@IamHim wow me and mateo really have to be nerfed badly man i'm not even kidding this is getting out of hand
@SigmaMale_69 replying to @IamHim
who even are you đđ
@whenisgta6comingout FUCK YES. WE ARE FUCKING WINNING THE LEAGUE. WE ARE FUCKING WINNING THIS THING. VAMOSSSS
@PizzaOverBurger replying to @whenisgta6comingout dude there isn't even a release date for gta 6 yet lol. it's probably coming out like 2030 at this point
@whenisgta6comingout replying to @PizzaOverBurger that's not possible. gta 5 came out in 2013. no way he doesn't come out soon. i give it till 2025 max or i'm gonna unalive myself fr
@PizzaOverBurger replying to @whenisgta6comingout bro it's not that serious
@YeNotKanye the way mateo king moves with the ball should genuinely be considered a crime in 47 states. lock him up
@Ilikesmellingfeet they have mateo king. we have vinicius junior. yeah okay just wrap the league up and ship it to catalonia what's the point anymore i hate this club so much
@AmosIsAP chelsea fans have been talking shit for TWO WEEKS straight. i genuinely cannot wait for what's about to happen to them in porto đđđđ
@UnpaidIntern mateo king has been at this club for ONE season and barcelona are about to win the double. they were broke six months ago. SIX. MONTHS. AGO. football is a fake sport
@Icantthinkofaname guys mateo just scored AGAIN. i'm at work. i cannot scream. i am screaming internally. i am vibrating
@SigmaMale_69 real madrid fans were posting their tax returns to prove they were richer than barcelona yesterday. today they are silent. today they are mourning. let the mourning be loud
@whenisgta6comingout the league is ours. the league is OURS. atletico can pack it up. simeone get the bus ready
@PizzaOverBurger replying to @whenisgta6comingout i thought you were on suicide watch waiting for gta 6 mate. focus
@YeNotKanye puyol, ronaldinho, rivaldo and RONALDO are all in the same box right now. just put them on the touchline and let them coach idgaf
"WOOOO. HAHAHAâ"
High up in the VIP section, the boxes set apart from the roaring sea of fans below, Ronaldinho was on his feet, clapping, his whole face open with it. Beside him, Carles Puyol was up too, laughing, smacking his hands together in slow heavy claps, his head tipped back. Rivaldo and Ronaldo NazĂĄrio stayed in their seats, clapping along, smiling, Ronaldo shaking his head at the screen with a half-grin.
A row of fans below had pulled their shirts off and were spinning them above their heads.
Puyol sat down still grinning, turned to Ronaldinho, and the two of them clasped hands in a quick celebration of their own.
Ronaldinho dropped back into his seat at last, laughing.
"I guess that's it."
The four of them sat in their row, four legends of the game, four ex-Blaugrana except for the one of them who had also worn white. They had come to the box together because none of them could keep away from a league decider at the Wanda, and now they were watching it shake out exactly the way the four of them, between them, had won so many before.
"It's going to be hard for Atléti to come back from this." Puyol said. "Not with how they play. They are not built to chase."
Rivaldo turned his hand. "I don't know. They've come out a bit more since they fell behind. Barcelona's defence hasn't been all that today, you know. Atléti are just not being clinical. That can change."
Ronaldo NazĂĄrio shook his head, smiling.
"Yes. But are they going to stop another?"
Four different greats. Four different positions. Four different schools of thought. And down on the grass below them the noise was so deep you could feel it in the box's glass, while the Barcelona players were still celebrating on the field, Mateo with both arms in the air screaming, Pedri hanging off his neck like an oversized scarf, the others piling in and trying to drag him sideways into the huddle.
Up on the massive screen above the pitch, the camera cut to Mateo, grinning, his arms still raised. Ronaldo watched him a beat.
"That kid," Ronaldo said. "He really is something else, isn't he."
Ronaldinho turned to him, smiling.
"Of course you would say that."
Ronaldo looked at him. "What?"
Puyol, on Ronaldinho's other side, looked at him too, the same look on his face, like the answer was sitting right out there in front of them.
"I mean. Come on."
Ronaldo's eyebrows came up, oblivious. "No. Seriously. What?"
Ronaldinho leaned in.
"He's just like you."
"Eh?" Ronaldo's whole face did something. "What?"
"I'm serious." Ronaldinho was grinning now. "Don't you see it?"
Ronaldo turned back to the screen, sceptical, half-laughing, his eyes finding Mateo, who was still being half-strangled by Pedri while the others tried to pull him back into position. Ronaldo's lip curled. He could not see it.
Ronaldinho clocked the look.
"He's literally a younger you, mate."
"He has that same speed," Puyol jumped in before Ronaldinho had even finished.
