Time slipped away in training, and the twenty-ninth of November drew steadily closer toward Julien's nineteenth birthday.
During a break between sessions, his father Pierre called to ask where he wanted to celebrate: Paris or Liverpool?
The question barely needed answering. It was Paris without hesitation.
If the family made the trip to Liverpool, the whole party would have to travel. It was better simply to go home—to sleep in his own room and eat his mother's cooking.
Sometimes, in the evenings after training, Julien would find himself scrolling through family photos on his phone—summer barbecues in the garden, his brother's ridiculous poses in every photograph and felt a quiet warmth spread through his chest.
In Liverpool, he was an entire city's expectations, an untouchable attacking force under the brightest spotlight the game had to offer.
But back in the family home in Paris, all of that fell away. There, he was simply the younger brother, the son—the boy who still got teased about the time he cried watching The Lion King at age twelve and denied it for three years afterward.
That home was his anchor.
The twenty-ninth of November also happened to be the revised deadline for the Ballon d'Or vote.
As captain of the French national team, Julien held a ballot.
During a break between morning and afternoon sessions, an official email arrived from FIFA in his inbox which was very formal, and dense with procedural language, detailing the updated voting guidelines.
Buried midway through the text was a specific note: due to adjustments to the process, previously submitted ballots could be revised. The new deadline was November 29th.
Julien stared at the line about revision for a moment.
'Everything was as before.'
FIFA had announced the extension on November 20th—five days after the original deadline of the 15th.
Five days was more than sufficient time for the relevant officials to have tallied the preliminary results. In other words, by the date the extension was announced, FIFA very likely already knew what the outcome looked like.
It wasn't difficult to read between the lines: that outcome had probably not been explosive and newsworthy enough and satisfied certain interests.
Julien wasn't thinking Cristiano Ronaldo didn't deserve the award. He had nothing against Ronaldo. He simply found the whole manipulation baffling and, watched it through a more cynical view.
The circumstantial evidence had been substantial, even back in his previous life when he had followed it only loosely.
From what he had read and watched: The Qatar national team's head coach, captain, and media representative had all voted for Ronaldo.
Years later, Qatar's then-manager Fahad Thani would tell some local reporters: "Voting for Ronaldo first was entirely FIFA president Blatter's idea. Our football association's chairman told us to give Ronaldo the vote—it would help Blatter rehabilitate his image, and in exchange, he would deliver the World Cup hosting rights to us."
Bayern president Hoeneß had given his own pointed observation: "Perhaps people hoped Ribéry would win, but he wasn't the chosen one. Even after winning everything there was to win in a single calendar year, something else was being planned by FIFA."
Other national team coaches had come forward claiming their submitted ballots had been altered without their knowledge.
The specific details had grown hazy in Julien's memory—in his previous life, he had never been a obsessive fan of either Ronaldo or Messi reading and watching everything about them.
Back in Bastia, he had always been direct about it: the player he admired most was Hagi, the Romanian genius whose genius was too often remembered only by those who had seen it firsthand.
In any case, the affair remained permanently unresolved in history. The Ballon d'Or came around every year, and after enough time, most people stopped caring about any single edition. The calendar moved forward and took the controversy with it.
Julien opened the voting page and, without thinking further, entered Ribéry's name in the first position.
In his view, Ribéry's 2013 was a year of brilliance that had produced a treble with Bayern and carried France deep into World Cup qualification. He placed Ronaldo second, and Messi third. He submitted the ballot, closed the email, and went back to training.
Late November in Paris carried a soft and particular chill not the brutal cold of January, but the kind of cold that made warm light look warmer by contrast, that made firelit rooms feel earned.
The lights of the family villa blazed warmly against the darkening sky, amber glow was spilling through the floor-to-ceiling windows and washing across the garden below, turning the wet lawn gold and gentle.
Inside, the preparations were already complete before Julien arrived.
The long dining table was laid with a care that spoke of hours of quiet effort, his mother's doing, unmistakably, in every small detail. The deep, heady scent of beef bourguignon filled the hallway, rich and dark and slow-cooked, mingling with the sweetness of Black Forest cake that drifted from the kitchen.
Fairy lights had been strung from the corners of the living room ceiling, casting tiny constellations of warm white across the walls. A neon Happy Birthday sign glowed above the mantelpiece in pink and yellow.
Julien had barely stepped through the front door when his older brother René burst out to meet him, pulling him into a bear hug that lifted him half off the ground. "The birthday boy is here! Mum and Dad have been waiting forever—where have you been?"
Julien stepped into the living room. His parents stood at the center of the room, holding a freshly baked cake between them, their faces were bright with joy.
The room erupted into cheers and laughter.
The villa was already full.
By the window, Mbappé and Saliba were lounging together on the sofa, mid-conversation. The moment they saw Julien, both were on their feet.
Mbappé thrusted a neatly wrapped gift box into his hands. "Latest training gear—specifically designed for people who score too many goals. May they keep coming."
Saliba slung an easy arm around Mbappé's shoulder, grinning. "That's from both of us. Happy birthday, Julien."
Julien accepted the gift, laughing, and hugged them both.
Across the room, the old Bastia crew had covered a section of sofas near the fireplace—Mané, Van Dijk, Clauss, and Rothen arranged in a comfortable sprawl.
