I knew this one was coming. That doesn’t make it easier.

Wolfsburg came once and we said no. Kaleb wasn’t happy about it, not really, but he trained, he played, he scored. No drama. No sulking. Just that little look when we spoke about it, like he was asking me whether I really believed Miami was where he should still be. I told him the truth. For now, sí. I wanted him here. I wanted him for the rest of this season. I wanted to see where this thing could go with him.

Then they came back.

$4 million guaranteed. More if he plays, more if he scores, more if he becomes the player they think he can become. And half the profit if they sell him one day. I can sit here and write about football and development and pathways until the ink runs out, but eventually you have to prove you mean it. We cannot tell these boys that Miami is a place where they can grow and then put a lock on the door when somebody from the Bundesliga comes for them.

Still hurts.

Eighteen years old. Fourteen goals already. We put ten in his contract as a target because I thought it would stretch him. Ten. He looked at it and went straight through it. That might be the thing I remember most. Not the goals themselves, but how quickly the target stopped being something we were asking of him and became something he expected of himself.

I had started seeing the next version of the team, too. Jaydion left, Adrian through the middle, Kaleb right. Runner, connector, raider. Three kids growing together. Maybe I got greedy. Coaches do that. You draw something on a board and suddenly you’re planning two years of somebody else’s life.

Football doesn’t wait for your drawings.

I spoke to Kaleb after we accepted it. Told him I was proud of him. Told him Wolfsburg aren’t buying the finished player, nowhere close. They are buying all the work that still has to be done. Told him not to arrive in Germany thinking he’d made it because somebody paid millions of dollars for him. The fee is for what people think you might become. The work is what decides whether they’re right.

And I told him one other thing.

This has to mean something here.

Billy needs to see it. Jaydion needs to see it. Adrian needs to see it. Every sixteen-year-old walking into our academy needs to understand what happened to Kaleb Spielman. You come here. You work. If you’re good enough, you play. If you perform, we reward you. And if one day a door opens that we cannot open for you ourselves, we don’t stand in front of it.

That’s the club I want.

Doesn’t mean I wanted the door to open in July.

Qué mierda.

Tomorrow we work out how to replace fourteen goals.

Tonight I’m just going to miss the kid.