"And that freakish sixth sense in front of goal," Ronaldinho added, riding it. "The way the goal opens up for him before he even gets there."
"That's literally your whole build."
Ronaldinho's eyes drifted down, and the smile widened. He reached over and patted Ronaldo's stomach.
"Or at least it was. Before you got pregnant."
Ronaldo's hand came up and slapped his away. "Get out of here, manâ"
The box dissolved. Puyol was doubled over. Rivaldo's shoulders were shaking. Ronaldinho was wheezing, hand on Ronaldo's arm, refusing to let it go.
"I'm just saying!"
"Get out of here, dinho, I swearâ"
"Six months in the gym, Ronnie, you'd be the same playerâ"
"Six months in the gym, my fatâ"
The laughing rolled.
Eventually Ronaldo wiped his eyes and turned back to the conversation, still half-grinning.
"Alright. Alright. But are you sure? You really see it?"
"You're telling me," Ronaldinho said, "you don't see one bit of the resemblance? Between him and your young days?"
Ronaldo went back to the screen, watching Mateo jog now, the camera following him. He pulled a face.
"Hmm. I don't know. He dribbles a lot."
Ronaldinho smiled. "You also dribbled a lot."
"Yeah, but not like this."
"You watched that City game," Puyol said.
Ronaldo's mouth closed.
Ronaldinho let out a low whistle, remembering, and even Rivaldo, who had been the quiet one of the four so far, started slowly shaking his head, side to side, his lips pressed together.
Ronaldo nodded slowly, looking at the screen.
"Yeah. You know what, that game, I'd say he resembled you more, Dinho."
Ronaldinho's hand flew to his own chest. "Me?"
"Yeah," Rivaldo finally spoke, soft. "The way he moves with the ball. The dribbles. The disguise of the touches. That is your shape, Dinho. Not his." He nodded at Ronaldo.
Ronaldinho sat back in his seat, smiling, not saying anything, the smile speaking for him.
While the four legends were sat upstairs comparing him to two of the greatest forwards the game had ever produced, something which would have made him actually, genuinely faint if he could have heard them, Mateo King was down on the grass with his fists in the air and his head thrown back, laughing.
He was on his way back into position. The Atlético players were trying to chivvy him along, restart the game, kill the celebration, and one of them, jaw tight, came across and put a shove into his shoulder, trying to push him toward the centre circle.
Mateo skipped sideways, sidestepping the shove without even looking at the man, his eyes still up on the Barcelona end, his hands still raised, his grin still wide.
He waved at them as he walked. Just walked along the pitch, an arm up, a slow casual wave, the whole stand losing its mind back at him.
The Atlético player went again, shoving at his arm this time, trying to drag it down.
"Vamos. Vamos. Restart, restart, eh?"
Mateo just laughed.
The referee came in.
"Eh. Eh. None of that. Watch it." He pointed at the Atlético player, who threw his hands up.
"He's the one delaying! HE'S the one!"
The ref turned to the Barcelona group.
"Boys. Back. Come on. Back to your positions, let's go."
Mateo started drifting back, finally, the smile still on his face. His path took him right between two Atlético defenders, and they stayed where they were, square-shouldered, eyes on him, refusing to give him an extra inch. He walked between them like they were not there.
He felt their eyes.
He kept smiling.
And inside him, somewhere underneath the smile, somewhere in his chest and behind his sternum, a thing was happening that he could not have put a single word to if you had asked him to.
He felt like he was flying.
He had not noticed his feet leaving the ground. He had not noticed his hands fly together, the squeeze of his own fingers, the bounce in his step that lifted him. His whole spirit, light, his whole body, light, like the gravity had decided to leave him alone for a while.
"YES!"
It tore out of him before he had decided to say it.
He felt like a kid again. The same pure feeling, exact, the one he had felt that first leg against Manchester City.
He felt it again now, in the sun, in a stadium screaming his name, the league one half-game from being theirs.
Yes.
...
On the touchline, Diego Simeone stood with both hands shoved deep into his suit-trouser pockets, his eyes fixed somewhere far out across the stadium, and his face giving nothing back to anyone who looked at him.
There was no fury in it. No despair either. Nothing as easy as either of those. His jaw was set, his lips a thin straight line, the lines around his eyes pulled tight in a way that could have been concentration or could have been calm or could have been a man slowly bleeding out and refusing to show it.
He looked at the screen. He looked at his players. He looked at the giant clock on the scoreboard.
He did not blink for a long time.
The Atlético players did not waste a second. The moment Barcelona had settled back into something resembling shape, Suårez stepped over the ball at the centre spot, tapped it sideways to Lemar, and they were going again.
