"MATEO! HERE! HERE!"
"MESSI! MESSI! MESSI!"
"LET'S GOOO!"
"BRING THE CUP HOME!"
"THE DOUBLE! WE'RE WINNING THE DOUBLE!"
"¡A POR LA SEXTA!"
The Barcelona players came out of the stadium toward the bus, and the noise hit them like a wall. From where Mateo walked, he could see all of it, the fans pressed up against the barriers, hundreds of them, faces red and screaming, a row of security straining to hold the line as bodies pushed against it. He was grinning. He could not help it. He looked around at all of them, at the sheer madness of it, and he loved it, every single decibel.
He turned his head and looked back over his shoulder at Messi.
Messi just smiled, and gave him a small nod.
Mateo turned back around.
"Mateo! Take—!"
He felt something drop down onto him out of the crowd, and his hands shot up on instinct and snatched it out of the air.
"Oof—"
He turned the thing over in his hands, frowning at it.
"Glasses?"
It was a pair of black sunglasses. He laughed, and he put them on, and he looked around at the fans with the shades sitting on his face, laughing, showing them off, pointing at them.
"See? See?"
He should not have done that.
"MATEO! TAKE MINE!"
"HERE! TAKE THIS!"
"HAVE MY WATCH!"
The whole barrier erupted, fans tearing things off their own bodies and flinging them over the security line at him, and this is what football fans truly are, this is the unfiltered madness of love. Thankfully most of what came raining down was soft, scarves, caps, shirts, the odd flag, nothing that would split a head open. But even so, the players had to pick up the pace getting onto the bus, the security closing tighter around them.
Mateo stopped at the door of the bus and turned back around to face the crowd.
Messi tapped him on the stomach. "You should get on."
Mateo nodded. He bent and scooped up a cap that had landed near his feet during the storm, set it on his head over the sunglasses, and then he raised both arms and pumped his fists in the air and bellowed it out.
"¡VISCA BARÇA!"
The whole place exploded all over again.
"Hahaha—"
Mateo was still laughing as he climbed onto the bus. He pulled the cap off his head.
"The fans are insane."
Sergi Roberto, sliding into a seat, looked up. "When you keep goading them, why wouldn't they be?"
The bus laughed.
Mateo just shrugged, and then leaned into it. "It's not my fault they love me."
A chorus of groans.
He stood in the aisle, milking it. "I mean. Who can blame them, really?"
Griezmann laughed. "Yes, yes, your majesty." He did a little fake bow from his seat, and the bus went up.
"That's right." Mateo turned. "Hey, Piqué."
Piqué was a few rows back, typing something on his phone. He glanced up.
"You still haven't found a name for your league, right?" Mateo said.
Piqué raised an eyebrow.
"How about you name it," Mateo said, "after the hottest name in football right now."
Everyone around him groaned. Pedri put his face in his hand and shook his head.
"Don't mind them," Mateo said. "They're just haters. Just think about it. It would be huge."
Piqué tilted his head. "Hmm. That could work."
The whole bus turned. "Really?"
Even Mateo looked stunned. "Wait. For real?"
Mateo's face split into a grin. "Haha. I knew you were a man of culture—"
"That could work," Piqué said, nodding slowly, thinking it through. "Ooh. But there's one issue."
"What?" Mateo said.
"I don't have Mbappé's number."
The bus detonated. Players were doubled over, somebody shoving Mateo from behind, the laughter rolling up and down the aisle.
"I mean," Piqué went on, perfectly straight, "if we want to use his name, we have to ask his permission, don't we?"
More howling. Araújo reached over and shook Piqué by the shoulder. "Nice one. NICE one."
Mateo gave a flat, fake laugh. "So funny."
Beside him, Dembélé nodded along seriously. "Yes. Yes, it was."
The bus went up again.
"But I'm serious," Mateo pressed, riding it now. "Just imagine it. Mateo League. No, no, no. Kings League. It's got a nice ring to it, you can't lie—"
A hand landed on his shoulder.
Koeman. Cold. Stone-faced. He looked at Mateo and said, flat:
"Go sit down."
The bus lost it. Laughter everywhere, voices calling out over the top of each other.
"Gaffer's had enough of him already—"
"Wouldn't you be?"
"I heard he was a troublemaker back in the academy, man. They weren't lying"
Mateo, grinning, dropped into the seat beside Pedri, who shifted over to make room and just shook his head at him.
"Why," Pedri said, "do you always have to embarrass me," the whole bus still rocking with it around them.
A few rows back, Piqué muttered it to himself, shaking his head, and went back to his phone, trying to forget the nonsense the class clown had been spouting.
"Kings League."
He typed for a moment.
Then he slowed. Then he stopped. His thumbs went still on the screen, and a look came over his face like something had just snagged in his mind, and he muttered it again, quieter this time, turning it over.
"Kings League. Hmm."
