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Chapter 213: Mark Him with Five
🕑 Added 2025-05-27 00:20:09 +0000 UTCOctober 21, 2015 — En Route to Belgrade
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The cabin lights were low. A soft amber glow spilled over the rows of plush leather seats, trays pulled down, boots kicked off. Outside, the sky was black and endless. Just the hum of engines and the low rhythm of turbulence beneath their feet.
Tristan sat by the window, hoodie half-drawn over his head. One leg folded under him. His phone rested on his thigh. A fleece blanket bunched beside him, forgotten.
Across the aisle, Vardy and Schmeichel were locked in a pointless debate over who snored louder. Mahrez had his hood up, earbuds in, eyes on his tablet. Chilwell was out cold, mouth slightly open, neck pillow sliding to one side.
Tristan wasn’t part of the conservations around him — not yet. He was thumbing out a reply to Barbara, half-buried in the blue-white glow of his screen.
Then Vardy turned.
“Oi, Tristan.”
He looked up. “Yeah?”
Vardy shifted in his seat, eyebrow raised. “So how much is Klopp paying you under the table? Don’t lie. That he talks about you in front of the media. I quote ‘He’s the most talented player in history’.”
Across the row, Mahrez pulled one earbud free. “He’s probably sending him voice notes every night. ‘Hello, Tristan. I miss your pressing intensity.’”
Schmeichel leaned back. “Nah, he’s standing outside your hotel window right now with a boombox.”
“Playing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone,’” Vardy added. “Real slow. Real romantic. Like a proposal from a man who’s seen too many Scorsese films.”
Even Kanté smiled at that.
Tristan shook his head, still typing. “Yeah, yeah. I’m not that one paying him to hype me up.”
He sent the text, then looked up again. “What can I say? Everyone wants me. Can’t exactly ignore it.”
His voice stayed light, but not weightless. There was a truth hanging under it, just enough to turn the air still.
No one said it out loud, but they all heard the edge in his voice — the not-so-hidden part.
Tristan was leaving.
Not tonight. Not this week. But summer? Yeah. Everyone knew.
Vardy leaned back, watching him for a moment.
It wasn’t just Tristan. Mahrez would go. Kante too, if anyone was paying attention. Schmeichel had had offers for months. And who could blame them?
They were the miracle squad. The once-in-a-lifetime lineup that shouldn’t have worked — but did. And now the world had finally noticed.
Agents. Scouts. Bidding wars. It was all circling.
And Vardy?
He wasn’t bitter.
He’d lived it the hard way. Sunday league, non-league, no league — every league but the one that mattered. He understood what it meant to have doors open that used to be walls.
Still.
He looked back at Tristan — hoodie up, fingers brushing the edge of his phone, a small smile still hovering at the edge of his mouth, like he was trying not to show too much.
He was his little brother.
Vardy closed his eyes for a moment. Let the hum of the jet settle in.
Enjoy it.
That’s what he kept telling himself. Every trip. Every tunnel. Every joke.
Because this version of the squad — this rare, bizarre, perfect thing they’d become — wasn’t going to last.
Next season? It’d all be different.
And Tristan?
Tristan would be somewhere else. Bigger lights. Louder nights.
But for now, he was still here. Still laughing with him.
.
Partizan Stadium – Manager’s Office
The radiator clicked in the corner. A soft mechanical breath. A draft slipped through the cracked window — carrying the smell of wet concrete, steel rails, and cigarette smoke rising from the stadium’s outer bowl.
Outside, Belgrade was all shadowed rooftops and blinking traffic lights. Inside, it was just whiteboards and fluorescent buzz.
Miloš Nikolić leaned over his desk — both palms flat on the edge of a tactical board, its surface ghosted with dry marker stains from seasons past.
Behind him, the flat-screen TV hung silently on a freeze-frame: Tristan Hale, arms spread mid-stride, shirt clinging to his shoulders, body tipped forward like he was sprinting through a different gravity.