"And we are back underway here at the Wanda Metropolitano. Less than fifty minutes of football left between Barcelona and the league title. Less than fifty. Think about that for a moment. Think about where this club was at the start of this season. The press conferences nobody could believe. The departures that did not happen, the arrivals that did. The boy nobody had heard of. And here they are now, on the cusp of it." A pause. "Truly. MĂ©s que un club."
The Atlético players pushed it forward.
Llorente carried it through the middle, Koke peeling off the right shoulder, Lemar working the left. Mateo dropped back to mark, jogging across the lane, and as Llorente angled to slide it into him Mateo cut the line, the pass dying off Llorente's foot and skidding sideways instead, and Atlético had to reset.
"ÂĄLateral! ÂĄLATERAL!" SuĂĄrez was screaming for it.
The ball came across to the right. Carrasco took it on, jinking, Suårez peeling off the back of Piqué's shoulder. Piqué stayed with him, talking the whole way, "Eh, eh, eh, no, no, no," his hand on the small of Suårez's back, the two old friends shoving each other in low quiet violence.
Carrasco fed it inside to Koke, and Koke, twenty-five yards out, twenty-six, and the Wanda rising under him with every metre, looked up, saw nothing he liked, and just hit it.
"KOKEâ"
The ball flew wide of the post by three yards.
Koke stopped dead where he was and dragged his hand down his face. "Shhh. Shhh, shh."
He turned and trudged back, shaking it off.
Atlético came again.
Lemar got it in the half-space and went at Alba with the dribble, three step-overs, a feint inside, a feint outside, and Alba, low and patient, did not move. He waited Lemar out, nicked it off his toe as the Frenchman finally committed, and was gone with it, away down the line.
"And Alba, Alba breaksâ"
The ball flew square across the field, fast, and Lemar came chasing back trying to claw it, and De Jong met it on the half-turn.
"Could this be another one?"
De Jong's head was up before the ball had even arrived at his foot. He took one touch to set, lifted his chin once more, and arrowed it.
A long ball, weighted to perfection, gliding right.
"And he releases it. And it lands. In the feet. Of Lionel Messi."
Messi took it down with his thigh and the whole AtlĂ©tico back line froze on him at the same time. SaviÄ shifted. Felipe shifted. Trippier shifted. All three sets of eyes locked on the small man with the ball, all three of them edging in, all three of them refusing to be the one who lunged.
Messi shaped to go.
Three bodies twitched.
Messi rolled it back to Sergi Roberto.
"Oh, the cheekâ"
Roberto took it and carried it inward, and by the time he was looking up the Atlético players had backpedalled the whole shape into a wall again. But that was not going to stop this Barcelona, not in this moment, not in this stadium. Roberto turned. Pedri made the run. Roberto slid it.
A red shirt arrived to take it off Pedri, and Pedri received it in front of him, dropped his hips, dragged the ball back across his own body in a tight little spin, and broke free into the gap.
"And Pedri, oh, Pedriâ" The commentator was laughing now, half-incredulous. "Iniesta. Welcome back, my friend."
Pedri carried it into the edge of the area. He looked up. Mateo was running off the shoulder, sprinting.
Pedri rolled it.
Mateo took it past one man, his right boot dragging it past the lunge, and as the second man came in he chipped the ball with his toe and stepped over the leg as it scythed in beneath him, and he hit the ground just outside the box and shot first time without thinking.
"AHHHHHâ"
The whole stadium came up.
Oblak threw himself across. His fingers, just the fingers, scraped at it, just enough, and the ball spun off and down and into the six-yard box, and Dembélé was charging in.
SaviÄ got there first, half a step, both arms up to shield his body, and the ball cannoned into his shins as he turned. DembĂ©lĂ© crashed into the back of him, both of them stumbling, SaviÄ going down on top of the ball, his arms wrapping around it like a man holding a child in a fire.
The whistle blew.
"FOUL! AGAINSTâ"
Dembélé's arms flew out, both hands up at the sky.
"Come ON! Come ON, ref, come ON, what is THAT?"
The referee jogged past him, palm flat, signalling for the free kick to Atlético.
"I had it, I hadâ" DembĂ©lĂ© was still going, stalking after the ref, the words tumbling. "Tell me where the foul is. TELL me. I had the ball before he did, tell me, refâ"
The ref turned and gave him a single warning look, and Dembélé threw his hands once more and turned away.
Atlético, two down. The half-time clock ticking. And it is normal, of course, for the side chasing the goal to come out of itself, even one as built around its shape as Atlético Madrid. They came forward.
Carrasco worked it down the left, switched it inside to Koke, Koke fed Llorente, Llorente squared it and Suårez had peeled off Piqué's blind side and arrived at the back post into a clear pocket, the cross floated to where his head should be.
And it went through him.
The ball glanced off the top of his shoulder and dribbled out for a goal kick.
