Ramón gathered the squad around the center circle, about twenty players arranged loosely in a semicircle. It was 4:15 PM, the afternoon light beginning to soften but still harsh enough to cast sharp shadows across the pitch. The temperature had dropped slightly from the worst heat of midday, but the field still radiated warmth upward, distorting the air above the grass in waves.
"Possession drill," Ramón said. "Eight v eight in the thirty-meter box. Twenty-minute session. I want clean first touches. I want decision-making. I want movement off the ball. Movement creates space. Space creates opportunity."
The squads divided. Che found himself on the team opposite Matías, which he understood was deliberate—Ramón wanted to see him against someone who understood his abilities. The possession square was marked with cones, tight enough that space was a premium, open enough that there was still room to create angles.
Ramón blew his whistle.
The ball started with one of the older midfielders—a boy named Luis, maybe seventeen, who had reasonable technical ability but nothing exceptional. He played it to a teammate, and immediately the opposite team pressed. This was the fundamental of possession work: maintain the ball while defending players tried to intercept or force a turnover.
The first pass to Che came at minute two. Luis played a sideways ball from about twenty meters away. Che's first movement was already predictive—he'd positioned himself before the pass, understanding the angle and the pressure that would come immediately. His left boot met the ball, and the sole of the shoe controlled it completely. The first touch was so clean that the ball barely moved from where it landed—a hallmark of elite-level technical ability.
The immediate pressure came from one of the older forwards, who'd anticipated the pass and was already moving. But Che had already processed what would happen. The forward was closing from the left side, which meant the right side of the field—three meters away—was open. Che's right foot played the ball immediately, a first-time pass that went back to Luis. No hesitation. No wasted motion. Just the instantaneous translation of field awareness into action.
Ramón was watching intently, his clipboard held but not consulted. His eyes were tracking Che's movement specifically.
This pattern repeated. Che received the ball six times in the first eight minutes. Five times, he either played a pass that kept possession or moved the ball into space that opened options for teammates. Once, he misread a pressure angle and lost possession to a pressing midfielder. But even in that mistake, there was something notable—his decision to attempt the pass at all was tactically correct; only the execution had been slightly off.
By minute twelve, the older players had shifted their approach. Instead of pressing Che individually, they were starting to mark him more tightly, understanding that his positioning and awareness were creating problems for their team's defensive shape. Two defenders began shadowing his movement, tracking him across the box even when he didn't have the ball.
This changed the texture of his involvement. With the attention now focusing on him, other teammates had more space. But Che adapted. Instead of trying to receive the ball in dangerous positions, he started moving to support play—dropping deeper, moving wider, creating passing angles for others while he himself became secondary in the immediate attack.
Ramón was nodding.
At minute eighteen, Ramón paused the drill. He gathered everyone back to the center circle.
"Movement," he said, pointing generally at Che. "That's what I want to see. Not just the ball-carrier. Everyone moving. Creating space for others. Understanding that football is about where you're not, not just where you are."
The second possession drill began with different positioning. This time, Che started deeper, almost in a defensive midfielder role. The ball came to him about five meters from his goal line. He had defenders pressing immediately—the opposition understood by now that he was the problem.
His first touch took the ball backward slightly, which seemed counterintuitive. But it drew the pressing defender another step forward, which opened a lane that hadn't existed moments before. Che's second touch played the ball forward into this gap, splitting two defenders with a pass that was weighted precisely—fast enough to be dangerous, slow enough for the receiving midfielder to control it cleanly.
The midfielder pushed forward, and Che immediately began a supporting run, moving into space behind the receiving player. The ball came back to him one touch later, and now he was in an advanced position with the field opening in front of him. He had options: pass forward to the strikers, play a wide ball to a winger, continue running to create overload in the midfield.
He chose the wide pass, playing it to a teammate on the left flank who immediately had shooting space. The winger struck it, and although it went wide, the entire sequence had taken maybe eight seconds and had created a genuinely dangerous attacking moment.
Ramón's expression hadn't changed, but there was a quality to his attention that suggested he was processing something significant.
The drill continued for another twelve minutes. Che was being marked heavily now—sometimes double-marked, with two defenders assigned specifically to prevent him from receiving the ball in advanced positions. This was defensive adaptation. Ramón was essentially running a test: how does this young player handle being tactically isolated? Does his ability break down when he doesn't have space? Does his decision-making suffer under sustained pressure?
