God Of football

Chapter 999: Goal Drought?

When the table in the living room buzzed, Izan didn’t even look at his phone at first.

He had just come back from training, and there was a lot that went through mind after sessions like that.

The Hampstead house was quiet with the late afternoon light pouring through the glass wall, stretching across the wooden floor.

The phone buzzed again, and on the third time, he finally reached for it lazily, thumb brushing the screen open after the face ID got the lock out of the way.

Scrolling through the stack of notifications, Izan came across a tagged notification from an account he recognised.

"Not doing too bad for yourself," he muttered as he stared at the massive football edit account with millions of followers.

And this was the same account of the guy who had taped him first when he was playing in that scrimmage back on one of the pitches in Alboraya, a couple of years ago.

Tuning his thoughts out, he turned towards the bottom of the post where the caption read:

"15-year-old Izan was a menace."

He tapped the link attached, and a moment later, the reel opened with grainy footage from a pitch, particularly, the Cuidad Deportiva de Paterna.

The colours were slightly washed with the camera shaking from somewhere behind the metallic netting, where fans were sometimes allowed to stand and watch the team train.

And in the video, a younger version of him — leaner, almost fragile-looking at the time- glided past a defender in one of the Valencia training kits.

In the next second, the video transitioned, this time to Izan, who was well established in the Valencia senior team and then his performances against Atlético Madrid, which resulted in his first hat-trick.

The second cut moved towards another side of Madrid, at the Bernabeu this time, where he got a brace too against Real Madrid.

A finish at the near post.

Then another where he dropped his shoulder, sent two white shirts sliding in opposite directions before rounding one of the very best shotstoppers in the world.

Eventually, the edit slowed into a celebration as a boyish grin broke out on his face with arms spread wide.

After a second watch, he moved into the comments, and it was already flooded.

The official LaLiga account had commented:

"We remember."

He let out a soft breath through his nose before moving further down, where he saw some familiar names.

Pietro17: "Anomaly since day one."

luvSosa: "Golden boy."

Javi Guerra: "Irreplaceable. Always."

He smiled properly at that while his thoughts blurred into the memory of Valencia heat and the smell of the pitch at Mestalla.

The way the crowd used to chant his name with disbelief, and how they revered him.

Back then, it was smaller and nowhere near how the Arsenal fans did him, but it felt much more special back then.

He remembered the first time he walked into the senior dressing room.

The way older players had looked at him like he was someone’s younger brother who had wandered in by mistake.

Stuck in his thoughts, he didn’t even realise he was still smiling until Olivia’s voice came from behind him.

"Reliving your glory days?"

She was walking past the couch, brushing a hand along the back of it as she moved.

He tilted the phone toward her without turning his head fully.

"If those are my glory days," he said lightly, "what should these current times be known as?"

She paused.

Then she came around and sat beside him.

The video looped again, but neither of them watched it this time.

Olivia looked ahead, not at the screen.

"It’s him against the world now," she said quietly.

Izan looked at her properly then.

Her expression wasn’t worried exactly, but it was to some extent.

"These days, it doesn’t even feel like you belong to us," she said with a wry smile while bobbing her head around.

He leaned forward slightly, then wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her gently toward him as he leaned back into the couch.

Her head settled against his chest while her hand found comfort in his hair.

"I’m happy," he murmured near her ear. "I’m having fun."

She let out a soft sigh.

"I just wish I could do more for you."

He shook his head against her hair.

"You already do enough."

"Plus, we’ve got a lot ahead of us," he added, almost as if reminding himself.

They then stayed like that for a moment, quiet with the late afternoon shifting slowly across the floor as light started slowly giving way to darkness.

Then Hori’s voice cut clean through the calm.

"Oh my God."

They both turned their heads towards the source of the voice, and Hori stood near the base of the staircase, arms folded, expression somewhere between disgusted and amused.

"You have a perfectly large room upstairs," she said. "But no. Let’s make everyone uncomfortable in the living room."