The door opened with a light squeak.
Stefan stepped in, holding his phone. “They’ve landed.”
Nikolić didn’t move.
“Customs cleared. They’ll train tomorrow at Red Star’s indoor pitch. Hotel’s by the river, across from Kalemegdan.”
Still nothing.
Then — a quiet breath. “Good.”
A few seconds passed. Stefan shifted closer. His eyes flicked to the board.
“You’re really going with three on him?”
Nikolić’s gaze stayed down. He nodded once. “Two tight. One floating.”
Stefan exhaled through his nose. “That’s half the midfield. If we press like that—”
“I know.”
“So?”
Nikolić finally lifted his head.
His face looked drained — not from lack of sleep, but from overexposure to one name. His pupils moved like someone watching too many screens at once.
“You think I want to do it?” he said, voice dry. “You think I enjoy telling my players they’re not enough to stop one man?”
Stefan said nothing.
Nikolić knocked his knuckle gently against the board. “Name me one. One player in this squad who can hold him alone. Even for ten minutes.”
Stefan didn’t offer a name.
Nikolić picked up the remote and clicked play. The TV stuttered back to life.
Clip one — Tristan turning out of pressure against Arsenal. One pirouette. One angled pass. Vardy in on goal.
Clip two — United. All three of his goals.
Nikolić spoke without turning. “He’s not normal. He moves like a winger, thinks like a number ten, finishes like a nine. He’s not in our system. He’s outside it. He’s not from the same universe as the rest of us.”
Stefan rubbed at the back of his neck.
“You could mark the zone.”
“He floats.”
“Man-mark?”
“He pulls defenders out of shape. That’s the whole trick. You chase him, you break your shape. Then he punishes the hole.”
“Then foul him.”
Nikolić turned from the screen, face still calm, but his jaw barely parted as he spoke.
“Free kick.”
He pointed with the remote. “Three this month already. One from thirty-three yards. You foul him, you just shorten his angle.”
Stefan pressed his lips together. Looked down. Then back up.
Nikolić stepped over to the desk. Picked up a stat sheet — printout. He held it like it was radioactive.
His eyes scanned the numbers, then shook his head slightly, as if the paper had just insulted him.
Stefan tried again. “Boss, I understand. He’s... unique. But three players? That’s surrender. That’s fear.”
The room felt still.
Nikolić’s tone didn’t change. “What do you think this is?”
Stefan didn’t answer.
“Let them laugh in the papers,” Nikolić said. “Let them talk about pride. Pride’s no use when he’s dancing through your midfield with ten million people watching.”
He walked slowly back to the board. Moved a red magnet. Then a white. Then a yellow. All pressing in around one small label: 22.
“We play five in midfield. Double pivot. Attacking mid drops into the line. The winger tucks. The moment he turns, we collapse.”
Stefan pressed his palm over his mouth, dragging his fingers across his cheek. “You really think it’ll hold?”
Nikolić didn’t blink. “No.”
He reached up and tapped the magnet labeled Hale once.
“I think it’s our best bad idea.”
A silence settled.
Then, quieter: “Pray he has a quiet night.”
October 22, 2015 — Partizan Stadium, Belgrade
The cameras cut to the tunnel just as the players lined up. Smoke from the pre-match flares still hung faintly in the rafters, and the crowd hummed with the kind of low, volatile energy that felt ready to boil.
Up in the Sky Sports commentary box, Rob Hawthorne’s voice cut in.
“Evening from Belgrade. It’s a cool night in Serbia, and the atmosphere is fierce here at Partizan Stadium.”
Beside him, Alan Smith leaned into the mic.
“Hostile place to play, Rob. Leicester will know that. But you get the sense—after the way they’ve started the season and what happened in Rome—that this group isn’t fazed by anything anymore.”
