My Ultimate Gacha System-Chapter 341 - 15: St George’s Park II

Changing Room — 2:50 PM

His kit was at spot twelve. White training top folded over the back of the chair, England crest on the chest, dark shorts, white socks. Number 26 on a small card beside the hook above the spot.

Last called up. That was fine. Numbers were placeholders until they meant something else.

He changed while the room filled around him. Trent Alexander-Arnold coming in from the right talking to Trippier about something neither of them looked particularly invested in. Henderson on the floor near the far wall working through a hip flexor sequence with the particular focused patience of someone who’d been maintaining the same body for fifteen years. Rashford already changed and sitting with his phone. Kalvin Phillips arrived while Demien was lacing his second boot and dropped his bag on the bench and said nothing to anyone, which seemed to be his natural state.

Grealish came past and clocked Demien’s boots — the Predator Elites, the same ones from the Coppa Italia final — and paused.

"You with Adidas?" he said.

"Yeah," Demien said.

"Good choice," Grealish said, without particularly meaning anything by it, and kept walking.

Eze arrived and took the spot beside Demien and they nodded at each other without speaking and laced their boots in parallel, and the room noise built around them while the clock on the wall moved toward three.

Training Pitch — 3:00 PM

The pitch surface was the kind that came from professional daily maintenance — dense and level and the specific bright green of grass that received more care than any club training pitch he’d worked on except Gewiss Stadium on matchday.

Southgate and two assistant coaches and a fitness coach waited at the centre circle while the squad settled into the loose pre-session grouping that teams used everywhere at every level, and when the last players came out of the tunnel Southgate looked around once and said: "Right. Two laps, dynamic stretching. Then possession drill. Move."

The squad jogged. Demien fell in on the outside of the group and settled into the pace and the pace was fine — controlled, purposeful, nothing he couldn’t hold — but what the first lap told him was something the television version of this squad had never communicated and that was how the baseline felt in person. The way everyone moved was the movement of people who had been at this level long enough that nothing about it required demonstration. There was no effort being shown. There was just the effort.

He ran both laps and said nothing and took note of everything.

The system panel appeared in the corner of his vision when he was coming off the second bend.

「DAILY TRAINING MISSION ACTIVATED」 「LOCATION: St George’s Park — England Senior Camp」 「OBJECTIVE: Complete full training session — 85%+ pass accuracy」 「REWARD: +10 TP」 「BONUS OBJECTIVE: Impress coaching staff during tactical drill」 「BONUS REWARD: +5 TP」

The panel faded. He kept running.

Possession Drill

Three teams of eight. Keep-away in a forty-by-thirty grid. High press from the middle team, two-touch maximum, rotate when you lose possession.

His team: Gallagher, Eze, Mings, Guehi, Ramsdale, Trippier, Phillips. Rice’s team pressing.

The first ball came to him at the edge of the grid with Rice closing from six yards. Two-touch meant the first touch had to be directional not settling, and it was — inside to Gallagher before Rice got there, weight correct. Rice overran it.

The second time he was tighter with two bodies close and he took it one-touch to Trippier and moved immediately into the space that opened, and the ball came back in a better position.

Nothing lost. Nothing spectacular. He was above 85% within ten minutes and the primary objective was not the concern.

The concern was the bonus. Impressing coaching staff during tactical work meant not just being correct but being visibly better than the players around him at something specific, and the players around him were very good and very familiar with each other and with this environment.

He worked through thirty minutes of possession without losing the ball once and without doing anything that made any of the coaching staff write anything down.

Tactical Shape

Southgate brought them in and a whiteboard on wheels was brought out and he drew Malta’s shape — 4-5-1, sitting deep, narrow, wingbacks dropping to form a near-six when England entered the final third.

"They don’t press high. They give you space in front of the block and make you find the way through. Our job is patience. Circulate, shift them, find the pocket when it opens." He tapped two zones on the board. "The space between their midfield line and their defensive line is where we want to play. That’s tight but it’s there when they shift."

He stepped back. "First team through."

Kane, Saka, Foden, Rashford, Rice, Henderson, Shaw, Stones, Maguire, Walker, Pickford took their positions.

Demien was in the second group watching, and he watched properly.

The first team ran the drill and what he understood watching it from the outside was what he hadn’t been able to understand from television, which was how the unit moved as connected parts. Henderson and Rice in the double pivot weren’t communicating with each other during the drill — they didn’t need to because the positions they each took were a function of knowing exactly where the other one would be, and that knowledge came from years rather than instructions. The distances between lines were maintained by instinct rather than correction. When Southgate stopped it twice the corrections were specific and fine — Stones’ angle on a switch, Shaw’s timing on an overlap — not the principle, which was already correct.

Switch.

Demien’s team in. He played the eight alongside Kalvin Phillips.

The first passage he showed for the ball the way Henderson had — shoulder check early, drop slightly, show on the half-turn — and the pass came and the press was faster than it looked from outside. He took his first touch and it was slightly heavy, not a mistake but heavier than he wanted, and rather than force it into traffic he played it back to Maguire. Safe. Not impressive.

He reset and took his position for the next sequence.

The second time the ball came to him he was in a tighter pocket and he played it one-touch to Phillips before driving forward into the channel, and the ball came back to him in a better position and he pulled it into Eze’s run ahead — clean pass, good weight, right decision.

Southgate glanced toward his assistant. His assistant said something quietly. Southgate didn’t write anything down.

The drill ran for twenty minutes and he didn’t lose possession once and he wasn’t Henderson.