England. London. Near Heathrow Airport.
"Honestly, with your head coach talking like that, it paints a bad sign."
It was the weekly recording of CBS Sports Golazo, and as usual the place was lively, even though the show was close to wrapping for the night.
"No. I don't think I see it like that."
Kate Abdo shook her head, looking across at the ex-Liverpool man beside her. Then she turned toward the side, where Micah Richards sat at his end of the desk.
"What's your view on what Tuchel said, Micah?"
"I miss Thierry."
Micah just muttered it out.
"Excuse me. What?" Kate said, taken aback.
Jamie Carragher stretched a hand out, laughing.
"Don't mind him. He's just angry that Thierry got asked to attend the Clásico."
Micah groaned at hearing it said out loud.
"He's sitting pitch-side at what's going to be the game of the season, and I'm here." He looked around the studio, scoffed. "Recording."
Kate replied sarcastically.
"Well. Sorry you have to do your job."
"Hahaha." Jamie was laughing. "Don't pout." Then, "Me and the lads are heading to the bar for a few pints to watch the match. You want to come?"
Micah answered before the question was even finished.
"Do you even have to ask?"
The two of them dissolved into laughing.
Micah's enthusiasm for the match was not unique to him. Not in England.
Out on the street, two British lads were walking, deep in it.
"You can't be serious, mate. You really reckon Madrid have got a shot?"
"I'm dead serious. It's matches like this that Madrid turn up for. Look what's happening with that mouthy King kid. Made for sure. I've got them winning, I've put the parlay on them and all."
"Mate. I hope you don't need that money." The other lad started laughing. "That kid Mateo is a demon." He kept laughing. "Madrid are so cooked. Consider your parlay goodbye, son."
"And Messi?"
"What about him? What's that one going to do? He hasn't scored against Madrid since Ronaldo left in 2018. Nil. Zero goals."
"Mate. I pity you with this thinking of yours."
They were reaching the door of the bar. The Barcelona lad put a hand on the other's shoulder.
"Just kiss your money goodbye."
The Madrid lad flung the hand off.
"Get out of it."
The Barcelona lad was still laughing as they pushed the door open. instantly they were met with the chaos that was the inside of the bar.
"Oi, oi. Are the lineups out yet?"
"Nah. Just Madrid's."
"Hahaha. They still doing that, posting it thirty minutes early to psyche the other team?"
"They think it's 2017."
"Hahahaha." Laughter rolled around the bar.
"Laugh all you want. Real Madrid are beating those muppets."
"Course. There's the United fan, everyone, you lots never disappoint."
The bar was rammed. Bodies three deep, the heat coming off the crowd, every screen on the walls showing the pre-match build-up. And because it was England, because it was a room full of Englishmen with a thousand grievances between them, the talk had drifted off the Clásico and onto their own.
"It's just sad Arsenal never got to meet this Barcelona side this season with Arteta in charge, honestly."
"Mate." Another lad laughing at him. "United are finishing above you lot. Get your priorities in order before you start talking about facing Barcelona."
"I just need Real Madrid to take that kid's leg off before the final."
"Oi." Someone rounded on him. "You Chelsea lot are something else, you know that?"
The Chelsea fan just laughed.
"I don't care about any of that. Sergio, let's go. Clear the brat's leg for me" He raised his pint, cheering to no one.
The whole room churned, loud, lit up, a hundred conversations stacked on top of each other.
A waitress, run completely off her feet, met two lads near the front. She was moving fast, two plates already balanced on one arm.
"Welcome. Yeah, there's seats just over there, on the edge." She pointed. "I'll be with you shortly."
Someone across the room called out for fishsticks and another round.
"I'm coming!" she shouted over her shoulder. Then back to the two lads, pointing again at the seats. "Just there, alright."
And she hurried off.
One of the two lads watched the room.
"Since when did El Clásico matches get packed out like this again?"
The other one tugged his sleeve.
"Let's just go grab the seats before someone nicks them."
