Match Day. 7:30 PM. Villa Park Stadium.
Under the blinding stadium floodlights, the legendary stands of Villa Park were already shaking. Tens of thousands of Aston Villa supporters were roaring the team anthem, "Hi Ho Aston Villa," the sound echoing into the freezing Birmingham night.
Up in the stands, Xia Dongguo and Marianne Bjorn had already found their seats.
Theodore's dad, Xia Dongguo, was acting like a kid in a candy store, holding his phone up and recording every single thing he saw.
He was absolutely buzzing!
His mother, Marianne, was the complete opposite. She sat silently, her knuckles white as she aggressively refreshed the Aston Villa app on her phone, desperately waiting for the starting XI to drop.
...
Down in the home locker room, Dean Smith stood in front of the tactical board and read out the starters.
Theodore Bjorn's name wasn't called.
He wasn't surprised. Even though he had played like a god in the training scrimmages over the past two days (bagging two assists and earning Grealish's stamp of approval) he was still a 17-year-old kid who had just walked through the door.
The midfield is the engine room of the pitch, it dictates the transition between offense and defense.
If a midfielder lacks chemistry with the backline, the whole system collapses.
Dean Smith loved playing the youth, but throwing a rookie into a high-stakes Championship start on 48 hours' notice was suicide.
Theodore calmly zipped up his warmup jacket and took his spot on the bench.
His time would come.
...
8:00 PM. Kickoff.
Eighth-place Aston Villa against eleventh-place Ipswich Town.
Only six points separated them in the table, and both teams were desperate to climb into the promotion spots.
The second the referee blew the whistle, the match devolved into an absolute dogfight.
It was wide-open, chaotic back-and-forth English football.
Even though his son was glued to the bench, Xia Dongguo was losing his mind in the stands.
Every time Villa crossed the halfway line, he screamed until his voice went completely hoarse.
In the 32nd minute, Villa finally drew blood.
John McGinn received the ball in the midfield.
With a nasty drop of the shoulder and a quick change of pace, he sent two Ipswich midfielders sliding the wrong way.
Picking his head up, McGinn spotted Grealish lurking out wide on the left flank.
Grealish brought the ball down perfectly. Sure, the guy liked to close down bars on a Tuesday, but with a ball at his feet, he was pure magic.
He squared up his defender, executed two blistering step-overs, and cut inside onto his right foot.
Without hesitating, Grealish let it fly from outside the box.
BOOM!
The ball rocketed off his boot like a heat-seeking missile, completely bypassing the keeper and tearing into the top corner.
1-0!
The stadium erupted.
Grealish sprinted toward the corner flag and broke into a ridiculously goofy, exaggerated dance to celebrate.
On the bench, Theodore laughed out loud, aggressively waving his towel in the air.
He was genuinely thrilled for his new friend.
But Ipswich Town wasn't about to roll over.
After the restart, the visiting side pushed their lines high and launched a relentless, physical bombardment on the Villa penalty box.
They played classic, old-school Championship football: get it out wide, hoof it into the mixer, and pray.
Under the suffocating pressure, Villa's backline started to crack.
In the 41st minute, they paid the price. Ipswich's 20-year-old winger, Flynn Downes, used his raw pace to completely roast Villa's full-back down the touchline.
Instead of cutting inside like Grealish, Downes drove hard to the byline and whipped a vicious right-footed cross into the center.
Ipswich's star striker, Will Keane, was waiting.
Standing at a towering 188cm, Keane bullied the Villa center-back out of the way, won the aerial duel, and violently headed the ball downward.
It bounced past the diving keeper and into the net.
1-1.
The match leveled out after that.
The frantic, end-to-end pace of the first forty minutes had completely drained the players' legs, and the referee blew for halftime with the score deadlocked.
While the rest of the bench was just watching the game, Theodore had spent the entire 45 minutes mentally dissecting the pitch. He zeroed in on Ipswich's two center-backs, James Collins and Luke Chambers.
They were big and strong, but their turning speed was agonizingly slow. If someone could just slip a perfectly weighted through-ball behind them, Villa's forwards would be in on a 1-on-1 every single time.
In the locker room during halftime, Theodore pulled Grealish aside and whispered the tactical vulnerability to him.
