Chapter Four: An Old Injury Worth Eight Million

In stoppage time, his free kick found a striker at the far post. The header went wide. Two-one. Harborbridge lost, but their supporters stayed and sang for ten minutes. Back in his office, Harding slapped the team sheet onto the desk. “We have someone who can open a door, but nobody who can run through it. The winter window is four months away. In four months, we'll already be relegated.” Lin had a name: Elias Ndiaye, twenty-one, a Senegalese winger. Two years earlier, he had clocked 35.7 kilometers per hour in Ligue 1. Now Northcastle United had loaned him to a third-tier club, where he had not played for seven months. The official reason was cartilage damage in his right knee, making high-intensity football inadvisable.