As the bus pulled away, Mateo looked out of the window. They had been moving a while now, but the fans were still out there, scattered along the roads in twos and threes, even here, even in Madrid. A smile pulled at his face at the sight of them, and then he turned back to his phone. Over fifty messages. He started speed-running them. Alejandro. The Guys. Javi, the gateman at La Masia. Adrián, the team liaison. Óscar. Half the academy staff, it felt like, and a scatter of the students too. He thumbed through the wall of congratulations, well dones, proud of yous, and then one stopped him. Lamine Yamal. He opened it. And his face fell.
"Ahh. Why didn't I think of that."
Most of the messages had been the same warm noise, congratulations on congratulations. This was the first one that was different. Lamine had said he should have done the Siu after one of the goals. Mateo sat there a second, genuinely gutted.
"Fuck, man."
He typed back. dude i forgot 😭 next time though. good looking out. He sent it, then fired off another. hows the academy? training going okay?
Beside him, Pedri looked up from his own phone. "What's wrong?"
Mateo just sighed and held the screen out to him. Pedri read it. His eyebrows shot up.
"Dude. Thank God you didn't do that."
Mateo shrugged.
"No, I'm serious," Pedri said. "They'd have killed you on that pitch. Literally killed you."
Mateo smiled at him. "But you can't lie. That would've been epic."
"Mateo. Please. Never do that."
"Hahaha—"
"Mateo, I'm serious, man." Pedri was half-laughing now but his eyes weren't. "If you'd done something like that? They'd have had to abandon the game." He shook his head. "Who is even putting this stuff in your head?"
Mateo went back to typing. "My junior at the academy. You watched the intra-high final, right?"
"Yeah."
"He was the young scrawny attacker for them."
Pedri's eyes opened in realisation. "Ooh. The right-winger kid?"
"Yeah. That's him."
"He was good," Pedri said. "He was really good."
Mateo grinned, proud of it. "Insanely talented, bro. Next-level stuff."
Pedri sighed. "Great. Another troublemaker to look forward to."
Mateo punched him in the shoulder, and the two of them cracked up.
He went back to the phone, working through the rest. He answered his uncle. His aunt had sent a video, her and his grandma squeezed into frame together, both of them congratulating him, his grandmother blowing a kiss at the camera. His mom and dad, how proud they were, how much they loved him. He answered each one, and with every reply the smile on his face sat a little wider.
He kept scrolling. And then one caught his eye. Sarah. From the media team. He opened it. Pictures, with two words underneath.
Enjoy 😉
He tapped download, watched the bar fill, and opened them. And his eyes went wide, and a grin spread all the way across his face.
No freaking way.
Five pictures. Match photographs, and not just any match photographs.
The first was his own face, scrunched up tight in mid-celebration, the raw seriousness of it, teammates blurring in around the edges, his hand thrown out and his mouth open in a roar. Fuck. This is hard.
He swiped to the second and started laughing. It was from his third goal, him turning away, the ball just leaving his foot, and the thing that made it, the thing that made it perfect, was Ramos. Down on the floor in the frame, looking up at him as Mateo struck it.
He swiped again. The third kept the theme. The scissor. Him in the air, body bent and slanted, both legs off the ground, Ramos's hand still fisted in his shirt dragging at him, the ball coming off his boot. He smiled at it.
The fourth was a celebration shot, and it was hard as hell. Him and Thierry Henry, the two of them screaming into each other's faces over the broadcast desk, every vein and tendon lit up, a picture with so much noise in it you could almost hear it.
Then the fifth.
Ooh. This is so sick.
It was him from behind, walking away, the bold 36 across his back. And around him, scattered like the aftermath of something, the white shirts. Modrić down on the floor to the left. Kroos in front with a shirt pulled up over his face. Varane turned away. Ramos with both hands on his hips. And Mateo in the dead centre of all of it, walking out through the wreckage, the scoreboard glowing in the backdrop.
4-1.
It was, by a distance, the sickest picture in the set.
He saved all five, fast, and shot a message back to Sarah. i love you so much, you know me too well 😭 Then another. don't worry, i'll put these in good hands 😏
He opened Instagram. Before the match his follower count had been 9.2 million. It was 11.7 now. He stared at it a second, amazed at the jump, the smile tugging again, and then he went to post, selecting all five pictures. They were already clean, already edited, nothing left to do but choose them. He sat looking at the empty caption box.
What do I even put?
"Right, team!" Koeman's voice carried down the bus. "We're at the airport. Let's go. Up, up, let's move."
Mateo looked up. Players were already standing, filing out, bags swinging down from overhead. He got to his feet, and as he did, a thought arrived, and his eyes widened, and a slow smirk crept across his face.
This is perfect.
He typed it fast, and hit send, and watched it climb up onto his page, the five photos and the words beneath them, and he stood there in the aisle looking down at his own caption, the comments and likes already flooding in.
Same old, same old.
A/N
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