“The one you’ve been dueling like it’s personal.” He holds my eyes a beat too long. “Play the game, not the man. Water. Go.”
“It’s not personal,” I tell him. “It’s a quarterfinal.”
“Sure,” he says, the exact same way Davide says it to me, and he moves on to the goalkeeper.
Second half, they score.
It’s a set piece, which is an insult. Their big centre-half rises at the back post and it’s in, and the red half of the stadium becomes the only noise in the stadium. I stand in the middle of the pitchwith my hands on my hips and feel the tournament tilt under my feet.
“Heads up,” Davide shouts, clapping. “There are still thirty minutes left. Go get it back.”
So I go and get it back. That’s the job. You don’t stop weather and you don’t sulk about the rain. You go and get the ball and you run at the man again, and you keep running at him until either he breaks, or the clock does.
So I run at him again. And again. And every single time a compact Czech shadow arrives at the exact instant the danger becomes real and turns my best into merely good, my goal into a half-chance, my half-chance into a tame goal kick the keeper collects without leaving his line.
“He’s still on your shoulder,” their keeper yells at him once, and Kovár doesn’t even answer, because he’s always on my shoulder, that’s the whole point of him.
In the seventy-eighth I get past both him and the rest of the back line, and it’s just me and the keeper, and I take the shot early, because I’ve learned that with him behind me there is no such thing as late. He is always larger in the last step. That is the part television misses. Six-one does not sound like much until the shoulder closes the lane and the reach arrives where the ball was supposed to be safe. The keeper saves it with his legs. I’m on my knees on the grass with my hands in my hair, and when I look up Kovár is already turning to organize his line.
“Reset,” he tells them, flat. “Next ball. Same shape.”
Because for him the save is just the next ball. He doesn’t carry missed chances either. And I hate that we’re the same. I hate it. On my knees, I have never wanted anyone more.
We don’t score.
Four minutes of added time. I play them as if my life depends on it, which maybe it does. I get one more cross in that’s aninch from Davide’s head. One inch. The width of the entire tournament. Then the whistle, three times, final.
It’s over. Italy is out. I am out. My World Cup ends on a set piece and a Czech right-back and one inch.
Their bench empties. Red bodies run past me toward each other while I stand in the middle of it perfectly still. For me, that’s the loudest thing my body can do. I make myself take the inventory a professional takes.
I played well and we lost. I played well and it didn’t matter. That’s the sentence that’s going to live in me for a while.
Around me, the aftermath happens in pieces. Gallo sits down on the grass and stays there. Ricci has his shirt over his face. Davide stands over him with a hand on his head, saying nothing, guarding him from the cameras with his body.
He comes to me. Of course he comes to me. Through all the red celebration he crosses to the losing winger, hand out, and I take it, because I am a professional and the cameras are on us and this is what men do. His grip is exactly the grip from a hundred private nights. His eyes, for one second, are not the match face at all.
“You were the best player on the pitch,” he says, quietly. Just for me. The truest thing, offered like a coin.
And there it is. The whole disease in a sentence.
“Of course I was,” I say, because I will not be small in front of him, not today of all days. “It wasn’t enough. Congratulations. Go win the whole thing.”
“Enzo...” He watches me but doesn’t say anything else. My stomach drops, waiting for the rest of what he’s not saying. What he’s not going to say and my own words of caution are already replaying in my head.
“You’ve earned the semi. Genuinely. You were the best defender on the pitch and you know it.”
“Don’t do the professional voice with me.”
“It’s the only voice I’m allowed out here. It’s the only voice I can do right now.” I keep his hand the exact length a handshake is supposed to last, and not one second longer. “That’s the thing I finally understand, standing here. You can say the tender thing right now, in front of seventy thousand people, because right now it costs you nothing.”
“That’s not fair,” he says, but doesn’t add anything else. Just stands a step away and watches me.
“Here on the pitch, Marek, everyone is watching, bu nobody sees. You could tell me you loved me on this exact spot and it would still be deniable by dinner.” I can’t stop what’s been inside me from tumbling out. “You have always been so good at walking away. Go win your semifinal.”
“Enzo, wait...”
But I am already turning, because I have somewhere to be, which is anywhere that is not standing in front of him letting him hand me tenderness he will disown the moment there is a door involved. I go and clap my own supporters. They came a long way to watch this. They deserve a man who can lose with his spine straight.
