"Rewind it again!"
"Stop! Right there!"
"Do you see that!"
"Almost the instant Lucas strikes the ball, Leon has already slammed on the brakes and forced himself to turn back towards goal!"
Inside the AC Milan offices in Portello, Milan, a group of coaches were watching a video clip that had been sent back from Spain.
The footage was from the Segunda División B match between Leoia and Real Madrid B that had just concluded.
In the final moments of the match, Leon had made an astonishing save to deny Lucas's superbly executed chip and secure the win for his side.
Leoia had completed the double over both Barcelona B and Real Madrid B.
That alone was enough to send the Leoia faithful into a frenzy.
Following the win over Real Madrid B, Leoia had climbed to 12th in the table.
Well clear of the relegation zone.
As a newly promoted side in the Segunda División B this season, Leoia's position at the halfway point of the campaign was more than satisfying for their supporters.
Watson had edited the match footage and sent it back to the Milan offices the moment the final whistle had blown.
He had already decided to formally recommend Leon to Milan.
A goalkeeping talent from the East.
His assessment of Hachim Mastour, by contrast, was fairly modest.
Talent was there, but so were obvious flaws.
He needed more time developing at a lower level.
"How did he do that?"
"Anticipation can just about explain it."
"But how did he overcome his own body's momentum like that?"
"Exceptional natural talent? Not entirely impossible, I suppose."
Turner Gal, the Milan fitness coach, still wore a faint look of astonishment on his face.
"Polly! What do you make of it?"
Turner Gal turned to the chief scout Polly beside him.
Polly held a very senior position within the Milan coaching setup.
Approaching seventy, he had witnessed the glory days of Milan.
He had also witnessed the decline that had followed.
Ordinarily Polly would not sit down to watch footage of young players sent back by scouts from around the world.
This time he had simply happened to be there and ended up watching alongside his colleagues.
"I want every single reel of Leon's matches."
"I will draw my conclusions after watching them all."
A rare look of serious intensity crossed Polly's face.
That kind of expression had not been seen since the days he had watched Kaká play.
What a scout saw in a player and what a coach saw were entirely different dimensions of observation.
Especially when it came to young players, coaches focused on current ability.
What a scout valued was exceptional potential in one specific area.
In Polly's eyes, Leon's technical fundamentals were severely lacking.
But all of that could be trained.
What Leon had shown in his anticipation on one-on-one situations was something extraordinary.
Anticipation was invisible and intangible, almost impossible to put into words.
It was also extremely difficult to improve through training.
It was like Milan's manager this season, Inzaghi.
A man who lived on the offside line.
He simply read where the ball would drop and simply appeared in exactly the right place to score.
That was talent.
Leon had no idea at this point that he had already caught the attention of AC Milan's chief scout.
In reality, Leon's current [Anticipation] rating was only 7, which was entirely ordinary.
But the talent [Must-Save on One-on-One] genuinely had the ability to mislead even the sharpest scouts at the top level.
Even so, every one of Leon's attributes could be raised through the system.
[Ding! Congratulations, host, system task completed!]
[Ding! System reward: 200 system points!]
[Ding! Match settled! One one-on-one saved: 10 points, three regular shots saved: 3 points, match victory: 10 points, clean sheet: 20 points! Total system points earned: 43!]
The system points from this match were noticeably fewer than the previous one.
That was to be expected.
Leon could not possibly have the chance to save a one-on-one in every match.
And scoring a goal in every match was even further out of the question.
He was a goalkeeper, not a striker.
Even so, the system task reward this time was generous and had doubled the usual amount.
That was presumably tied to the clean sheet requirement of the task.
For a goalkeeper, the longer the run without conceding, the more impressive the achievement.
The total system points earned from this match came to 243.
Leon's cumulative system points had now reached 443.
That was enough to unlock the second module in the system, the System Shop.
[Ding! System points threshold detected as reached. System Shop can now be unlocked. Unlock?]
'Unlock.'
Leon said it in his mind.
When he looked at the system again, the System Shop panel was no longer greyed out.
Leon went in for a browse, then quietly backed out again.
He could not afford anything.
Every item in the System Shop could be exchanged for system points.
But even the cheapest item he could find, an injury recovery potion, cost 1,000 system points.
And it only reduced injury downtime by a single day.
The two [Free Trial Card: Choose Any] vouchers that had come with his beginner's gift pack were priced at 10,000 system points each.
Only then did Leon understand why the effect of the [Free Trial Card: Choose Any] had been so outrageously powerful.
Because it was outrageously expensive.