"ARGHHHH."
The sound came from Isak.
The striker had been moving toward the ball in the 92nd minute, tracking it down the left side of the Barcelona half, the very last instinct of a player who had refused to stop competing since the moment the second half had kicked off. He reached for it.
Mateo got there first.
The slide tackle came from his right, clean through the ball, no contact on the man, and Isak's boot went through empty air at the same moment the ball disappeared from in front of him. He went down with the momentum of his own run.
He raised his hand.
"Ref! Do something!"
"REF!!!"
The referee was already running the other way.
Mateo was already standing. He had the ball at his feet and he was turning, the transition from defending to moving so immediate that by the time Isak had finished appealing, Mateo was five yards clear and building.
Isak hit his palm on the grass.
The referee did not look back.
In the booth, both commentators had been watching.
"We are into the ninety-second minute. Barcelona three, Real Sociedad one. And Mateo King, at ninety-two minutes, just made a sliding tackle in his own half to win back the ball. He tracked back. He tracked back from the attacking position he had been in and he slid in and he won it."
Jon Champion.
"You know what that is? That is the thing that separates players. Many players, especially the stars, especially at this level, do not do that. Maybe it is age. Maybe it is the inexperience. Maybe it is the lack of ego that has not developed yet. But Barcelona have genuinely struck gold with this one. He tracks back. He defends. He works. And now he is running."
On the pitch, Mateo was in the centre of everything.
He was in the Barcelona half, which was not where Barcelona needed the ball but was where the ball was, and the Real Sociedad players were pressing the last minutes the way desperate sides pressed the last minutes, with the energy of men who had nothing left to lose.
"KICK IT AWAY!"
Dest, pointing from the right.
"HERE! HERE! LOOK OUT!"
Busquets from the centre.
Three Real Sociedad players were around Mateo. He felt them. He did not panic. He held the ball against the first one, using his body low, hips out, the wall of a player who had been doing this in professional football since he was seventeen. He felt the push. He pushed back. The ball stayed at his feet.
He dribbled the second.
Not past him. Through him, technically, the ball going one way and his body going the other and the defender chasing both simultaneously and catching neither. He came out the other side of the press with the ball still at his feet.
The third came in rough.
This one had given up on technical. He just pushed, the full body weight of a frustrated player coming in from the side, and the force caught Mateo mid-step and knocked him sideways.
He went down.
He fell on the ball.
"Oorrhh."
He hit the turf, the ball somehow still under his chest, his falling hands finding it, and he pushed it away from both his body and the opposition before the referee arrived.
"Okay. Okay. Goal kick. GOAL KICK. Everyone back. Come on."
The referee stepping in between the players, both hands up.
Mateo pushed himself off the grass. He raised one hand toward the referee, the acknowledgment of a player confirming he was fine and was not going to make anything of what had just happened.
The assistant referee on the near side looked at him.
"Just go back."
His voice had the quality of a man who had been saying various versions of "just go back" for the last five minutes and had found the shortest available version.
Mateo grinned.
He turned toward the Camp Nou.
He started moving toward the touchline, and as he moved he raised both arms toward the stands, the full open gesture of a boy asking a stadium to get louder. The Camp Nou answered before he had finished asking.
"KING! KING! KING! KING!"
The chant starting in the lower tier and rolling upward. The scarves. The flags.
He pointed into the crowd. He did the kissing gesture, both hands to his mouth, sending it into the stands. He was laughing.
"I love you too!"
He shouted it at the full capacity of his lungs into a crowd of eighty thousand people who were making enough noise that none of them could specifically hear him and all of them understood him.
The Camp Nou roared.
"EL JOVEN NUESTRO!"
Then the chant shifted, the Camp Nou chants had built to where they needed to be, No matter what you thought you knew this was the last match here, the screams the flair, Barcelona would not sleep tonight...
"MATEOOO! MATEOOO!"
The referee appeared at Mateo's shoulder.
"Final warning."
He said it calmly but he said it.
Mateo turned to him. Both hands came up. The full international surrender sign, both palms facing forward.
"I am going! I am going!"
He started moving back toward the pitch. He walked past two Real Sociedad players who were waiting to restart and trying to communicate with their body language that this was not the time for what Mateo was doing with his time.
He walked past them.
"Nothing personal, boys," he said as he passed, the grin still on his face. "It is just the business."
He kept walking. He did not look back to see their response.
