"YES — YES — YES—"
The referee's whistle was still fading when Mateo was already moving.
He had been standing at the edge of the technical area in the large Barcelona jacket — the substitute's jacket, the one that said you are not currently playing in the specific language of football logistics — and when the sound came he didn't process it consciously so much as his body processed it before his brain had caught up, the YES arriving from somewhere below thought, the word coming out of him before he had decided to say it.
He ran onto the pitch.
Behind him, the bench erupted.
The coaching staff and the substitute players had been building toward this moment for ninety-three minutes and the release of it was total — not the contained joy of professionals managing a public moment, the uncontained joy of people who had come to Manchester needing something that felt impossible and had been given it. They poured onto the pitch in the way benches pour onto pitches when something is over and won and the permission to feel it fully has finally arrived.
Koeman grabbed his arm.
Not gently — the full grip of a man whose hands had been doing controlled, purposeful things for two hours and had just been given permission to stop being controlled. Mateo felt the pull and stumbled slightly, nearly going, catching himself, and Koeman was already screaming at him from approximately six inches away.
"WE DID IT — WE ARE GOING TO THE FINALS—"
Mateo screamed back.
Not words — the sound of someone whose feelings had exceeded the available vocabulary and had found the simplest available exit. His face completely open, his mouth completely open, the full uninhibited expression of a seventeen-year-old boy in the middle of something that did not yet feel entirely real.
The bench players hit them from both sides — the pile arriving, hands on shoulders, on backs, on heads, the laughing physical collision of people who had been sitting for ninety minutes watching something extraordinary happen and were now inside it rather than beside it.
Koeman was still shaking him.
Mateo shook back.
He broke free eventually — not escaping, just moving, the energy needing to go somewhere, his legs carrying him out onto the pitch where the match had just ended and where the Barcelona players were still finding each other in the particular, beautiful chaos of a team that has just won a Champions League semi-final.
He jogged.
The pitch around him was the specific landscape of a match that had just concluded — bodies in various states of emotional and physical exhaustion arranged across the grass with the randomness of people who had given everything they had and had stopped in whatever place the final whistle found them. City players sitting. City players standing with their hands on their heads. City players with their eyes on the ground, the private grief of professionals who understood exactly what had just happened and were absorbing it in their different ways.
He moved through all of it.
The Barcelona players were everywhere — finding each other, the reunions happening in pairs and clusters across the pitch, the noise of it building from a dozen individual celebrations into the single, overwhelming sound of a team that was going to a Champions League final.
He grabbed hands. He was grabbed. Someone got him around the neck from behind and he laughed, reaching back, not even seeing who it was before they were already moving on to the next person.
Then he saw Pedri.
They hit each other at something close to full speed, which was not entirely intentional but was entirely appropriate. Both arms. Both of them. The impact of two people who had been roommates and teammates and friends through a season that had produced this, arriving at the same place at the same time with the same feeling and expressing it in the only way available.
"DUDE — NO WAY—"
"NO WAY—"
They were both shouting. At each other. From a distance of approximately four inches.
"What did we do, dude—"
"DUDE—"
"No way we did that—"
"WE DID—"
This was, in terms of the information content of the exchange, not a high-yield conversation. Neither of them appeared to notice or care. They were jumping — not deliberately, just the bodies doing what bodies do when they are twenty years old and seventeen years old and have just qualified for a Champions League final, the energy finding its way out through the legs because there was nowhere else for it to go.
Mateo was laughing so hard that the jumping was becoming structurally uncertain.
Pedri was laughing harder.
They stumbled, caught each other, stumbled again, and somehow remained upright, which felt like one of the minor miracles of the evening.
Mateo's hands dropped from Pedri's shoulders.
He looked around.
The pitch. The stadium. The away end still singing — still, even now, the Barcelona supporters in their corner with their voices and their tears and their complete refusal to stop. The City end — some people still in their seats, some making their way out, some standing and watching, the full spectrum of how sixty thousand people processed a loss of this magnitude. A few City players being consoled by teammates. A few Barcelona players on their knees.
The thought arrived quietly, underneath all the noise.
