The pass was inch-perfect, your teammate slotting it home with the kind of easy finish your assist had made simple. He wheeled away celebrating, and the first person to reach you afterward wasn't him — it was the veteran captain, clapping you on the back with something that looked genuinely like approval.
"That's how you make friends fast in this dressing room," he said. "Skill gets you noticed. Trust gets you selected."
The head coach's reaction was more measured. "Good vision," he said. "I'd like to see end product too, when the moment's yours to take. Don't disappear into the team so much you stop backing yourself."
It was a fair note, and one that sat with you over the following weeks — the dressing room's trust was building nicely, but so was a quiet question about whether you had the killer instinct to finish games as well as start them.
Your league debut, three weeks later, came in a tight match your club needed to win. Chasing a goal late on, you found space in the box yourself this time, a teammate also in a decent position nearby.