Chapter 10

A broadcast from Ego and Anri opens with fresh results, confirming that Team X has fallen to Team W by four goals to one. Attention then shifts to the meeting of Team Y and Team Z, where Kuon points out that their opponents share the same knife's edge, since a defeat would knock either side out of contention. He also flags Hibiki Okawa, ranked two hundred fifty-fourth, as the danger to watch.

To draw the best from each roster member, Team Z commits to a rotation in which one player at a time takes the forward role while the others feed and support him. Chigiri opts out, preferring to hold the back line, so the plan gives every attacker a ten-minute window to display his particular strength.

Bachira goes first and slices through on his own, only to be dispossessed from behind by Niko, prompting Isagi to note that Team Y clearly has schemes of its own. When Bachira's window closes, Kunigami steps up, but his game depends on lurking unmarked until a teammate delivers the ball to his zone. A pass finds him, yet two defenders smother his shot, and possession keeps swinging between the sides.

Amid the churn, Isagi picks up on Okawa staying eerily motionless before suddenly springing into action, and he grasps that the stillness was deliberate. The realization lands hard: Team Z has only been able to press forward because Team Y permitted it, with Okawa biding his time for a signal from Niko to launch the real counterstrike.

Running twenty pages, this First Selection Arc chapter reached Japan on October 10, 2018 and English readers on April 20, 2021, and its content appears in the fourth episode of the anime. The tactic at its center, sometimes rendered as Next Me, Then Nine, gives the installment its title.