When the second half kicked off, Grealish immediately tried to exploit it.
He constantly looked to thread the needle directly behind Collins and Chambers.
But the passes just weren't connecting.
Grealish was an elite dribbler, but he didn't have Xabi Alonso's 84-rated vision or Pirlo's 99-rated passing.
The balls were either slightly overhit or intercepted.
On the bench, Theodore gritted his teeth in frustration.
'The space is right there!'
Ipswich realized what Villa was trying to do and started pressing higher to cut off Grealish's air supply.
Then, their 19-year-old midfield loanee from Chelsea, Trevoh Chalobah, decided to make a statement.
Receiving the ball about 25 meters out from the Villa goal, Chalobah noticed the defenders backing off. He didn't think twice. He took one touch to set himself and unleashed a long-range shot.
Boom!
Villa's midfielder, Albert Adomah, was a step too late to block it.
In net, Lovre Kalinić reacted a fraction of a second too late.
He fully extended in a desperate dive, but the shot was too pure. The ball ripped into the back of the net.
2-1!
Ipswich had taken the lead on the road!
Villa was shell-shocked. After the restart, they were desperate to find a quick equalizer.
As the team's undisputed engine, Grealish dropped deep to collect the ball and dictate the tempo.
He took a heavy touch, looking to turn up the pitch.
He never saw the tackle coming.
Running purely on adrenaline after his spectacular goal, Chalobah came flying in.
It was a reckless, hyper-aggressive challenge. The 19-year-old completely clattered through Grealish, wiping him out with a sickening crunch.
Grealish hit the turf hard and stayed down, screaming in agony as he clutched his ankle.
The stadium fell silent.
Grealish lay writhing on the freezing turf, his face completely twisted in agony.
The stadium screens replayed the brutal foul in slow motion.
Trevoh Chalobah did not just mistimed a tackle, he had maliciously driven his knee straight into Grealish's kidney area.
It was a filthy, sneaky hit, completely shielded from the referee's line of sight.
No whistle. No yellow card. Trevoh Chalobah jogged away unpunished, while Aston Villa's star player was left screaming in unbearable pain, frantically slamming his fists against the grass.
"Fuck!" Dean Smith cursed on the touchline, violently kicking a water bottle.
The medical staff rushed the pitch.
After a brief, tense examination, the head physio looked up at the bench and crossed his arms in an 'X'. Grealish was done.
He couldn't continue.
Panic rippled through the home stands. This was a catastrophic blow. Nearly eighty percent of Aston Villa's offensive production flowed straight through Jack Grealish's boots.
Without him, the engine was dead.
Smith's face tightened with sheer anxiety as he spun around to face his substitutes.
He only had two viable options to plug the midfield: the veteran Mile Jedinak, or the 17-year-old rookie, Theodore Bjorn.
Jedinak was an Australian international built like a brick wall, but his offensive capabilities were painfully average.
He was a pure defensive destroyer, not an attacking playmaker.
If Villa wanted to win this game, parking a defensive midfielder on the pitch wasn't going to cut it.
Smith made his choice.
"Bjorn!" Smith barked, pointing dead at him. "Get your gear off! You're replacing Jack. Right now!"
Theodore's legs had been itching for the past hour.
Without a word, he ripped off his warmup jacket, revealing the number 33 jersey and sprinted to the touchline.
As the medical staff helped Grealish limp off the pitch, the captain heavily leaned toward Theodore.
"Give 'em hell, kid," Grealish grunted through the pain, patting his shoulder. "Make that bastard pay."
Up in the stands, Marianne suddenly grabbed her husband's arm, her eyes wide.
"Dongguo! Look down there! Is that... is that our boy?"
Xia Dongguo practically dropped his phone as he squinted at the touchline.
His voice instantly skyrocketed several decibels.
"Holy shit! It is!" Xia Dongguo screamed, completely ignoring the confused looks from the English fans around him.
"That's my son! He's actually playing in the Championship! Move, move, I need to record this!" He frantically held his phone up, his hands shaking with pure hype.
On the pitch, Theodore slotted right into the attacking midfield role.
The moment the referee blew the whistle to restart play, Theodore went to work.
