demien

Scamacca

Gasperini stood near the board and his instructions were brief.

"Stay compact in the first fifteen minutes. They’ll press high early because the crowd pushes them forward and they need points. Absorb it." He looked along the bench. "When we have the ball, circulate. Don’t force the vertical pass before the moment is right. Patient build-up, then exploit the wide channels when their block shifts." He paused. "Defensively — Tolói and Scalvini, watch the runners off set pieces. We’ve seen the patterns. Don’t lose your man in the box." He looked at the room. "One goal might be enough. Don’t gift them anything."

He stepped away from the board and the room stayed quiet for the two minutes before the tunnel call came.