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CHAPTER 65 — THE SPACE BETWEEN
Winter settled into Marseille without ceremony.
It crept in through cracked knuckles and stiff muscles, through breath that fogged in the air before training, through floodlights that felt harsher against the grey sky. December blurred into January and January into February and with it came a stretch of matches the club would later describe as difficult, a word that flattened what it truly felt like.
The first team did not collapse.
They simply stopped winning.
Draws piled up first. Then narrow losses. One-nil defeats that felt heavier than thrashings ever could. The table didn't lie, but it didn't scream either—Marseille hovered, stuck between ambition and reality, bleeding points slowly enough that the alarm bells came late.
Injuries remained the unspoken headline.
A hamstring here. A knock there. Players returning only to leave again. The squad trained in fragments, sessions adjusted daily, tactical plans simplified not by choice but necessity. The rotation became survival rather than strategy.
And beneath all of it, the academy kept playing.
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The reserve pitch sat farther from the sea, wind cutting across it sharply in the mornings. Kweku had learned to tape his wrists now, to keep warmth in his fingers. He wore long sleeves under his training top, breath steady as he jogged laps with the others.
This was not glamour.
This was repetition.
The reserves played in a league where mistakes were punished immediately but rarely remembered. Scouts watched occasionally, but more often it was staff—assistants, analysts, youth coaches—taking notes, exchanging glances.
Kweku didn't score every game.
He didn't need to.
He played between the lines, finding pockets of space where the game slowed for him. One touch to escape pressure. A disguised pass to release a runner. A calm presence when others rushed.
"Tempo," one coach muttered during a match. "He gives us tempo."
That was becoming his reputation.
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The pitch was hard that afternoon, grass brittle under boots. The opposition pressed aggressively, eager to disrupt the buildup. The reserves struggled early, losing duels and misplacing passes.
Kweku dropped deeper without instruction.
Not dramatically. Just two or three meters. Enough to receive the ball facing forward instead of with his back turned. He took fewer touches, moved the ball faster, guiding play rather than forcing it.
By halftime, Marseille were level.
By the hour mark, they were controlling the match.
The goal didn't come from brilliance. It came from patience.
Kweku received the ball near the right half-space and scanned it once, twice. The fullback overlapped, drawing a defender. The striker checked short. Instead of choosing either, Kweku slipped the ball between two defenders into the path of a late-arriving midfielder.
Finish. Net.
No celebration from Kweku. Just a raised hand, acknowledgement, and jog back to position.
From the sideline, a man in a heavy coat wrote something down.
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The first team lost again that weekend.
A narrow defeat away. Missed chances. Tired legs. Post-match interviews filled with phrases like "we need to be better" and "we're working through it."
At the training ground on Monday, the mood was flat.
Players moved carefully, conserving energy even in warm-ups. Coaches spoke less, watched more. When the reserves trained nearby, their shouts and laughter carried across the pitches.
Someone noticed.
"Funny," an assistant said quietly. "They sound freer."
No one replied, the atmosphere was too tense.
But that tension barely reached Kweku, his days settled into a rhythm.
School in the mornings, jacket zipped tight against the cold. French still felt heavier when he was tired, words slower to come, but he listened carefully and wrote everything down.
Afternoons at the academy. Training, recovery, video sessions. Evenings spent eating quietly, stretching in his room, calling his mother when the time difference allowed.
"How is your body?" she asked every time.
"Okay," he replied, always.
He didn't mention the bruises, the fatigue, the way winter seeped into his bones. She didn't need that weight.
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One afternoon, as the reserves finished their training, Kweku noticed a small group near the first-team pitch.
The head coach stood there.
He wasn't watching openly. No crossed arms, no intense stare. Just present. Observing drills. Occasionally glancing toward the reserve side.
Kweku felt it, a tightening in his chest.
He didn't change how he trained.
If anything, he simplified. Cleaner touches. Smarter positioning. Less urgency, more control.
Later, Coach Devereux pulled him aside.
"Good session," he said. Nothing more.
But his tone was different.
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By the end of the month, Marseille had slipped further.
Not disastrously. Not yet. But the margins were shrinking. Injuries forced younger players onto the bench. The same names appeared on team sheets, overworked.
In meetings, the academy was mentioned more often now.
Not as a solution.
As an option.
And options mattered.
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Kweku lay in bed that night, phone on his chest, staring at the ceiling.
He wasn't dreaming of debuts.
He was watching first-team matches and thinking about space.
How to find it.
How to keep it.
How to be ready if it suddenly opens.
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