God Of football Chapter 999: Goal Drought?
Previously on God Of football...
When the table in the living room buzzed, Izan didn’t even look at his phone at first.
He had just come back from training, and there was a lot that went through his mind after sessions like that.
The Hampstead house was quiet with the late afternoon light pouring through the glass wall, stretching across the wooden floor.
The phone buzzed again, and on the third time, he finally reached for it lazily, thumb brushing the screen open after the face ID got the lock out of the way.
Scrolling through the stack of notifications, Izan came across a tagged notification from an account he recognised.
"Not doing too bad for yourself," he muttered as he stared at the massive football edit account with millions of followers.
And this was the same account of the guy who had taped him first when he was playing in that scrimmage back on one of the pitches in Alboraya, a couple of years ago.
Tuning his thoughts out, he turned towards the bottom of the post where the caption read:
"15-year-old Izan was a menace."
He tapped the link attached, and a moment later, the reel opened with grainy footage from a pitch, particularly, the Cuidad Deportiva de Paterna.
The colours were slightly washed with the camera shaking from somewhere behind the metallic netting, where fans were sometimes allowed to stand and watch the team train.
And in the video, a younger version of him — leaner, almost fragile-looking at the time- glided past a defender in one of the Valencia training kits.
In the next second, the video transitioned, this time to Izan, who was well established in the Valencia senior team and then his performances against Atlético Madrid, which resulted in his first hat-trick.
The second cut moved towards another side of Madrid, at the Bernabeu this time, where he got a brace too against Real Madrid.
A finish at the near post.
Then another where he dropped his shoulder, sent two white shirts sliding in opposite directions before rounding one of the very best shotstoppers in the world.
Eventually, the edit slowed into a celebration as a boyish grin broke out on his face with arms spread wide.
After a second watch, he moved into the comments, and it was already flooded.
The official LaLiga account had commented:
"We remember."
He let out a soft breath through his nose before moving further down, where he saw some familiar names.
Pietro17:
luvSosa:
Javi Guerra:
He smiled properly at that while his thoughts blurred into the memory of Valencia heat and the smell of the pitch at Mestalla.
The way the crowd used to chant his name with disbelief, and how they revered him.
Back then, it was smaller and nowhere near how the Arsenal fans did him, but it felt much more special back then.
He remembered the first time he walked into the senior dressing room.
The way older players had looked at him like he was someone’s younger brother who had wandered in by mistake.
Stuck in his thoughts, he didn’t even realise he was still smiling until Olivia’s voice came from behind him.
"Reliving your glory days?"
She was walking past the couch, brushing a hand along the back of it as she moved.
He tilted the phone toward her without turning his head fully.
"If those are my glory days," he said lightly, "what should these current times be known as?"
She paused.
Then she came around and sat beside him.
The video looped again, but neither of them watched it this time.
Olivia looked ahead, not at the screen.
"It’s him against the world now," she said quietly.
Izan looked at her properly then.
Her expression wasn’t worried exactly, but it was to some extent.
"These days, it doesn’t even feel like you belong to us," she said with a wry smile while bobbing her head around.
He leaned forward slightly, then wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her gently toward him as he leaned back into the couch.
Her head settled against his chest while her hand found comfort in his hair.
"I’m happy," he murmured near her ear. "I’m having fun."
She let out a soft sigh.
"I just wish I could do more for you."
He shook his head against her hair.
"You already do enough."
"Plus, we’ve got a lot ahead of us," he added, almost as if reminding himself.
They then stayed like that for a moment, quiet with the late afternoon shifting slowly across the floor as light started slowly giving way to darkness.
Then Hori’s voice cut clean through the calm.
"Oh my God."
They both turned their heads towards the source of the voice, and Hori stood near the base of the staircase, arms folded, expression somewhere between disgusted and amused.
"You have a perfectly large room upstairs," she said. "But no. Let’s make everyone uncomfortable in the living room."
Olivia lifted her head, laughing softly.
"We’re not even doing anything."
"Sure," Hori replied dryly.