And this was happening almost everywhere in the country. And out of it too. It was still over an hour from kickoff, and across Europe the match was the talk of every football broadcast going. The media had been peddling the rivalry for weeks. The clash between one of the greatest defenders of his generation and a scarlet newcomer superstar. A captain and a rookie. Ramos's speech. Mateo's clap back.
Negativity has a way of spreading fast and gathering attention, and the media had run with this one. Couple that with two of the biggest clubs in the world, one of them packed with stars, and add the freshly lit feud between two of the most talked-about players in football right now, and the thing was simply explosive.
And the numbers reflected that.
...
"Are you serious with this?"
Tebas looked down at the tablet someone had just put in front of him, his eyes moving over the rows of numbers, the charts, the climbing lines.
"Yes, sir. The live viewer count has already passed ninety-eight million."
Tebas kept looking, just staring at the figures.
"All broadcasters are seeing a spike," the man went on. "Fourteen percent across the board. Movistar's at nineteen. Total views are sitting at three hundred and twenty million, and peak estimates have it reaching five hundred and seventy to six hundred and fifty million."
Tebas's head came up at that.
The man smiled.
Tebas looked back down at the tablet.
"Well. Thank you for this."
The man nodded, then pointed out that they had configured the display to show real-time estimates as everything kept climbing. Tebas just nodded.
As the La Liga president, Tebas was always in the know on things like this. It was, technically, his job. Apart from running the league, keeping the clubs in line, all of that, his single most important task came down to one thing. Get eyeballs on the league. Views. Simple as that.
These numbers were insane. And the match was still an hour away. The upper limits had not been touched yet.
Recently the El Clásico numbers could not have been called insane. The last one had peaked at a live count of, what, seventy-nine million, with total views around four hundred and seventy. Measured against other fixtures it was still top-tier. But Tebas had been in this league a long time, and he knew what these numbers used to be. A few years ago they were double this. He remembered the numbers from Pep against Mourinho. Ronaldo against Messi. Those numbers were obscene, doubling the Champions League finals of the same period without blinking. Football viewership has a way of always going up.
That had not held true here. Not with Ronaldo leaving the league, not with the slide in quality at both Madrid and Barcelona. The numbers had stagnated for years.
But now he was watching a resurgence. It still was not prime El Clásico territory. But it was better than anything they had seen in years, good enough that it almost had him thinking he had made a mistake.
The tension between him and the presidents of both clubs over the whole Super League business had pushed him to skip the match in person. Watching the tablet now, he regretted it, slightly.
It would have been nice to watch it live.
Meanwhile, also in Spain, outside the Estadio Alfredo Di Stéfano.
The Di Stéfano was hosting this Clásico. With the Bernabéu under renovation since 2019, the smaller ground had become the temporary home of Real Madrid's senior men's team. But if you were standing in one particular section outside the stadium, you would never have guessed it.
Soar blue and noble red was all that could be seen.
"AHHHHHH!"
A phone shot up into the air, the lad behind it spinning in a slow circle to catch the whole section.
"You see this? You SEE this? Put it on the TikTok, put it on right now!"
"WE ARE GOING TO BURY THEM!" someone roared past his ear. "BURY THEM! You hear me? Today they DIE!"
The chants came in over the top of each other, three different songs trying to win the same patch of air, none of them giving way. Off to one side a knot of grown men had their arms locked around each other's shoulders, swaying, bellowing the words up at the sky, and at least two of them had tears running down their faces while they sang.
"OI, RAMOS!" A man cupped both hands around his mouth and screamed it toward the stadium like the captain could hear him from here. "RAMOS, YOU OLD PUTA! Go on, touch him today! Touch the kid and watch what happens to you!"
"They're FINISHED!" another shouted. "Every one of them! Tell Courtois to keep the net warm!"
A younger lad was doubled over laughing, slapping his mate's chest, barely able to get the words out.
