Rico calls a friend.
His name is Dino Calabrese. He managed in the lower leagues of England for eleven years before moving into coaching education. He owes Rico nothing and Rico owes him nothing and that is exactly why Rico calls him. He needs someone who will tell the truth.
Dino comes on a Tuesday morning. He is a compact man in his early sixties with the specific watchfulness of someone who has spent decades looking at footballers and separating the ones who have something from the ones who only look like they have something.
He watches Marco train for forty minutes without saying a word.
Marco does not know who Dino is , Rico has not told him. He just asked Marco to train as he normally does and Marco has done exactly that the same focused repetitive work he has been doing every morning since he arrived. Running, ball work, the drills he taught himself on cracked concrete over twenty years.
Dino watches.
After forty minutes he turns to Rico.
DINO: "How long has he been training properly?"
RICO: "About three weeks. Before that street football, cage football nothing structured."
Dino looks back at Marco on the pitch.
DINO: "The physical side is extraordinary. Whatever he did for work the labour paid off. His strength, his endurance, his first touch under pressure. That is not something you can teach quickly. He has that already."
RICO: "And the rest?"
DINO: "Raw. The technical gaps are visible. He has instinct but instinct without structure only takes you so far. He will need time."
He pauses.
DINO: "But there is something there. I won't pretend there isn't."
Dino goes onto the pitch. He spends hours with Marco watching him in specific positions, asking him to do specific things, testing the edges of what he can and cannot do.
At the end of it he asks Marco one question.
DINO: "What position do you play?"
MARCO: "Number nine."
Dino nods slowly. The nod of someone who is not surprised and is not going to say something encouraging when something honest is more useful.
DINO: "Nine is a hard position on the pitch to learn late. Physicality alone is not enough at nine. You need years of reading the game from that position, the movement, the timing, the relationship with the ball in the final third. Even with everything you have physically, at your age, nine is "
He stops. Looks at Marco carefully.
DINO: "I'm not saying impossible. I'm saying difficult and you have enough other attributes that it would be worth thinking about whether nine is where you are most useful."
He shakes Marco's hand, Nods at Rico and leaves the pitch.
Marco stands in the middle of the pitch looking at the goal at the far end.
Rico walks over and stands beside him.
For a while neither of them speaks. The morning is grey and still. The kind of English morning that makes no promises about what comes after it.
MARCO: "How did you know what position to play?"
Rico considers this.
RICO: "I didn't. Not at the beginning. I played many positions before I understood where I felt natural."
MARCO: "What positions?"
RICO: "All of them. Left side, right side, midfield. I tried everything my coaches put me in."
He pauses.
RICO: "Most people who know me now think if I wasn't a striker I would have been a winger. Or a ten. That is what they say. But the position I played when I first started when I was very young, before anyone was watching was centre back."
Marco looks at him.
MARCO: "Centre back."
RICO: "I loved it. Reading the striker in front of me. Understanding where they wanted to go before they knew themselves. Stopping them."
MARCO: "What happened?"
RICO: "I wasn't physical enough. At that age the other boys were bigger and I was losing too many aerial battles. My coach moved me forward."
He looks out at the far goal.
RICO: "But I never forgot what I learned back there. Many people think a good striker is someone who knows how to attack. I think a good striker is someone who knows how to defend. Because if you understand how a defender thinks, if you have stood in that position and felt what they feel then you know exactly how to beat them. You already know the answer before they have asked the question."
Marco is quiet for a moment.
MARCO: "Do you think I can make it?"
Rico looks at him.
RICO: "It doesn't matter what I think."
MARCO: "It matters to me."
RICO: "I know. But it is still you who has to walk onto the pitch. It is still you who has to do it when no one is watching and when everyone is watching and when you are tired and when it is not working and when it is. What I think doesn't change any of that."
Marco looks at the pitch.
RICO: "What I will say is this. You have been working in warehouses and garages your whole life and your body looks like a footballer's. You taught yourself to play on concrete with no coach and no proper ball and you have instincts that cannot be taught. Those things are not nothing. Those things are actually quite a lot."
Marco does not respond immediately.
He just looks at the far goal and then slowly, he nods.
Patrick handles the logistics.
A small interview. One outlet controlled, brief, no photographs of the house or the family. Just Marco, sitting in a neutral room, answering questions on camera for the first time. Patrick is off-camera throughout. Rico is not in the room.
The interviewer is professional and respectful. She has been briefed on what is and is not available to discuss.
INTERVIEWER: "Marco can you tell us a little about where you grew up?"
MARCO: "Milan. The north of the city. My mother and I. She worked very hard. It was a simple life."
INTERVIEWER: "And when did you find out about Rico Santos?"
MARCO: "Recently. Before my mother died she told me. She gave me a letter she had written a long time ago. It was — it was not easy to hear. But I am grateful she told me."
INTERVIEWER: "What has the family's response been?"
Marco pauses. He chooses his words carefully.