SuĂĄrez stood there on the grass for a long second, looking at the corner flag, looking up at the sky, looking at nothing. He bent at the waist and put his hands on his knees, and then he straightened and slammed the heel of his boot into the turf.
"ÂĄQUĂ! ÂĄQUĂ! ÂżQUĂ HACĂS, SUĂREZ? ÂĄQUĂ HACĂS!"
He was screaming at himself. Walking back into shape, head down, slapping his own thigh with his own fist, his face twisted up in a thing that anyone who had ever loved a striker would have recognised on sight.
The neutrals in the crowd, and even some of the Catalans, felt something snag in their chests at the sight of it. He was a great man having a bad day in the wrong shirt.
The play rolled on.
Busquets had it now, deep, the conductor turning his slow circles in the centre of his own half. And then, slowly, then suddenly, Busquets started to move.
He carried the ball forward. Not fast, never fast, but with the inevitability of a tide. He went past one, then a second man dropped off rather than commit, and the Atlético midfield band, who had been holding their shape with the religious discipline Simeone had drilled into them for a decade, suddenly had to make the call between staying disciplined and stepping to the man, and the half-second of hesitation was all Busquets needed. He carried it ten yards more.
He looked up, his head already turned, and he found his oldest friend on the field running into the channel he had created.
Alba.
He played it left, a single inch-perfect ball threaded into Alba's stride.
"And Alba is gone!"
Alba's legs ate the touchline. He drove into the box without ever breaking the stride from Busquets's pass, and from out wide he looked up once and stabbed it across the face of goal, low and hard.
Mateo had been sprinting in from the back post. He saw the ball coming flat across the six, saw it skimming away from him, and slid, full length, both legs out, the studs of his boots stretching for it, and the ball clipped his outstretched foot at the very tip and squirted on through, just past the far post, brushing the netting on the outside and out for a goal kick.
Oblak, who had been mid-dive, lay on his back for a moment staring up at the lights.
Mateo got up, slapped his hands together once, shook his head, and jogged back.
The match rolled on.
A few minutes later, Pedri picked the ball up in the centre and turned, and Carrasco came across to close him. The two of them tangled, Pedri turning his back to ride the challenge, Carrasco's hand on his hip, Pedri shrugging it off, and then a shoulder went in and Carrasco went down hard, his hands flying out, his face screwed up.
"AHHHH! AHHHHH!"
Pedri turned, his palms up at the sky.
"I barely touched you. I barely touched him, ref, look atâ"
The referee was already coming over.
"I barely touched him, ref, look at him, LOOK at him, Iâ"
The yellow card came up.
"Eh? EH? For that? COME ON!"
Pedri spread his arms wide, looking around the field as if asking somebody, anybody, to back him up. He found nobody. He shook his head, dismissive, threw a hand in the air, and walked away.
The first Barcelona yellow of the day was on the board.
The clock kept ticking.
A couple of minutes later, the ball had gone out for a Barcelona throw down the right. Sergi Roberto picked it up and shaped to take it, his eyes on De Jong drifting back to receive. He glanced toward the touchline first, a habit. Koeman was up there gesticulating, shouting instructions toward the back four about something tactical, the words lost in the noise.
Roberto's eyes drifted past him.
And found the fourth official's board.
A small, glowing, blue square at the chest of the man in the high-vis vest.
+3.
Three more minutes.
Roberto's mouth tugged up at the corner. He muttered it to himself.
"Three more."
He turned back to the throw. De Jong was waiting, and Pedri had drifted up to support, and Messi was a little further inside watching. And in the middle of all of them, walking absently, half on the ball half off it, was Mateo, looking around at the stadium, half-bouncing on the balls of his feet.
He bumped back into a body that did not move.
Mateo turned. Giménez. The Uruguayan was already glaring at him.
"Oh, sorry about that, man. My bad."
Giménez did not answer.
Mateo grinned, and shrugged, and drifted off the few yards to the half-space.
Roberto took the throw. Quick, flat, into De Jong's chest. De Jong was looking to feed Pedri back into the middle, and as he half-turned the Atlético pressure arrived in numbers. Koke, Llorente, two red shirts at once, hunting the ball, and De Jong, for the first time all afternoon, took a touch he should not have, and Koke nicked it off him.
"And Atléti win it back! In the Barcelona half!"
The press cracked into action the moment the ball was lost. Pedri spun and pursued. Busquets came across. Mateo joined the press, hunting Koke as he tried to lay it square. The ball moved fast across the Atlético midfield, two-touch, one-touch, Llorente to Lemar to Koke and back again, the Barcelona pressers spinning in chase, and then Lemar found the diagonal and went over the top.
Lodi was overlapping, sprinting onto the long ball, and he took it down on the bounce and slid it inside without breaking stride. Correa met it on the run.