He passed Griezmann. Griezmann slapped his back.
"Good work."
He passed Dembélé. Dembélé grabbed his shoulder and shook it, laughing.
He kept walking to his position.
In the broadcast booth, both commentators were having the time they were having.
"He is a character. I will tell you that. Eighty-thousand people chanting his name in the ninety-second minute and he is out there conducting them like a madman."
Jon Champion, the laughter in his voice fully present now.
"He really is. Absolutely no ego about any of this. He makes the tackle in his own half, he nearly gets flattened in the press, he falls on the ball, and then he gets up and blows kisses at the fans."
Darren Fletcher.
"And you know what the Real Sociedad players can say nothing. Because it is three to one. That is why."
The laughter settled.
Jon Champion's voice shifted back to professional.
"Now. Speaking of three to one. Let us talk about what this result means for the table, because it is significant. Barcelona, with this victory, go level on points with Atlético Madrid at the top of the league. Atlético have a game in hand. They play Cádiz tomorrow. But Barcelona have put the pressure squarely on the league leaders with this result. The gap that was three points this morning is now zero. That is the context of what we have watched here tonight."
"And for Real Sociedad," Darren Fletcher. "Sevilla won their match two to one earlier today. That means the battle for fourth place has ignited properly. Real Sociedad lead Los Nervionenses by a single point as things stand. One point. With two games left. Whatever anyone says about tonight's performance, Real Sociedad cannot afford to drop points in either of their remaining fixtures."
"A lot still to play for. For everyone. And two more games to do it in."
The goal kick came long, the Real Sociedad keeper playing it deep into the Barcelona half. The ball came down in the centre of the pitch, and Piqué went up for it against Isak, the final physical contest of a match that had been full of them. Piqué won it.
The ball bounced.
A Real Sociedad player was first to the second ball. He played it wide. The cross came in. Araujo rose. He cleared with his head.
The ball fell to Silva.
He looked at the minute on the scoreboard.
94:25.
His face was the face of a man who had been playing football at the highest level for twenty years and knew exactly what 94:25 with a two-goal deficit meant.
He looked up.
He saw the space on the right and he ran toward it, the old winger's instinct still alive in the thirty-five-year-old's legs, the desire to do something with the last minute that the match was going to give him.
Mateo came to him.
The body arrived first, the hip turning to block Silva's path, the low stance that turned a man into a wall. Silva tried to shift his weight around it. Mateo shifted with him. Silva tried to go through. Mateo held.
Silva looked up. He had Mateo on him and the clock running and the ball at his feet and no pass available.
He shot.
The outside of the boot, the same weapon he had been using all night to move the ball through tight spaces, and the shot came off with pace, low, moving toward the near post.
"HE SHOOTS!"
Jon Champion.
Ter Stegen was positioned. He tracked it. He went down. He did not jump. The ball did not require a jump. It required him to be in the right place at the right height, and he was, his hands taking the ball cleanly, and he held it to his chest and went down and stayed down.
The whistle blew.
Once. Twice.
The game was done.
"IT IS OVER! IT IS FINALLY OVER!"
Jon Champion.
"Barcelona three, Real Sociedad one. Matchday thirty-six. The Camp Nou is on its feet and it has every right to be. This was a performance. Two goals from Mateo King, first a thundering header at the nineteen-minute mark and then a clinical volley from a Messi combination that nobody who was watching will be describing as anything less than extraordinary. Then an Isak goal that breathed life back into this match for fifteen minutes. Then Lionel Messi with a free kick that reminded everyone in the stadium, on the broadcast, and in every pub and living room watching this feed, exactly why he is what he is."
Darren Fletcher came in.
"Three to one. This league battle is still very much alive. Atlético Madrid will wake up tomorrow knowing the team behind them has pulled level. They have a game in hand. They will play Cádiz tomorrow and they will be expected to win it. But if you are playing football at the Estadio de la Cerámica or the Estadio Alfredo Di Stéfano or the Estadio José Zorrilla or wherever Atlético are playing, and you know what is behind you, you will feel it. Barcelona have told them something tonight."
He breathed.
"They are not letting up."
...
"WOOOOOOO!"
Araujo was screaming.
He was halfway across the pitch with both arms in the air, the celebration that had started at the final whistle still going, still building, the specific extended release of a centre-back who had cleared two shots off the line and headed away six corners and was now allowed to express what he had been holding in for ninety minutes.