The broadcast switched to the lineups:
PARTIZAN BELGRADE — 4-5-1 Formation
🧤 Filip Petrović (GK)
🚀 Radojević (RB)
🏰 Milenković (CB)
🏰 Stevanović (CB)
🚀 Đorđević (LB)
🏃♂️ Jovanović (RM)
🛡️ Marinković (CM)
🛡️ Trajković (CM)
🏃♂️ Ilić (LM)
🎯 Radulović (CAM)
⚽ Đurđević (ST)
LEICESTER CITY — 4-2-3-1 Formation
🧤 Kasper Schmeichel (GK)
🚀 Danny Simpson (RB)
🏰 Robert Huth (CB)
🏰 Wes Morgan (CB) — Captain
🚀 Ben Chilwell (LB)
🛡️ N’Golo Kanté (CDM)
🛡️ Danny Drinkwater (CDM)
🖌️ Riyad Mahrez (RW)
🎯 Tristan Hale (CAM)
🏃♂️ Marc Albrighton (LW)
⚽ Jamie Vardy (ST)
Back on air, Rob’s voice lowered.
“Two very different shapes here tonight. Partizan lining up with a dense midfield five — plenty of numbers to clog the center — and Leicester sticking to that flexible 4-2-3-1 with Hale just behind Vardy.”
Alan nodded, already watching the midfielders shuffle into shape.
“Keep an eye on that area between the lines, Rob. That’s where Tristan Hale lives. And judging by the way Partizan are tucking in early, I think we’ll see a lot of attention on him.”
“He’s the magnet,” Rob added. “The pivot point. You stop him, maybe you stop Leicester.”
Alan gave a short laugh.
“Easier said than done.”
.
The whistle blew.
The match had begun.
Partizan kicked off, passing it quickly back to Milenković who spread it wide to Đorđević on the left. A roar burst from the stands as the first move unfolded, the crowd stamping and clapping with that Balkan rhythm that felt more like a threat than support.
Leicester stayed compact, letting the ball circulate along the back before pressing as a unit. Within seconds, Kanté snapped into a challenge near the halfway line and turned it over. The ball rolled toward Drinkwater, who took a touch and glanced forward.
Rob spoke over the swelling noise. “And just like that, Leicester set their trap. Quick turnover — and now they look to spring.”
Drinkwater played a simple ball into Tristan, who dropped into the pocket just ahead of the circle. As soon as he touched it, the pressure came.
“Look at that,” Alan said sharply. “Two men closing in already — Trajković on his hip, Marinković cutting the lane.”
Tristan barely held it for two touches before laying it back off to Kanté, who immediately recycled it out wide to Chilwell. The crowd let out a quick, satisfied murmur — like they’d just dodged a bullet.
“They’re not letting him breathe,” Rob said. “That midfield triangle’s locked on him like a tracker.”
Alan’s voice had a note of appreciation. “You expect tight marking — but this? This is a box-and-shadow. One goes body, one goes space, and the third reacts to his pass.”
Five minutes passed like that. Tristan moved, and the wave followed. Every time he checked in, someone clattered the passing lane or forced a first-time touch. He barely strung together more than three steps without pressure.
But Leicester adjusted.
Mahrez started tucking inside. Albrighton stayed higher and wider. Vardy began dragging Stevanović out toward the right, trying to thin the crowd around Hale.
Fifteen minutes in, Drinkwater fired a diagonal into Tristan’s chest — his first real moment of time. He took one touch to control, spun left — and in that second, the stadium held its breath.
Then it collapsed again.
“Here he comes,” Rob said.
But before he could slide the through-ball to Vardy, Marinković clipped his ankle.
Whistle.
“Free kick,” Alan confirmed. “About thirty yards.”
Tristan stood up, shook his legs out, and dusted off his sleeves.
He clipped it in. Huth got a head on it — just wide.
As the match wore on, Leicester kept shifting pieces. Tristan drifted left, found a new pocket — same result. A trailing boot. A clattering shoulder.
But then, just before the half, space opened.
Vardy peeled away from Stevanović again, dragging him wider than usual. Mahrez checked back, pulling Ilić out with him. That little vacuum? Tristan spotted it.
