The first full week of pre-season at Liverpool was a baptism by fire, a relentless series of drills designed to forge a team of champions into an even sharper, more ruthless machine.

And, of course, a place where the banter was just as elite as the football.

The light-hearted mood evaporated the moment they stepped onto the pitch.

Arne Slot stood in the center circle, his expression one of intense, analytical focus.

"Alright, lads," he began, his voice cutting cleanly through the morning air. "We've worked on fitness. We've worked on patterns. Today, we see how it comes together. A simple game. Six-versus-six. Two small goals. I want to see speed, I want to see intelligence, I want to see competition."

He began to read out the teams, and a jolt of pure, unadulterated tension shot through Leon.

"Team A: Salah, van Dijk, Jones, Robertson, and Gakpo."

"Team B: Leon, Isak, Trent, Konaté, Szoboszlai, and Ngumoha."

The setup was not an accident. It was a test. A live-fire experiment.

The 'Alpha Attacker' on one side; the 'Creative Apex' and 'The Hammer' on the other.

This was Slot's laboratory, and they were his prized, volatile chemicals.

The game began, and for the first ten minutes, it was a beautiful, brutal demonstration of the problem his system had warned him about. Salah was a force of nature.

He demanded the ball, his every touch electric, his movement a blur of red. In the third minute, he received a pass from Robertson, dropped his shoulder, and unleashed an unstoppable long shot that flew into the top corner.

Two minutes later, Leon's team tried to respond.

Leon saw a brilliant run from Isak and tried to thread a pass through.

But he had held onto the ball a fraction of a second too long, trying to be the primary creator.

The pass was cut out. The synergy was off. They were getting in each other's way.

On the sideline, Arne Slot and his assistant, Pep Lijnders, were watching with keen, analytical eyes.

"There it is," Slot murmured, almost to himself. "The friction. They are two great players trying to occupy the same creative space."

"They're canceling each other out," Lijnders agreed. "It's like having two number tens on the pitch. It clogs the engine."

Then, in the tenth minute, Leon decided to take matters into his own hands.

He received the ball in the midfield, saw the wall of defenders in front of him, and just... ran.

He glided past the first challenge, nutmegged the second, and found himself one-on-one with the goalkeeper. He faked a shot, sending the keeper sprawling, and then coolly dribbled past him, tapping the ball into the empty net.

It was a moment of individual brilliance.

But as his teammates ran to congratulate him, he felt a pang of frustration. He had had to do it alone.

And then he remembered. The Lightning Rod.

He looked over at the young, quiet Belgian, Nathan Ngumoha, who was playing with a simple, effective energy. He looked at Salah, the sun around which Team A revolved. And he had an idea.

The next time he got the ball, he didn't try to be the hero. He deliberately played a simple, early pass towards Salah's side of the pitch.

As expected, three players from Salah's team, including Robertson, were instantly drawn towards their superstar, a gravitational pull of pure defensive instinct.

But in that same moment, on the opposite side of the pitch, Nathan Ngumoha made a lightning-fast, untracked run into the space they had just vacated.

Leon saw it.

He screamed for the ball back, and with a single, first-time pass, he switched the play, a beautiful, raking ball that landed perfectly in Ngumoha's stride. The young winger was in, but his final shot was saved.

The move didn't result in a goal, but on the sideline, Arne Slot's eyes widened.

He turned to Lijnders, a slow, brilliant, impressed smile spreading across his face. He had seen it. The solution.

The training session ended, a whirlwind of sweat, skill, and a newfound tactical hope for Leon. He felt a profound sense of relief.

That evening, he met Sofia at a cozy, quiet restaurant in the city center.

"So," she said, her eyes sparkling with amusement as they looked at the menus. "How was your first week as the brain of the machine?"

"It's... a work in progress," he admitted with a wry smile. He explained the tactical conundrum, simplifying the complex footballing jargon.

"Basically, Mo Salah is the sun. Everything revolves around him. And I'm... well, I guess I'm another, slightly smaller, very white-haired sun. And the problem is, you can't really have two suns in the same sky. It gets a little crowded."

"So what do you do?" she asked, genuinely intrigued. "Go supernova?"

He laughed. "No. You find a moon. You bounce your light off someone else, someone unexpected, and you create a whole new kind of gravity."

"A poet," she said, a warm, affectionate smile on her face. "My footballer is a secret, tactical poet."

They talked for hours, an easy, happy conversation that was the perfect end to a long, complicated week. As they were getting ready to leave, walking out into the cool Liverpool night, Sofia slipped her arm through his.

"For the record," she said, her voice a soft, happy murmur.

"I think two suns in the same sky sounds kind of beautiful."

He smiled, a feeling of pure, uncomplicated happiness washing over him. He was about to reply when he saw a familiar, iconic figure walking out of a private room at the back of the same restaurant.

It was Mohamed Salah. He wasn't alone. He was shaking hands with another man, a man in a sharp, expensive suit with a predatory, intelligent look in his eyes.

Leon recognized him instantly from the news, from the back pages of every sports paper in the world.

It was Giovanni Russo, the most powerful, most ruthless, and most famous super-agent in all of football, an agent known for one thing: engineering spectacular, world-record-breaking, and often very controversial, transfers. And he was not Mo Salah's agent.

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