Garcia arrived at the pitch at half eight with a notebook, a bag of cones, and a crate of water bottles he had bought with money he was trying not to count.

The grass was still damp from the morning. The air had the cool, flat stillness that came before a hot day, and the pitch was empty except for one figure stretching near the touchline.

Rafi was already there.

He was sober now, sharper than the night before, and moving through his stretches like a man who regretted agreeing to something and had decided to take it out on his hamstrings.

"Before you say anything," Rafi said, without looking up. "This is one session. Not employment. Not loyalty. Not some emotional reunion package where I forgive you through coaching."

"Understood," Garcia said.

"One session. If the boy is serious, we talk about the rest."

"That is all I asked for."

Rafi straightened up and looked at him properly for the first time. "You look like you didn’t sleep."

"I slept."

"You look like you slept in a folder."

Garcia let that one go, because it was not entirely wrong.

Alan’s car pulled into the small car park a few minutes later. Jamie got out with his boots in one hand and his shoulders tight, and Alan got out after him and took in everything at once — the cones, the pitch, Rafi, the notebook under Garcia’s arm. He was not hostile. He was measuring.

"Mr. Holt," Garcia said. "This is Rafi. The coach I told you about."

Alan shook Rafi’s hand and studied his face the way he had studied Garcia’s card.

Rafi looked past both of them at Jamie. "You warmed up?"

"No," Jamie said.

"Then go warm up. The session starts when you’re ready, not when you arrive."

Jamie glanced at his father once, then jogged onto the pitch.

Rafi picked up the cone bag and walked after him without another word.

The first hour was hard to watch.

Rafi did not start with speeches. He started with the ball. Short passing, receiving on the half-turn, first touch away from pressure, body shape before the pass. Simple work, the kind every academy boy had done a thousand times.

Jamie struggled with almost all of it.

His first touch tightened the moment Rafi stepped toward him. The ball bounced off him at angles he did not choose. When Rafi pressed from behind, Jamie’s body closed instead of opening, and the pass came out backward before he had even looked forward.

"Again," Rafi said.

The same thing happened.

"Again."

It happened a third time, and this time Rafi caught the ball under his foot and stood on it.

"Stop playing like you’re trying not to make a mistake," he said. "You’re so busy avoiding the wrong thing that you never do the right thing. Again."

Jamie nodded. The next touch came out safe anyway.

Garcia stood at the side with his notebook and said nothing. Alan was a few yards away with his arms folded, and Garcia could feel the doubt coming off him without needing to look. The session was exposing exactly what Millwall had seen, exactly what every coach had said, and there was nothing Garcia could do about it except let it happen.

This is the point, he reminded himself. The weakness has to come out before anyone can work on it.

Then Rafi changed the drill.

He set up a wide channel with two cones and put himself on the ball as a winger. "You start half a step behind," he told Jamie. "I’m going at the byline. Your job is to make sure the cross never happens. Go."

Rafi pushed the ball past him and ran.

Jamie turned and went after him.

The change was immediate. The hesitation that lived in his feet when the ball was at them disappeared entirely the moment the ball belonged to someone else. He closed the gap in strides that did not look possible from a standing start, got his body across the line of the cross, and blocked it with the THUD of a boy who had done this exact thing his whole life.

Rafi collected the ball and walked back without comment.

"Again," he said.

They ran it again. Jamie closed it again.

They ran it a third time with Rafi starting further ahead, and Jamie still got there, and on the fourth one Rafi disguised a cut inside instead of the cross, and Jamie read it before the chop came and was already waiting on the inside line.

Rafi stopped. He put his foot on the ball and looked at Jamie for a moment.

Then he looked over at Garcia, and something in his face had changed.

He pulled Jamie aside near the end of the session, close enough that Garcia and Alan could hear without being invited in.

"I’m going to tell you what you are, and you’re going to listen without sulking," Rafi said. "You’re rough on the ball. You’re too safe under pressure. If you walk into a trial camp playing like the first hour of today, the coaches will write you off by lunch and they will be right to."

Jamie took it standing still, eyes on Rafi.

"But you’re not a waste of my time," Rafi said. "And I don’t say that to many people, so don’t make me regret it."

Garcia kept his face neutral, because looking pleased would have ruined it.

Rafi laid the plan out plainly. First touch under pressure, every day. Opening the body before the ball arrived. Forward passing after winning it, until the safe ball stopped being automatic. Wide recovery work, over and over, because the recovery was the weapon and the weapon needed to be sharp. Repeat sprints, because trial matches did not care how good your first effort was if your fourth one disappeared.

"We’re not fixing you in two weeks," Rafi said. "Nobody fixes anybody in two weeks. What we’re doing is making sure you don’t show up to that camp as the same boy Millwall let go. Understood?"

"Understood," Jamie said.

Alan stepped forward then, and asked the only question he had asked all morning. "Can you actually improve him before August 3rd?"

"I can make him sharper," Rafi said. "I can’t make him brave. That part is his. But if he shows up every day and works without sulking, he’ll walk in there different." He looked at Jamie. "Will you?"

Jamie said, "Yes."

It came out faster than his answers usually did.

That evening, Garcia sat at the desk in his bedroom and did the part of the job no system could do for him.

The August 3rd trial programme had an online registration portal, and the portal wanted everything. Player details. Date of birth and age-group eligibility. Previous academy background. Playing position. Medical declaration. Emergency contact. Guardian consent for a player under eighteen. Slot confirmation and the participation fee.

Garcia worked through it line by line, checking each field twice, because one wrong digit in a date of birth could void an application and there would be no time to fix it. He typed Jamie’s name into the player field and stopped for a second, looking at it.

The first player G11 has ever registered for anything.

He sent Alan the guardian consent form with a short, professional message and got a reply within the hour: Received. Will sign and return tonight.

Then he called Ben.

"The five clubs," Garcia said. "Still expected?"

"Still expected," Ben said. "I checked again this afternoon. But Garcia — expected. Don’t go promising that man scouts until they’re standing next to the pitch. If the clubs change their plans on the Friday, that’s football, and it won’t be my fault or yours, but it’ll feel like ours."

"I know."

"I’m serious. Manage it."

"I am managing it."

"Good." A pause. "How did the session go?"

"Rafi didn’t walk."

Ben laughed down the line. "Then it went well."

Garcia finished the registration just before midnight. The confirmation page loaded, and he read it twice before letting himself believe it.

Registration Confirmed — J. Holt — Northgate Performance Centre, Salford. Programme begins Monday, 3 August.