"Nah, nah, listen, listen. Benzema. Yeah? Ask him where the tape is. Ask him! Fifteen, my friend, FIFTEEN!"
The whole circle around him went up, howling, somebody nearly going over backward.
In the middle of it all stood a man wrapped head to foot in a Barça flag, and he was not singing the songs, he was screaming over them.
"I FLEW FROM SUDAN FOR THIS! SUDAN! You hear me? I do not even have a ticket! I am not even GETTING IN!"
The men nearest him stopped dead. Then they swarmed him. Hands on his shoulders, on his head, dragging him into the middle of the swaying line.
"He came from SUDAN! From Sudan, this one! Sing, brother, SING!"
And he sang.
If any American, a New Yorker specifically, had been standing in that section, he would have clocked the uncanny resemblance between this set of fans and the beloved New York Knicks faithful.
And if you were a Barcelona fan standing in there, you could have convinced yourself you were at the iconic Camp Nou itself. The Estadio Alfredo Di Stéfano held only six thousand. Yet there were already more than that gathered outside the small ground, and even with the extra away allocation Madrid had granted, most of these people were never getting inside for the match. To them it did not matter. Coming here was the point. It was what the support of a Barcelona fan looked like.
But for all their love, for all their noise, they could only really dominate that one section.
Anywhere else, it was perfectly clear whose house this was.
Bright "Optic White" was the true theme of the day. Masses and masses of Spaniards and people from every corner, a sea of white spread out under a giant screen mounted for those who could not get in, the whole scene tilting toward the home side. The laughs. The smiles. The singing. They were buoyant, loud, carrying the certainty of people who had decided the night before it had started.
And here was the thing. Their team was already out of the title race. They had, officially, gone a whole season without a trophy. They were facing a Barcelona side on an unbeaten run, a side still on course for the double of league and Champions League. And these fans had no fear. No doubts that their team would clinch this. To them, games like this, the ones where the world counted them out, these were the games Real Madrid thrived on. They were not afraid.
Los Blancos.
It was not a simple name to carry. It might technically mean "the whites," but after years of winning, of dominating, of ruling the sport, it meant far more than that now. It was not just a nickname. It was a statement of what they were as a club.
The Peak.
It was that simple. It was why the fans were not afraid. Why they believed their team could do the impossible. Why, today, inside that ground, they were going to scream their lungs raw and roar as they beat Barcelona.
And more brazen than the fans with that mentality was the team itself. From the president to the staff, to the players, to the coaching staff.
...
"Are the lineups out?"
Zinedine Zidane turned to one of his assistants.
"Yes, sir. Just came through." The assistant glanced at the sheet. "It's like we predicted from Koeman. Same lineup he used against City and Sociedad."
Zidane nodded.
"The only difference is Pedri's out. He's playing Griezmann instead."
Zidane's eyebrow lifted a fraction.
"He's still on the bench, on the lineup, so we don't think he's injured," the assistant went on. "Most likely they're resting him after the last match." He carried on. "As for Griezmann, on paper he's in the attacking midfield slot, but we believe he'll mostly be used as a support striker."
Zidane handed the sheet back.
"Thanks."
The assistant nodded and stepped away.
Zidane turned and looked out over the dressing room.
The mood was heavy. Nobody was talking. Some of the players sat with their elbows on their knees, heads down. A couple had their eyes closed, breathing slow, somewhere far inside themselves. One was bouncing a knee. One kept retying a boot that was already tied. The room had the weight of men who had read the same newspapers as everyone else and knew exactly what the world expected of them tonight.
Let's do this, Zidane thought.
He walked out into the middle of the room.
You could say a lot of things about this man. He had been called one of the greatest managers to ever live and a fraud in the same breath. No tactics, some said. Brilliant tactical flexibility, said others. Pass to Ronaldo and inshalla . He had won the Champions League three times in a row. Too many people held too many opinions on Zinedine Zidane to ever land on one.
But there was a single thing everyone agreed on. The French man was one of the finest man-manager the sport had ever produced, and it was not debatable.
