Hold Me Close

picture perfect professionalism

Alexia opens her door with a humility to her smile. The absence of a smirk on such an annoyingly well-sculpted face hitches my breath, rendering me completely unprepared to enter a neutral zone inside what is supposed to be enemy territory. I had readied myself for battle, not the coffee she offers me.

Her apartment is decorated nicely. It's lived-in, more so than mine, and modern enough to fit the stereotypical design of footballer's homes. She has framed photographs on some walls, and safely stylish paintings on others. The layout itself is identical to my own home, though it is inverted as she lives in a B apartment; open-plan, corridor to the rooms, large windows on one side.

I step over a ragged allusion to a monkey; a victim of the dog that barks from behind a closed door as I come in. Alexia tsks and kicks the toy away, letting it slide under her dining table while she brings two full mugs of coffee over to the TV. Unsure of what else to do, I take a seat on the edge of her sofa, the grey fabric almost matching the colour of my post-exercise sweatpants. When Alexia sits too, it is on the opposite end, remote control in hand.

Two notebooks lie on her coffee table, both with the FC Barcelona crest printed on the front. Alexia hands me the newer-looking of the two. The other has a quarter of its pages full with scribbled notes already.

"You started early." She looks up from the lined paper, smile gone, a smirk replacing it at my surprise. I guess I shouldn't have expected anything else. "Alright, grab a pen. Let's talk about Lynn Wilms before you start the match."

We go through my national teammates, and I learn that Alexia is a very good listener. She writes down almost every word I say, leaning over to show me when she isn't sure she has gotten the correct thing. Her attention to detail is relentless, and she quizzes me long after I have thought I could share everything there is about them. Each question is insightful and clever and I have to take in this side of her with slight disbelief. Alexia really is a football nerd.

She presses play on the match an hour and a half later, both of our coffees cold by now. I clear my throat, ready to let her do the talking. "This is their typical formation," she starts with, pointing at the organised lines the players get themselves into before kick-off. "Roord and Oberdorf work well together in the midfield. They can play on both sides. Do you think that Roord will start on the right against us?"

"Possibly. They might not want her to mark me." Jill hates marking me. It's too easy to get in her head when I know her as well as I do, making distracting her a simple task. She loves that I will nutmeg the opposition whenever I can, praising me for the showboating built into my style of play as fundamentally as a simple pass, but, when she is the other team on the pitch, she is understandably irritated by it. No one likes having to reduce themselves to fouling because they have no other option. "Am I staying on the right indefinitely?"

She shrugs, a dismissive gesture. "You are two-footed."

"And you are not," I point out, goading her into admitting that I am better. Alexia would rather drink cold coffee than tell me that.

By the end of the match, we have moved closer together, finding the distance to be an inconvenience when trying to show each other what we have written down. By now, I have filled out the first few pages of my notebook, mostly with the consistencies in my Dutch teammates' play that have been reaffirmed by what happened today.

The 4-0 defeat against Eintracht Frankfurt is an insightful match. It's nice to know what Wolfsburg look like when they lose.

Alexia and I linger on the sofa, uncertain about what to do now. There is nothing professional tying me to staying, and so I stand, making her jump. "Jaimie will shout at me if I'm late to dinner." We haven't adopted the Spanish mealtimes. "If you need my help again, feel free to ask. Or text me. See you tomorrow?"