Drinkwater slid the pass in low.
“One touch. Two. Oh, lovely footwork!” Rob shouted.
Tristan weaved between the collapsing midfielders — barely — and poked the ball through the line.
Vardy ran onto it.
Left foot. One bounce. Slammed into the bottom corner.
Goal.
The away end exploded.
“That’s why he’s the best,” Alan said, voice tight with praise. “Three men on him all night — and it takes one pocket, one moment, and he makes the whole thing unravel.”
1–0 Leicester.
Second half, same pattern.
Partizan weren’t bad. They had structure, discipline, legs — but every time they pushed forward, they left something open.
In the 63rd minute, it was Mahrez. Tristan drew all three markers to the left channel, paused with the ball, let them bite, then flicked it over the top with the outside of his boot.
Mahrez didn’t even break stride.
“Ball’s perfect!” Rob shouted.
Mahrez touched it once, brought it down, then tucked it past Petrović with ease.
2–0.
By the 70th, Partizan had a lifeline. Radulović curled one from the edge of the box — lovely hit, just out of Schmeichel’s reach.
2–1.
But they never looked like breaking again.
And Tristan?
He capped it in the 84th. Dropped deep, pulled both midfielders with him, then pinged a no-look switch that sent Albrighton flying into space. Albrighton cut inside. Shot. Scored.
3–1.
Final whistle.
Job done.
Alan summed it up best. “Didn’t score. Wasn’t flashy. But he walked off three assists and a man-of-the-match medal — in a game where he barely had three seconds to think.”
Rob added, “Sometimes it’s not about space. It’s about what you do without it.”
“Or,” Alan said with a grin, “what you force others to give up to try and take yours.”
.
Post-Match Media Room
Cameras shifted on tripods. Boots shuffled against concrete. The room smelled faintly of cold sweat. A Serbian flag hung behind the podium, its edge curled inward like it was recoiling.
Miloš Nikolić sat forward, one forearm resting on the table. His blazer was undone, collar pressed tight against his throat. His fingers drummed once — then stopped, as if he’d caught himself revealing something.
His assistant stood near the back wall, hands in his pockets, unreadable.
The moderator gave a slight nod, and a reporter from B92 leaned forward, notebook half-folded.
“Coach Nikolić,” he said in Serbian, “you marked Tristan Hale with three players tonight. In hindsight, was it too much?”
Nikolić didn’t blink. His voice came flat and unhurried.
“If we used four,” he said, “maybe he wouldn’t have assisted three times.”
A ripple of quiet laughter moved through the room. Quick. Uneasy.
Nikolić didn’t laugh.
“We contained him,” he continued, “as well as anyone has this season. He didn’t score. He didn’t dribble through five. But he still destroyed our formation. He still bent our midfield until it broke.”
He leaned back slightly. The chair creaked.
“I stand by the plan.”
Another reporter — foreign accent, maybe French — raised a hand. “Was there any thought to adjusting after the first assist?”
Nikolić exhaled, slow through his nose. He glanced at the table, then back up.
“We did adjust,” he said. “We moved our line. We fouled him earlier. We dropped into a block and doubled Mahrez instead.”
He let that hang for a moment. Then added:
“Didn’t matter.”
His voice wasn’t bitter. Just stripped down to the wires.
“The moment he gets half a second to breathe,” he said, “he punishes you. You give him one channel. One run. One teammate moving at the right angle. And that’s enough.”
His fingers tapped the table again, once.
“You can’t man-mark a shadow,” he said. “He doesn’t stay still. He doesn’t play in one position. And tonight…” He paused. “Tonight, he showed why every club with money and ambition wants him.”
The next question didn’t come.
Nikolić stood. Quietly. He offered a single nod toward the room, turned, and walked out without another word. His assistant followed — no eye contact, no hurry.
The door clicked shut behind them.