Mateo was standing near the centre circle laughing.
Busquets jogged over to him with his arms up, the small joke flex, both biceps presented in the universal gym-bro pose. Mateo did the flex back. They both laughed. Piqué arrived. Alba arrived. The Barcelona players cluster forming the way clusters formed when professional men had finished their job and were briefly allowed to be the boys they had once been on training pitches together.
Across the pitch, the Real Sociedad players were walking toward their tunnel. Their heads were down. The walk had the small post-defeat gait of a team that had given everything and had still lost.
Alguacil was waiting for them on the touchline.
He met each one of them as they came in. A hand on the shoulder. A nod. A few words, audible only to the player who received them. He told one of them he was proud. He told another the season was not over. He told a third that the work they had put in tonight had shown. His assistants were doing the same beside him, the staff distributing the small specific kindnesses that lost matches required.
The cameras moved past him.
Back to the pitch.
"Dudeeeeee."
Pedri was walking toward Mateo from the bench.
Mateo had just stepped out of the cluster of Piqué, Araujo, Alba and the others, the boys still rubbing each other's heads, still laughing about something Araujo had said. He saw Pedri coming.
He spread both his arms.
"Dudeeeee."
They met in the middle.
The handshake was the one they had been doing since the third week Pedri had been at Barcelona. A clap of their right hands together. A high-five that closed into a brief finger lock. A pull into a light shoulder bump. Then a step back. Then the snap of their fingers together at the same time.
They finished and they hugged anyway, laughing, both of them saying dudeeeee one more time into the side of the other's neck.
They walked.
The Camp Nou was still going around them. The lap of honour had not technically started but the players in the cluster behind them were already drifting toward the supporters' side, hands going up at the crowd.
"You good?"
Mateo asked it quietly.
Pedri laughed. He was still playing it cool, the specific eighteen-year-old performance of a boy who did not want to be the friend who had taken himself off.
"Yeah. Just was a bit tired. Gaffer said I should go check it out, so I am going to head to the med bay after this."
"That's good."
Mateo nodded. They kept walking.
He exhaled.
"Man. Just three matches left."
Pedri shook his head.
"I know, right. My heart cannot calm down. The league and the Champions League. Both. Both of them."
He stopped himself. He shook his head harder.
"No. No no. Do not let me jinx it. Do not. I cannot say it out loud."
Mateo laughed.
"Since when were you superstitious?"
"I am not superstitious. I just—"
Mateo cut him off.
He had stopped walking. He was looking up at the sky. The lights of the Camp Nou were on. The night had come fully and the bowl of the stadium was full of the specific orange-white glow of a football ground in spring.
He looked at the crowd. The far side. The sea of supporters who were still there, still standing, still singing, refusing to leave the stadium with anything left in their lungs. He looked at the flags. He looked at the names on the back of his teammates' shirts moving in his peripheral vision.
He looked back at Pedri.
"No matter."
His voice was quiet.
"No matter what."
He held it.
"We are winning those trophies."
He said it the way you said a thing you had decided was true. Not the way you said a thing you hoped was true. Not the way you said something to convince yourself of it. He said it like a fact that was already on its way to becoming visible to everyone else.
Pedri looked at him.
He looked at his friend, at the seventeen-year-old standing under the lights of the Camp Nou with two goals in the final standings of the most important home match of the season, and he saw what he had seen the first time he had walked into a training session with this boy just a few months ago.
The certainty. Mateo did not say things to hope them. He said them to make them real.
Pedri laughed. Soft. The laugh of a boy who had just decided to believe what his friend had decided.
"That is right."
They started walking again. Mateo's hands were back in his pockets. The intensity that had been in him for that one second had gone somewhere it would be when he needed it next.
"My brother said there is this park he went to yesterday. The gaffer should give us a break tomorrow. Maybe we should all go there."
"For sure. I will text the guys. Check if they are free."
Pedri did not answer for a second.
"Ehm. I was—"
He stopped. Started again. Failed.
He forced it out.
"I was thinking maybe just. Me. You. And the girls."
He said it in a way that showed he had been working it out in his head for some time.
Mateo turned his head slowly to look at him.
"Hmmmm."
The grin was already starting.
Pedri pushed his shoulder.
"What. What."
"I did not say anything."
"You said hmmm."
"That is not saying anything. Hmm is not a word."
