Football Reborn: The Manager from the future

⚽ Football Reborn: The Manager from the Future

Chapter 56 – The Shadow Academy

Three days after Lusail.

Tempo FC had made history. But history had a short memory.

The world wanted to know one thing:

"What comes next?"

The answer lay not in Europe. Not in Paris.

But thousands of miles away — beneath the heat-scorched plains of Rosario, Argentina.

Chuva had seen the signal.

So he packed light.

And flew into the shadows.

🇦🇷 Arrival in Rosario

The plane touched down in silence. No cameras. No welcoming committee. No fanfare.

Clara had secured the trip with false identities and a "humanitarian scouting" cover. Even Seraph had been reduced to a basic offline version on Chuva's watch.

They were off the grid.

But not alone.

Waiting at the gate: a man in a gray overcoat, sunglasses at night, and a limp.

He gave Chuva a once-over, then nodded.

"You're late. El Maestro doesn't like waiting."

"Good," Chuva replied. "I don't like following orders."

🏚️ Club Deportivo Ascenso

The car ride took them deep into the heart of the barrio.

Through streets scarred by time, walls covered in murals of Maradona, Messi, and sometimes both — their faces blurred by sun, smoke, and bullet holes.

And finally, they arrived at the gate.

Club Deportivo Ascenso.

From the outside: a half-collapsed warehouse with a rusted goalpost out front.

From the inside: a hidden crucible of footballing monsters.

🕳️ The Underground Pitch

Beneath the club's floor, behind a hydraulic lift camouflaged by grass turf, was the real academy.

An underground chamber lit by UV floodlights.

Artificial pitch. Temperature-controlled walls. Dozens of youths sprinting, colliding, shooting, shouting.

Every one of them had one thing in common:

They moved like no child should.

Sharp. Precise. Engineered.

"This isn't an academy," Clara whispered. "It's a lab."

Chuva agreed. But stayed silent.

Then a voice boomed from the far end:

"You finally came, future man."

🧓 The Original Maestro

The man who walked toward them looked 80, maybe older.

Thin, wiry, skin like paper, but eyes like obsidian.

He wore no shoes.

Only a whistle and a rosary.

"El Maestro," the guide whispered.

He extended a hand.

"Call me Juan."

Chuva took it. "You accessed our data feed during PSG. Why?"

Juan nodded toward the playing children.

"You gave us something new. Our monsters need new prey."

📡 Revelation: The Black Codex

In a dark backroom lit by a single bulb, Juan pulled out an old hard drive.

"Before there was AI," he said, "before GPS, before GPS-trackers and data graphs… there was intuition."

He opened the drive.

Inside: footage, data logs, handwritten notes — all from Messi's youth training, meticulously logged over ten years.

Every heartbeat. Every sprint. Every misstep.

And more than that:

The Black Codex — a forgotten training program designed to clone footballing genius.

But no club had ever made it work.

Until now.

🧠 Seraph's Flaw

Clara tapped the data into a drive and ran a comparative sim on her portable system.

And froze.

"Chuva… they're mimicking Seraph's predictive structures. Manually."

"These kids," she said slowly, "are learning with nothing but pure training… to do what we use AI for."

Chuva stared at the footage.

He saw a 14-year-old dummying passes before the ball arrived.

A 16-year-old volleying blind after reading a deflection vector.

An 11-year-old dribbling through six defenders — with his eyes closed.

🦁 The Boy Called León

Juan guided them to the far chamber.

There, a match was underway.

One player — in a ragged shirt marked only with "LEÓN" — danced across defenders like the ball obeyed him.

He didn't run. He slid.

At one point, he received a pass while mid-backflip — and still managed to trap it, recover, and score.

"That's him," Juan said. "My final son."

"Name?" Chuva asked.

"None yet," Juan replied. "He only speaks when he plays."

Kojo, watching the footage remotely, texted one line:

"He moves like a song I haven't heard yet."

📜 The Offer

Later, over cheap maté and silence, Juan made his pitch.

"You want León," he said.

"Yes," Chuva admitted.

"You want him to play in Europe, in your lab-coached machine."

"No," Chuva said. "I want him to play in history."

Juan smiled.

"I'll give you León. But only if you accept the other part of the bargain."

"What's that?"

Juan leaned in.

"You let me train one of yours. In secret. In darkness. For one year."

Chuva hesitated.

Then nodded.

"Deal."

🕶️ Back at the Hotel – A Ghost Awakens

That night, Clara decrypted the last part of Juan's drive.

There was a locked folder, named:

"M: Prototype Zero"

Seraph paused as it scanned the contents.

Then whispered something that made Chuva sit up.

"Chuva. This… this isn't a youth player profile."

"It's you."