Moments later, Claudio Ranieri entered. His blazer was perfectly aligned. A bottle of water was already waiting at the desk. He sat with care, then folded his hands gently on the table like he was praying for a kind question.
A Sky Sports reporter didn’t wait.
“Claudio,” she asked, “Were you surprised by how tightly Tristan was marked tonight?”
Ranieri’s face moved — smiling.
“No,” he said. “No. If I were them, I would have marked him with four.”
That time, the laughter was real. Big. Cathartic.
Ranieri didn’t wait for it to finish.
“But you see,” he continued, “when they do that? Mahrez scores. Vardy scores. Albrighton scores. This is our team.”
“One of them gets doubled? The rest find space. That’s what we train. That’s what we build.”
A different reporter leaned forward, tapping a pen against the table. “Did you speak to Tristan after the game?”
Ranieri nodded, his chin dipping gently. “Yes. He was annoyed.”
That surprised the room — a few eyebrows lifted.
“He wanted a goal,” Ranieri said. “Of course he did. He’s twenty. He’s scored in every competition this year. For him, assists are not enough.”
He paused, looking down briefly, like the memory was still fresh in his ears.
“But I told him: three assists is a hat-trick in disguise.”
“I said, ‘If that is you being contained, then I hope you are contained every week.’”
Ten Minutes Later
Tristan stepped into the room, hair still damp, laces loose, match shirt swapped for a club hoodie. A wall of journalists stood waiting.
"Tristan," one asked, "What did you make of the three-man pressure on you tonight?"
He paused, offered a half-shrug. "It shows what teams think of us. Of me. It’s not disrespect. It’s fear."
"Were you frustrated not to get on the scoresheet?"
He gave a small smile, looking down for half a second. "Always. But goals aren’t the only thing that matter. If I’m dragging three players out of place and Vardy scores because of it, that’s a goal I’m proud of."
Another voice: "Do you expect more teams to try this now?"
Tristan met the question with a quiet nod. "Yeah. They’ll try. Everyone’s watching."
Three assists. Two of them after being boxed in. One no-look switch from deep.
And now? He could already see it his head.
Clips being sent to club analysts across Europe. Tactics boards redrawn. Midfield coaches pulling freeze-frames of him receiving under pressure.
Three men on him. All game. And still they lost.
He smirked to himself.
"Best bad idea," he murmured before answering another question.
.
Next Day
Carrington Training Complex
Rain tapped against the windows like it wanted to be let in.
Louis van Gaal didn’t move.
He stood near the monitor, arms folded, chin lowered slightly, as if staring hard enough might rewind the tape. But it didn’t. It played the same way every time.
On screen: Tristan boxed in by three Partizan midfielders. Twisting. Pivoting. Flicking the ball through a gap that shouldn’t have existed. Mahrez ran on. Goal.
"That pass," van Gaal said flatly. "Was from balance. Not luck."
Beside him, one of the younger analysts scratched something into a notepad, flipping between clips. "And the third assist — Albrighton goal — no-look switch from deep. Forty yards. Didn’t glance once."
Van Gaal didn’t blink.
"When we play them again," he said, quieter now, "he does not receive. We don’t track him. We block where he wants to pass."
He stepped closer to the screen and tapped a finger near Tristan’s outline. It left a faint smudge on the glass.
"Force him sideways," he muttered. "If he must play, he plays backwards. Not forward. Never forward."
The room was silent.
But Van Gaal’s head wasn’t.
He still remembered it. 7–1. The humiliation. Not a loss — a dismantling. That day at King Power when the boy had made fools of them. Of United. Of him.
Then came 5–2. Again. At home, at the theater of dreams and it still hadn’t mattered. The scoreline changed, but the feeling didn’t.
He remembered Pearson’s smirk. Remembered shaking his hand and feeling like he was being mocked.
No arrogance. No celebration. Just something worse — pity.
He’d wanted to rebuild after that. Reset the culture. And to his credit, he had.
