"Wahh— ahh—"
Mateo staggered back a step, nearly losing his footing as the lights flooded the hall and the wave of sound crashed into him all at once. His eyes went wide, darting across the room — the banner, the balloons, the faces — all of it refusing to fully register. His mouth opened and closed like he was searching for words that kept slipping away.
"What— who—" He blinked hard, shaking his head slightly. "What is— how did—"
Before he could pull a coherent sentence together, something slammed into his back.
"SURPRISE BRO!"
Fermín had launched himself clean onto Mateo's back, arms locked around his shoulders, nearly toppling them both as he howled with laughter right next to his ear. Mateo stumbled forward under the weight, grabbing Fermín's arms to steady himself, his face caught somewhere between shock and the laugh that was already cracking through.
"GET OFF— Fermín—"
But the laugh was already there, breaking wide open across his face as Fermín slid off him still cackling. And then the rest of them were walking over — Gavi, Casado, Balde, all of them with grins stretched ear to ear, moving through the crowd toward him like they owned every second of this moment.
Mateo looked at them and shook his head, still laughing, still disbelieving.
"You guys—" He pointed, laughing. "You guys—"
"Surprise!" they said together, coming to stand right in front of him, four of them shoulder to shoulder, absolutely delighted with themselves.
Mateo stood there smiling at them — really smiling, the kind that takes over your whole face before you can stop it. He looked from one to the next, then swept his eyes around the hall again before landing back on them.
"Did you guys do all this?"
Gavi and the others exchanged a glance.
"Well— yeah," Gavi said, like it was obvious.
"But not really," Balde added quickly.
Casado stepped in. "We discussed it and wanted to throw you something small—"
"Then the assistant coach heard us," Fermín finished, spreading both arms wide to gesture at the entire decorated hall, the banners, the balloons, the crowd, all of it, "and it kind of snowballed into... this."
Mateo looked around at the everything Fermín's hands had just presented and shook his head slowly, the smile refusing to leave.
"Well," he said, "whatever the cause was — I'm so grateful."
All four of them smiled back at him, warm and genuine, for exactly one quiet second before Gavi cleared his throat loudly.
"Okay, this is getting a bit too—" He broke off, pretending to cough into his fist, dramatically, like the emotion in the air was physically irritating him.
He never finished the sentence. The rest of them had already dissolved into laughter before he could.
Mateo was still laughing as he turned and let his eyes properly take in the hall for the first time. A massive congratulations banner hung across the full width of the room, bold and bright, impossible to miss. Balloons in clusters of deep red and blue — Barcelona colors — bobbed from every corner, some drifting lazily near the ceiling, others anchored to chairs and tables in fat cheerful bunches. Streamers ran along the walls. Tables had been pushed to the sides and loaded with food and drinks, and the whole space had been lit warmly, the kind of light that made everything feel like a celebration even before you noticed the decorations.
And the people — the hall was packed. Cafeteria staff stood in groups near the back, clapping and grinning. Coaches from different age groups were dotted around the room, some still in their training clothes, nodding at him with proud smiles. Students from across the academy filled the space — boys from the dorms he had grown up with, and girls from the female side of the academy too, all of them laughing and cheering, pressed together in the warmth of the room. Even some of the club executives stood near the far wall, beaming in their suits, entirely unbothered about being in a room full of teenagers. Every face in the place was turned toward him, every smile pointed at him, and for a moment Mateo just stood in the middle of it all and let it land.
"Still surprised they allowed all this though," he murmured, still looking around the room as he said it, taking in another sweep of the banners and the balloons and the sheer size of the crowd.
"Why won't they?"
The voice came in like a thunderclap — deep, booming, cutting clean through the noise of the hall and pulling every head in the vicinity around at once.
"MR. ALEJANDRO!"
"BOSS!"
"MOTHER!"
All four of them shouted at the same time as Alejandro, the dorm supervisor, came cutting through the crowd toward them with the quiet authority of a man who had absolutely no doubt he was the most important person in any room he entered.
Alejandro's face broke into a wide smile at the chorus of names — right up until his eyes landed on Balde, who was grinning proudly, the word mother still sitting comfortably on his lips.
The smile disappeared. Alejandro fixed him with a flat, steady glare.
Balde immediately retracted his entire neck into his shoulders like a tortoise, eyes forward, chin down, very suddenly interested in a spot on the floor somewhere near his shoes.
Alejandro held the look one extra second — long enough to make his point — then shook his head slowly, the smile returning as he turned and walked to stand in front of Mateo.
