"Call me Coach."
The words echoed in David's mind over and over again, looping like a song he couldn't turn off. He sat in front of his newly assigned locker in the dressing room, staring at nothing in particular. It wasn't that the words themselves were bad—far from it. But it was the way they were said. The tone. The weight behind them.
Almost every coach he had met before preferred to be called gaffer or boss. Granted, he had only met two in his short career so far, but still—it was a pattern. It was familiar. And yet, here was Erik ten Hag, a man who didn't even acknowledge his handshake, shutting down the interaction with three simple words.
David couldn't shake the feeling that something was off.