We actually did it.
He believed they could win. He had believed it before the match, had carried that belief through both legs, had acted on it in the specific, committed way of someone who was not performing belief but actually had it. He did not think it was unbelievable that they had won.
But four-nil.
Even having been involved in all four goals — even having been the person who delivered the corner and taken the penalty and spun around Ederson — he still stood on the Etihad grass in the aftermath of it and found the number slightly extraordinary. This was Manchester City. The team that the football world had spent the season describing as the best on the planet. The team that had beaten them in the first leg, had gone to the Camp Nou and won, had played them off the pitch for stretches of that match with a control that had felt, at moments, almost clinical.
Four-nil at some point.
Final score four-two, and the two had come with a red card and a completely different tactical setup, which meant the damage was already done by the time City had found the goals, which meant the four-nil had been real, which meant—
They were going to Porto.
"The final," he said, out loud, quietly, to himself.
The word did something to him when he said it. Not panic — something closer to the specific weight of an occasion arriving in full, the way big things settle into you not at the moment they happen but slightly after, when the noise has given you enough space to understand what the noise was about.
He was seventeen years old and he was going to the Champions League final.
He looked up and found Pedri still nearby, already talking and laughing with Araujo, and said "hey — I'm coming" in a direction that was not quite toward Pedri, and then he started moving toward Messi.
Messi was in a small cluster — Busquets beside him, the two of them in the quiet, complete conversation of players who had been doing this together for years and needed very few words to say most things. They were laughing, which was its own complete language between them.
Mateo saw Busquets look up first — the older player registering his approach and smiling, the wide, genuine smile of a man in the best mood of a difficult season. Then Messi turned.
Mateo was grinning. He could feel it on his face — the full-teeth, helpless, completely unmanaged grin of someone who had not been able to stop grinning since the whistle and was not expecting to stop anytime soon.
Busquets looked at Messi.
"I'll go join the rest," he said.
He was already moving as he said it — but he stopped at Mateo's side first, raising his fist, and Mateo met it without thinking, the contact clean, and Busquets laughed as he kept walking.
Mateo reached Messi.
"We won," he said. It came out slightly louder than he intended, the volume still calibrated to the chaos of five minutes ago. "We — the final — we made it to the final—"
He was moving as he said it, not standing still, his energy doing the thing energy does when there is nowhere specific for it to go — shifting his weight, gesturing slightly, the barely-contained motion of someone trying to hold a feeling that was larger than his body.
Then he caught himself.
He stopped.
Messi was looking at him. Not saying anything. Just looking at him with the expression of someone who was entirely at peace with whatever was happening in front of him.
"I know it's not finished," Mateo said, slightly faster now. "We still have the promise, and I remember — we're going to win the final, I still remember that, I just — it's the semi-final, we made it through, and obviously we're still—"
Messi laughed.
The laugh arrived cleanly, cutting across the sentence, the genuine laugh of someone who had been watching something and had found it precisely as endearing as it looked. He put his hand on Mateo's shoulder — one hand, easy, the contact of someone who was not managing the moment but simply in it.
"I know," he said.
Mateo stopped talking.
"You did amazing work tonight." Messi's voice was quiet in the way it was always quiet when he meant something completely. "I am very proud to share the same pitch as you."
The Etihad was still loud.
The away end was still singing.
Somewhere behind him, his teammates were celebrating a Champions League final berth on the grass of the Etihad Stadium.
Mateo heard none of it.
He stood there with Messi's hand on his shoulder and Messi's words in his ears and a smile on his face that he would not have been able to describe to anyone who asked him to describe it — a big, helpless, slightly stupid smile, the smile of a seventeen-year-old boy who was hearing his idol say he was proud to share the same pitch as him, and who did not have a single word available in response.
He had been speechless in front of Messi exactly once before.
This was the second time.
Messi's hand dropped from his shoulder.
"The others are already in the away section," he said, in the easy tone of someone returning to the practical. "We should go join them."
He draped his arm across Mateo's shoulders as they started moving — the natural, unpretentious gesture of someone who had done this a thousand times with teammates and found nothing remarkable about it, which somehow made it more remarkable.
