The players went to their benches.

A woman two yards to Garcia’s left was pointing toward the pitch and speaking quickly. The man beside her was Oliver Whitmore.

They had crossed paths at agents’ events and club visits more times than Garcia could place.

Oliver saw him and the smile appeared at once.

"Garcia." He said the name at a volume that carried a few yards in both directions. He came over with his hand out. "How long has it been?"

Garcia shook it. "A while."

"I heard some things," Oliver said. "Rough patch, from what I gathered. You went very quiet."

"I took some time," Garcia said.

"Smart." Oliver nodded as though this were advice he would have given himself. "I heard about Vantage. That whole situation." He paused a beat. "And Sofia leaving as well. That is a lot to absorb at once."

"Life moves," Garcia said.

Oliver studied him briefly and then turned to the woman beside him. "Charlotte, this is Garcia. He was at Vantage for a few years. Paulo Mendes, back before anyone was paying attention."

Charlotte Reed looked at Garcia with recognition that was not polite interest.

"Paulo Mendes from Lille?" she said. "That was you?"

"Early stages," Garcia said. "Before the transfer."

"That was serious work," Charlotte said. "Nobody was tracking that league in those years."

For a second Garcia felt the weight of the name he used to carry before Holt took it apart.

Oliver’s smile held, but something behind it adjusted.

"That was a while back now," he said.

He glanced once around the touchline and then back at Garcia. "What brings you out today? Anything specific, or just keeping an eye on things?"

"I was nearby," Garcia said. "Came to watch."

"Of course." He said it evenly. "Well, it is good to see you keeping yourself busy."

Then he nodded toward the pitch, said something to Charlotte, and they both turned back to their notes.

Charlotte glanced back once before she did.

Garcia looked down at his notebook.

He had not said anything he needed to take back. That was the only score worth keeping.

Red came out pressing from the restart.

Callum Price received wide right in the forty-eighth minute, turned Mason Clarke with one sharp touch, and burst past him to win a corner.

He was within thirty metres.

Garcia confirmed.

[GOLDEN EYE: PROSPECT APPRAISAL — SCAN 1 / 3]

Name: Callum Price

Age: 17 Position: Right Winger

Current Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ (1.2)

Potential Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3.0)

Key Strength: Acceleration over short distance

Key Weakness: Poor decision-making in the final third

Recommended Training Focus: Release timing and final-ball selection

[Weekly Uses Remaining: 2 / 3]

Three stars.

That was a career. It was not a story, and it was not a number a new agency without a client list or a reputation could build its first gamble around.

The touchline was already half-pointed at Price, and by the time the final whistle went it would be fully pointed at him. Someone would have his family’s number before Monday morning.

Garcia left him on the pitch and looked for Ward.

Ward was still not scoring.

He mis-controlled a pass in the fifty-third minute and gave possession away. Cole shoved him off the ball in the fifty-seventh. When a through-ball finally found him in the box in the sixtieth he got under it and put it over the bar.

The father two spots along let out a slow breath and looked at the ground.

Garcia watched the replays of it in his head.

Ward had arrived in the right position a half-second early each time. His reading of the play was correct. But his first touch under pressure was not ready for the moments his movement was creating.

That was a technical problem.

Technical problems in a seventeen-year-old with that movement could be fixed with time and the right work. He was not the finished product. He was the outline of one.

Ward drifted to the near side in the sixty-second minute and dragged his marker into space that none of his teammates used.

He held the position for three seconds, checking the angle over his shoulder, then dropped back to receive when the ball went elsewhere.

Garcia confirmed.

[GOLDEN EYE: PROSPECT APPRAISAL — SCAN 2 / 3]

Name: Elliot Ward

Age: 17

Position: Striker

Current Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ (0.5)

Potential Rating: ★★★★☆ (4.0)

Key Strength: Off-ball movement inside the box

Key Weakness: First touch under physical pressure

Recommended Training Focus: First-touch finishing against contact

[Weekly Uses Remaining: 1 / 3]

Garcia read it twice.

Four stars at ceiling. Half a star now, and four stars at the end of the road.

The gap between those two numbers was the entire pitch.

He looked along the touchline at the two scouts. Both of them were facing the other half of the pitch. Neither had reacted. They had watched the same match Garcia had watched, and they had written off the same boy Garcia had just confirmed at four stars.

When the session ended they would drive back with Callum Price’s name on their phones and nothing else.

Ward was still out there, getting shoved off the ball and running into space that nobody was using.

Nobody else could see it clearly.

Garcia opened his notebook to a fresh page and wrote Elliot Ward’s name at the top.

He had one scan left.

Sixty-eight minutes.

Blue sent on a substitute. Number fourteen walked off the bench with his hands in the waistband of his shorts and rolled his neck slowly while he waited near the touchline for the referee’s signal.

Within three minutes of entering the match, Tyler Grant had changed it.

He received the ball between the lines in the sixty-ninth minute, turned his marker with a single first touch, and played a reverse pass that split Red’s defensive block and sent their right-back scrambling. He had seen it before the ball arrived at his feet.

The right-back was still running when the ball was already gone.

Then in the seventy-first minute he received on the edge of the box, shaped left, shifted right, and put the ball into the far corner.

THWACK.

The net snapped back.

"Get in!" The man two spots along grabbed the shoulder of the woman beside him.

The scout nearest Garcia straightened up from the fence and started typing with both thumbs.

Garcia watched the touchline more than the celebration on the pitch.

Oliver Whitmore leaned toward Charlotte and said something. Charlotte opened a new page without looking up.

Grant was obvious.

Garcia knew what happened when a room full of professionals all pointed themselves at the same player on the same afternoon. The calls went out fast, the family had options before the week was over, and the agency that won was the one with the strongest history and the loudest name.

That was not a competition G11 was built to enter yet.

But walking away from a real player because the competition looked too strong was exactly the logic that kept small agencies small.

Garcia needed the number before he decided anything.

He had one scan and a player nobody else was looking at already confirmed at four stars. Using the final scan on Grant was a risk. Walking away without it was also a risk. If the number came back low, he would know to stop thinking about it. If it came back high, he would have a problem worth having.

Grant worked to the right side in the seventy-fourth minute and came within range.

Garcia focused and mentally confirmed.

The target lock began to settle.

Then a figure in a yellow bib stepped off the bench.

He was carrying a water bottle and walking without hurry, waiting near the touchline for a substitution board that had not gone up yet.

The name across the back of his bib was HOLT.

The lock shifted.

[Target Locked — Jamie Holt — Right Back]

Garcia caught it a half-second too late and thought stop, but thought was slower than the system.

"No," he said.

He had meant it as a thought. It came out as a word, just above a murmur, in a moment of total quiet between a tackle and a whistle.

A man two yards along turned and looked at him.

Oliver Whitmore tilted his head slowly and said nothing.

Garcia looked down at the notebook and drew a short horizontal line under nothing, because a man writing a note was a man who had reacted to the match. He kept the pen moving for three full seconds and then looked up without looking at Oliver.

The system had not paused for any of it.

[GOLDEN EYE: PROSPECT APPRAISAL — SCAN 3 / 3]

Target Confirmed: Jamie Holt

Position: Right Back

Weekly Uses Remaining: 0 / 3

Scanning...