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Mooninite's Academy Trophy - AustinP0027 - 2026-06-08
Diary Entry #1 – Academy Champions
I have been informed that keeping a diary is a useful activity. Apparently, humans write down their thoughts so they can remember things later. This is, of course, because human brains are weak and fragile. Mooninite minds retain every thought, every conversation, and every insult we have ever delivered. Nevertheless, I have decided to document this season so future historians can accurately describe exactly how a Mooninite arrived halfway through a campaign and immediately improved the quality of an entire football club.
When I joined Jakarta, I was listed as a defensive midfielder. I bet some paperwork somewhere probably still says that. Humans enjoy their labels. They see a player standing in the middle of the field and decide he belongs in a little box with a short abbreviation attached to it.
I spent most of my time where I felt like spending it, which happened to be in the middle of the field. That is because the middle is where games are decided. The wings are for scenery, and the penalty boxes are where people take credit, but the middle is where control lives.
Over six matches I played every minute available to me. Five hundred and forty minutes played. I ran more than fifty-two kilometers, which sounds exhausting until you remember I am from the Moon and therefore possess a level of physical conditioning that Earth science is currently incapable of measuring. Humans kept asking how I maintained my energy. The answer is simple: Lunar stamina. Like most things originating on the Moon, it is vastly superior to the Earth equivalent.
What amused me most was watching opponents try to figure out what I was going to do.
Defensive midfielders are apparently not supposed to score three goals. They are not usually expected to provide two assists either. Yet there I was, collecting both while spending most of my time dictating play from the center of the pitch. According to the numbers, I generated only 0.77 expected goals, yet I scored three.
Earth statisticians call this overperformance. Mooninites call this acceptable.
I took eleven shots and put seven on target. I completed nearly eighty three percent of my passes while still trying things ambitious enough to create chances. One hundred and thirty-nine successful passes, six key passes, and enough progressive movement of the ball that coaches started using phrases like “driving the team forward.” I assume they meant me literally, because there were several occasions when I looked around, realized nobody else had a semblance of a plan, and carried the entire operation myself.
Defensively, things were equally as entertaining.
Fourteen tackles won from eighteen attempts, five interceptions, twelve clearances and a collection of headers, blocks, recoveries, and interventions that collectively translated into opponents spending ninety minutes wondering why every attack seemed to end with me standing in the way of it. One player told me after a match that I was “everywhere.”
I explained that when your awareness is limited to three dimensions, that was probably true. On the Moon we have five dimensions.
Thousand.
Five thousand.
By the time the final match came around, nobody would admit it, but there was a feeling around the club that this thing was already over. The coaches still gave speeches while the players still talked about staying focused. Meanwhile our opponent still convinced themselves they had a chance.
Humans have a remarkable ability to ignore reality when it makes them uncomfortable.
Then we won, of course.
There is probably a detailed account of the match somewhere. I assume journalists wrote thousands of words about key moments and turning points. About team tactics and personnel battles. Humans love pretending events are more complicated than they are. The important detail is that Jakarta ended the season with a trophy and I ended the season standing next to it.
Afterward I kept hearing people repeat statistics at me as though I had not been there. Goals, assists, tackles won, shots on target. These are all things I already knew.
One man spent nearly five minutes explaining my average rating to me.
I thanked him for informing me that I had played well.
The statistics were impressive, although I was disappointed to discover they only measure things that happened on the field. There is currently no category for "general improvement of everyone nearby through exposure to Mooninite excellence."
One day, perhaps.
The numbers were respectable. Not Mooninite levels, obviously.
Had I chosen to dominate every aspect of every match, the figures would have been much larger. But football is a team sport, and occasionally one must permit others to participate in the match.
Later, after most of the celebrating had died down, I ended up standing around with the trophy while people took photographs of each other holding it. Humans are obsessed with photographs. They seem terrified that an event might happen without leaving behind evidence that they were standing near it.
While this was going on, I looked up and saw the Moon over the stadium. At that point the trophy was involved in a comparison it had absolutely no chance of winning.
The trophy was shiny. It was important. An entire season had been spent competing for it.
The Moon is the Moon.
There are some comparisons you simply cannot survive.
RE: Mooninite's Academy Trophy - PBubs900 - 2026-06-08
Loved this, you are a great writer!!