Dark Moves Of Love ~ Neymar Jr

Chapter 82

The next few days I didn't get a chance to talk to Marina at all. It seemed like we were never in our room at the same time and I never saw her at lunch or dinner either.

I saw Peter once or twice but he was always eating with the assistant coaches or Mr. Jones and I could never talk to him.

The players were probably icing him out again after what happened with Bernard and they would probably ice out Marina too if she bothered showing up.

The only times I saw them were at practice but there was never enough time to say anything.

I kept thinking this was somehow about Carlito and what happened during the storm at the shelter and I wondered if I should be doing more to help Marina. But when we boarded the plane to Belo Horizonte nothing had changed.

We were scheduled to play Chile the next day and our practices felt extra daunting as the day of the game approached.

We were all doing double practices every day and Scolari had added extra time for penalty practicing. It was hard work.

Inside the coaches' room we reviewed tapes and analyzed every Chilean player's penalty techniques and every goalkeeper's strategy. Which side they favored, which foot, how each player and goalkeeper changed their approached depending on who they faced.

It was extremely interesting to consider all these aspects of football that I had never thought of before, so at the end of one meeting I took the liberty of asking Scolari, Coto and Mr. Jones for their permission to put all the information into good use.

"What I want to do is essentially feed the computer all these raw data and create an algorithm which takes into account the different parameters for each player and spits out the best possible strategy. Think of it as a game of chess, a program that teaches the computer how to play. And the more you play the more data it gathers to teach itself to play better. That, in computer science, is called deep learning and I believe that we can try to apply the idea of it in this particular situation. And of course it could be something that is useful overtime, if you keep updating the data. So what do you think?" I asked. I saw Mr. Jones beaming at me and relaxed a little.

"You can do that?" Scolari asked.

"I believe so. It will take some time, but I think we have the kind of data here that can make it work. I can start with a simpler version, something to help us in the Chile game and continue working on it if you want?" I suggested.

"Yes." Scolari said. "Tell us what you need from us to make it work."

"I'm going to need some help. Marina and Peter." I said and saw the three of them nodding. I took a deep breath. "And Alex."

"Alex?" Mr. Jones asked confused. "He's gone. We can't bring him back even if they allowed it."

"He's not. He's here in Rio."

"He's in Rio?" Scolari asked.

"Well he was in São Paulo but he's back now."

"How?" Mr. Jones asked me.

"Can he come back? I'm going to need all the help I can get here."

~*~

"I can't believe you brought him back!" Peter exclaimed and it was the first time he spoke to me in about a week. "I can't believe he was here the whole time and he didn't bother to tell me! And you didn't tell us either!" He said but his tone wasn't accusatory.

"I didn't know at first. They were staying at Neymar's house in São Paulo." I said.

"So when's he coming back?" Marina asked me. We were on the plane on our way to Belo Horizonte and it was the first time I could corner them to tell them the news.