"SUCK MY DICK, RAMOS!"
"SUCK MY DICK!"
"HE WARNED YOU! HE WARNED YOU!"
"NO DIFFERENCE! NO DIFFERENCE!"
"FOUR-ONE! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! Playing hard to get for WHAT?"
"IF WE WIN THE UCL WE ARE BURNING BARCELONA DOWNNNN!"
"FUCK COURTOIS!"
"His baby mama's hot though."
The game might have been over, but for the Barcelona fans already pouring out of the stadium and into the streets, the night had only just begun. Four-one. Away. At the home of their oldest enemy. They were not going home quietly.
And the ones online were no better.
everybody who doubted come out RIGHT NOW. come out. did i not say hat-trick? DID I NOT SAY IT
Lord have mercy because if Barcelona carry this Champions League too I am genuinely cooked
real madrid shouldn't even be allowed back in la liga next season after that, send them down
17 years old. SEVENTEEN. at the bernabeu. a hat-trick. I need everyone to sit with that
Drake — nice one team 🔥 [attached: a $750,000 bet slip on Barcelona to win]
Rio Ferdinand — Pure passion, that. Incredible from both teams. El Clásico really is the pinnacle of rivalry in this sport. What a game .
Iniesta — Good work, boys 🙌💙❤️
Outside the ground, the streets had become a carnival, songs and drums and bodies everywhere. And in the middle of it, the man who had flown from Sudan was crying.
Two Barcelona fans had his face in their hands, holding him, and a knot of streamers and people with phones had gathered around, filming, one of them pushing a mic toward him, laughing.
"So! How was the game, eh?"
The one with an arm slung around his head was grinning. "Was it worth it? Travelling round the whole globe for this, was it worth it?"
The Sudan man wiped at his face. The people around him laughed, warm, the mic still up.
Then he spoke, and the laughing eased.
"My whole life is Barcelona." He looked dead into the camera, serious now, his voice steady under the tears. "I was there."
He held up a hand and started counting, finger by finger.
"2016. Atlético Madrid." Heads around him nodded. "'17. Juventus." More nods, some eyes closing. "'18. Roma." A few tongues clicked. "'19. Liverpool." Faces around him soured at that one. "'20. Bayern."
The hand dropped, and his voice started to go.
"Five years. Five years I was there. Everything I do, everything, it is for this club." He clapped his hands together, hard, and his voice rose into a shout. "I was there when we had NOTHING. Nothing! NOTHING!"
Someone beside him, gently: "And what do you have now?"
And the man's face broke, the tears coming fast and free, and his head tipped back, and his voice cracked all the way through as he said it.
"Man, we got Mateo."
He threw his head back and wept, laughing through it, the people around him grabbing him, holding him, the whole little circle of strangers swept up in it under the Madrid sky.
And the mood was no different inside.
"¡VAMOSSS!"
The Barcelona players were screaming as they filed past, and Mateo and Messi stood just outside the door to the media room, the squad streaming by them. Mateo turned and pumped a fist after them.
"¡Vamos!"
The players laughed, some pumping their fists back, and Messi put both hands on Mateo's shoulders, laughing, rubbing the top of his head. Koeman stood off to the side, watching them, grinning.
"Gaffer."
A few feet away, Zidane had been frowning at the Barcelona players. He turned his head.
Ramos was looking at him.
Zidane straightened, smoothed his suit, and forced a small smile. "What's up?"
Ramos looked at him a moment. "I'm going to head out."
Zidane's face went confused. "But the press—"
He stopped. He caught it. He understood.
"No. No issues. Me and Benzema will handle it."
Ramos nodded.
And his eyes drifted, just for a second, past Zidane, to where Mateo and Messi and Koeman stood together, laughing, the three of them lit up with it.
His face did not change. It stayed stone.
Then he turned, and he walked out.
Mateo laughed at something Messi said, oblivious.
One of the media staff came over to the group. "You can all go in now, please."
Koeman and Zidane both said their thanks. The two coaches looked at each other, Koeman just a touch smug, a touch cocky, Zidane giving him nothing, no expression at all.
Then they went in.
Funny enough, for a boy who should have been used to it by now, Mateo was caught off guard as he walked into the media room. Calm. Nobody rushing him with questions. He was, in fact, the one bouncing on his seat, restless, while the press settled. But the moment everyone was seated, the room broke open all at once.
A standard one first, for Messi, about the game.
"Leo, congratulations. A statement win, away from home, in a match billed as everything. How does this one feel, and what does it say about where this team is right now?"
Messi smiled, leaning toward the mic, easy, unhurried.
"It feels good." A small laugh. "It feels very good. Look, a night like this, in this stadium, against this opponent, you do not forget these ones." He tilted his head. "But honestly, for me, the result is not the surprise. I see these boys every day in training. I see what they can do. So when people are shocked, I am a little confused, because I have been watching it all season." He smiled wider. "This squad, the energy, the young ones especially, it is special. I have played in a lot of great teams here. This one has something. You can feel it building. And I am just happy I get to be a part of it while it happens."
The room warmed to him, a few of the reporters smiling along, and he rested his back, the answer landing light and generous, all the credit pushed outward onto the squad.