"I'm sure they'll want to see the man who made all of this happen," he said, the small teasing note in his voice genuine and warm.
Mateo shook his head, the smile still fully operational. "It was all of us."
The smile said something different.
Messi saw it and said nothing, because he had already made his point.
They were about to start walking when the voice came through the noise — not loud, not amplified, but close, close enough that it cut through everything else with the specific quality of something directed rather than broadcast.
"Dear — dear—"
Messi turned.
The surprise moved across his face briefly — the genuine, unguarded surprise of someone who had not been expecting this specific thing.
"Anto—"
She hit him.
Not harshly — the full-body arrival of someone who had been moving toward this for twenty minutes and had finally closed the distance, both arms going around him, the impact absorbed by a man who had a moment to brace and still stumbled half a step with the momentum of it.
He laughed. The real laugh — the one that arrived when something happened that he had not planned and found himself glad about. His arms went around her.
"I know," he said, quietly, into her hair. "I know."
She was crying. He could feel it.
He held her.
Mateo stood to the side.
He watched them — not intrusively, just for the moment that it took to register what he was looking at, the two of them on the Etihad grass in the middle of everything, the stadium still loud around them, the celebration continuing in every direction. The man who had just told him he was proud to share the same pitch as him, holding his wife, who had come from wherever she had been watching and had needed to get to him the moment it was over.
A quiet smile settled on Mateo's face. The different kind from the full-teeth grin of ten minutes ago — smaller, warmer, the smile of someone witnessing something that belonged to other people and was beautiful precisely because of that.
He turned.
And walked away, leaving them alone.
He walked away from the couple and kept walking.
The feeling of the match was still everywhere on him — not just in his head but in his body, the specific physical residue of ninety-three minutes at this level, the legs carrying a tiredness that the adrenaline had been managing for the last hour and was now beginning to hand back. His chest was still slightly elevated. His hands, when he looked at them, had the faint tremble of someone whose nervous system had been running at maximum and was coming down gradually.
He looked around as he moved.
The pitch in the aftermath of a match like this had its own particular quality — neither the organised chaos of during nor the empty stillness of after, but the in-between, the messy, human, fully unscripted minutes when the result was real and everyone on the pitch was processing it in their own way. Barcelona players in clusters, singing, laughing, holding each other. The away end still vocal, their voices carrying across the pitch with the specific quality of people who had come a long way and intended to be heard until the lights went out.
And around and between all of it — the City players.
Some sitting. Some standing with the particular stillness of people who needed a moment before they could be anywhere or do anything. Some already moving toward the tunnel, the professional's instinct to get inside, to get to the dressing room, to begin the private process of absorbing a result this large.
He was not looking for anyone specifically.
Then he saw him.
Isn't that—
Walker.
The City right back was a few yards away, in the middle of a small group of teammates — not celebrating, not collapsed, but doing the thing that experienced players did in these moments, the quiet work of a senior professional helping the people around him find their feet. His hand on someone's back. A word. The body language of someone who had absorbed his own version of the result and had decided that his job was not finished yet.
Mateo started moving toward him.
As he got closer he could see who Walker was attending to — Zinchenko, the left back, who was not okay. The Ukrainian was walking, moving away from the group, but the movement had the quality of someone going somewhere without knowing where they were going, the directionless grief of a person who needed to be somewhere else and did not know where that somewhere else was. His face was wet. Not the discreet few tears of someone managing their reaction — properly wet, properly crying, the full release of someone for whom this result had cost something real and personal.
Walker watched him go.
Said something softly to the nearest teammate. Tapped a shoulder.
Mateo came from behind.
"Told you we'd win," he said.
Walker turned. The surprise of it crossing his face before the recognition arrived — the brief startled quality of someone who had not expected a voice from that direction — and then he saw who it was and the surprise became something else.
He smiled.
Not a big smile. The real kind — the tired, honest smile of a man who had played ninety-three minutes at maximum output against a seventeen-year-old who had given him the hardest evening of his recent memory, and found, on the other side of it, that he could still smile about it.
