The rebounder wall was at the far end of the main training pitch. It was a very huge rebound frame, mounted atop a concrete floor. It could have its angle adjusted and there was a net at the base to stop the ball from rolling too far. The first team usually made use of it for shooting drills, but the academy used it mostly on Fridays.
But on Tuesday morning, at five forty five in the morning, it was first come first serve.
William had permission to use the training ground outside of schedules sessions. It was written into the academy scholar agreement, something that most scholars didn't test the validity of. William had been testing it since he was fifteen.
He changed into his training outfit quickly, and jogged onto the main pitch. The floodlights were off, so he had a head torch strapped to his forehead, as it was still too dark to rely on natural light, causing there to be a beam of thin white light cut across the pitch as he jogged across the pitch to where the rebounder wall was situated.
He opened the system panel and confirmed the quest parameters. Two hundred passes, eighty-five percent accuracy threshold, completed before the seven-thirty session. The system would track completion automatically.
Apparently, it had access to his data even though he did not consciously give it. He did not question this though. Quite frankly, he didn't really care too much about it. He had spent the early hours of the morning lying awake deciding to take the thing at face value, at least for now. Either it was real, in which case he should treat it as real. Or it was some elaborate and specific hallucination produced by cold and stress and three years of being told he was not quite good enough, in which case doing two hundred passes before breakfast would still improve his passing, so there was no actual downside to it.
He set the rebounder at a comfortable angle and stood roughly twelve meters back. He took the first ball from the mesh bad and struck it.
Forty three passes in, the system flashed a small amber notification warning him that his pass accuracy was currently below the threshold. He had been rushing it, causing the passes to arrive back too fast. He had to calm down so he took deep breaths, and then adjusted his stance, taking an extra touch on the next ten or so passes to recalbrate.
He completed the two hundred passes when it was thirteen minutes to seven. He stood for a moment with his hands on his knees, panting lightly, and he watched the holographic panel reappear.
[DAILY QUEST COMPLETE!]
[Pass Completion: 191/200 (95.5%)]
[Threshold met: {yes} | {no}]
[Reward: 20 Credits]
[Credit balance: 20]
Twenty fucking credits. William stared at his credit balance. He needed five hundred for his first cap expansion. Twenty was four percent of that, so that was pogress.
He went inside, showered and ate a small breakfast he brought with him from home and went back to the pitch at quarter past seven, making him the first person to arrive.
The Tuesday training session was supposed to be a light technical day. Those type of sessions were ran when matches were on the weekend and the target was improving sharpness without fatigue. William had been told not to come in, but he had. He was disobeying the coach, but he didn't really care about that at the moment. They already planned on discarding him so what difference didn't make.
When Stanton, the head coach, arrived, and saw him warming up on the pitch. He just spared him an extra glance before walking to set things up with his assistants.
David Stanton was a forty-one, ex lower league midfielder. He had been the coach the coach at Middlesbrough's academy for six years, and even though the crude voicemail he sent William said otherwise, he was very nice. There was just too many players in the academy and few first team slots, so he was required to be an asshole in quite a few football career stories.
William warmed up alone. The other players arrived in groups of twos and threes, the usual pre-season noise and banter filling the cold morning air. Marcus Webb arrived last, as he always did. Somehow, he managed to always arrive just on time. A talent that William admired.
He was wearing a new pair of boots. Something that William noticed because they were the same model as his worn out pair, but these were the ones that his own was supposed to be replaced by.
The session ran for forty minutes before the head coach, after staring to his right ten times in a row and seeing William awkwardly training alone, sighed and pointed at him. "Smithson, inside. On the right side of the five".
A small part of the pitch had been segregated to create a makeshift five-a-side pitch. It was eighteen meters by twelve, small enough to make sure that you didn't have time or space to think. William had always been average in those drills. He wasn't bad, but he was nothing special e
When he got to the pitch, he saw a small flash of light and he saw the system panel at the corner of his vision, before it spread across him creating a translucent overlay. There were small green arrows that indicated passing lanes that were open or half spaces that could open up. The position of the other players were then rendered as faint overlays at the edge of his vision. There was a number in the top right of each player, that he understood to be their current pressing distance to the ball.
William would've spent a minute wide eyed if he had the time.
'Not a cheat my ass!' William thought to himself as he jogged to his position.
He made his first touch of the game in the right channel. It was a hard pass that he barely got under control with his first touch. Usually, his first thought would have been to release it back to the nearest match and keep it simple. However, thanks to the system's overlay that now replaced his vision, he saw a gap on the far left. There was space for one of his teammates to run into.
William didn't waste any time and played the ball across the full width of the pitch in one touch.
The ball arrived somewhat at its intended destination. It was a bit overhit, but his teammate managed to chase down and get to the ball before the opposition, looking surprised that William had delivered such a pass.
On the sidelines, David Stanton's head turned a bit, before nodding slightly.
In the next ten minutes, he played three more passes that had the same quality. Though they weren't as precise as he would've liked them, it was the vision that mattered.
The system wasn't playing for him. William understood that fact. It was simply showing him things that he could not see on his own. It was still left to him to make the pass or make the run or whatever. The system was simply feeding him information but he was still the one that had to take action and make use of the information.
In other words, it could show him a passing lane or something, and William could make the pass, but the pass could end up being intercepted or inaccurate.
David called the session to a close a few minutes after the match was over and then addressed the team. As the players jogged back, he held William back.
"Come and see me on Thursday". David said.
William nodded, and stifled the smile that was threatening to burst on his face. He walked back to the changing room and as he took of his clothes, he finally smiled.
'I can do this'.