Reincarnated As A Wonderkid

The apologetic, ruthless smile on Byon's face was the last thing Leon saw before his world shrank to the size of a suffocating, sky-blue shadow.

For the next ten minutes, every time Leon moved, Byon was there. When Leon dropped deep, Byon was there.

When Leon drifted wide, Byon was there.

"HE'S BEEN ERASED!" the commentator, Barry, yelled, a note of stunned admiration in his voice.

"Pep Guardiola has just deleted Liverpool's £150 million playmaker from the match! Biyon, his own best friend, is marking him so tightly they could share a packet of crisps! A tactical masterstroke of pure, beautiful cruelty!"

On the pitch, Liverpool's attack, which was supposed to be a symphony, was now a disjointed mess of confused noise. Leon, their conductor, had been silenced.

"Leo! Give me an option!" Mo Salah screamed, but Leon couldn't. He had Byon draped all over him, a friendly, suffocating blanket of defensive excellence.

Manchester City, the champions of Europe, smelled blood. They began to play their football, a mesmerizing, hypnotic carousel of possession that slowly began to strangle the life out of Anfield.

In the 18th minute, the inevitable happened. City worked the ball with a patient, probing brilliance, moving Liverpool's defense from side to side.

The ball came to Kevin De Bruyne on the right. He looked up, and with the casual, effortless grace of a grandmaster, he whipped in a cross. It was a thing of pure, geometric perfection, an arcing, venomous ball that seemed to have its own GPS.

And rising to meet it, a blond, unstoppable force of nature, was Erling Haaland. He hung in the air, a picture of power and grace, and met the ball with a thunderous header that flew into the net before Alisson could even react.

1-0 to Manchester City.

Anfield was stunned into a dead, horrified silence.

The Liverpool players just looked at each other, a collective, unspoken "what just happened?" hanging in the air.

"You've got to be kidding me," Andy Robertson grumbled to a grim-faced Virgil van Dijk.

"That was their first proper attack."

"Stay calm," the captain rumbled back, his voice a low, steady anchor in the storm. "We go again."

But they couldn't "go again."

Their entire system was built around Leon finding the spaces, and those spaces no longer existed.

They resorted to a more direct approach, a flurry of hopeful, frustrated crosses from their world-class fullbacks.

Trent Alexander-Arnold sent one in. Rúben Dias headed it clear. Andy Robertson sent one in. John Stones headed it clear. It was like throwing rocks at a fortress.

"They're getting desperate, Clive," Barry lamented. "This isn't Liverpool's game. They're just hoofing it into the box and hoping for a miracle!"

"It's a testament to Guardiola's plan, Barry," Clive replied calmly. "He's taken away their brain, and now the body is just flailing."

The frustration on the pitch was palpable.

"Big man, you've got to win one of those!" Salah yelled at Isak after another cross was easily dealt with.

"They've got three men on me!" Isak roared back, pointing at the wall of blue shirts surrounding him.

In the 32nd minute, the frustration boiled over into a mistake.

A risky pass from a Liverpool midfielder was intercepted.

The ball fell to Rodri, City's midfield anchor, about 30 yards from goal.

He looked up, saw the space, and unleashed an absolute missile of a long shot.

The ball flew with a vicious, dipping power.

Alisson, at full stretch, got a hand to it, but the shot was too powerful. It cannoned off his glove and into the roof of the net.

2-0.

A new, colder silence fell over Anfield.

On the sideline, Arne Slot just stared, his face a mask of disbelief. Across from him, Pep Guardiola, the architect of this beautiful destruction, allowed himself a small, satisfied smile.

The second goal broke Liverpool's spirit. The coiled spring was gone, replaced by a dejected, disjointed mess.

And Manchester City, the most ruthless team in the world, went for the kill.

In the 38th minute, they produced a goal of such sublime, effortless, and devastating beauty that it felt less like a football move and more like a work of art.

Kevin De Bruyne, the Belgian genius, received the ball in the center circle, just inside his own half. The entire Liverpool team was pushed up, desperately trying to get back into the game.

De Bruyne looked up, and he saw a run that no one else in the stadium, perhaps no one else on the planet, could have possibly seen.

Phil Foden, from the left wing, had made a ghosting, diagonal dart into the space behind Liverpool's high line.

The pass was not a pass. It was a teleportation device. It was an assist from the middle of the field, a 60-yard, perfectly weighted, outside-of-the-boot through-ball that bent the laws of physics and landed, with the softness of a feather, directly in Foden's stride.

Foden didn't even have to break his run. He took one touch to control it and a second to coolly slot it past the onrushing Alisson.

3-0.

The game was over. The stadium was a library of ghosts. The Liverpool players just stood there, hands on their hips, their faces pale with shock and a dawning, horrifying sense of humiliation.

They were the champions of England, and they were being taken apart, piece by beautiful, brutal piece, on their own turf.

The clock ticked over to 40:00.

Byon, his job done, his friend completely and utterly erased from the game, just jogged back to his position, a quiet, almost apologetic look on his face.

Leon just stared at the scoreboard, the glowing numbers a testament to a perfect tactical assassination. He had been so focused on his own power, on his own evolution, that he had forgotten the most important rule of the game: there is always a bigger genius, and today, his name was Pep Guardiola.

The halftime whistle at Anfield was less a sound and more a funeral dirge.

The home of "You'll Never Walk Alone" was a cathedral of silent, heartbroken disbelief. The champions of England were being dismantled, humiliated, and clinically assassinated on their own hallowed turf. 3-0.