Page 51 of Offside

“You attached photos.”

“Annotated photos. I’m a professional.”

They keep it going, the three of them, a rally without me in it, and I sit inside my own minimum viable output and eat what’s in front of me. Which is a plate. Which was at my seat when I sat down, eggs, toast, two bananas, because a man walked into this gutted room ten minutes after losing the biggest match of his life’s sleep and his hands still ran their schedule.

He’s at the far end now, gray, upright, captaining the wreckage. Refilling Horak’s juice. Answering the physio. I don’t engage. He doesn’t engage. Two professionals, ten meters, one plate.

“You’re not doing the report,” Horak says to me, careful, like he’s asking about an injury. “There’s always a report.”

The room doesn’t stop, but it leans. Men not looking at me, but listening.

“Item one.” My voice comes out on time and in tune, which is the whole trick, that’s all the broadcast has ever been. “The eggs win today. Nobody contest them.”

It gets a laugh. Small, real, grateful. One bit, with blood all through it, and nobody checks the blood, because nobody has ever once checked. Horak goes back to his juice looking less nineteen. Minimum viable output, delivered.

The rest of the day I run cold.

Pool at ten. The physio talks at me for twenty minutes while she works my calf.

“My mother says that referee needed glasses in 2019 already. My brother-in-law has the offside from the buildup frozen on his television like a shrine. And I say we were an inch from extra time. An inch, Šíma. You put that ball through a keyhole in the eightieth and nobody will remember it, and that’s football, and football should be ashamed of itself.”

“It happens.”

She moves to the ankle, waiting for more from me. Which I usually give. When I give her nothing else, she says, “Fine. I’ll talk for both of us. My sister wants to know if the team is eating.”

I give her four words total across twenty minutes and she doesn’t notice, because she’s kind and she’s talking for both of us on purpose.

“You’re allowed to be sad,” she says, at the end, patting my ankle. “Even you.”

“Noted.”

Coach passes me in the corridor. Stops. Looks at me the way he looks at film.

“Bronze,” he says. “I need the room lighter. You’re the lever.”

“I know.”

“I know you know.” Even coach talks at me in paragraphs today.

At lunch, Novotný reads his federation feedback aloud to the table. It has sections.

“Point four. The fourth official’s coordination with the linesman on the buildup, see attached, figures one through three.”

“Withdraw the appendix,” Polášek says.

“The appendix is load-bearing.”

“You’ve cited your own tweet.”

“I’ve cited a WITNESS.”

The table argues the appendix for ten minutes, gratefully, loudly, a squad breathing into a paper bag, and I eat my lunchinside the noise and contribute nothing, and nobody needs me to, which is either the system working or the system failing and I no longer know the difference.

Damián finds me in our room at four, folding what’s already folded.

“So we lost,” he says, to my back. “And the sun came up anyway. I checked. I was surprised too.” He drops onto his bed. “Tobík called for an hour. He says, and I’m quoting, tell your roommate the blog rates his semifinal an eight point five and the blog does not inflate." He looks over at me, gauging my reaction. "He thought it would help.”

“It helps.”