God Of football Chapter 1009: What A Season Left Behind!

A photograph captured by freelance photographer Daniel Morse during the final days of the Premier League season would, in less than a week, grace the covers of hundreds of magazines across all seven continents. This included publications not primarily focused on football. Furthermore, the image was printed on thousands of shirts from a factory in Bangladesh and found a place on the wall of a bar in Osaka, a venue that had never previously broadcasted Premier League matches until a couple of seasons prior. Morse had positioned himself behind the north goal, aiming for a wide shot to encompass the full spectacle of the Emirates stadium during celebrations. He intended to capture the confetti cannons erupting and the vibrant red and white of the atmosphere, with sixty thousand people on their feet, generating a sound so immense it felt as though a wormhole might spontaneously emerge and engulf them all. While panning across the pitch, his viewfinder unexpectedly landed on Izan, and something compelled him to pause. Izan was standing alone in the center circle. His teammates had already moved towards the supporters, substitutes had flooded out from the bench, and Arteta could be seen near the touchline, his arms around his coaching staff, his face hidden in someone’s shoulder. With the season concluded and the title secured, the entire stadium was in a state of joyous motion, with the exception of Izan. He remained completely still, his boots firmly planted on the grass, head tilted back slightly with his eyes closed. The confetti descended around him in a slow, spiraling fashion, catching the late afternoon sunlight.

"They've done it again," the commentators bellowed from the gantry, as it seemed the fans were on the verge of stepping onto the pitch. "20 years of drought and now Arsenal have won the league, back-to-back!"

Back on the pitch, a grass stain marked Izan's left knee from a sliding tackle in the second half. His arms hung loosely by his sides, reminiscent of someone who had finally, after a considerable duration, set down a heavy burden. Morse captured eleven frames in four seconds. After reviewing them in his own time, he selected the third image, where the stadium's lighting illuminated Izan, presenting him as an angelic figure poised to return to his celestial abode after fulfilling a divine mission. The photograph was published the following Thursday, with a single word placed beneath Izan's face, above the masthead: UNPRECEDENTED.

And that was all. No subheading was provided, and no explanation was deemed necessary. This itself served as a testament to the extraordinary nature of the season. Attempting to describe the 2025/26 season to someone unfamiliar with it—perhaps someone who had been at sea, in a coma, or possessed an unusual aversion to football—would immediately present a challenge. It wasn't a shortage of facts; the facts were plentiful. The issue was that, presented plainly and chronologically, these facts sounded fabricated. They resembled the fantastical numbers a child might invent when asked to imagine the greatest footballer ever, only for an adult to gently explain that reality doesn't operate that way. Except, in this case, it had. It truly had, and there were countless eyes, hearts, and cameras to bear witness.

Seventy-five goals in the Premier League. In a single season. This was a staggeringly mythical output from a 16-year-old who had arrived from Valencia two summers prior. The previous year had been spectacular; he had scored 47 league goals, shattering numerous records while securing the sextuple. However, many felt that was his peak. Izan was destined to become the greatest player football had ever conceivably witnessed. If he was achieving such numbers at 16 and 17, what would he accomplish by 23? Yet, they didn't have to wait that long. Just one season later, he delivered this. To further enhance the dreamlike quality, he provided twenty-seven assists in the league to complement his goals. This meant that in the Premier League alone, across thirty-eight games (in which he didn't participate in all), Izan Miura Hernandez had been directly responsible for one hundred and two goals.

For context – and context was becoming increasingly scarce – the previous Premier League record for single-season goal contributions before Izan's arrival stood at 47. This record was held jointly by Alan Shearer and Andy Cole and had even been matched by Mohamed Salah the season before. However, in that very same season, Izan had decimated that record, raising the tally to 67 goal contributions. And just a year later, Izan hadn't merely broken it; he had rendered it obsolete, a relic from a bygone era of the sport. Then there was Europe. Thirty goals in the Champions League. Twenty-two assists. The thirty goals shattered the record he himself had set the previous season when he surpassed Ronaldo's benchmark of seventeen with twenty-two goals – a record that lasted barely twelve months before its creator made it appear modest.

His fifty-three career Champions League goals, accumulated across parts of two seasons, had already made him Arsenal’s all-time leading scorer in European competition.

A distinction that would have seemed laughable to suggest when he signed, given that he was sixteen years old and there were players in that dressing room who had spent entire careers chasing even a whiff of that same milestone.

The FA Cup had gifted him six more goals.

The Carabao Cup added four, and the Spain qualifiers saw him net eight.

One hundred and twenty-three goals in total.

Sixty assists.

A remarkable hundred and eighty goal contributions across just sixty-three appearances in a single, standout season.

Statisticians had exhausted appropriate historical comparisons somewhere around March and had spent the remainder of the campaign in a state of quiet professional crisis. They produced numbers that were technically accurate yet contextually meaningless because the context simply hadn’t formed yet.

You cannot compare something to history when history possesses no equivalent.

You just have to witness it unfold and try to hold onto the incredible sights.

What the wider public managed to hold onto, in the absence of proper context, was something simpler and more profoundly human.

Amidst all the praise and compelling narratives, the season had not been without its considerable friction.

There had been a particular Tuesday night in February at Molineux, a game that nobody within the Arsenal camp speaks of with any warmth.

Wolverhampton Wanderers, fighting relegation with the sheer desperation only a club staring into the abyss of the Championship can muster, had decided early in the match that the most effective way to counter Izan was to make the simple act of being Izan as physically unpleasant as possible.

It was not precisely a novel approach.

Several clubs had attempted variations of it throughout the season, but with uniformly predictable results.

Izan would absorb the robust contact, stay upright more often than seemed physically reasonable, and then proceed to score twice or thrice anyway.

However, the treatment at Molineux on that specific night was something beyond what even that established pattern had prepared anyone for.

He was fouled eleven times. Eleven times within a mere thirty minutes.

He suffered a late tackle to his left ankle in the opening minute and continued playing. He was elbowed forcefully in the ribs while contesting a header in the 15th minute, yet he uttered no complaint.

He was brought down from behind in a challenge so blatant that even the Molineux crowd openly hissed at its severity, but he simply got up, glanced at the referee, and then looked away – an action somehow more cutting than any overt reaction he could have offered.

Even with all that sustained pressure, he found the net in the forty-fourth minute and again in the sixty-second, securing Arsenal a 2-0 victory.

Arteta had occupied his seat in the post-match press conference with the profound stillness of a man actively suppressing a considerable amount of potent feeling.

When questioned about the game's intense physicality, he paused for a significant moment before offering his response.

"There are various ways to play against exceptional players," he stated carefully. "Some of them involve playing football. Others… do not. Tonight, we witnessed examples of both." Another deliberate pause. "I am immensely proud of how Izan conducted himself. More proud than words can adequately express."

The FA conducted a review, but no administrative changes materialized.

Their official statement had been non-committal, brushing over the events while leaving everyone dissatisfied.

What nobody could have possibly predicted was that Izan himself seemed, after four days of dedicated rest and treatment on his left shin, to return not diminished but somehow clarified.

It was as though the period of rest had purposefully stripped away superficial layers, leaving only the absolute essential.

In the four league matches that followed the Molineux encounter, he unleashed a torrent of eleven goals.

His shot accuracy across those four games stood at an astonishing ninety-eight percent.

His average touches within the opposition's penalty box per game increased by three.

Whatever Molineux had intended to achieve, it had demonstrably failed.

Wolves ultimately faced relegation in April, and their manager departed by mutual consent just six days later.