"And here come AtlĂ©ti, here they comeâ"
Correa drove at AraĂșjo, one on one, in front of the box.
"Stop. Stop. Stop." AraĂșjo was talking to himself low, dropping his weight, all of it instinct, refusing to lunge.
Correa step-overed once, twice, a third time, dropped his shoulder to go right, then snapped his body the other way to go left, his pace surging, his hand coming out to lever AraĂșjo off him.
AraĂșjo went with him stride for stride, an arm of his own coming up to stay against Correa's bicep, the two of them locked together at speed, the bodies bouncing off each other, the contest absolute.
"And what an INDIVIDUAL battle here, this is brilliantâ"
Correa cut sudden. Stopped him dead, dragging the ball back with the sole and shifting it across his body, hunting the half-yard.
AraĂșjo whipped his body around to turn with him, his momentum thrown, his hand coming up high to try to brake against Correa's chestâ
The hand scraped up across Correa's face.
And Correa went down, both hands snapping up to his cheek, screaming.
"AHH! AHHH!"
PEEEEEEEEP.
The whistle tore across the stadium.
"And he is DOWN. He is DOWN. Correa is DOWN. And what has he caught him with, AraĂșjoâAraĂșjo with a hand, with the hand to the FACEâ"
The referee was already pointing.
To the spot.
"And we have a PENALTY. A penalty in the third minute of added time. Three minutes to half time, Barcelona were sleepwalking toward a two-nil lead into the break in a game many had called done five minutes ago, and now, NOW, the door has swung wide open again, this is a chance for AtlĂ©tico Madrid to walk into the dressing room one goal behind, one strike from being level, one strike from being right back in this football matchâ"
The crowd came apart. The Atlético end exploded into joy, the Barcelona ends into howls, whistles screaming down out of the stands like hail.
On the touchline, Koeman's hands were both in his hair, his face contorted, shouting something that nobody could hear.
Beside him, six yards down the line, Simeone's hands flew out of his pockets for the first time all half.
"ÂĄPENAL! ÂĄPENAL! ÂĄPEN-AL! ÂĄVAMOS, ĂRBITRO, PEN-AL!"
He was up on his toes, both arms thrown wide, his suit jacket flying open, his whole face come back to life at last, screaming, screaming, the calm gone, the patience gone, his man down on the grass with a chance to drag them all the way back from the dead.
"ÂĄVAMOS! ÂĄVAMOSSSSS! HAHAHAHA "
Simeone was not the only one who lost his mind.
On the pitch, the Barcelona players had swarmed the referee from every direction. Piqué had a hand pressed flat against his own chest, jogging backwards beside the official, talking fast.
"Ref. Ref. Where? Where? Show me where. The hand was DOWN. He had his back to the man, ref, you saw it, you saw itâ"
Busquets came in low, both arms out, talking quietly but talking fast.
"Mateu, please. Please. VAR. At least look at it. Look at it once. That's all. Look at it once."
The referee shook his head, both hands raised, walking through them.
AraĂșjo had not moved from the spot of the contact. He stood there with his arms spread wide, his palms turned up to the sky, his face open and stricken.
"What did I do? What did I DO? What did I do, eh?" His voice broke a little on it. "I had my eyes on the ball. ON THE BALL. Where is the foul?"
He turned in a slow half circle, asking the question of the air, of nobody, of everybody.
"Where is the foul?"
The Atlético end was already singing. Already dancing. Half of the stadium one big bouncing tide of red and white, scarves above heads, a song that had been waiting all afternoon for an excuse to come out. The Barcelona players saw it and burned at it.
Pedri was screaming at the assistant ref. Alba was screaming at the assistant ref. Roberto had given up and was standing with his hands on his hips, head tipped to the sky, his mouth slightly open in disbelief.
The referee held his hand up.
"Enough! ENOUGH! It's a penalty."
He pointed once at the spot, hard, and turned and walked away.
"And he is going to stick with it. He's going to stick with it. He is not going to the monitor, he is not consulting, the call is the call. A penalty to Atlético Madrid in the third minute of added time at the Wanda Metropolitano. And the man walking up to the ball, ladies and gentlemen, is the man whose goals built this club for nine years, the man this club let go for nothing eleven months ago, the man who has not stopped scoring since the day they did, Atlético Madrid's top scorer this season."
A beat.
"Luis SuĂĄrez."
The ball was already at his feet.
The Barcelona players were still arguing. The referee herded them away with both arms, pointing at their half, sending them back beyond the D.
"Get back. Back. Back. We're playing. Let's play."
Ter Stegen stayed where he was. He was on his line, slapping his gloves together hard, the heavy meaty clap of them carrying over the noise of the stadium. He bent at the waist, then sprang up, both arms wide. He shouted something to nobody, just to use his own voice, just to keep his blood up.
