In the spotlight

27

Matteo Rodriguez

"You good man?" I heard my friend's voice approaching me as he gently hit my upper back with his left hand. Marco's face appeared in my vision as he leaned forward to match the height of my head.

I needed a second to collect myself. I was leaning forward myself, supporting my body weight on my knees with both of my hands. The pounding sounds of my heart almost deafened me, and the feeling didn't improve when a high-pitched buzz took over its place.

I straightened up while trying to catch my breath, trying to calm myself down a little before speaking up. Maybe I was pushing these trainings way too hard. Most of my teammates have already left the training grounds, but I decided that a little agility improvement wouldn't hurt.

What else could I do after all? I was way too close to getting my place back in the starting eleven to let go of it now. Just a little more pushing, I thought, just a few more meters and a few more passes, and the manager will announce the change anytime now.

After I finished my second kilometer of sprinting and spent twice as much time training as any of my teammates, nothing happened. At the end of the training, he called over the coaches, and after mumbling a few words between them, they just left. Nothing happened again.

"I thought that maybe today would be the day." I straightened up, feeling a dull ache in every single muscle my body has. Sweat dripped down from my forehead, hitting the grass-covered ground in front of me. I swept my hair back from my forehead, feeling disappointment when strands of hair fell back before my eyes.

"Your return is not a matter of your physical form." The brown-haired man shook his head next to me, scratching his beard-covered jawline in the process. I felt one of my eyebrows rise with a confused expression on my face.

"You need to sort the grudge out with your teammates." Marco looked up towards the completely black sky, spotted with small white dots resembling one star each. His statement caught me even more off guard than the previous one.

"I have already tried explaining everything to them, but they wouldn't listen." I shook my head disappointedly. I looked down at the grass in front of me. I kicked the ground softly, feeling as if the gas caressed the bottom of my football shoes as I felt anger brewing in me once again.

"If nobody will listen, maybe you are doing it wrong." Marco shrugged his shoulders as he traced his brown eyes back at me. I furrowed my eyebrows as my confusion grew even more, but judging by the smile taking over his lips, I knew he was not going to explain it further.

He nodded at me as a way of saying goodbye and left the whole pitch all together, leaving me all alone in the middle of the green-covered training track. Darkness hovered over me in the early spring evening, but due to the intensity of my workout, I couldn't feel the cold at all. My whole body was steaming thanks to the sweat stuck to my body, and I thought calling it a quit today would be the wisest.

I walked off of the pitch myself, heading straight towards the changing rooms. I didn't waste any more time than necessary since everything was completely empty anyway. I grabbed my post-training sweatpants and Real Madrid tracksuit from my bag, and after a quick shower, I took them on, ready to leave at once.

I threw the huge sidebag on my shoulder, correcting the straps so it wouldn't cut deep into my skin while walking. The complete and deadly silence created an eerie atmosphere in the training complex, but silence lately has become my best companion.

Even the underground garage seemed to be empty; only a few cars and huge tour bus with the Real Madrid logo printed on it were lingering here and there without any drivers accompanying them. My deep black Mercedes, however, appeared to be the only vehicle that had a person leaning against it.