Saturday, August 26, 2023

Manchester United Dressing Room

Full-Time

The noise from Old Trafford still bled through the concrete in dull waves, but inside the dressing room nobody made a sound that resembled celebration, because a 3-3 draw at home felt closer to a defeat than a point gained.

Demien sat near his locker with his boots half-untied and his elbows on his knees, caught between the goal and assist that sat in his own column and the two points the team had thrown away. Bruno paced the far end with his jaw set, dragging a towel across the back of his neck, while Casemiro stayed bent over his own laces in silence and the defenders avoided each other’s eyes because they already knew how the morning papers would read.

Ten Hag waited until the kit staff had stepped out before he spoke, and his voice stayed level though it carried an edge underneath.

"Three goals at Old Trafford. Three." He let the number sit. "A team that scores three here should not drop two points. But we play with our hearts instead of our heads. We score, and then everyone runs forward, and the second ball is theirs every time."

He didn’t look at any single player while he said it.

"The midfield stretches after we attack. The fullbacks are caught high. The forwards react late when we lose it. And then the back four is defending fires that should never have started." His eyes moved across the room. "This is not one man. This is all of us. We fix the structure or this happens again next week against a better side."

Demien kept his head up while he listened, because the message wasn’t that he’d failed — it was that starting meant owning the whole ninety minutes, the goals and the gaps alike, not just the moments that made the highlight reel.

Nobody answered. There was nothing to add that the scoreboard hadn’t already said.

Sunday, August 27, 2023

Temporary Apartment, Manchester

8:30 AM BST

The headlines split down the middle when Demien thumbed his phone awake the next morning.

"Walter dazzles on first United start — goal and assist on a dream debut" sat directly above "Three at home and still no win: Ten Hag’s defensive crisis deepens." One half of the coverage celebrated him while the other half buried the result, and the two halves didn’t sit comfortably together.

He read enough to understand the tone before he set the phone face-down on the duvet, because praise felt hollow when it was wrapped around a draw, and scrolling further wouldn’t change what the table said.

Sunday, August 27, 2023

Carrington Training Centre

10:00 AM BST

Because he’d played the full ninety, Demien was treated like a starter in recovery rather than slotted into the lighter group — bike work first, then the ice bath that punched the air out of his lungs when he lowered himself in, then the massage table and a round of mobility before some easy technical touches.

The system surfaced as he settled onto the bike.

「DAILY TRAINING MISSION ACTIVATED」

「Post-Match Recovery」

「Complete recovery protocol」

「Maintain optimal condition after first start」

「Complete mobility and light technical work」

「Reward: 8 TP」

「Bonus: Fatigue below 15%」

「Bonus Reward: 5 MP」

He worked through it without cutting corners, and his legs felt heavier than after any cameo but the soreness sat in the right places rather than the wrong ones.

「DAILY TRAINING MISSION COMPLETE」

「Recovery Protocol: Completed」

「Fatigue Level: 12%」

「Mobility Work: Completed」

「Reward: 8 TP」

「Bonus Reward: 5 MP」

「Current Balance: 604 TP | 351 SP | 943 MP」

Sunday, August 27, 2023

Carrington Analysis Room

11:30 AM BST

Ten Hag started the video with Forest’s goals rather than United’s, and the room watched the first one in silence as the frozen frame showed Mount’s pass cut out and three white shirts already breaking before a single red shirt had turned.

"Here." Ten Hag tapped the screen at the empty space behind the midfield line. "We attack with everybody and we leave this. Every time."

He rolled the second goal, paused on the loose second ball that nobody reacted to, then the third where the back-post marker stood flat-footed while the Forest substitute climbed over him.

"Not only defending," he said while the clip held. "It starts earlier. The shape after we attack, the pressing with emotion instead of organization, the distances too big, the reaction too slow when the ball drops."

Only after that did he show the other side — Demien’s chopped finish past Williams, the threaded ball for Bruno, Rashford’s runs, Casemiro’s recoveries — and he let each clip play without much comment.

"These are good," Ten Hag said. "But good attacking does not cover ninety minutes of poor control. You cannot outscore your own mistakes forever."

Demien absorbed it without dropping his head, because the lesson landed clean — if he wanted to sit at the center of this team, creating wasn’t enough on its own, and he had to be the one who steadied things when the match turned emotional.

Sunday, August 27, 2023

Temporary Apartment, Manchester

4:00 PM BST

The message came through while Demien was reheating lunch.

Sophia: In Manchester tomorrow for a conference. Staying overnight. Don’t make plans.

He read it twice, and something in his chest loosened that he hadn’t realized had been tight, because calls and texts had carried them through the summer but they weren’t the same as her actually being here.

Monday, August 28, 2023

Manchester City Centre

6:00 PM BST

She was waiting outside the hotel when his car pulled up, and the football noise that had filled his head for two days went quiet the moment he saw her.

Sophia pulled him into a hug before he’d fully straightened up, and she held it a beat longer than a greeting needed before stepping back to look at him properly.

"You’ve been behaving yourself?" she asked, one eyebrow lifting. "Or have the Manchester girls already started causing problems?"

"You know better than that."

"Do I?" She tilted her head, enjoying the way he refused to take the bait. "New city, scored on your debut, name in all the papers. That’s exactly when they come out."

