Play the field by Cardans

Disclaimer this isn't my story. I just reuploaded it since I get lost right away when I read stories on AO3 but if the og author aka Cardans want me to delete the reuploaded then I will do it

So enjoy their story :)

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If there's one thing in the world George loves, it's soccer.

He's played it all his life, first as a snot-nosed toddler in a club team and now as a grown man in his final year of college, playing for Manberg University. And it's not just that he loves it, it's that he's good. Good enough to make captain, good enough to lead them to a win.

Speaking of wins – they won tonight. They always, always win.

There should be a few hundred people seeing it, witnessing their journey to the finals and eventually to the tournament, but instead there's fifty, scattered thin and sparse throughout the arena.

And normally there would be more, if not for the football game. If not for every football game.

Soccer plays on Mondays, and Football is supposed to play Fridays. Supposed to, but somehow, that never seems to be the case.

At first, their games overlapped by accident. There was an issue with one of the soccer games, so the soccer team had to reschedule and ended up playing at the same time as Friday Night Lights. Then half the football team got the flu and they had to work overtime, had to start playing Monday games as well as Fridays. And maybe it'd be okay, if it were temporary, if it didn't carry on like that for the rest of the season.

The Manberg Manhunters play every game on Monday now. They tackle each other and toss their stupid pigskin and steal George's crowd, every single week.

(Okay, so it's not his crowd, but he's the captain, and it's his senior year, and anything soccer is kind of his.)

And George– George knows, right? He knows that this is America, that soccer doesn't really mean anything here. It's a kid sport, something to keep the rugrats busy, but it's still his sport. It's still something he puts his all into. And it feels kind of shitty to see empty arena after empty arena, all because the idiot football players insisted on changing their schedule.

He shouldn't be mad at the players. It's not like they have any control over it. But he's mad at them anyway, because he can be. Because he wants to be. Because he doesn't even know their coach's name, so it's not like he could complain if he wanted to.

And also because the players are easy, and they're available, and they're fun to piss off.

Seriously, all those rumors about football players are true. They're airheads that get mad at the drop of a hat. They're only good at tackling and catching a ball, which are two things George can respect. He's a goalie. His whole thing revolves around his ability to spot and stop the ball. That's why he can sometimes respect the sport, even if he can't respect the dumbass players.

Well, most of them are dumbasses.

There's this one guy, this idiot that nicknamed himself 'Dream.' Like, who even does that? Nicknames are meant to be given to you, not decided by yourself. But whatever, George can look past that.

Anyway, this guy– he's different from the others. He's a relatively young player and an even younger captain, but he doesn't have that aloof look like most football players have, like he's taken one too many shots to the head. He looks sharp, and clever, and downright cocky. And from what George has seen, it's justified. George watches the recaps of each game (school spirit and all), and he sees the way Dream moves. It's like he's floating or something, from one end of the field to the other, straight to the end zone. On the rare occasion that they don't win, Dream still does something impressive in every single game, at least twice, if not three times. So yeah, he's allowed to be a little proud. And George doesn't fault him for that.