"You meant something."
"How could I have meant something. I did not even use a word."
Both of them broke at the same time. Laughing. Pedri shaking his head, Mateo grinning, the rhythm of two boys who had been doing this exact kind of conversation in the corridors of La Masia for the better part of a year and had it down to its precise notes.
"MATEO. MATEO."
The voice came from the touchline.
Both of them turned.
Messi was standing in front of a small cluster of reporters at the edge of the pitch. Half the cluster had their cameras up. He was waving Mateo over with one hand, the other already in the middle of an answer he was giving.
Mateo nodded at him.
"I am coming!"
He turned back to Pedri.
"Go," Pedri said. "I will start heading to the med bay."
"Okay then."
They did the handshake again, faster this time. They started walking in different directions.
Mateo turned back.
"Wait. We are still heading back together?"
"Yeah. I told my brother to leave the car."
"My man."
They went their ways.
Mateo jogged toward Messi.
The reporters had been arranged by Barcelona's own media team. They were a small specific group, two from Movistar, one from Catalunya Ràdio, one from the club channel, the kind of post-match pitchside press that the club allowed because the club knew what would be asked. They were not the wolves at the tunnel.
Messi was answering a question when Mateo arrived. He was speaking calmly, the post-match Messi voice, even and almost soft.
"The team has played good football tonight. The first half we showed who we are. The second half we suffered a bit. But this is football. The team responded. We have shown that we believe in this title race and we have shown that we can compete at the level required."
He saw Mateo arrive.
He smiled. He beckoned him over with his hand.
The reporters looked at each other. Small smiles. The murmur of professionals who had just been handed a moment they had not expected.
Messi turned slightly toward the cameras.
"Anyway. Mateo is here now. The man of the moment."
Mateo grinned. "Come on."
"Two goals. Two."
He held up two fingers.
"This is your Man of the Match," Mateo said quickly, gesturing at Messi for the cameras. "He won it. Just confirming."
The reporters laughed.
"The second goal was all you," Mateo continued, the words coming out in the small unselfconscious rush of a teen who had been waiting fifteen minutes to say it. "Did you see the way he cut in? Did you see it? Three players around him. Three. He drops his shoulder, he is falling, and he still gets the pass off. To me."
He shook his head.
"And the free kick. The free kick was just—"
He could not find the word.
Messi was smiling.
The reporters were filming. The relationship was visible in the frame in a way that no question they had prepared could have produced. The two players standing beside each other on the pitch, the older one quiet and amused, the younger one talking faster than necessary because he was still working off the adrenaline of what had happened.
"Mateo." One of the reporters. The Catalunya Ràdio one. "Can we get a couple of questions while we have you?"
"For sure."
"The team performance tonight. How would you describe it?"
Mateo's voice changed slightly. The professional gear coming online.
"It was a complete performance for forty-five minutes. Then we suffered for a period and we had to dig in. I think the experienced players showed their class. Araujo at the back was incredible. Ter Stegen. The captain with the free kick. And the fact that we found a way to put the game beyond them at the end. That's something you can't fake."
A second reporter.
"You scored two goals tonight, you brought your league tally to twenty-three. The captain was just talking about the goals of the season. Is this season a dream coming true for you? And what do you think about the run-in?"
Mateo looked at her.
He took half a second.
"All the way."
He said it simply.
Then he expanded.
"I came into this season in the middle of it. From the call-up from the youth team. I was just happy to be in the senior squad. This is the team I have dreamed of playing for since I was WAS. My dream was already complete the moment I walked into that dressing room. Playing beside my teammates. Playing beside—"
He paused. He looked at Messi.
"Playing beside the freaking GOAT, I mean come on."
Messi laughed. The reporters laughed. Mateo laughed.
"So that part is done." He recomposed. "But this. The league. The Champions League."
His face shifted. The smile staying but the eyes changing underneath it.
"This is a want."
He said it cleanly.
"For the club. For the fans. For my teammates."
A pause.
"For myself."
He held the last one.
The reporters were quiet for a beat. The small respectful pause of journalists who had been doing this work for years and had recognised that the answer they had received was bigger than the question they had asked.
Then the Movistar reporter, the woman who had been beside the cluster the whole time, finally let the question out.
You could see her decide. The small physical lean forward. The fact that she had been holding it through three other questions and could not hold it through a fourth.