Taking a group of men who looked downcast and sending them out onto a pitch against a supposedly better side, with intensity, with the drive to win? For him, that was almost too easy.
"Is this it?"
He said it quiet, almost to himself, and heads came up around the room.
"This is the team they've written off, eh? This is the team the whole of Europe has spent two weeks burying. I've read it. You've read it. They've already played the match for us. They've already given them the trophy." He let a small pause sit. "And you're sitting here looking like you believe them."
He moved his eyes around the room, slow, landing on one man after another.
"I know different."
His voice came up.
"I have stood on a training pitch with you every single day. I have seen what is in this room. I know the quality that is sitting in these chairs right now, and I am telling you, I have seen what that quality does to a football match. There is no team on this planet, none, that the men in this room cannot beat."
A few heads lifted higher.
"That is not a hope. That is not me trying to make you feel better before you walk out there. That is a fact. There is no side Real Madrid steps onto a pitch against and cannot win. That is not arrogance. That is who we are. That is the shirt. You do not get to wear this and be afraid."
He pointed at the crest on the nearest player's chest.
"Other teams, when the world counts them out, they shrink. They go quiet. They wait to lose." His lip curled. "We are not other teams. When they count us out, that is when we are most dangerous. That is the whole history of this club, written by men exactly like you, sitting in a room exactly like this one, being told exactly what you are being told tonight."
The room had changed. Someone was nodding hard. Someone rolled their shoulders. A pair of fists clenched on a pair of knees.
"They have a boy who likes to talk." Zidane let it hang. "Good. Let him talk. Talk is free. Out there, the pitch does not care what he said into a microphone. Out there, there are eleven of you, and you have done this longer, and you have won more, and you have bled more for this badge than that child has been alive."
He turned, and his eyes found Sergio Ramos.
The captain was sitting forward, head down, hands clasped between his knees, and he had not moved through the whole of it.
"We do this for them," Zidane said, and he tipped his head toward the wall, toward the noise of the crowd bleeding faintly through the concrete. "For the people out there who flew across the world to wear this white. We do this for the captain."
Every head in the room turned to Ramos.
Ramos did not look up.
"And more than any of that." Zidane's voice dropped, and somehow that made it louder. "We do this for ourselves. Because we know what we are. Because we do not need anyone outside this room to believe it."
He straightened.
"Real Madrid do not cower."
He said it flat, final, a statement of physical law.
"So. Let me hear it."
A beat.
"¡Hala Madrid!"
It came back at him, the whole room at once, the heaviness gone, replaced by something with teeth.
"¡HALA MADRID!"
And finally, the time reached.
"Matchday thirty-seven. The Estadio Alfredo Di Stéfano. And if you have somehow arrived here without a pulse, allow the next ninety minutes to find you one."
Peter Drury's voice rolled out over the images of the ground, his partner beside him in the booth.
"Barcelona come into this evening still in pursuit of Atlético Madrid at the summit of La Liga, the title still alive in their hands, the double still glittering somewhere on the horizon. And standing in their path, of all the sides in all of Spain, this one. Real Madrid. Out of the race themselves. A season slipping toward its end with empty hands. And yet, oh, there is no team on earth who would rather be the executioner tonight. To stop Barcelona is one thing. To be the ones who stop them from chasing down their fiercest rival? For the men in white, that is not a consolation. That is a feast."
The camera swept the stands.
"And look at this stadium. Cut almost clean down the middle. To the left, a wall of white. To the right, unmistakably, defiantly, the blue and the red of Catalonia, come to Madrid and refusing to be quiet about it. Two tribes. One small ground. And between them, somewhere out on that grass tonight, a quarrel that has filled the back pages for a fortnight. A captain at the close of a great career. A boy at the dawn of one. Sergio Ramos and Mateo King, who have said a great many things into a great many microphones, and must now say them with their feet."
His partner leaned in.
"And Peter, is that who I think it is up in the stands?"