SuĂĄrez set the ball on the spot. He pressed the studs of his boot into the grass beside it, settling himself, levelling it. He stepped back, one pace, two, three.
He stopped.
He looked up the pitch.
And his eyes found Ter Stegen.
In the family area, the world had gone quiet.
Isabella had her hand pressed flat to her chest. Antonella was on the edge of her seat, her phone forgotten in her hand. David sat beside Isabella, his hand on her knee, his eyes locked on the screen above them.
In the corner of the box, little Mateo, Antonella's youngest, was staring up at the giant screen with his head tipped back. He looked at the camera close-up of Luis SuĂĄrez, and then at the camera close-up of the goalkeeper, and then back at SuĂĄrez.
His face crumpled in confusion.
"MamĂĄ," he said, looking up at Antonella. "Uncle Luis?"
Antonella did not look down at him. She could not look away from the screen. Her hand reached down and found her son's shoulder, and she squeezed it once, gently, and said nothing at all.
The whole row of them sat in silence, leaning forward, every single one of them, watching the man on the spot.
"And you have to think, what is going through Luis Suårez's mind right now. You have to think about it. Nine years. Nine years he gave this club, this stadium, these supporters. One hundred and ninety-eight goals in a Barcelona shirt. The MSN. The trebles. The nights he carried this team on his back. And eleven months ago he was told by a phone call, by a phone call, that he was no longer wanted. By a man named Koeman. A man who is standing twenty yards from him right now. Suårez wept on that phone call, ladies and gentlemen. He told the world he wept. He went to Atlético because no other top club would have him at his age, and what has he done? He has dragged Atlético Madrid into the title race almost on his own. Twenty-three league goals before today. And now he stands on this spot. In this stadium. Where his children grew up. With everything riding on this kick."
A pause.
"You could write a book about what is inside that man's head right now."
But the truth was Luis SuĂĄrez was not thinking any of those things.
He was looking at Marc-André Ter Stegen.
His friend, for years. The man he had eaten breakfast next to on team flights. The man whose kids had played with his kids in a pool at a teammate's house in summer. The man who had hugged him on the day he announced he was leaving and held him for a long time without saying anything because there had been nothing to say.
SuĂĄrez looked at him, and Ter Stegen looked back, and there was nothing in either man's face that the cameras could read.
SuĂĄrez took one more pace back.
He stopped.
And inside him there was no monologue. No revenge. No grief. No nine-year highlight reel. No thought of the man on the touchline who had made the phone call. None of it. He was a striker on a spot, and twelve yards from him stood a goal, and between him and the goal stood a man, and that was all there was in the world.
There was only the ball.
There was only the man.
There was only the corner.
He had decided on the corner the second he had set the ball down.
Ter Stegen, on his line, sprang up once more on the balls of his feet. He spread his arms wide. He took a long deliberate breath in through the nose. The Wanda roared down at him from every side, and for the briefest second the roar was outside him, distant, somebody else's problem, and his pulse was a slow heavy drum in his own ears, and he was alone.
He looked down the spot.
His eyes met SuĂĄrez's eyes.
The two friends, on opposite sides of a line they had not chosen.
Mateo, behind the D, both hands on his hips, watched without breathing.
The referee blew the whistle.
SuĂĄrez moved.
He did not sprint. He walked the first step, the second, the third, his weight building, his shoulders heavy and balanced. He looked, for one half-instant, like a man with nothing else to do. His standing foot planted. His striking foot swung through.
Ter Stegen had moved at the strike. His weight had already gone right, his enormous frame already committing, his arms already stretching, and as his body left the ground he was already, on some level beneath thinking, knowing.
The ball went left.
Soft and low and into the bottom corner, just inside the post, the kind of finish a striker takes when he has stopped feeling anything at all.
It rolled into the side netting.
GOAL.
"GOALLLL! GOALLLLL! LUIS SUĂREZ! LUIS SUĂREZ AT THE WANDA METROPOLITANO! He buries it, he BURIES it, low into the bottom corner, twenty-four league goals this season, and with that strike Luis SuĂĄrez becomes the third top scorer in La Liga this campaign! Above him on that list, only two men. Lionel Messi. And Mateo King. Three strikers, three men who at some point in this calendar year wore the same shirt, and today, today, the man at number three has come back into the home of the men at number one and number two, and he has put it past their goalkeeper to drag his side back into a league title race many had buried this morning. Two-one. TWO-ONE. There is a half-time to come and ninety more minutes of football still to play in the season of Luis SuĂĄrez's life!"
You do not celebrate against your former club.