"Over thirty goals," he began, his voice carrying across the group, thick with pride. "More than ten assists. Hat tricks like it's nothing." He counted each one off like a man reciting scripture. "Nimble on the feet, incredible dribbling—" he paused, then drew himself up slightly, the next words landing with extra weight— "El Júnior."
He said it with vigor, like he had been waiting for the right moment to say it out loud in a room full of people. Then he let out a laugh — full and easy — shaking his head at the collection of nicknames that the radio commentators had been stacking on top of each other for months every time Mateo was the subject. He had heard and stored every single one of them.
"When the suits heard the idea for this," he continued, nodding toward the executives along the wall, "you should have seen how they were shaking." He laughed again at the memory.
Then, slowly, his expression changed.
The laughter softened. His eyes settled — grew quiet, the way eyes do when something real is sitting just behind them. He looked at Mateo, and for a moment it was just the two of them in the middle of all of it.
"I knew you could do it, kid." His voice dropped, the boom gone, something much smaller and much heavier in its place. "I'm so proud of you."
He let that sit for a second, then lifted his gaze and swept it slowly around the group — Gavi, Fermín, Casado, Balde, all of them standing there.
"Of all of you," he said.
Mateo felt it hit somewhere in his chest. He swallowed once.
"Thanks, Boss," he said quietly.
Alejandro sucked in a sharp breath through his nose — the kind of breath a man takes when he is absolutely not going to cry in front of a room full of people. His hand came up fast, swiping quickly across his eyes before anything could actually spill over, and he straightened immediately, squaring his shoulders.
"Not this man," he muttered to himself, very firmly, like he was issuing himself a direct order.
He cleared his throat. Adjusted his collar. Looked around briefly at no one in particular.
"Well—" He clapped his hands together once, sharp and decisive. "What are we all doing standing here? It's a party, isn't it?"
The boys burst out laughing.
Alejandro was already turning toward the crowd, pulling himself up to his full height, and then his voice came out enormous, filling every corner of the hall—
"¡VAMOS! LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED!"
The entire room erupted.
And get the party started they did.
The hall transformed the moment Alejandro's voice rang out. Music came up from somewhere — upbeat, loud, the kind that made it physically difficult to stand still — and the whole room seemed to exhale at once and decide collectively that tonight was for enjoying.
The games came first. Someone had arranged a round of El Pañuelo — the handkerchief game — right in the middle of the hall, two long lines of academy students facing each other, screaming numbers, sprinting forward to snatch the cloth before the other side could. The competitive shrieking alone was enough to drown out the music. Then came Sillas Musicales — musical chairs — which rapidly descended into chaos the moment four chairs were pulled away at once and a cluster of twelve-year-olds from the under-13s decided the rules were more of a suggestion. A tug of war was set up near the back wall using a thick rope borrowed from the equipment room, boys from different age groups lining up on either side, boots squeaking on the floor, coaches watching from the sides with their arms folded and grins they were trying very hard to disguise as professionalism. Card games broke out at the tables — Brisca, Escoba — older students hunched over their hands with the intense seriousness of men negotiating contracts.
And La Masia had gone all out today. Properly, genuinely all out.
The tables that had been pushed to the sides of the hall were loaded — actually loaded — with food and drinks that nobody had seen inside these walls in what felt like years. Croquetas piled high on wide platters. Patatas bravas glistening under the warm lights. Small bocadillos lined up in neat rows beside towers of empanadas. There were juices, sodas, sparkling water — and in the corner, a dessert table that had caused a quiet stampede the moment it was unveiled, churros stacked beside small cups of thick chocolate dipping sauce, slices of tarta de Santiago arranged carefully on tiered stands. The young players moved through it all with the barely contained energy of people who had been eating nutritionally optimized meal plans for months and had just been told, just for tonight, that none of that applied anymore.
Much to their absolute delight.
Even the manual staff were present — not working, just there. The gatemen took turns stepping away from the entrance to join the party properly, laughing and loading plates, men who had spent years waving players in and out of the academy gates now standing in the middle of the hall with cups in their hands and smiles on their faces. The kitchen staff who had prepared everything stood at the edges of the room watching people eat their food and grinning with the satisfaction of people who knew they had done something right. The cleaners, the groundsmen — all of them folded into the celebration, the usual invisible lines between roles blurring pleasantly in the warmth of the evening.
It was a good day in La Masia. A genuinely, undeniably good day.
Friendship. Love. Humility. Unity. Culture. Family.
