Crush - Leah Williamson

21. For the Glory

For the Glory - All Good Things

A: "Better back down, you're in my domain
Got the whole crowd screaming out our name."
[...]
B: "Why you shaking, we're a dynasty
In the making, we're the royalty."
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Warm flashes pierced my tinted glasses as I stepped down from the coach. Phones and cameras pointing toward us while we determinedly walked through the carpet adorned with Arsenal's colors that they had displayed for our entrance. If it was to intimidate us or to represent their team, either way resulted in a terrible idea, for I had to contain myself from stepping on their crest.

The mixed chants, the hands wanting to touch us, the little signs hanging from the barrier. It made it all feel... heavy. A kind of heaviness I was not used to. Never had I felt my breath as thick as now, as if my throat was incapable of letting the air course pass it.

Even in the morning I felt like this. When I woke up with Patri's arms around my body I had to doble check I didn't in fact had a gym weight on my chest. A daunting feeling of oppression clouded my usual focused mind.

I was uneasy but I couldn't pinpoint why. Maybe it was from the lack of dinner from yesterday, or I had overextended myself in training. Maybe it was Patri's head on my chest the entire night that had left an imprint on my body. Or maybe it was something (someone) deeper that I didn't want to think about and so my brain was doing its best.

Either way, I knew I had to get my act together before I stepped on that field. There wasn't a slight chance I wasn't going to play my first Champion's League semifinal because I have unresolved issues.

Maybe it's time I go to see a therapist.

Mental note: ask Olga her's, for Alexia's does not think very highly of me. Don't even ask

"Too much white for my liking."

"Huh?" Distracted, I missed Claudia's small figure beside me, her gaze flicking towards the large crowd of blaugrana jerseys surrounded by a sea of red and white.

I loved the devotion the fans have for us. Even when I see impossible to have a crowd to back up your mistakes and successes, there's always a blaugrana scarf spinning up in the sky. Now, on a sold out stadium where the hostility will try to tilt the scale off our favor, the hundred-something beaming faces that will be there cheering us on makes it even more thrilling

And daunting, for I was yet to fail in front of them. Shaking my head, I looked back at an excited Claudia, her headphones plugged in with some upbeat Spanish song I was capable of listening even with my AirPods on. She looked everything but intimidating

"Yeah, not my color either." I winked at her although my (Alexia's) Oakleys' covered my eyes. She laughed for she too remembered how last time we faced Real Madrid I told her she was like a bull when they see red but with white

Claudia patted my shoulder before she ran towards Cata Coll's side. They had became inseparable since the goalkeeper made her return from that heinous injury that we shall not say its three letters

With my feeling of oppression slightly better, I saluted the fans giving them the best smile I could offer. And when I was about to enter the building that will hold one of the most electrifying matches of the season, a little girl with her face painted of our crest's colors euphorically waved her sign at me.

"Vull ser com vostès quan creixi"

"I want to be like you when I grow up"

And suddenly the heaviness was gone, only replaced by a fire driven to make that girl believe she could fulfill her dream.