"It is. That is Luis Enrique, the head coach of the Spanish national team, taking his seat. A curious presence, some would say, given he is a man partly responsible for the very tension simmering between certain of these players."
"So why's he here?"
"Officially? To run his eye over his options ahead of a summer of European Championship football. To decide, perhaps, finally, who carries Spain this summer. Unofficially?" A pause. "Well. He chose this match, of all the matches, to come and watch. Make of that what you will."
The teams stood in the tunnel mouth, then began to walk.
"They have given us a fortnight of words. Tonight they give us the football. And something tells me, my friends, this is going to be one to remember for a very, very long time."
The internet was already at war.
here we go. madrid out the title race and STILL the most dangerous team in spain. counted out is when they bite. watch.
Mateo about to give Ramos a footballing lesson on his own pitch. screenshot this
as a neutral i genuinely don't care who wins i just want blood. give me a war
everyone hyping the kid up. one bad tackle from ramos and the wonderkid is crying for his mum. this is the bernabeu sweetheart not the academy
time to watch my previous victim square up against my future victim 😌 enjoy your little spanish kickabout boys, see you in Porto
^ chelsea fans really got beat 4-2 in their league last night and still came out MORE confident, fascinating
KING KING KING. they're gonna learn his name tonight whether they like it or not
On the pitch, the two teams stood in their lines.
The cameras moved down the row, and most of the faces wore the polite half-smiles men put on when they know they are being filmed.
Most.
From where Mateo stood, looking down the line, he was not smiling. His jaw was set, his eyes flat and forward. And when he looked across at the white shirts, he found the same thing waiting back. Twenty-two players on that pitch. Not one of them smiling.
"Okay, okay."
Mateu Lahoz arrived between the two captains, his arms out, herding them together for the formalities. He said his piece, the usual instructions, the let's-have-a-good-clean-one that referees say and players never hear. The photographers crowded in. The captains shook for the cameras.
The coin went up.
It came down in Lahoz's palm and Ramos called it and Ramos won it, and he chose, and the word came back along the line: Madrid would take the kickoff.
Lahoz pointed the players to their halves.
Mateo, turning to jog back, let his eyes slide sideways and hold on Lahoz for one long beat as he went.
Then the two sides met in the middle to shake.
There were no smiles in it. Hands met hands, brief, hard, eyes mostly elsewhere. And then the camera found the one everybody had come for, Mateo and Ramos, palms clasping for half a second, neither man looking at the other, both already turning away before the grip had finished.
"Well," the second commentator said, with a small laugh. "At least they shook hands."
Drury chuckled. "At least they shook hands. Let us hold onto that, while it lasts."
On the touchline, Koeman was already up, clapping hard, barking, urging his men, intense from the first second. A few yards along, Zidane stood with his arms folded, watching Koeman for a moment with a faint unreadable expression, then turning his eyes back to the pitch, perfectly still, perfectly calm.
Lahoz moved the last players into shape. He glanced at Benzema, gloved hands, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet over the ball, and got a thumbs up. Lahoz nodded and backed away.
"You good? You good?" he called, to no one in particular, to everyone. He nodded at the silence as if it had answered him.
He lifted the whistle.
Peeeeeep!
"And we are underway."
As the words fell, the match began.
contrary to everyone's believe, it started measured.
Madrid had the ball first.
Courtois rolled it out to Varane. Varane took a touch and Mateo was already coming, not sprinting, just closing the angle, herding him toward the line. Varane clipped it square to Ramos. Ramos took it on the half-turn, head up, and there was Griezmann, arriving on his blind side.
"¡Hombre! ¡Hombre!" Casemiro was shouting, dropping in, banging a fist on his own chest, giving Ramos the out.
Ramos found him. Casemiro killed it, turned, and the ball went up to Kroos, and the calm German triangle began, Kroos to Modrić, Modrić back to Kroos, Carvajal pushing high to give the width. Barcelona dropped off and let them have it for now, a low red wall forming on the halfway line.