Rothen was already midway through some apparently hilarious story from their time together at the club. Former head coach Hadzibegic came across with a warm smile, patting Julien on the back. "Happy birthday, Julien. It's been too long. You've been making quite a name for yourself in England—we watch every match."
Chataigner stood nearby, holding a jersey covered in small, overlapping signatures in five different colors of pen—the signatures were dense and crowded, some in careful print, some in barely legible scrawl, climbing up the sleeves and around the collar.
He said laughing. "This is Bastia's gift to you. The whole squad signed it—current players, and some of the die-hard supporters too. Bastia is proud of you. Always will be."
Julien held the jersey for a moment, turning it over in his hands, reading a name here and there then embraced each of them both in turn.
Bastia would always hold a different kind of place in his life.
He pulled Mané and Van Dijk aside for a proper catch-up asking about their families, their seasons when the front door swung open again and the Liverpool group spilled in together, arriving like a small delegation from another world.
Gerrard led the way, holding a red Liverpool jersey signed by the entire squad. Suárez followed close behind, carrying a bottle of aged Bordeaux with a handwritten label Julien couldn't quite read from a distance.
"From all of us," Suárez said, extending the bottle with a grin. "Happy nineteenth, Julien. Don't drink it all tonight."
Sturridge came in last, handing over a wrapped package shaped unmistakably like a small tactics board, customized with Liverpool's formation sketched in red marker.
"For the training sessions," he said seriously. " Custom made. Try a new system. Keep Jürgen guessing."
Julien's eyes stung, just briefly. He pulled Gerrard into a tight embrace, saying nothing for a moment.
"You all flew out here," he said finally. "You didn't have to do that."
Gerrard shrugged. "Of course we did."
The biggest surprise of the evening came last, when the doorbell rang for the third time and Deschamps and Zidane stepped in from the Paris night, dressed simply.
The two French legends crossed the room to Julien with broad smiles. They embraced him firmly, and said.
"We're counting on you to bring the trophy back for France next year."
After dinner, the villa's many rooms were filled with scattered conversations—the relaxed, drifting kind that only happen late into a good evening, when the food has been eaten and the wine has been poured and nobody is in any particular hurry to be anywhere else.
By the fireplace, Deschamps and Zidane had settled into the deep armchairs with the ease of old colleagues, talking tactics in low voices, glancing occasionally toward Julien with admiration.
On the terrace, Mané, Van Dijk, Rothen, and the Liverpool players had spilled outside into the cold, passing a bottle around and trading stories from the derby match with increasing volume and laughter, their breath was misting in the night air.
Near the kitchen, Julien's mother was swapping baking tips with Mbappé's family, turning every few minutes to watch her son across the room, her face was full of a silent, settled pride.
The conversation ranged from Bastia to Liverpool, with Pierre reminiscing about playing football with Gaio in the streets of their hometown when he was a child.
Julien sat among his family and friends as the evening wore on, contributing here and there, listening more than he spoke. The firelight moved across faces he loved. Somewhere near the kitchen, someone laughed at something, and the sound carried through the whole house.
He hadn't fully understood, until tonight, how many threads connected him to so many different lives—Bastia, Liverpool, Paris, the national team, the streets of his childhood, the training pitches of his present.
Each one a world he had lived in fully. Each one still present, gathered here in this warm and crowded room, wearing party clothes and drinking wine and teasing each other about goals scored and missed.
No cameras. No reporters. No expectations. Just the people who mattered most, in the room at the same time.
It felt extraordinary.
When the cake was brought out—everyone gathered close without needing to be asked.
The room contracted warmly, shoulders touching, voices rising in a ragged, cheerful, badly harmonized rendition of Happy Birthday.
Candlelight moved softly across Julien's face as he looked down at the flames. Around him, the faces of the people he loved most were lit in warm gold. He closed his eyes.
He made his wish quietly: health for his family. A title for his club. That he would never lose his love for football.
He blew out the candles.
The room broke into applause and cheering, and somewhere in it, Saliba shouted loudly with complete sincerity that he had to do his signature celebration.
Mbappé immediately seconded this. There was a small chorus of agreement.
Julien laughed, shook his head, then laughed again. And then, to a wave of delighted noise that filled every corner of the villa, he spread his arms wide.
The night grew late.
Friends began to leave in twos and threes, collecting coats from the hallway, pressing Julien's hand or pulling him close one more time.
Gerrard was one of the last of the Liverpool group to go, pausing at the door and squeezing his shoulder. "Jürgen said he didn't have time to fly out, but he wanted you to know—he's giving you tomorrow off too. Come back rested."
Julien nodded. He saw them all to the door, accepting every farewell.
When the last guest had gone, he settled back onto the sofa with his family, talking quietly for a while longer.
Julien looked out through the tall windows at the Paris night sky—the low orange glow of the city against the clouds, the bare branches of the garden trees moving slightly in the wind, a scatter of cold stars visible where the light allowed.
He felt completely, simply at peace.
After a long moment, his gaze drifted in, and his mind went still.
'Nineteen, huh'
'I am nineteen years old.'
"Hey there, nineteen-year-old kid..." He said to himself murmuringly.
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