Page 25 of Offside

“The semifinal wants that?”

“It’s been very clear about it.”

“And the bibs needed numbering?”

“The bibs have always needed numbering. Somebody finally listened to them.”

He lets me finish, because he’s wise. Once the kit room can pass a military inspection, I feel better in a way that has a shelf life of maybe forty minutes.

Polášek finds me before the forty minutes are up, holding the seating chart I posted this morning.

“You assigned bus seats.”

“Optimized. Sleepers at the back, talkers at the front, Novotný by a window that locks.”

“We’ve sat wherever we liked before.”

“And look where it got us.”

“The semifinal.”

“Exactly. Imagine the final.”

He walks away shaking his head, and he takes the chart with him, which is how I know it stands.

The semifinal does this to me. Everything I can reach gets an order. Travel manifests, checked twice. Recovery slots, rebalanced. The physio’s queue, resequenced by muscle group,which she accepts with one eyebrow at legal maximum and then uses.

I know what I’m doing. I’m a dispatcher, running perfect timetables for everything in the country.

Šíma comes through the recovery room with half the squad behind him and stops like a tour guide who has found the monument.

“There he is,” he says, to his audience. “The man who gave the bibs a government.”

“Numbers,” I say. “The bibs got numbers.”

“Novotný’s photos are in the chat. There’s a hierarchy. There’s talk of a constitution.” He watches my hands, which are squaring the protein tubs on the shake station by expiration date. “Captain. Those tubs have been interviewed twice already. They have nothing new to say.”

Novotný laughs from the ice baths. Polášek just looks at me. That’s worse.

“Expiration dates matter in a semifinal week,” I say.

“They expire in March,” he says. “I checked. It’s on the record.”

I put the tub down. He’s already moved on to narrating Novotný’s ice bath like a cup final. He doesn’t look back to check whether it worked. He doesn’t have to.

And that’s all I have to say about the recovery room.

Damián finds me in the players’ lounge mid-afternoon, holding his phone like a boarding pass.

“The shipping people emailed. The boxes from my apartment in Germany come in three weeks. Nine boxes. That’s either very sad or very efficient.”

“Efficient. You’ve been living out of overnight bags since Munich.”

“Right?” He drops into the chair opposite. He has the lightness about him again, the one that switches on whenever the futuregets mentioned. “Tobík found a place that does proper knedlíky. The bread kind. He sent a picture. Šíma’s going to defect.”

“He’ll demand an inquiry.”

“It’s how he keeps control.” He scrolls, grinning. “I have a bunch of Czech league programs in the boxes. I should probably get rid of them.”