"Can you cook?"
Tyler stared at the person asking him the question and rubbed his nose awkwardly. It was at that moment that he really thought about it. He spent most of his life living with his grandma and most of the time he was training or working out. He didn't even know when the food was made, all he knew was that food was always on the table whenever he was hungry.
"No. No I can't," Tyler answered after moments of thought.
"Oh... Bummer." The bulky kid looked disappointed. "Oh well, I'm Tony," he said as he stretched his hand out.
"I'm Tyler." Tyler took his hand and they shook.
Tyler grabbed a few pieces of food from the fridge and went over to the sitting room where there was a match between PSG and Brest being played.
It was at that moment that Tyler knew that he didn't have to worry about bonding with his new roommates. If there was anything that would have connected teenage boys, then it would be football.
"Who do you think is going to win, pornhub?" Enzo asked while looking at Tyler.
Tony looked at Tyler weirdly while turning his head. "Pornhub?"
"Yeah, I caught him moaning while he was on the bed earlier," Enzo said. "Hence the name."
"That... That's not what happened," Tyler muttered.
Tony broke into laughter. "Finally someone who has a worse nickname than me."
"What's your nickname?" Tyler asked.
"That's classified informa—"
"Stripper. His nickname is stripper," Enzo answered while holding back his laughter.
"How'd that come about?" Tyler raised an eyebrow.
"Well you see, it's a funny—" Enzo started talking but stopped when he received a death stare from Tony. "It's classified information."
"Anyways, Pornhub, who do you think is going to win?"
"I think it's very obvious that PSG are winning this match."
"Yeah, I guess so," Enzo said, turning back to the TV. "I just really want Brest to win."
"Why?" Tyler asked, making Tony burst into laughter.
Tony then stood up and mimicked Enzo's voice. "I'm a simple man, I see Brest playing and I support them because they're my favorite things in the world."
"I'm not talking about the club in my reason," Enzo smiled.
"I figured," Tyler said, doing his best not to start wheezing from laughter.
The three of them continued to watch the match, talking and taking jabs at each other. Even though Tyler just arrived, they talked as if they'd known each other for years.
The next day Tyler woke up very early in the morning and went to the gym to do a little bit of workout. After working out, he had his bath, cleaned himself up and went to the Monaco performance center. Even though he was going to be playing with the under eighteens, Adi Hutter made sure he trained with the first team.
When Tyler arrived, the training ground was almost empty. A few coaches had already arrived and were already setting things up. When Tyler saw them, he greeted them and then went into the locker room to change into his training wear.
A few minutes later, more and more players started arriving and in the next twenty minutes, everyone was changed into their training wear and they were surrounding Adi Hutter who had Tyler stand beside him.
Ever since he arrived in Monaco, Tyler had yet to encounter anyone that spoke French to him, so it didn't really hit him that he was in a foreign country. It was in this training session that it hit him. Almost everyone spoke French to each other.
It wasn't as if he didn't understand the language. One of the things he did was to learn foreign languages while he was still developing. From the day he got released for the first time, he realized that if he went pro, he wouldn't always play in England. Since then, he decided to learn other languages, becoming proficient in French, Spanish and Portuguese.
"Alright everyone," Adi Hutter addressed everyone in French. "Today, we have a new player in our midst. This is Tyler Wilson from England. He's just seventeen and is but a boy coming to a new country. Please treat him well."
"Welcome Tyler!"
Quite a few players said welcome messages to which Tyler smiled and responded to as many as he could.
"Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's start with training," Adi said.
The training session consisted of several training exercises. The first one was a yoga or team bonding exercise. Everyone was placed in pairs and started stretching.
"No, that's not how you do it," George Ilenikhena said as he adjusted Tyler's posture while the team performed a particular stretch.
"Thanks," Tyler said as he got the hang of it.
"Hey, you're from England right?" George asked in English.
"Yeah," Tyler nodded.
"Thank God," George said, making Tyler raise an eyebrow. "It's nothing, my parents make me speak English a lot and there's finally someone else asides me that doesn't speak broken English."
"So you're excited because you have someone to speak English with?" Tyler smiled as he asked the question.
"It might seem a bit bizarre but that's it," George said.
The pair continued to talk until the session was deemed over. The next training exercise was a fitness session and it was one of the most gruelling training sessions that Tyler had ever participated in. There was a lot of running involved and by the end of it, the seventeen year old crashed on the floor taking in huge gulps of air.
George laughed at Tyler's reaction and plopped on the floor beside him. "I'd get up soon if I were you, that's not even the worst training session."
Tyler groaned. "What is?"
"The tactical meeting," George shuddered. "And seeing as it's the day after a matchday, that's next so get your ass up and move to the locker room."
Tyler dragged himself up and walked alongside George to the locker room. On the way there, he noticed how several of the first team players wore annoyed expressions, as if they were walking into something they dreaded.
The tactical session, it couldn't be that bad, right?