"That's how everyone talks until their belly starts to swell," she remarked like a mother who worried too much, snapping her fingers toward the fluffy white dog resting by the sofa. "Miko." At the sound of its name, the white Samoyed obediently padded toward her. "I can't deal with this," Hori declared, already heading for the cantilevered stairs. "Find yourselves a room. Preferably, the one you already have." She ascended the stairs with Miko trotting closely behind, a wave of laughter following her from below. ..... The West Ham match and the verdict were behind them, and the international break brought a much-needed pause. Twelve days without club football. Twelve days filled with national anthems, press conferences, and squad announcements flashing across the screens. And once more, Izan's name was conspicuously absent. This time, the reason was straightforward. A sprain. In the days leading up to the break, he had injured his ankle, earning him permission to skip the international games. Consequently, the uproar from his earlier exclusion that season was nowhere to be heard. The world had more pressing matters to captivate its attention. When the break concluded, he was selected for the squad facing Fulham that weekend. At the Emirates. The final score was 3–0. Izan did not score, but his performance rendered it unnecessary, as all three goals originated from his influence. In a game where Arsenal had several key players sidelined, including Rice and Odegaard, along with other midfield options, Arteta deployed Izan in a much deeper role than usual. This positioning, however, proved to be no hindrance for him. By midweek, the clamor surrounding him had resurfaced. The Champions League was back, with Arsenal hosting Atlético Madrid. A match that carried a distinct sense of pride. By the end of the night, the score read 4–0. And once again, Izan shone, netting two goals and providing two assists. He scored one by effortlessly weaving between the center-backs as if he belonged there, and the second was far more clinical. With a deceptive shoulder drop, he sent the defender the wrong way before calmly slotting the ball home. In between, he carved out space from seemingly nowhere for teammates who barely needed to adjust their stride. With these contributions, Izan amassed ten goals and nine assists across just three Champions League matches. Nineteen goal contributions solely in European competitions. The statistics began to blur the line between reality and fiction. Resembling a gameplay scenario from a career mode set to beginner difficulty. Yet, his opponents were Atlético Madrid, not a team from a training ground. Before the reverberations of that midweek European encounter had even faded, Arsenal dominated Crystal Palace in the league, scoring another four goals. Despite playing the full ninety minutes, Izan did not score or provide an assist. It marked the first time in over eighteen months that he left a pitch without his direct involvement being recorded on the scoreboard. This absence from scoring and assisting did not go unnoticed, as a few dissenting voices grew louder, suggesting the league had begun to adapt to him. And the subsequent match did little to bolster his case. In the Carabao Cup fixture against Brighton, he entered the game in the 80th minute. He neither scored nor assisted in this appearance, but attention shifted elsewhere. Everyone was focused on his two consecutive games without a goal contribution, disregarding the fact that he had only played ten minutes in the latter match. A pundit on a late-night television show lamented, "It's become a global spectacle when this kid doesn't score or assist in two straight matches. That's the level of attention he commands now." When questioned about his perceived goal drought in an interview, Izan simply offered a smile without uttering a word. However, in the very next game, Izan made his loudest statement, achieving a hat-trick by the 70th minute. "Well, there are the goals they were asking for before the game," the commentator announced after Izan concluded his goal celebration. But his scoring spree did not halt there; against Slavia Praha in the following match, Izan secured another hat-trick, followed by a third consecutive hat-trick against Sunderland in the league. It appeared to be a direct response to the recent murmurs about his "two-game goal drought." As if defying expectation, in the next league encounter against Tottenham at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium, Izan delivered yet another hat-trick, marking his fourth in a row and accounting for twelve goals in that span alone. To cap it all off, he skillfully provided five assists interspersed within these matches. The Premier League statistics consequently soared to unprecedented levels. Thirty goals. Eleven assists. In eleven appearances out of a possible twelve. In European competitions, the numbers were even more astounding. Thirteen goals and eleven assists, achieved in just four Champions League games. And remarkably, Izan had not yet reached adulthood. [25th November]