"You did," he said.
They shook hands — the proper version, grip and hold — and then moved into a brief hug, the embrace of two professionals who had spent ninety minutes on opposite sides of something and had found, at the end of it, a shared respect that neither of them needed to announce.
Mateo covered his mouth saying "I wanted to".
Walker looked at him. A beat. Then a laugh — a short, genuine one.cutting him off
"You've started covering your mouth."
"Well," Mateo said.
Walker laughed again, slightly more.
"I wanted to say—" Mateo kept his hand where it was, his voice dropping to the level that the gesture required. "I saw what you did online. After the last match."
Walker's expression shifted — the slight movement of someone who knew exactly what was being referenced and had a prepared response to it that involved not making a big deal of it.
"Nah," he said, already shaking his head. "It's all good. It's all good."
"Still," Mateo said.
Walker looked at him for a moment. Then nodded once — the nod of someone accepting something they were not going to argue against, because arguing against it would itself be a kind of making a big deal of it.
Mateo smiled.
"Congrats on the match," Walker said, settling back into the easier register. "You were phenomenal tonight. Genuinely." He paused. A small, dry beat. "Would have been nice if you'd maybe shown the set piece ability before the game, but—"
Mateo laughed. The full version — the laugh that arrived when something landed properly, the ha-ha-ha of someone who had not expected the joke and found it exactly right.
"Hey," Walker said, spreading his hands.
"Hey," Mateo agreed, still laughing.
Walker looked at him — the look of someone wrapping something up, the look of a professional who had another place to be and was finding the right way to get there.
"Go win the whole thing," he said. The sincerity in it plain and uncomplicated, the well-wish of someone who had competed against you at maximum intensity and was, on the other side of it, genuinely rooting for you. "The whole thing. Go do it."
Mateo took his hand again.
"You can count on us," he said.
Walker held the handshake for a moment.
Then he nodded.
Walker's eyes went wide.
Not dramatically — the small, specific widening of someone who had registered something over Mateo's shoulder and was working out how to respond to it.
"Why is he rushing over here," he muttered.
Mateo frowned. "What?"
Walker's expression shifted. The tired, honest smile from a moment ago was still there but it had acquired something else — something that could only be described as devilish, the look of a man who had just seen an opportunity arrive and had made a very fast decision about it.
"I thought he'd stopped doing that," Walker said, to himself, still looking at whatever was behind Mateo.
"Stopped doing what—"
Mateo turned.
Pep Guardiola was walking toward them across the Etihad grass, one hand raised, his eyes fixed on a point that — Mateo was becoming increasingly aware — was Mateo.
Mateo looked back at Walker.
Walker's smile had completed its evolution into something fully, unapologetically devious.
"Gaffer—" He raised his own hand, waving Pep over with the enthusiastic helpfulness of someone performing a service. Then, in a voice low enough that only Mateo could hear it, without breaking the wave:
"Sorry. But this is the revenge for every single dribble tonight. Good luck."
He was already moving.
Not jogging — walking, the brisk, purposeful walking of a man who had somewhere else to be and intended to be there with some urgency, the walk of someone who was leaving a situation and was not going to look back at it.
"Wait — what—" Mateo turned. "Walker—"
Walker did not stop.
Did not look back.
Was, within approximately four seconds, several yards away and moving with the particular momentum of a man who had decided that his part in this was complete.
Mateo stood there.
Then he heard the voice behind him.
"Mateo King."
The accent. The specific, unmistakable quality of it. Close — closer than he had expected, the voice of someone who had covered the distance more quickly than Mateo had been tracking.
"I have been wanting to talk to you."
Mateo turned around slowly.
A/N
Hey everyone,
Sorry for the short chapter today — after everything that went into the last one I didn't want to overload you again straight away. The next chapter should also be a decent length so I wanted to give everyone a bit of breathing room,
If you want to read chapters ahead with uploads and to support me subscribe to my Patreon below There is also a picture of how mateo looks like posted and later there would be votes and all on the site some you wont need to pay to vote but you can if you want to support me thanks
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Thank You your support is greatly appreciated thank you all
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