"Mateo. A few days ago, I am not sure if you have seen this, but a player. The national team captain for when you made your debut in the senior squad."
Mateo nodded. "Ah."
Finally, it comes.
He thought,
He started smiling. Nodding. Acknowledging.
"He made some comments about you. And I do not know if—"
Mateo cut her off.
"Yeah. I know. I know."
He stood for a second. Composing the answer. He looked at the camera. He looked at the woman. He looked at Messi, who was still standing there, the small smile on his face becoming the small interested smile of a man who was not going to interrupt this.
He turned back to the reporter.
"I am going to be honest with you."
The voice was the same warm professional voice. The eyes underneath it had gone somewhere else.
"When I first heard it, I was shocked, mad , stunned all different emotions just rushed at me for a bit. I was actually speechless."
He paused.
The grin came back. Quick. Bright.
"And you all know how multitalented I am with my voice, do you not? For me to be speechless. Come on. That has to mean something."
The reporters laughed. Mateo laughed with them.
The grin came down.
"No, but seriously. I really was stuck. I did not know what to say. The whole thing took me by surprise, I mean yeah we had some issues and all that but i genuinely thought we had left that behind."
He let it sit.
He shook his head softly. The smile coming back, smaller, the smile of a person who had thought about something and arrived somewhere on it.
"But now. Now I am actually kind of glad it happened."
A pause.
"I am glad."
The reporter caught it.
"Can you elaborate on that?"
Mateo nodded.
He looked at the cameras.
"Okay. So. I am going to tell you all this. I am sure if any of you go and check my past with the youth team, which I am sure you are all going to do as soon as we finish this interview—"
The reporters laughed. He kept going.
"My issues with that club. They are. Ehm. Well. Let us say less than stellar."
The smile was getting smaller now.
"It is no secret if you ask any of the academy boys I came up with. Me and that club, we just never clicked. Never. I did not like them. It wasn't just rivalry I mean maybe that started it, but it became more than that, I did not like the way they did things. I did not like the way they carried themselves. I did not like the way their players behaved on the pitch."
He shrugged.
"The whole thing. I just..."
He searched for the word. Did not find it.
"Cheats. No morals. The players whining at every challenge. Diving at the slightest contact. The way they talked the jabs and all, The general atmosphere of that club at the youth level. Was not my type of football."
The reporters were quiet now. The professional alertness of journalists who had stopped guiding the answer and were just letting it happen.
"So when I came to the senior team, I will not lie, I still did not really like them. I had inherited the feeling, I have also watched them sooo. But I had also never played them at this level. So I had decided I was going to give them the benefit of the doubt, at least just play them with respect you don't need to like someone to do that. I was going to wait. I had not played the senior side. I had no specific reason to judge them personally. Normal rivalry. That was where I was going to leave it."
He looked at the reporter.
"But now. Now I am actually glad that this happened. Because it has answered a question I had not yet asked."
"Which is?"
He smiled.
"There is no difference."
He let it sit.
"There is no difference between the youth team and the senior team. The exact same attitude. The exact same behaviour. The exact same lack of morals and the exact same whining. The same club, just with bigger names and better cars. I had been giving them the benefit of the doubt for nothing. And honestly? That has taken a big knot off my shoulder."
The Movistar reporter blinked.
"How does that help, though? What does it matter, if the youth team and the senior team are the same?"
Mateo looked at her.
The smile was back.
It had a different quality this time.
"Well. Let us just say."
He paused. He let the silence sit. The reporters around him had stopped moving.
"Let us just say my record against Madrid is kind of very impressive."
The reporter held very still.
"Are you saying—"
"I am not saying anything." The grin was full now. "I am just saying. Look it up. The youth records are public. I have played the Real Madrid academy sides quite a few times across the past four years. The results. Are. Public."
He held up one finger.
"And now I know there is no difference between the youth team and the senior team."
He held up the second finger.
"So I just have to keep doing what I have always been doing."
He let it land.
He looked at the camera.
"At the Bernabéu. Next round."
He nodded once. Polite. Professional. The interview voice all the way back.
"That is all I will say. Thank you."
He turned. He patted Messi on the back as he passed. He walked back toward the tunnel.
Behind him, the reporters were still standing where they had been standing, none of them quite ready to ask the next question.
Messi watched Mateo walk away.
The smile on his face was very small and very specific.
He turned back to the cameras.
"Okay. Next question."
A/N
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