Olivia lifted her head, laughing softly.

"We’re not even doing anything."

"Sure," Hori replied dryly.

"That’s what they all say until one has a swelling belly," she said like an oversimulated mother before she clicked her fingers towards the white ball of fur beside their couch.

"Miko."

The moment it heard its name, the white Samoyed trotted toward her obediently.

"I can’t stand it," Hori continued, already turning toward the cantilever stairs.

"Get a room. Preferably, the one you already own."

She started up the staircase with Miko padding after her while from behind, laughter followed.

.....

With the West Ham game and the verdict out of the way, the international break arrived, forcing a pause.

Twelve days without club football.

Twelve days of national anthems and press conferences and squad announcements flashing across screens.

And once again, Izan’s name was absent.

This time, the reason was simple.

A sprain.

In the days building up to the break, he had sprained his ankle and had therefore been allowed to sit out the break, and so the outrage of previous omission earlier that season was nowhere to be seen.

The world had bigger curiosities to obsess over.

When the break passed, he was named in the squad against Fulham on the weekend.

At the Emirates.

The game ended 3–0.

Izan didn’t score, but with how he performed, he didn’t need to because all three goals came from his feet.

In a match where Arsenal had a lot of players like Rice and Odegaard, as well as a few other midfield options out, Arteta played Izan much deeper than usual, and it seemed position wasn’t a weakness for him.

By midweek, the noise returned in full.

It was the Champions League again, and Arsenal had Atlético Madrid at home.

The kind of game that carried a different kind of pride.

By the end of the night, it was 4–0.

And once again, Izan came through, scoring two goals and making two assists.

He scored one by ghosting between centre-backs like he’d been there all along, and the second was much more cruel.

With a drop of his shoulder, he sent the defender leaning the wrong way before he slid the ball home.

In between, he created space out of nothing for teammates who barely had to break stride and with that, in three Champions League games, Izan had ten goals and nine assists.

Nineteen goal contributions in Europe alone.

The numbers stopped feeling statistical and started feeling fictional.

Like something lifted from a career mode save on beginner difficulty.

And yet it was Atlético Madrid, not a training ground side.

Before that midweek result had even settled, Arsenal dismantled Crystal Palace in the league, putting another four past them.

And although Izan played the full ninety, he didn’t score or assist.

It was the first time in over a year and a half that he walked off a pitch without his name directly etched into the scoreboard.

And that wasn’t without its commentary because, despite the win, a few rival voices got louder, talking about how the league had started to catch up to him.

And the next game didn’t help his case either.

In the Carabao Cup fixture against Brighton, he came on in the 80th minute.

He didn’t score there or assist either, but nobody cared.

All they cared about was that he had gone two games without scoring, not even caring that he had only played 10 minutes in the second game.

A pundit on late-night television shook his head and said, "It’s become world commotion when this kid doesn’t score or assist in two matches in a row. That’s where we are."

When asked about his goal drought in an interview, Izan just smiled but didn’t say anything.

In the next game, though, Izan was the loudest because by the 70th minute, he had a hat-trick.

"Well, there are the goals they were asking for before the game," the commentary said after Izan finished his celebration.

But it didn’t stop there because against Slavia Praha in the next match, Izan scored another hat-trick before scoring a third hat-trick in a row against Sunderland in the league.

It was almost like a response to all the noise about his "two-game goal drought."

And as if it couldn’t get better, in the next league game against Tottenham at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium, Izan scored another hat-trick to make it 4 in a row, making it twelve goals in that stretch alone.

And to top it off, he threaded five assists in between them for good measure.

The Premier League numbers ballooned beyond comfort.

Thirty goals.

Eleven assists.

In eleven appearances out of twelve possible.

In Europe, it was worse.

Thirteen goals and eleven assists, and in four Champions League games at that.

And Izan still wasn’t even an adult yet.

[25th November]