Second minute.
Kroos tried the first real pass, a diagonal aimed at Vinícius down the Madrid left.
Sergi Roberto read it. He stepped across and got his head to it, nodding it back infield, but only as far as Valverde, who came onto it without breaking stride.
"Man on, MAN ON!" Busquets barked.
De Jong was the man on. He went through the back of the ball and Valverde at the same time, all in one motion, clean, and came out the other side with it at his feet. He looked up, drove five yards, and slid it into Mateo, who had dropped between the lines.
First touch. Casemiro arrived to smash him. Mateo let it run across his body and away before the Brazilian got there, and Casemiro hit nothing but air and shirt.
Third minute.
The press won its reward.Courtois had it again and went short to Kroos, but Barcelona had pushed up this time, the trap set. Mateo and Griezmann came as a pair, curving their runs to cut the pitch in half, and Kroos's options closed one by one. He rushed it. The pass meant for Casemiro came out heavy and square.
De Jong was already gone, reading it, and he pounced in front of Casemiro and took it clean off his toe.
"¡Vamos! ¡Vamos!" the Barça end screamed, halfway out of their seats.
De Jong slid it wide to Alba overlapping, Alba whipped it first time across the six-yard box, and the whole stadium sucked in, and the ball fizzed past the face of Courtois's goal, a stud's width from Dembélé sliding in at the back post, and out.
Koeman was on the touchline with both arms over his head, then both arms going like a man bringing a plane in to land.
"¡SÍ! ¡ASÍ! AGAIN! AGAIN!"
Fourth minute.
Madrid answered.
They did not panic. Courtois went long this time, over the press, dropping it on Benzema's chest with his back to goal on the edge of the Barça half. Benzema cushioned it, held off Piqué with a forearm, and laid it back into the run of Valverde.
Valverde drove. He carried it twenty yards through the middle before Busquets slid out to meet him, and the two of them collided, Busquets winning the ball with the bottom of his foot and Valverde tumbling over the top.
"¡Falta!" Valverde was up on his knees, both arms out to Lahoz.
Lahoz waved it on. Nothing. Madrid groaned, the white half of the ground with them.
Fifth minute.
Modrić, dropping deep, found a pocket nobody had closed and turned into it, and suddenly Madrid had a runner at a backpedalling defence. He clipped it first time out to Vinícius, one on one with Sergi Roberto.
Vinícius took him on. Stepover, stepover, the drop of the shoulder, and he went outside, and for half a second he was past.
"¡Atrás! ARAÚJO!" Piqué roared.
Araújo came across like a closing door. He got his body between Vinícius and the byline, shepherded him a yard wide, and the cross when it came was strangled, looping up off the wrong part of the boot and into Ter Stegen's gloves.
Ter Stegen caught it, and held it, and looked for the quick release.
Five minutes. No cards. No blood. Just two heavyweights circling.
"I know it's only the first five minutes," the second commentator said, "but this has been far more, ehm—"
"Normal?" Drury offered.
"Normal."
"Yes." Drury laughed softly. "I confess I'm not sure what I expected. Fireworks in the first ten seconds, perhaps. But this has been a good deal more measured than anyone might have predicted, given the thrills Barcelona have given us all season, and the thrills this fixture has handed down across the ages. Patient. Respectful, almost." A beat. "Almost."
On the pitch, Dembélé had the ball on the left.
His chest was heaving. He took a touch, lifted his head, found the picture, and dropped his shoulder as if to go outside, the burst of acceleration loading into his legs.
It was a lie.
He checked, spun back inside off the fake, and as Carvajal's weight went the wrong way Dembélé drove into the middle and slid the pass off instinct, no backlift, straight into feet.
Mateo took it on the half-turn in the centre of the park.
Modrić was on him in a heartbeat. Mateo felt him coming, dropped his shoulder, snapped a sharp turn to the right, and the Croatian was suddenly facing the wrong way.
"Ooh. It's on now—"
Up in the stands, people came up out of their seats.