MARCO: "It has been honest. Which is the right way to handle something like this. Not everyone processes this kind of news the same way or at the same speed. I understand that."
INTERVIEWER: "What is it that you want, Marco? Now that you're here."
MARCO: "I want to play football."
INTERVIEWER: "You're twenty-eight with no professional record. A lot of people will say the age is against you."
MARCO: "Yes. It is. I won't argue with that but I won't be the first player to start late. It has been done and I have been training every day, every morning, for as long as I can remember. The years I didn't have a pitch I found a wall. The years I didn't have boots I played without them. The game has always been there."
INTERVIEWER: "What position do you play?"
Marco looks off camera for a moment.
Rico is not in the room. But Marco looks toward where he would be.
MARCO: "Defence. Centre back."
The interviewer pauses.
INTERVIEWER: "A Santos who plays defence. That's unexpected."
MARCO: "My father taught me that the best way to understand how to attack is to learn how to defend. I believe him."
INTERVIEWER: "Have you been training formally?"
MARCO: "Every day. Every morning. Since I arrived in England I have not missed one session."
INTERVIEWER: "Anything else you want people to know?"
Marco is quiet for a moment.
MARCO: "Just that I am grateful. To Rico for believing that I deserved a chance before he had any reason to. That is ,that means everything to me."
The interview goes live on a Thursday morning.
By lunchtime it has been viewed four million times.
@GlobalFutbol: "Rico Santos has a SON nobody knew about. A 28-year-old son from Italy. Who wants to be a CENTRE BACK."
@FutebolPuro: "Marco Santos. The third Santos. My brain cannot process this. Where did he come from. HOW."
@TaktikFussball: "A Santos that plays defence. Rico said the best striker understands how to defend. His son took notes. Literally."
@SantosWatch: "The way Marco looked off camera when they asked his position. He was looking at Rico. He chose that answer for a reason. "
@FootballTwitter: "Be honest. You didn't see this coming. Nobody saw this coming. Rico Santos has three children and one of them wants to be a centre back."
THE SUN "SANTOS SECRET: Rico's Mystery Son Revealed And He Wants to Play Football"
GAZZETTA DELLO SPORT "Il Terzo Santos Marco, il figlio segreto di Rico che vuole diventare calciatore"
MARCA "El Tercer Santos: Marco, el hijo secreto de Rico que nació en Italia"
Not all of it is kind.
@AnonymousFan22: "28 years old, no professional experience, daddy is famous. This is a publicity stunt and nothing else."
@FootballRealist: "I respect the story but let's be honest. If his name wasn't Santos nobody would be talking about this."
@ItalianFootball: "Playing in the streets of Milan your whole life and now wants a professional contract because your dad is Rico Santos. Good luck with that mate."
And one article that cuts differently from all the others.
DAILY MAIL "The Other Woman: Who Was Andrea — The Italian Mother of Rico Santos's Secret Son?"
The article is not cruel. It is thorough. It has Andrea's full name. A photograph old, slightly blurred from somewhere Marco cannot identify. It talks about Rico's relationship with Klaus and Lucas's mother. The timeline. The dates.
Klaus reads it.
He reads it twice.
He puts his phone face-down on the table.
He does not reply to any of the seventeen messages in the family group chat.
He does not post anything.
THE TRIALS
The requests come within 72 hours.
Twelve clubs. Mostly lower league. Patrick screens them carefully some are genuine, some are transparent attempts to generate press coverage by association. The ones who want Marco Santos the story rather than Marco Santos the player are declined without explanation.
Marco attends every trial without complaint and without expectation. He performs with the same focused intensity he brings to the morning gym sessions at Rico's house. The coaches who watch him report back similar things: the physical attributes are exceptional for someone his age. The technique has gaps that are consistent with someone who learned without proper coaching. The reading of the game is instinctive in a way that is harder to teach than the technical gaps are to fix.
Raw. But real.
At the fifth trial a coach pulls Patrick aside afterward.
COACH: "He's not ready. But he's not far off not ready. Which at his age is actually quite something."
Patrick writes it down.
Graystone FC
The call comes on a Wednesday evening.
Graystone Football Club. Second division of the English football league system. A ground that holds four thousand people on a good day. A wage structure that Patrick describes diplomatically as "modest." Training facilities that are functional rather than impressive.
Their head of recruitment watched Marco at the third trial.
Then came to watch him again at the fifth.
Then called Patrick.
RECRUITMENT: (on the phone) " I think there's something there that we can work with. We have a good defensive coach. We have time and we have a spot in the squad that needs filling."
Patrick tells Rico.
Rico tells Marco.
Marco sits very still for a moment.
MARCO: "Graystone FC"
RICO: "Second division. Not glamorous, not well paid but a real club with a real contract and a real chance to —"
MARCO: "Let's do it"
Rico looks at him.
Rico picks up his phone.
RICO: "I'll tell Patrick to confirm."
Marco nods.
Then he looks out of the window at the garden.
He does not say anything else.
He does not need to.
END OF CHAPTER 26