Riase the Level - Ona Batlle

7

a/n: Any conversations in Spanish will be italicized.

The beginning of training could be described as a little messy, as most of us were just back from international camp and needed to get our feet wet again, and some of us weren't past the jetlag yet. Jonas knew that right after returning from a camp was always rough for the international players, so we started out with some basic passing patterns before moving into some more intense and technical drills.

When we split into the partners for the next drill, I looked towards Daan, we usually partnered up for everything, but I saw her walking over to work with Lia. It made me a little sad, but I understood and went over to Jill instead.

This drill was a 1v1 and it went by quickly, but it was a little awkward for me and Jill. We were both attacking players, me a striker and her an attacking midfielder, but we made it work. After plenty of points being scored by each of us, I had won, and it was time to end the session with some small-sided games. Daan and Jill were together on the opposing team which always made games difficult because they worked so well together, but our midfield and defense were doing well to keep them contained.

By the end of the training session, my team ended up losing 4-3, I had two of our goals with Viv scoring one as well, but for the opponents, Beth had two on top of Jill and Katie each scoring one too.

I was happy with how I played today, but I was an incredibly competitive person and was upset with the loss. Apparently, you could see this on my face as Jordan came up to me, as she usually did when I was upset after a session, "Take a breath, Cammy, you played great."

I smiled and looked at her, "I know, so did you Jord. I just don't like losing."

Jordan laughed, "Trust me I know you don't."

I didn't get the chance to talk to Daan after training that day. Well, I did have the chance, but she didn't want to talk to me. She had told me that she didn't want anything to take away her focus from this weekend when we were playing Manchester United. Currently, we are in third place and are only above them in the league by two points, so we needed to pull out a win this weekend.

Me and Daan pretty much avoided each other this week, only sending each other small smiles, but not sharing any more than a few words in passing. It was a bit awkward at our flat, but I spent a lot of time at Leah and Jordan's to give Daan some space. Jill insisted that I tried talking to her, but I knew I just had to give her time and space, that she'd come to me when she was ready. That was a big thing about Daan, she always came to you when she was ready, you didn't have to worry about figuring out when she was ready to talk because she certainly would let you know.

We had just gotten to the field, the Emirates, and were doing our pregame field inspection. Just like always, I was standing at center field staring down the goal, shoes off, envisioning scoring, and hearing the huge crowd that was about to fill this arena scream my name. This sounds cocky, maybe I am a little, but this was just to get my mind focused on my goal before the game.

I also just wanted to keep myself busy and avoid any of the pregame subtleties with the opposing team. None of my Australian teammates played at United so I didn't want to make any small talk with players I hardly knew. Plus, I had slept with Maya Le Tissier late last season, so that would've been a bit awkward.

However, there was one player I kept watching from afar, Ona Batlle. We haven't spoken in nearly ten years, we've seen each other at matches for the past two since she came to United, but never spoke besides simple good games. I never pushed further than this because I didn't know if she would remember me, but I certainly had.

I began playing for the Barcelona Academy at 7, the youngest player on the U-12 team, that is where I met Ona. We played together for 3 years and were best friends, despite her being three years older than me. It didn't matter the age difference, we were best friends because of our love for football. We would always play together, even outside of training, it was always football. Our friendship was so innocent our friendship started because of our shared passion, but even as we were so different it always stayed.