Mateo went.
"He is as quick as ever—"
The speed. He ate the ground, the ball glued in front of him, his head up and swivelling even at full pace. To his left Dembélé and Messi were both tearing forward, filling the lanes. Ahead of him the white shirts were sprinting back, the whole Madrid block collapsing toward its own goal. Lahoz was running flat out just to stay near it.
"He is coming, he is coming—"
"He's coming," Ramos said, low, slapping the back of his hand against Varane's chest. The two centre-backs set themselves, side by side, the last line. there was only one thought in his mind as he saw Mateo
you.
Mateo did not slow down.
He came at the heart of them. Varane stepped, Ramos stepped, and Mateo dropped the ball under his sole, dragged it across his body, and went between them, a single ruthless movement that split the two of them like a wedge, the ball flicked through the half-yard of grass between two of the most decorated defenders in the game.
"Shit—" Varane got out.
Mateo was through.
The booth detonated.
"OH, HE'S BEEN THROUGH THEM, HE'S THROUGH—"
The whole stadium came up off its seats at once, Six thousand bodies rising, Courtois already abandoning his line and pouring out to close the angle, the noise climbing into something that did not sound like a crowd anymore, it sounded like one enormous voice, and the entire night had narrowed to a boy, a ball, and a goalkeeper—
Bang.
Mateo hit the ground hard.
Ramos. Seeing the boy had gone past him, Ramos had spun and got across, and somewhere between the ball and the path of Mateo's run his body had arrived, and Mateo went down, the chance gone, the ball squirting loose.
"HEYYYYY—"
The Barcelona end erupted in fury, a wall of whistles and screams and arms thrown at the sky, the protest rolling down out of the right-hand stand in a single outraged roar.
"And he's down! Mateo King is down, and the Catalan half of this stadium wants blood, they want a card, they want a foul—"
Lahoz arrived at the scene.
He looked around. He looked at the two players. And he did not reach for his pocket, and he did not blow.
"And Mateu Lahoz says no. Says play on. Says there's nothing in it—"
"Well, the Barcelona supporters will have a very different view," the second man said. "That is a man of vast experience using every inch of it."
And the play did not stop. The ball had broken to a white shirt, and Madrid were already moving with it, Varane reaching down to clap a hand on Ramos's shoulder, a word of approval, before turning to support the move. The ball went out to Carvajal. Dembélé chased across to close him. The game rolled on, indifferent, up the other end.
Behind it, Mateo sat up on the grass.
Ramos stood over him for a moment, looking down, no expression, then turned and jogged away.
Mateo did not get up straight away. He sat there, reached down, adjusted a shin guard, tugged a sock back into place, taking his time.
"Heheh."
A small sound, down in his chest.
He sat there on the turf of the Alfredo Di Stéfano, the stadium still howling around him, and he chuckled to himself.
He laughed.
Then he got up, jogging back into shape, nodding his head slowly to himself as he went.
Real Madrid 0, Barcelona 0.
This game was going to be unlike anything Mateo had ever played. No respect between colleagues here. It was not just a match. It was not a job, not simply a passion, not even a rivalry in the ordinary sense of the word. Even if recent years had buried it under politeness and handshakes and shirt swaps, there was, underneath all of it, only one true thing that had ever existed between Real Madrid and Barcelona.
Hate.
It was that simple. These were not two teams who shared a friendly rivalry, banter, mutual respect under the needle. Genuinely, truly, they did not like each other. And with everything that had been bubbling up to the surface these last weeks, the calm of the opening six minutes was finished. There were no words left that could properly say what was about to happen out there. Only the ones that fell from Peter Drury's lips, watching that run, that impossible dribble, and the captain's body arriving to end it.
"It's begun."
A/N
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
patreon.com/David_Adetola
Thank You your support is greatly appreciated thank you all
I've also created a Discord channel to make communication easier, where I'll post updates
https://discord.gg/qwz2Ztvn (New discord link)