Now, United were stable. Focused. Close to the top of the table. The locker room, once fractured and fragile, had bought in again. The press weren’t hounding him for answers anymore.
But Leicester?
Leicester were still there.
Worse — they were stronger.
Claudio Ranieri was a softer face, but the same machine. And Tristan Hale? That boy — no, that man — was different. He was now that best.
Van Gaal stared at the freeze-frame. Tristan mid-pass, weight leaning to one side, eyes facing the wrong way — and still threading it through.
He spoke again, voice more to himself than the room.
He said. "He cannot dictate."
The analyst glanced up. "Would you man-mark him?"
Van Gaal exhaled through his nose.
"I don’t care how many goals he has. If we lose to him again — if we lose to Leicester again — I will never hear the end of it. Not in this job. Not in this country."
He picked up the remote and switched to a new angle. Low sideline view. Tristan’s first assist. That spin. That through ball.
He watched it again. Then again.
Then whispered:
"Not again. We will surround him with 5 bodies if we have to.
It wasn’t just United going over that tapes, it was across all of England and Europe.
Newcastle United Training Centre
.
The projector cast a still frame against the back wall of the tactics room — the image grainy but clear enough.
Tristan. Mid-swing. The ball already threading through two defenders, weight perfect, precision surgical.
A red circle had been drawn around his name on the tactical sheet. Then another. Then a third — darker, slower, as if the marker had started grinding plastic.
“That’s the same kid we tried to kick out of St. James’ last year,” someone muttered.
Another coach scoffed. “Didn’t work then. Won’t now.”
The defensive assistant leaned forward, knuckles pressed into the table. “I don’t want pretty. I want pressure. Double him. Leave someone else free — I don’t care. He’s not playing in our house again without bruises.”
There was a pause.
One of the younger staff cleared his throat. “You really think we can get away with that again?”
The room didn’t answer at first.
Because they all knew the answer.
Last year? That match was chaos. Hard fouls. Shouldered tackles five seconds after the ball had gone. They’d targeted Drinkwater first. Then Tristan. The whole plan had been disruption — knock them out of rhythm, force them into scraps.
It had worked somewhat.
The head coach rubbed a hand down his face. “He holds grudges, that one.”
The room fell quiet again. No one made eye contact.
One of the physios spoke next. “He’s stronger now. Look at that Europa match — three men on him. Still dropped three assists. And everyone around him is so much better.”
“Yeah,” the set-piece coach said under his breath. “And this time, the ref won’ be so much on our side.”
All heads turned.
He shrugged. “It’s not the same anymore. Tristan’s not just a talent — he’s the face of the league. Of England. The brand. One bad tackle? One elbow that lands wrong?” He mimed a red card. “ We’re down to ten men in the twelfth minute.”
The defensive assistant grunted. “Then don’t get caught.”
But even he didn’t sound convinced.
The manager finally spoke. Quiet, but firm. “It’s not about Tristan anymore.”
The room stilled.
He looked up from the printout in front of him. “It’s Leicester. As a unit. As a system. They’re top of the table. Undefeated. And we’re not just playing a wonderkid anymore — we’re playing a side that plays like they are that best in the world.”
He stood and walked to the screen, pausing the clip.
“They’ll come for revenge. He’ll lead it. And how much Leicester has been saying they wanted to play us again, it’s best we prepare our boys for it.”
This wasn’t a problem Newcastle was facing alone.
Clips flicked across screens. Chalkboards erased and redrawn. Coach after coach. Assistant after assistant. All watching one game. One player.
Tristan Hale.
Contained. Still decisive. Still unbeaten.
And across Europe, the question echoed:
How do you stop a player who doesn’t need space to destroy you?
.
4125
I really hope you guys liked this chapter and sorry for that delay chapter, I was out celebrating Memorial Day with my family.
And I’m tired as fuck writing this one right after coming home. Lmao. I didn’t drink that much. So I think that chapter should still be somewhat good.
I think, I don’t know, let me know how it is guys.
