The Penalty by Mal Peet

switch from standstill to incredible speed without, apparently, any intervening period of acceleration. It was simply that at one moment he was strolling and the next he was at full power. Yes, he had a repertoire of skills and tricks that no boy of his age was entitled to; but Faustino understood that it was this extraordinary variation in pace that was the key to his game. In particular, he would brake suddenly, as if he had run out of ideas, or space. Got stuck. He would not look up, not seek support. It would tempt defenders to close in. It would distort their formation. Then, with what looked like nothing more than a shrug, a shuffle of feet, a sidestep, the ball would be gone. And so would he. There was, Faustino thought, something slightly spooky about it. Because even on replay you couldn’t see what he’d done. What you could see, though, was that whenever he received the ball, a ripple of panic spread through the Atlético defence.
    But, as Cesar Fabian had said, early in the second half the boy seemed to lose the plot. He fluffed a number of simple passes. Twice in less than five minutes he was caught offside, stranded like a crab at low tide. A minute later, Cabral, the Atlético defender given the dread responsibility of marking the boy, took the ball from him with a half-hearted tackle. The camera caught Cabral looking over his shoulder as though he’d done something clever without knowing how.
    “Weird, wouldn’t you say?” Salez said.
    “Interesting,” Faustino said.
    When Vadinho, the DSJ winger, was chopped down in the Atlético penalty area Salez pressed the
pause
button on the remote.
    “Now, watch this,” he said. “Brujito has been crap for some time. I was at the game, okay, and I know that Morientes was ready to substitute him. He’d got Berger warming up along the touchline. Brujito must have known he was going to be taken off. Then there’s this penalty.”
    Salez hit
play
.
    “Vadinho fancies it himself, see? He carries the ball to the spot. But then Brujito comes up to him and they have this discussion. It’s obvious Brujito wants to take it. It’s also obvious Vadinho doesn’t want him to. I think that Vadinho thought Brujito was injured. We all did. Morientes did. It’s not on the video, but he was going ape from the dugout. But Brujito takes no notice. He insists on taking the penalty.”
    “Which he was entitled to. He’d taken the last, what, four for DSJ? And left the keeper for dead in every one.”
    “Yeah, Paul, but the point is that Brujito had gone off the boil. Look at him. He looks … I dunno, depressed, or something. So why does he want to take the kick? And, here we go, it’s got to be the saddest attempt I’ve ever seen. The keeper just takes it out of the air and says, ‘Thank you very much.’”
    Faustino watched the Atlético supporters jeering and celebrating, then watched Brujito walk to the bench to be substituted. Humiliated.
    “Max, rewind the tape, please. There’s a bit where Brujito is out on the left wing near the corner flag and Cabral is closing him down. Ten minutes before the penalty, something like that. No, not there. Forward. Now back a bit. Yes, here.”
    Brujito had taken the ball down the left touchline, dangerously close to the corner flag. Cabral was crowding him, watching the ball, shielding it against the cross. Because from this position all Brujito could do was cross. Another Atlético defender had moved into the frame to cut off any move Brujito might try to make towards the centre. And Faustino understood that this was exactly what Brujito wanted: to draw another defender towards him. Because it left a gap into which a DSJ midfielder could run. And when that space opened, Brujito would, somehow, by some outrageous magic, get the ball into it, as he had done many times before. But he didn’t. Cabral slid in, won the ball and cleared it upfield.
    “Go back again,” Faustino said, dragging his chair closer to the TV.
    Salez