Another, for Zidane, about the defeat. Zidane gave the perfect professional answer, no drama, all class. "Barcelona edged us tonight. They were the better side. We will look at it and we will go again." Another reporter started, "About the captain, Sergio—" and Zidane shut it down smoothly, no edge to it. "The captain had matters to attend to. He sends his apologies for missing this. Next question, please."
Mateo glanced over. I thought I saw him in the corridor.
While he was thinking it, a journalist stood up, smiling wide.
"Hi, my name is Carla Ferrer, I'm with Movistar." She kept the smile. "My question is for Mateo."
Mateo turned his head to her.
"My question for you," she said, still beaming, "is what did they tell you at half-time?"
Mateo laughed. The whole room laughed with him, everyone except the Real Madrid bench, Zidane and Benzema sitting there flat.
"No, for real," Carla pressed, grinning. "What did they tell you at half-time? Because that second half. That first goal. What? What did your coach say to you in there?"
Koeman was laughing now, Messi too.
Mateo, still laughing: "Yelling."
The room cracked up.
"Yelling at me," Mateo went on, the playfulness easy in his voice. "Telling me to do something."
"You did something!" Carla said, high and delighted, and the room went up again.
Another reporter stood, no introduction. "Coach. There's a clip going around from about the fifty-sixth minute, where you have a brief word with Mateo, and afterwards you look completely flabbergasted. Like you cannot believe what you've just heard."
"Ahh." Koeman put a hand on his own head, laughing. Mateo was laughing beside him.
Koeman waved his free hand. "I promise you. I promise you, if any of you had been standing where I was standing, you would have had the exact same face."
The room laughed.
He looked at Mateo, shook his head, and turned back to the reporters.
"I was like, wait a minute." The disbelief was still in his voice, as if he were reliving it. "He has barely had any shot on target the whole game."
His face screwed up, recreating it, a man who still could not quite process the memory.
"And now he is telling me he wants to shoot. From far out." He looked around at the press like he was searching for backup, like is everyone seeing this, can you believe this, and the room laughed harder. Mateo and Messi were both gone.
Koeman shook his head. "Immediately, I wanted to shut it down. Like, what are you thinking, son. What are you THINKING."
The laughter rolled.
He put his hand back on his head, and he shook it slowly, and then he said it.
"And I'm thinking, as I'm walking."
A beat.
"I said. But He's King."
...
Then Koeman turned to Mateo, and his voice softened out of the joke.
"You win some, you lose some." He looked at Messi, then back across the boy. "But with players like these? It's hard to see us losing many."
The room laughed.
And while it was still laughing, one reporter stood up, and he did not laugh. His face was stern, set.
"Manuel Esteban. Marca."
Mateo turned, pointed at him, grinning. "I know you."
The reporter did not smile.
Mateo just smiled wider. "Ask your question."
"You're top of the league tonight, but only just, and you travel to Atlético Madrid next week with the title still not mathematically yours. Win there and it's done. Lose, and the door opens again. And then, a week after that, you're in Porto for the Champions League final." He paused. "So forget tonight. My question is about what's left. Two matches. Everything still on the line. How are you approaching them?"
Mateo smiled, shook his head, and muttered, half to himself, "Of course. Not one question about the game we just played."
Koeman laughed. The room laughed.
The reporter blinked. "Pardon?"
Mateo waved a hand. "Sorry. Sorry." He waved it again, laughing now, and his face opened up. "Wow. I just, I can't believe it. Two games. Two trophies."
He said it geeked out, lit up, a kid for a second. Messi reached over and put a hand on his shoulder, and gave him a small nod.
The room watched him. Zidane watched him too, from the far end of the table.
Mateo looked back at the reporter, and the kid in him settled into something steadier.
"How am I approaching them?" He nodded slowly, turning it over. "Same way I approach everything. I'm going there to win. Both of them." He said it plainly, no heat in it, just fact. "I won't lie to you. Two trophies in two weeks would be awfully nice."
The reporter's eyebrows went up. He leaned back, the flatness in his face shifting into something sharper.
"Win both." He let it hang a second. "That's confident. Some might even say a little cocky. A little brash, for a seventeen-year-old in his first season." He tilted his head. "And what about everyone else? All the players who go to these finals and don't win. By that logic, did they just waste their time?"
"Winning isn't everything."
Mateo's voice came out level, cutting cleanly across the question.
"But wanting to win iseverything."
He shook his head, a small laugh in it.
"Since I was little, I've always thought, why go to a tournament if you're not going there to win it? To try to win it?" He shrugged. "There's no point even going."
A beat.
"It's an attitude I've had my whole life. It's an attitude I'll always have."
Then he smiled, and there was something almost gentle in it.
"Third sucks. Second's even worse."
The room chuckled.
The reporter pressed, not unkindly now. "For a first season, a Champions League finalist isn't bad. That's a remarkable year by any measure."
Mateo nodded along.
"It's not bad," he said. "It's not bad at all." Then the conviction came back into him, quiet and total. "But I want to win."
He held the man's eyes.
"That's just my nature."
And the words sat there in the room, and nobody laughed at them, because there was nothing in them to laugh at. A seventeen-year-old had said it the way other men say their own names.
The reporter looked at him for a long moment. And then he shook his head, slow, and a chuckle came out of him, the chuckle of a man who had been in this game for thirty years and had heard a thousand young players promise the world and watched the world break most of them.
He sat back down. And as he did, he said the only thing left to say.
"You'll learn."
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/qHffUpEGc (New discord link)