Championship Matchday 14
Cardiff City vs Bradford City
Saturday, 1 November – 15:00 KO
The wind bit harder the closer they got to the tunnel mouth. Cardiff's steel-and-blue stadium loomed like a modern fortress, and Jake stood beneath it, expression unreadable beneath the hood of his coat. The rain hadn't started—but the threat of it hovered thick in the sky.
Around him, the players bounced in place, eyes shifting toward the crowd, the pitch, each other. The rotated eleven. Hungry. Young. Lightly scarred.
"Don't play like winners…" Jake's voice had echoed last night, inside the dim hotel conference room, "play like you need to win something."
Rin Itoshi, barely eighteen and already carrying electricity in his stride. Obi, teeth clenched, eyes alert, waiting to erupt. Rasmussen, quiet but coiled. The back line, young and eager, with Cox behind them—barely old enough to drink, but today, their last line.
Jake exhaled slowly.
