Chapter 1: The Kid Meets His New Team Mates
After surviving his first meeting with The Boss, The Kid joins his new teammates and tries to make an impression by explaining the club’s latest fantasy football idea.
The response is not quite what he expects.
Meeting the Squad
The Kid has finally made it inside the training ground and is now being introduced to the players who will become his new teammates.
Joining a new club is never simple. There are reputations to understand, personalities to navigate and an established dressing-room hierarchy to respect.
The Kid decides that the best way to make an impression is to explain the finer points of a new fantasy football game.
It seems like a good idea.
His teammates are less certain.
Fantasy Football Meets the Dressing Room
The conversation quickly reveals that professional footballers may not view fantasy football in quite the same way as supporters.
Fans study statistics, select squads and debate which players deserve a place in their fantasy teams. The players themselves are more likely to focus on one question: how many points are they worth?
The Kid attempts to explain the rules, but the discussion soon becomes distracted by personal scores, appearances and hairstyles.
Even in fantasy football, professional pride is never far away.
The Kid Tries to Impress
The Kid is still finding his place within the squad.
He has arrived with a major reputation following his World Cup performances, but his new teammates have their own achievements, personalities and opinions.
By introducing the fantasy football game, he hopes to show that he can fit into the group and contribute something different.
Instead, the conversation reminds him that footballers can turn almost any subject into a competition.
The Football Inspiration Behind the Comic
This chapter was created during a period when fantasy football was becoming an increasingly important part of how supporters followed the game.
Fantasy football encouraged fans to pay attention to players beyond the teams they supported. Goals, assists, clean sheets and individual performances became part of a wider weekly competition.
Storybook reverses the usual perspective by imagining professional footballers discussing their own fantasy value.
The result is a joke about vanity, competition and the way footballers might react to being reduced to points and statistics.
Characters Featured
The Kid
The Kid is eager to make friends and settle into his new team. His enthusiasm is genuine, but his attempts to explain fantasy football lead the conversation in an unexpected direction.
The Boss
The manager remains focused on football rather than fantasy football. He is more interested in whether his new signing can help the team than how many points anyone might score in a game.
The New Team Mates
The Kid’s teammates are established players with strong personalities. Some are interested in the fantasy game, while others are more concerned about their own scores, public image and recognition.
The Cabbie
The Cabbie appears at the end of the comic as The Kid considers asking him for help. As usual, the driver remains close enough to the football world to become involved without actually being part of the club.
Behind the Gag
The humour comes from the gap between how supporters and footballers view fantasy football.
For supporters, it is a game of strategy.
For players, it can become another measure of status.
The Kid wants to explain tactics and scoring. His teammates are more interested in whether the game properly recognises their talent, celebrity and appearance.
The joke also continues Storybook’s wider theme that even simple conversations become complicated inside an elite football club.
Looking Back
Originally published in 2015, this chapter connected the Storybook narrative directly with Fantasy Sports Portal’s fantasy football roots.
It also expanded the world beyond The Kid, The President, The Boss and The Cabbie by introducing the personalities surrounding him at his new club.
The Kid may be trying to settle into Madrid, but his thoughts soon return to the friend he left behind in Monte Carlo.
That friend is The Tiger.