It is an unspoken rule. Almost every footballer in the history of the game has bent his head and raised a flat hand and refused to twist the knife.
Luis SuĂĄrez had been kicked out of this club. By that phone call. He had begged to stay. He had been told no.
Luis SuĂĄrez was not following the unspoken rule.
He tore away from the spot with both arms thrown to the sky and a sound coming out of his chest that did not have any word inside it. He sprinted to the corner where the home supporters were massed, and he ran into the tide of them, his whole body pumping, his face wide open with a year of something pouring out of it at once.
His teammates came charging across the field after him and slammed into him from every angle. Correa got there first and the two of them banged their chests together, Correa shouting up into his face, SuĂĄrez shouting straight back.
"ÂĄVAMOS! ÂĄVAMOS, CHARRĂA! ÂĄVAMOSSSSS!"
Felipe leapt onto his back. Llorente piled in. Koke wrapped both arms around his head from behind and the whole stack of them stumbled toward the corner flag, a churning mass of red and white.
SuĂĄrez kept screaming.
Up the touchline, the calm was gone.
Simeone had moved. He had not just left his technical area, he was halfway onto the field, his suit jacket open and flapping behind him, his hair lifted by his own running, his two arms straight up above his head. He sprinted toward the home end. He swung his arms left and right and the home end swung with him, twenty thousand bodies tipping side to side in unison with their manager.
He reached the edge of the box and he went down on his knees. Both fists out. Both arms shaking. The veins in his neck standing.
He was screaming up at his own supporters and his supporters were screaming back down at him, and he did not look like a man who had spent the last seventy minutes calm with his hands in his pockets. He looked like a man who had been pretending all afternoon. He looked like a man who had been waiting for this for nine seasons.
And on the touchline behind him, twenty yards back, Ronald Koeman had his hands on his hips and his head tipped back to the sky, looking up at the underside of the stadium roof, his face stricken.
The score on the board flicked.
FC BARCELONA 2 â 1 ATLĂTICO DE MADRID.
And the half-time was three minutes away.
Shortly after the goal.
Peeep. Peeep.
The whistle blew twice, and the first half of the season's last league game came to a close.
"And what a half. What a half. The half did not let us down for a single second. Messi's opener, just a piece of pure genius, what else can you call it. And that counter for the second, oh, that counter, Mateo King at full flight, just devastating. Barcelona looked, for a long, long stretch, like they were going to walk into the dressing room with a two-goal cushion and the title halfway around the trophy cabinet. And then the penalty came. And then the man who knew this ground better than anyone in the away shirt stepped up. Two-one. Two-one going in. Barcelona keep their hand on the trophy. But the gap, ladies and gentlemen, the gap is closing, and the second half is going to be one of the great forty-five minutes of this season. Stay with us."
"Good job."
"Nice one."
"You did great. You did great, eh?"
The Barcelona players filed off the pitch in a long heavy line toward the tunnel mouth. Koeman stood at the entrance to the tunnel like a man at a finish line, reaching out a hand to each of them as they passed, patting backs, gripping shoulders, palming the side of a head, saying small encouraging things into ears that did not really want to hear them yet.
"Good shift. Keep your head up. Up, up. Good."
A few yards behind, the Atlético players were coming off too, and Simeone was doing the same thing on his side, the two managers mirroring each other without looking at each other, the players walking between them in two parallel lines.
SuĂĄrez came off the field slowly. He pulled his shirt up by the hem and wiped his face with it, and he paused for a moment near the tunnel mouth and looked back.
Messi was a few yards ahead of him in the Barça line, walking with his head down, one of the last to go in. Suårez's eyes stayed on his back.
He waited.
Messi did not turn around.
He kept walking, into the dark of the tunnel, and the door swallowed him.
SuĂĄrez stood there a beat longer, the shirt still in his hand. Then he turned and went into his own tunnel.
The away dressing room at the Wanda Metropolitano was not the dressing room of a team that was winning.
The bags were thrown down. Shirts came off and were balled and tossed into the corners. Bottles of water were grabbed and gulped and slammed back down onto benches. The messagers moved around the room with cold towels and ice packs. Nobody was talking. Nobody was hyping. Nobody was clapping anybody on the back.
AraĂșjo had not stopped to speak to anyone. He went straight to a far corner, sat down hard, and stared at the floor, his hands hanging between his knees. His jaw was set so tight you could see the muscle moving in his cheek. He was peeled, vexed, and he was not letting anyone near him.
The rest of them sat around in heavy silence. Piqué was muttering to himself, pulling on a sock he had already pulled on. Dembélé sat with both elbows on his knees, his head down, staring at a single spot on the floor. Pedri had pulled his own shirt up over his head, the hem sitting just over his eyes, a small private cave for himself.