He didn't even wait sixty seconds to make his presence known.
Seeing Trevoh Chalobah receive the ball and start driving confidently through the center, Theodore's eyes darkened.
He didn't just go for the ball, he launched himself like a freight train, brutally dropping his shoulder and barging straight through the Chalobah ribs, completely cleaning him out.
Chalobah hit the deck hard.
Scrambling to his feet, the Chelsea loanee looked at the teenager who had just leveled him and lost his mind.
"What the fuck is your problem?!" Chalobah roared, charging forward and violently shoving Theodore in the chest with both hands.
Theodore didn't budge an inch.
With Schweinsteiger's 82-rated physicality coursing through his veins, he stepped right back into Chalobah's face and shoved him back twice as hard, sending the Ipswich player tumbling back down to the turf.
"That's for Jack, you prick," Theodore spat.
The referee blew his whistle frantically, sprinting over to separate the two before a full brawl broke out.
He whipped out two yellow cards, booking them both instantly.
Theodore didn't care. The message was sent. He and Grealish had become brothers over the last two days, and nobody was going to take out his teammate without catching hell for it!
With the blood successfully boiling, the match resumed. Now, it was time for Theodore to show them what a 99-rated pass looked like.
78th Minute.
John McGinn won a gritty 50/50 ball in the midfield and immediately poked it over to Theodore.
Theodore didn't even take a touch to settle it. Using Xabi Alonso's vision, he saw the exact trajectory needed. He whipped his right foot through the ball, launching one of his signature, devastating cruise missiles pass.
The ball ripped through the freezing air, sailing beautifully over the heads of Ipswich's two sluggish center-backs.
Aston Villa's striker, Tammy Abraham, read the pass perfectly.
He shattered the offside trap, blowing past the defenders to bring the ball down with a silky touch right on the edge of the box.
Suddenly, Abraham was dead one-on-one with the keeper.
Ipswich's goalkeeper, Białkowski, panicked. He hesitated on his line for a fraction of a second, failing to rush out and close the angle. It was a fatal mistake.
Abraham coolly opened his hips and slotted a curled finish straight into the far post.
Smack.
2-2!
Villa Park absolutely erupted.
Over thirty thousand fans lost their collective minds, the deafening roar of "Hi Ho Aston Villa" violently shaking the stadium concrete.
"That was my boy's assist!" Xia Dongguo was screaming, aggressively shaking the shoulder of a random British fan next to him.
"That's my fucking son out there! Look at him!"
Down on the pitch, Abraham didn't even celebrate his goal.
He turned around, pointed both fingers dead at Theodore, and sprinted over to tackle him.
"That's a goddamn beautiful ball, Bjorn!" Abraham yelled over the crowd noise. "I swear to god, your passing is even better than Jack's!"
Theodore just smirked, ice in his veins. "Keep sitting on the shoulders of those two center-backs. I'll drop another one right on your head."
On the touchline, Dean Smith was furiously pumping his fists, looking like a total madman.
This was the exact genius he had gambled on!
Desperate to regain the lead, Ipswich completely abandoned their shape and threw bodies forward.
Winger Flynn Downes repeatedly tried to abuse his pace down the flanks, but Villa's defense had locked in, suffocating his runs.
The ball pinballed out of the box and once again found its way into the midfield—right to Trevoh Chalobah.
Before Chalobah could even look down to control the ball, a shadow completely eclipsed him.
Theodore had anticipated the play perfectly.
With a viciously quick stab of his right foot, he snatched the ball right off Chalobah's toes.
Chalobah froze, completely stunned.
He hadn't even heard the kid coming.
Theodore didn't hesitate. With the Ipswich defense caught completely out of position, he struck the bottom of the ball with power.
Another terrifying, arcing through-ball carved open the sky over the penalty area.
Once again, it dropped flawlessly into the path of Tammy Abraham.
The timing was perfect.
Abraham didn't even have to break stride, he just unleashed a thunderous, first-time volley.
The ball violently ripped into the back of the net before the keeper could even blink.
3-2!!
In the 82nd minute, the rookie had just orchestrated a legendary comeback.
A brace for Tammy Abraham.
A brace of assists for the 17-year-old kid who wasn't even supposed to be on the pitch!