Mr. Brightside || João Félix

T W E N T Y - T W O

Sunday, November 27, 2022 7:15AM

I woke up this morning to an empty room, Frankie and Kevin had practice this morning and it's apparently earlier than mine so they left early. I was currently stretching with the rest of the Portugal team getting ready to play a nice friendly.

"How you holding up ?" My dad nudges me.

"I'll survive," I sigh, "I'm just angry. I mean you can't look at me with a straight face and say this tournament isn't," I look around making sure no one is paying attention to our conversation 'rigged' I mouth. "You know I love Leo, and I think the world of him, as a person, and as a player, but you can't tell me things aren't looking to favor him right now. It bothers me because everyone thinks it'd be the biggest tragedy if he retired without a Word Cup, but what about you ?" I ask, "don't you deserve it too ? I think outsiders shouldn't meddle if he wins it, he wins it fair and square, if he doesn't, oh well, we can't gift every legend with a World Cup."

"Yeah," he sighs, "I get what you mean."

"And it's like the double standards, because you can't sit there and tell me that if they were favoriting you, it'd be the same. You can't tell me if you were getting this special treatment, the media wouldn't target you and talk about how the Cup was rigged and whatnot. The media chose their 'goat,'" I say doing finger quotes around goat. "And that's fine, we're all entitled to label who we want as the greatest of all time, biases aside, I think it's you, but when we're handing out World Cups the way this one feels, it takes away from the player, because it shows they needed help to win it. Odds are stacked against you," I sigh, "but promise me, you'll do everything in your power to walk out with the World Cup."

"I promise," he says holding out his pinkie finger and I intertwine mine with his.

My dad and I were playing on the same team which sucked for whoever was playing against us. In the first half, my dad and I scored back to back goals while the other team couldn't even get the ball close to the net. João who was on the opposite team had been pushing my buttons the entire game, constantly trying to steal the ball away from me but failing. This time, I was dribbling the ball at a good pace, and here he comes again.

"You're breathing down my neck," I tell him but he doesn't back down. "João back up." He once again doesn't listen and I lose my temper. I place my foot over the ball, trapping it in place, and push him to the ground with as much of my strength as I can.

"Hey ref, that's a red," Cancelo says as one of the players posing as the ref walks up to us and pulls out a red card. João Cancelo cheers as I help João Félix up.

"You alright ?" I ask. "You're not hurt are you ?"

"I'm fine," he huffs dusting himself off.

"Yeah, I think that's enough for me today," I sigh apologizing to the rest of the team and heading off the field.

João's POV

"I don't understand what happened," Cristiano says, "Sofia is very good about leaving her problems off the field. This has nothing to do with you," he reassures me, only I don't know if I believe it, "she's all over the place because of last night's game."

"Is she alright ?" I ask, "I noticed her eyes were red and puffy."

"You haven't spoken to her ?" He asks me. "What happened to you guys anyway, you went through the trouble of asking me for permission to date her to never ask her out ?"

"Um no," I scratch the back of my head, "last night she went with the team, and this morning she wasn't around, it's not like she'd even speak to me, she barely even looks in my direction," I huff. "I wanted to ask her, but then the Kai stuff happened, and I thought it'd be best to let it," I pause "dissolve. And now, I think she's mad at me, although I don't really know what I've done."