The part of the game that usually goes unseen, made into a game of its own.
Take football and strip out everything physical. No pace, no power, no luck. Two players, eleven pieces each, one move at a time. What is left is the thing coaches and the best players are really doing underneath it all: reading space, timing the run, finding the pass that breaks the last line.
Most football is settled by gifts you are born with. The fastest player arrives first. The strongest holds them off. Taka takes all of that away, so the only edge left is how well you see the game. The better you read it, the better you do. Every time.
Taka was first played by coaches on a UEFA B Licence course, people who study the game for a living. Within a week, they had stopped being friendly about it.
The pro coaches were unbeatable.