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The Camp Nou dressing room smelled of champagne before anyone had opened a bottle. Neymar had produced one from somewhere, nobody asked where and the first spray went over Busquets before the door had fully closed.
"HEY—" Busquets got his arm up too late. He stood dripping, looking at Neymar with the expression of a man who has accepted that this is simply how evenings like this end. Then Alves appeared with a second bottle and Busquets's expression shifted from resignation to participation. He grabbed it.
The noise outside in the tunnel was still rolling through the walls, ninety-five thousand people who had waited since 2009 for the feeling they were currently experiencing. In the dressing room it was smaller and louder simultaneously.
"Nothing is more satisfying than watching Mourinho leave," Busquets announced, standing on the bench, champagne running down his face. "Nothing in the sport. Not a title. Not a goal. Mourinho leaving. That's the ceiling."
"You've said this four times," Iniesta said.
"I'll keep saying it until it stops being true."
Pedro caught Lorenzo's eye from across the room and shook his head with a grin. "You realise every headline tomorrow is going to be about him and not the team."
"He scored the lob," Iniesta said. "And the two assists. The headlines are not wrong."
Martino walked through the door, looked at the champagne-soaked floor, looked at Busquets still on the bench, and said nothing. He found Puyol.
"Good result, Carles," Martino said, his voice quiet, offering a rare moment of steady ground.
Puyol looked up, meeting his manager's eyes with a tired, knowing nod. "Good result," he replied.
Outside the stadium, the last of the ninety-five thousand were still filtering toward the gates. By the player tunnel entrance, a group of supporters had gathered — the particular cluster that forms when word gets out that players are still inside and might emerge. They had the patience of people who have done this before and know that waiting is part of the experience.
Lorenzo came out twenty minutes after the final whistle, jacket on, bag over his shoulder. The tunnel erupted — a specific noise, intimate and close, different from the stadium roar. He signed jerseys, shirts, phone cases, the back of a match programme. Alves was beside him, doing the same with considerably more theatrical flair, embracing people he had apparently known for years, posing, laughing at things nobody else could hear.
One fan held out a Barcelona shirt with the number nine already printed. Lorenzo looked at it for a moment — his own name, someone else's shirt, worn and washed many times. He signed across the back and handed it over. The fan looked at it and said something in Catalan that Lorenzo caught the shape of but not the words.
Cecilia was off to the side, watching without being in it. She had the stillness of someone who has been to enough of these that the chaos no longer unsettled her. When Lorenzo looked up and found her she raised one eyebrow, a question without a question mark. He nodded once toward the gate.
They walked out together. Alves was still behind them, still performing.
Later that night, sitting on the terrace of the villa with the city below and the December chill in the air, Lorenzo opened the system.
The mission reward from the Chelsea second leg arrived without ceremony.
[Side Mission 'Defeat Mourinho's Chelsea (L2)' — SUCCESS.]
[Reward: Club Acquisition Startup Fund — System-backed asset. Ready for deployment.]
[Opening selection interface...]
The display expanded into a grid of club crests. Three were highlighted at the front.
Barcelona Club — Estimated acquisition: €3 billion.The internal politics will worsen. Bartomeu will sideline veterans, push Messi out, accumulate unsustainable debt, activate financial mechanisms that accelerate the decline. Management is the problem, not the playing squad.
Manchester United Club — Estimated acquisition: €2.8 billion.Post-Ferguson drift. The Glazer family extracts value rather than building it. Training infrastructure years behind. A club with the global reach of a dynasty operating with the ambition of a commercial investment.
Chelsea Club — Estimated acquisition: €2.5 billion.Abramovich's project will eventually hit a wall that has nothing to do with football. The structure requires a different kind of ownership before that wall arrives.
Below those three, dozens more crests, smaller clubs, different league contexts, different problems and different possibilities.
Lorenzo sat with it for a long time. The city lights below the terrace. The December air. The quiet that follows an evening of that size.
He thought about what the fund represented in practical terms. Three options, each requiring years of work, legal infrastructure, the kind of capital management that had nothing to do with what he did for ninety minutes on a pitch. He was seventeen years old. His professional career was few months old. The system had handed him the mechanism to become an owner before he had finished becoming a player.
He thought about Mateo Benitez — the agent his father had arranged, careful and specific and not given to enthusiasm for its own sake. The right person to manage whatever structure this would eventually require. Legal channels. Patient accumulation. The kind of thing that had to be built before it could be used.
He was not going to acquire a club in January.
He was going to play in a World Cup in the summer. He was going to finish this season. He was going to win things and understand what winning them at this level actually felt like. The acquisition fund would wait.
He closed the display.
"After the World Cup," he said quietly. "Mateo."
He put the phone down and looked at the city.
Plz Drop Some Power Stones.