The answer was no. If anything, Che's play improved. With less space available, his positioning became even more precise. He moved defenders with his body language alone, creating angles that were barely perceptible. He made one-touch passes that seemed to come from nowhere, threading the ball through gaps that should have been closed.
When Ramón blew the whistle to end the drill, it was 4:48 PM. The possession work had consumed almost forty minutes. Everyone was breathing hard. Sweat had soaked through uniforms. The grass was torn in places where players had changed direction aggressively.
"Water break," Ramón called. "Three minutes. Then shooting drill."
The shooting drill was simpler in structure but more demanding physically. Players moved through a sequence: receive a pass at the top of the box, one touch adjustment, shooting within three seconds. Goal or miss didn't matter. The focus was on efficiency of movement and shot quality.
Che went through the sequence four times. His shots were clean—no wasted motion, no indecision in the finishing stroke. Three of four hit the target, which was good for a possession drill where the emphasis was on process over result.
By the time the shooting drill ended, it was 5:15 PM. The regular high school squad training was officially complete. Players began gathering their things, moving toward the changerooms. Most of them glanced at Che as they passed, small nods of acknowledgment or simple observation. Nobody said anything, but the acknowledgment was there.
Ramón approached Che as he was collecting his training bag.
"You see the way you moved today?" Ramón asked. "That spatial awareness—most players take two or three years to develop that. You have it already."
"Thank you," Che said.
"The team wants you to play," Ramón said. "Next Saturday. Friendly match against a club from Maldonado. You'd be playing against boys who are two, maybe three years older than you. Some of them significantly bigger. You understand?"
Che nodded.
"But I think you're ready," Ramón continued. "Not eventually. Now. Your first match with us will be against real competition. That's a risk, but it's the right risk."
The walk home took longer than the walk to the high school because Che was moving slowly, processing what had happened. His legs felt heavy in that satisfied way that came after genuine physical exertion. His mind was still on the pitch, replaying moments—the pass he'd threaded between defenders, the way he'd adjusted when he was double-marked, the clean shooting technique.
The barrio received him back with its usual chaos. Vendors calling out, car horns, the distant sound of someone's television bleeding music into the street. The apartment building was where he'd left it, waiting, indifferent.
His mother was in the kitchen when he entered, still in her factory uniform. Her shift must have ended recently. She looked up when he came in, and her face shifted—surprise at his presence, curiosity about the reason he was there.
"You played," she said. It wasn't a question.
"I trained," Che said. "The coach says I can play in a match this Saturday. Against Maldonado. It's a friendly, but it's real competition."
He was aware that he was talking faster than normal, that his words were tumbling out with an energy he usually kept contained. His mother listened, and something in her expression was changing—a subtle shift in the muscles around her eyes, a slight upturn at the corners of her mouth that suggested more than she was showing externally.
"How was it?" she asked. "The training."
And the thing was—Che had never really talked to her about football. Not like this. Not with this tone of genuine excitement. He'd told her he was playing. He'd told her about scores. But he'd never tried to convey what it felt like, what it meant.
"It was..." Che paused, searching for words that might capture something true. "I was good, Mamá. I mean, I could feel it. The other players—even the older ones—they were watching me. The coach, he wants me to play on Saturday. Against much older players. Much bigger players. But he said I'm ready."
His mother was quiet for a moment. Then she turned to where his older cousins were sitting on the couch, watching television.
"Matías, Diego," she said, her voice carrying the particular tone that meant this was a directive, not a request. "On Tuesdays and Thursdays, you will pick up Sofia and Diego from preschool. Che has training on those days."
They started to protest—predictable, expected resistance from teenagers who didn't want additional responsibility. But their mother's expression didn't invite negotiation. After a moment of token complaining, they nodded acceptance.
She turned back to Che. "You play well on Saturday," she said. "You show this coach what you can do."
It wasn't effusive. It wasn't a celebration. But something had shifted in the apartment's atmosphere. The football—which had been his burden, his secret ambition, his source of family tension—had become, in this moment, legitimate. Acceptable. Almost, in some small way, supported.