Reincarnated As A Wonderkid

The week after winning the Scudetto was less a celebration and more a collective, blissful exhalation.

Lautaro Martínez, as captain, had made an executive decision: the entire team, and their families, were coming with him to his private villa on the Amalfi Coast.

The villa was a paradise, a slice of heaven carved into a cliffside, with a private beach where the turquoise Mediterranean lapped gently against the shore.

For one glorious week, they were not footballers. They were just a loud, happy, slightly dysfunctional family on vacation.

The scene on the beach was one of beautiful, glorious chaos.

"It needs more towers!" Julián Álvarez declared, his face a mask of intense architectural focus.

He was in the middle of constructing a sandcastle of such ambitious, questionable design that it looked less like a castle and more like a pile of sand that had survived an earthquake.

"A castle is not a castle without at least five strategically placed towers for optimal 'bird-based aerial defense'!"

Alessandro Bastoni, who was lying under an umbrella trying to read a book, just groaned.

"Julián," he said, not even looking up. "It is a sandcastle. It does not need an anti-air defense system. The only thing that's going to attack it is the tide."

"Aha! But that is what the tide wants you to think!" Julián shot back, pointing a plastic shovel at him. "The tide is a patient, cunning enemy!"

Sitting on a lounge chair nearby, Leon's mother, Elena, was in her element, acting as the unofficial team mom. "Nicolò! You need more sunscreen! You are turning pink like a little flamingo!" she called out to Barella, who was trying to teach his young son how to swim.

"I'm fine, Signora Elena!" Barella yelled back with a laugh.

"You are not fine! You are a lobster! Come here!"

In the middle of it all, Leon and Cole Palmer were just sitting on the sand, watching the beautiful madness unfold.

"So," Palmer said, a small, amused smile on his face. "Is it always like this?"

"Pretty much," Leon grinned. "You get used to the constant threat of tactical sand-based warfare after a while."

Later, a full-blown war did break out, but it was in the water.

An impromptu game of water polo, with two inflatable goals, descended into a chaotic splashing match.

Lautaro, his ankle now healed enough for a gentle swim, was a surprisingly graceful presence in the water, directing his "team" with the same fierce intensity he showed on the pitch.

"Dimarco! Man on! Don't let him get past you!" he yelled, just before Julián, who was on the other team, swam up behind him and dunked him under the water.

They played for over an hour, a glorious, exhausting, laughter-filled battle that ended with everyone collapsing onto the sand, completely spent.

As the sun began to dip towards the horizon, painting the sky in brilliant shades of orange and pink, the beach grew quiet. The families had gone up to the villa to prepare for dinner.

Only Leon and Palmer remained, sitting side-by-side, watching the gentle waves.

"So," Palmer said quietly, breaking the comfortable silence. "Manchester United finished sixth."

Leon turned to look at him. "I saw," he said.

"They missed out on the Champions League," Palmer continued, staring out at the sea.

"They're a mess. But they're a rich mess. And they think I'm the answer to their problems." He let out a short, humorless laugh. "£120 million. It's a stupid number, isn't it? It doesn't even feel real."

"None of it feels real sometimes," Leon admitted, thinking of the offers from Liverpool and Barcelona, the numbers so large they seemed like a typo.

"I love it here," Palmer said, his voice sincere.

"This team... it's a family. A loud, crazy, slightly insane family, but a family. But the chance to go home, to be the main man at a club like United, to be the one to bring them back to the top... that's a powerful story, isn't it?"

"It is," Leon agreed. He knew that feeling, the pull of a grand narrative.

"Liverpool... they won the league. They're a perfect machine. The scout told me I'd be the final piece of the puzzle. The brain in the machine."

"That's a powerful story too," Palmer said with a small smile. He looked at Leon, his expression serious. "So what are you going to do?"

"The same thing you're going to do," Leon replied, a sense of clarity washing over him.

"I'm going to enjoy this perfect week. I'm going to eat too much pasta. I'm going to listen to Julián's terrible questions. And then, when all of this is over, I'm going to sit down with my family and my agent and make the best decision for my life. Not for the story."

Palmer nodded, a look of deep, mutual understanding passing between them. They were two young men at a crossroads, holding a winning lottery ticket that was also a life-altering burden.

That night, after a massive, joyous dinner on the villa's terrace, the entire team gathered in the large living room.

Someone had managed to hook up a projector, and the pristine white wall was now a giant screen.

The final, colossal match of the European season was about to begin. The Champions League Final.

Manchester City vs. Paris Saint-Germain.

The atmosphere was electric. It was Byon versus Lamine Yamal.

The unstoppable force versus the unbuyable object.

"Come on, Byon!" Leon yelled at the screen as the teams walked out.

"No way, that little alien Yamal is going to destroy him!" Dimarco shot back, and the room was instantly divided, a friendly, passionate argument breaking out.

They watched, completely engrossed, as the two titans of football went to war.

It was a beautiful, tense, tactical battle. And as the final minutes of the first half ticked away, the score still locked at 0-0, Julián Álvarez, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, finally spoke.

"Okay," he said slowly, a look of profound, earth-shattering realization on his face. "I've solved it."

The room quieted, turning to him.

"Solved what, Julián?" Lautaro asked with a weary sigh.

"Football," Julián announced. "I've figured out the secret. It's not about tactics, or money, or even ghosts in the ball."

He looked around at the faces of his friends, his teammates, his family. "It's just about having the best story. And right now," he said, a huge, brilliant grin spreading across his face, "I think we've got it."

As the team cheered in agreement, a sudden, unexpected news alert flashed across the bottom of the screen, a breaking story from a major Italian sports journalist known for his impeccable sources. It was a story that had nothing to do with the match they were watching, and everything to do with them.

[BREAKING: Inter President Beppe Marotta has reportedly accepted an offer to become the new CEO of the Italian Football Federation. A press conference is scheduled for tomorrow. His replacement at Inter is rumored to be a shocking, high-profile name from outside the world of football.]