"Everything in this tournant is going to be loud," Nico William said while all eyes stayed glued to the screen.
On screen, the opening ceremony had begun, with perforrs moving across the pitch in formations that, from the aerial shot, resolved into shapes recognisable as the flags of the three host nations.
The music at first was the kind of music these things always had, enormous and orchestral, designed to make the mont feel as large as it already was.
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Pause
[Mid/AN: Okay, for the sake of not offending anyone, I will skip writing things like the opening ceremony performance. I looked online a lot for maybe a hint about anyone who could be performing, but it seems FIFA has done its best to keep it under wraps or just hasn’t gotten an idea yet, so fill in the gaps with your mind. I know y’all have very..., umm..., broad and nice imaginations. (.﹏.). Okay, now back to the book.]
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"Predictions," soone said from the back, causing all the players to go contemplative for a bit, at least before, "For the ceremony?" Zubindi asked, causing the rest of the players to break out into bits of laughter.
"What?" Lamine said with a slight chuckle, before pointing towards the screen.
"For the ga. xico, South Africa. Who wins?"
"Oh," Zubindi muttered before focusing on his food.
"So who wins?" Lamine repeated.
"xico," half the table said, more or less simultaneously.
"Obviously xico," Pedri affird.
"They have the ho crowd, opening ga, the Azteca. I think South Africa have no chance."
"Don’t say that," Carvajal said.
"Hosting nations at opening gas is never as easy as it looks."
The room went a bit silent after that before the predictions started to actually co through.
"xico win," Lamine said flatly.
"Two-nil and Lozano scores one of those two."
"Lozano’s retired," Fermín said, causing Lamine to look at him like he was mad.
"Since when?" Lamine questioned, but Fermin Lopez just shrugged and went back to eating.
"You....." Lamine hissed, realising it was just Fermin’s ploy to wind him up.
"I’ll say one-nil," Nico said.
"Maybe a scrappy late goal and then the crowd goes insane."
"That’s very specific."
"That’s how these gas go."
Huijsen, who had been eating quietly and watching the ceremony, said without looking up: "Two one for South Africa and they score first."
The table went quiet for half a second.
"South Africa scores first?" Pedri said.
"In the Azteca. Opening ga."
"That would be—"
"Chaotic," Cubarsí said.
"Incredible," Lamine said at the sa ti.
"It would be a nightmare for the hosts," Carvajal said. "Which ans it’ll probably happen because football."
Huijsen shrugged and went back to his food.
Lamine finally turned to glance behind before posing a na questionably.
"Izan?
Everyone looked down the table where Izan had been watching the screen with one elbow on the table and his chin resting in his hand.
He didn’t look away from the screen.
"xico. Two nil."
"Boring," Lamine said.
"Correct," Pedri followed.
"Those aren’t mutually exclusive," Olmo added.
On screen, the ceremony was reaching whatever its intended crescendo was.
A mont later, the caras cut between the pitch and the stands as one of the legends of the ga, Michael Essien, together with Alex Morgan, brought the World Cup trophy to a small podium set in front of the crowd.
Looking at it on the screen, the Spanish players felt reminded once again of why they were at the tournant.
Then the ceremony ended a while later as the teams ca out, and the broadcaster’s voice cut across everything else.
"This," he said, "is the 2026 World Cup."
And for a while, nothing else was said in the dining room.
The ga kicked off ten minutes after the ceremony ended, and within thirty seconds, it was clear that South Africa had not co to the Azteca to lose quietly.
They were very aggressive but also organised.
And when you watched them play, you knew that they had a plan and that imdiately made the dining room more interesting than most of the Spanish squad had expected.
"Okay," Pedri said.
"I can’t help but hear that one comntary whenever I see South Africa," Olmo inputted.
xico took a while to settle.
The crowd was doing what the Azteca crowd does, but for the first fifteen minutes, the ho side looked like a team feeling the weight of eighty-seven thousand people expecting sothing.
South Africa kept winning the ball back.
They kept transitioning and kept making xico’s defenders look at each other, and that made so players in the squad who had predicted xico’s easy win cower.
"Carvajal," Lamine said slowly, without taking his eyes off the screen.
"Don’t," Carvajal shook his head.
"I’m just saying—"
"Don’t say it."
The ga opened up after twenty minutes, and when it did, it beca genuinely good, end to end, with neither side giving the other a clean mont to breathe.
On one end, a xican winger cut inside and forced a save, while on the other, South Africa broke free with a three-on-two, but the finish went just wide.
Those who had been keen on eating had now forgotten their food.
Then, just before the half hour, a corner ca in from the left and xico’s goalkeeper went up for it, got there, landed badly, and stayed down.
"Uuuuuh," Raya mouthed while biting his knuckles.
On screen, the physios were already on, and the goalkeeper was on his back with one hand over his face.
"That doesn’t look good," Huijsen said, and nobody replied because there wasn’t much to say.
You didn’t have to be a doctor to read the body language.
The way the physio was already signalling to the bench, the way the goalkeeper wasn’t trying to get up and that made so of the Spanish players shift in their seats.
"You never want to see that," Carvajal said quietly. "Doesn’t matter who it is."
The players around him nodded, knowing very well that they couldn’t even fathom how difficult it would be to get stretched off in inarguably the biggest tournant of a footballer’s career!
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