Algorithm

Chapter 8

Marco's POV:

Away days consisted of a long coach drives to the hotel, followed by deep tissue massages and tactical presentations. The latter of which, I found myself in right now.

It wasn't all as bad as I'd made it seem. The long coach journeys were mostly taken up by listening to music, watching movies and chatting with my team mates, which always turned out to be a laugh, especially when you had Auba next to you. The deep tissue massages and small training session the night before really were very entertaining and relaxing too. It was an ease through really. Nothing too physically demanding, and a warm down that helped my muscles relax. Most of the other time was free time, relaxing in each other's room, or in the cafe's of the hotel, around it's ground.

But the one thing that I hated the most, was the tactical presentations because god, did they drag on. Yes, I knew it something that needed to be done, to perfect our own game plan against our opponents, to find their weakness and pluck it out, use it to our advantage; but they were just life sucking.

Since Thomas had come in, there more of them compared to Jürgen. That probably wasn't a bad thing, but it just felt like it. He was more technical than Kloppo, which surprised me. The thing was, this more technical edge to our game worked and so did these tactical presentations.

Don't ask me why because I'm really not sure. I did listen in them, of course, I did, otherwise we wouldn't be winning so many games and be in the position we were in the league. And I knew that every team needed a technician behind them, turning the cogs to make everything work. Though, personally I liked to make my impact on the field. Running the flanks, finding holes of space, pressing defenders, goalkeepers into making mistakes, then pouncing. Whether it was a shot on goal myself, or a pass through.

I sat at the back of the conference room in the darkness, as Thomas went through slide by slide, finding myself absorbing the words without even listening. The slides didn't even look like real pictures or video's too me, just blurs on a screen. And whenever Thomas would call my name out while explaining something, I'd merely nod my head as if I was paying interest.

Auba and I - who always sat next to me - would have a silent joke and entertain ourselves some other way. Much to those who were listening annoyance.

While Auba and I were doing just that, I felt my phone vibrate in my shorts pocket, having it on silence just in case I got told off again. I was going to answer it after the meeting but the temptation to know who it was was too much and well Thomas looked absorbed in his own speech to really care what one of his vice captains was up to.

So, I took it out of my pocket and turned the brightness down to make it not so obvious, seeing that it was a text from my agent, Sascha.

That excited me even more and I quickly opened up the text up to see what he'd wrote.

Frederiksen is in Dortmund - Sascha

It simply read but the excitement rose in me like a little kid on Christmas day and the reality that my app was going to be more than just a thought sooner rather than later was the main cause of that. I'd been awaiting news on this Frederiksen for a while now and to have the news through that he was here, well I was over the moon and really couldn't wait to get to work with him in developing my own app.

I smiled happily down at my phone, biting my nail as I did and started to write out a reply of how excited I was to meet him and that I would call Sascha after my team meeting. Auba being the nosey person he was, glanced over my shoulder and whispered to me who it was.

I hummed and looked at him. "It's Sascha, he said that the app designers in Dortmund." I whispered back. Auba nodded happily and winked, but the problem with my whisper in a silent room of twenty odd was that, I could be heard.