Mateo sat with a bottle of water in his hand, and a member of the staff crouched in front of him with two tape rolls and a question.
"How are the calves? Honest with me. Tight at all? You felt anything?"
"I'm okay."
"Honest, Mateo."
"Honest. I'm okay."
The staffer nodded, tapped his knee, and moved on to the next player.
If you had walked into that room cold, with no scoreboard to look at, no telephone to check, you would not have guessed for a second that these were the men who were beating the league leaders.
The door pushed open.
Koeman walked in.
He stood for a moment just inside it, looking around at all of them. He tapped PiquĂ© on the shoulder as he passed him, the small touch breaking the older man out of his sock-fixing. He went up the row and reached over and rubbed a hand on the back of AraĂșjo's neck, and AraĂșjo did not look up but the muscle in his jaw eased a little. He patted Pedri's covered head as he went past, and Pedri's hidden face cracked into a tiny smile under the shirt. He reached Mateo last and bumped his fist lightly against Mateo's shoulder.
And then he walked into the middle of the room.
A small, full, slow smile was spreading across his face.
He stood there for a moment, in the centre of the silence, and his smile got bigger.
"Is this it?"
The heads in the room started to come up.
He laughed, soft, and shook his head.
"Sorry. Sorry. I know you boys are not in the mood for any of this right now. I know. But I am serious." His head whipped around the room, his eyes finding each of them in turn. "Is this really it?"
Nobody answered.
"I do not know what you boys saw out there to put you all in this mood. I really do not. Because I know what I saw."
He took a slow breath.
"I saw us beat the league leaders."
A pause.
"No. No, scratch that."
He looked around at all of them, and his voice came up.
"WE ARE THE LEAGUE LEADERS
We are. As of tonight. We are. We did that. This team in this room did that."
He pointed at one of them, then at another, then at another, moving the finger across them, naming nobody, looking at all of them.
"You did that. You did that. You did that. You did that. All of you. Did that."
Mateo had set the water bottle down on the bench. He was looking at Koeman.
"Do you boys realise," Koeman said, "that you are starting to think this is normal?"
The room was quiet.
"Tell me." Koeman's voice came down a notch, the small smile back at the edge of his mouth. "Tell me. Explain to me how it is normal that you go out there. Against the best defensive team in Spain. The best. Against Diego Simeone's first eleven. In the biggest game of their season. And you score them. Two. Goals."
He looked around.
"Explain that to me."
He paced a single small step.
"The way you played the first half. Do any of you, honestly, still think that is normal?"
He came back to centre.
"Okay. Okay. We have a problem. The problem is that something happened, and every one of your heads went down at once."
His eyes, briefly, just briefly, found AraĂșjo, who was now looking at the floor between his boots like a man waiting to be told to leave.
The other players saw the look. They saw where it had landed. And Koeman moved his eyes on so fast that nobody could have proved he had ever looked.
"There is no one." Koeman raised a hand. "Listen. There is no one in this room to blame for anything that happened out there."
He let it sit.
"So. Let me answer my own question. Let me tell you. What we have done. This season. As a team. Is not. Normal."
He looked around at all of them, and his eyes had gone shiny at the edges.
"It is not normal."
He nodded, almost to himself, then to them.
"I am proud of you. I am incredibly proud of you. Every single one of you in this room. I am not supposed to say this. I am the head coach. I am supposed to demand more, eh? I am supposed to walk in here at two-one and tell you it is not enough. But I am going to say it once because it is true. I did not think we could have a season like this. I did not. When I walked into that office in August and saw what I had, I did not think we were going to be here."
He swept his eyes across the room.
"You made me believe."
A small silence.
"You did. You did. Every one of you in this room. You took this team I did not believe in, and you carried it on your backs, and you put us here. Forty-five minutes from a league title."
He took a step in toward them.
"And now that I believe. Now that I finally believe. Now you want to put your heads down?"
He shook his head, three small fast shakes.
"No, no, no, no, no."
His voice dropped, soft now, close.
"It cannot end like this."
The room was perfectly still.
A small movement.
Messi, on a bench in the corner, stood up.
He brushed his hands against his shorts, looked at Koeman, and started walking forward. Koeman watched him come, pressed his shoulder once as Messi passed him, and stepped aside, ceding the centre of the room to the captain.
Messi turned to face the room.
He looked at each of them in turn. Not a long look. Just a look. Mateo. Pedri. DembĂ©lĂ©. PiquĂ©. AraĂșjo, who finally lifted his head and met it. Roberto. Busquets. Down the line.
Then his voice came out, quiet, and the room leaned in to hear it.
"This is the last hurdle."
He let it sit a beat.
He looked at them one more time, and the fire that had been waiting under the silence in the room came up into the eyes of every man it touched.
"Let's do this."
A/N
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