"Goal! Goal! It's absolute poetry!"
"Renzo! It was him again! That vision is terrifying!"
"Did you see that? That wasn't a pass, it was a surgical strike!"
In the away end, the traveling Florentines—led by a screaming, red-faced Alex—had descended into pure anarchy. Renzo's quiet start to the half hadn't dampened their spirits; they had learned to wait. They knew that with Renzo, the silence wasn't a lack of effort—it was the calm before the storm.
When the lightning finally struck, it was more blinding than they could have imagined.
On the pitch, Mohamed Salah didn't even celebrate at first. He sprinted straight for Renzo, his face glowing with a frantic, joyous energy. This goal didn't just put Fiorentina up by two; it broke a suffocating 200-day drought for the Egyptian. Not since his days in London, over eight months ago, had he felt the net ripple under his boots.
"Renzo! I knew it!" Salah shouted, throwing his arms around the teenager. "The second I saw you shift your weight, I knew where it was going. I didn't even have to look back!"
Renzo grinned, returning the embrace with a calm that belied his age. "Don't get too ahead of yourself, Pharaoh. We're just getting started."
On the touchline, Vincenzo Montella was a man possessed. He hammered his fists into the air, a raw shout escaping his lungs.
"That pass!" he muttered to himself, his eyes wide.
To Montella, Renzo wasn't just a player anymore; he was a treasure map. As a manager who preached the gospel of possession and "tiki-taka" penetration, seeing Renzo work was like a master painter finding a brush that could draw perfectly straight lines.
Nearby, David Pizarro—the man Renzo had replaced—sat on the bench with his head in his hands, laughing in disbelief. He had told Montella to start the kid. He had seen this coming in training. Seeing it happen in the heat of Serie A, however, was something else entirely.
"The boy is a monster," Pizarro whispered, a proud smile on his face.
The mood in the rest of the Luigi Ferraris, however, was funereal. The Sampdoria fans looked on in hushed desperation, but the players were even worse off. They had felt their defensive shape was perfect. They had followed every instruction. And yet, a sixteen-year-old had bypassed four of them with a single flick of his ankle.
Samuel Eto'o, still standing near the halfway line, finally understood the Pharaoh's obsession.
Xavi, Eto'o thought, his mind racing back to the 2009 Treble. He has that same 'Assassin's Touch.' He doesn't just see the gap; he creates it out of nothing.
The Lion knew the danger. If Renzo was allowed to dictate the rhythm, the game was over. Sampdoria could fight back against a normal team, but you can't fight what you can't catch.
Sinisa Mihajlović, the Sampdoria boss, felt his composure snapping. A legendary defender and free-kick specialist in his day, Mihajlović knew a threat when he saw one. He had ignored the reports from the Genoa match, assuming it was a fluke. He wouldn't make that mistake twice.
Mihajlović barked orders, waving his arms frantically. He burned two substitutions immediately, bringing on the young defender Romagnoli and the explosive forward Luis Muriel. He tore up his 4-5-1 and gambled on a 3-5-2, pushing his wing-backs high to pin Fiorentina back.
But the most important change wasn't the formation. It was the man-marking.
"Soriano!" Mihajlović roared, pointing a finger directly at Renzo. "He doesn't breathe without you knowing. He doesn't touch the ball without you being in his shadow. Shut him down!"
Roberto Soriano, Sampdoria's midfield enforcer, nodded grimly. He wiped the sweat from his brow and stepped toward Renzo, his eyes cold and focused. In Soriano's mind, the kid's "highlight reel" was officially over. He was going to turn the rest of Renzo's afternoon into a physical nightmare.
What the veteran didn't know was that Renzo's upgraded Ball Control was about to make him question his entire career.