"Then they’re wasting their time."

Sophia laughed, the sound easing something between them, and she looped her arm through his as they walked. "Good answer. Lucky for you."

She reached into her bag while they moved toward the car. "Before I forget — Luca sent something through me. He’d have posted it but he didn’t trust the international mail not to lose it."

She handed over a flat parcel, and inside sat a folded Atalanta shirt with their old training number and a photo tucked into the fabric — the two of them from a youth session years back, arms slung over each other’s shoulders, grinning at whoever held the camera.

A note was clipped to it in Luca’s scrawl.

Don’t get too comfortable in red. Some of us are still making blue and black look good. — L

"He’s at Atalanta now?" Demien asked, turning the photo over in his hand.

"Signed properly this summer after the Braga loan ended. Playing on the wing." Sophia smiled. "Getting minutes too. Gasperini likes him. He won’t admit he misses you, obviously, but he asks about you every time he calls."

Demien huffed a quiet laugh at the note, because it was pure Luca — proud, playful, pretending not to care.

Monday, August 28, 2023

Temporary Apartment, Manchester

8:30 PM BST

Sophia stayed at the apartment that night, and with her in it the bare rooms felt less like a holding cell between two lives.

They ate at the kitchen counter because he still hadn’t bought a proper dining table, and she talked about the conference and the weight of running her father’s company — the suppliers who tested her, the people waiting for her to flinch — while he listened and refilled her water without being asked.

"And you?" she said eventually. "The draw. You scored, you set one up, and you still looked miserable on the highlights."

"Goal felt good," Demien admitted. "Assist felt good. But we drew at home after scoring three. It felt unfinished."

Sophia studied him for a moment. "Sometimes doing your part just shows you everything else that’s still broken around it."

"That’s exactly it."

"I know," she said. "That’s my whole job right now."

The conversation slowed and softened, and the distance that calls had never quite closed finally folded shut between them, and for one night Demien wasn’t United’s expensive new midfielder with a result hanging over him — he was just a man with someone who’d known him long before the red shirt.

The lights went off, and the apartment held a warmth it hadn’t carried since he’d moved in.

Tuesday, August 29, 2023

Temporary Apartment, Manchester

8:00 AM BST

The morning was quiet and easy. Sophia padded around the kitchen in one of his shirts while the kettle worked, teasing him about the empty fridge and the boots lined up by the door like the only thing he’d actually unpacked.

Demien picked up Luca’s photo from the counter where he’d left it, and the grin came back without him deciding to let it, because the kid in the picture was now adapting to Serie A and earning his own minutes while pretending the whole thing was beneath him.

"He really won’t say he misses you," Sophia said, watching him over her coffee. "He just keeps asking if you’ve forgotten how to defend yet."

"Tell him I’ll remind him in person at some point."

She left for her travel schedule mid-morning with a kiss at the door and a promise to call from the train, and when it closed behind her the apartment went quiet again — though not as empty as it had been before she arrived.

Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Carrington Training Centre

9:00 AM BST

Football sharpened back into focus because Arsenal away at the Emirates waited on September 3rd, and that was a different mountain entirely from Forest.

Ten Hag gave nothing away about his lineup, rotating the midfield combinations through the tactical phase — Casemiro with Bruno and Demien for one block, Casemiro with Bruno and Mount for another, then Demien dropped deeper with Bruno and Mount pushed ahead of him in a third shape.

The system activated before the main work began.

「DAILY TRAINING MISSION ACTIVATED」

「Arsenal Tactical Preparation」

「Complete full tactical session」

「Maintain positional discipline in defensive shape drills」

「Complete 5 pressure-release passes」

「Record 5 defensive actions in transition drills」

「Reward: 10 TP」

「Bonus: Zero tactical corrections」

「Bonus Reward: 10 MP」

Demien was used heavily against the simulated Arsenal press, and the coaches set the second unit to swarm him the way Ødegaard and Rice would on Sunday. Once he saw Antony peeling into space early and his first instinct fired toward the risky ball that would split the line, but the Forest analysis sat fresh in his head and he chose the stabilizing pass into Casemiro instead, resetting the shape rather than gambling.

He came through the whole session without a single correction from the staff.

「DAILY TRAINING MISSION COMPLETE」

「Pressure-Release Passes: 6」

「Defensive Actions: 5」

「Tactical Corrections: 0」

「Reward: 10 TP」

「Bonus Reward: 10 MP」

「Current Balance: 614 TP | 351 SP | 953 MP」

Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Carrington Training Centre

Late Morning

The preparation board hung by the analysis room when Demien passed it on the way out, and it wasn’t a starting eleven — just the schedule mapped across the week, tactical phases and set-piece work and travel times and the final activation.

His name sat in more than one midfield rotation.

Casemiro. Bruno. Walter.

Then lower down, a different block.

Casemiro. Bruno. Mount.

Ten Hag was giving nothing away, and the two combinations sat there side by side like a question he hadn’t answered yet.

Demien understood the message without needing it spelled out. Forest had proven he could start. Arsenal would test whether he deserved to stay trusted, and one loose pass at the Emirates would be punished faster and harder than anything Forest had shown him at Old Trafford.

He held the board for a second longer than he needed to, then turned for the car park.