These were not just slogans. Not just the words people typed into posts about La Masia online, arranged neatly beneath photographs and passed around as captions. Words and lines are not born from nothing — they come from somewhere, they come from evidence, from things that actually happened, from rooms that actually felt a certain way on certain evenings.
And as the party rolled on, everything the words claimed was simply on display.
It was in the way a under-15 defender ran across the room to translate for a newly arrived youth international who did not yet speak Spanish, just so the boy could understand the rules of the handkerchief game. It was in the way two coaches from rival age groups who spent most of their days in quiet professional competition stood side by side at the food table, talking with easy warmth, laughing at something one of them had said. It was in the way the older academy students kept pulling the younger ones into the games rather than clustering away from them, the way they always did when no one was watching and the occasion called for it. It was in the laughs that came from every corner of the room at the same time, the smiles that were not performed for anyone, the ease of people who had spent years in the same building eating the same food walking the same corridors and had, somewhere along the way, become something like a family without ever formally deciding to.
The slogans were true. They were simply true.
At the center of all of it — as he had been for the entire evening — was Mateo.
Forty-five minutes had passed since he first walked through that door and the room had erupted around him. Forty-five minutes, and he had not yet managed to find a single quiet corner to breathe in. It did not matter which direction he turned — someone was already there. A staff member wanting to shake his hand and tell him something kind. A younger student from the under-14s appearing at his elbow with wide eyes and a phone held out, asking for a photo. A coach patting him on the back and leaning in to say something in his ear. Groups of older students pulling him into conversations, into games, into the middle of whatever was happening nearest to him at any given moment. He had taken more photos in the last forty minutes than he had in the last six months combined. Every few steps someone new materialized in front of him, and every time he thought there might be a gap, there wasn't.
He was the sun of the room and everyone was orbiting cheerfully.
And Mateo — genuinely, honestly, without a single trace of resentment — was not bothered by it. He looked around at all of it and felt something warm settle in his chest. These people were all here for him. They had decorated this hall for him, pulled strings and gotten permissions for him, left their evening routines and came out because of him. How could he possibly be annoyed? He owed them every handshake, every photo, every conversation. He was happy to give it.
Yes, he thought, a small mischievous smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he turned to greet yet another group, that was definitely the reason. That and absolutely not the fact that he had always, quietly, deeply, enjoyed being the center of attention.
He held the thought in his head for exactly one second, entirely pleased with himself, then smiled wider and opened his arms to the next group coming toward him.
It was a little while later that Mateo found himself standing before a small gathering near the far end of the hall — a cluster of suited figures, the executives and directors who had made this evening possible, watching the party with the relaxed satisfaction of people who had authorized something that had clearly gone exactly right.
Mateo stood in front of them, and when he spoke, his voice came out quieter than the rest of the room, more careful.
"Once again," he said, "I want to say thank you — for allowing them to throw this."
He paused, looking around briefly — at the balloons, the banner, the packed hall, all of it — and when his eyes came back, they were a little bright at the edges. His jaw was set, the way it gets when someone is feeling something real and has decided they are going to say it properly.
"It really means a lot to me."
He meant every word of it. It was there in the steadiness of his voice, in the way he held eye contact as he said it, in the small careful breath he took after, like the sentence had carried actual weight and he had needed to put it down.
A hearty laugh broke from the front of the group, full and easy.
Patrick Kluivert, the academy director, stood at the head of the cluster with the relaxed confidence of a man entirely at home in a room like this. He laughed again, shaking his head slightly, like the gratitude Mateo was offering was both touching and unnecessary at the same time.
"It's only right," he said.
Then his expression shifted — the warmth remained but the lightness left it, replaced by something more deliberate, more considered. He looked at Mateo squarely.
"We didn't give you anything you didn't earn." His voice was measured, each word placed with intention. "We only gave you a place to become who you already were. This house was yours long before tonight." He held the eye contact for a moment longer. "We're just saying goodbye the right way."
Mateo nodded slowly, taking it in, his expression serious and still.
From beside Kluivert, Xavi Martín — the director responsible for the day-to-day running of La Masia, a quieter man than Kluivert but one whose words, when they came, always landed cleanly — smiled and leaned in slightly, his voice carrying just far enough.
"You may leave this place," he said, "but you don't leave what it made you. That stays with you. Always."
Patrick laughed, short and easy, cutting through the weight of the moment before it could settle too heavily.
"Let's cut this short," he said, waving a hand lightly. "We know there are many others who want to talk to you." He glanced sideways at the rest of the executives with a small smile, then back at Mateo. "Besides, I'm sure we old men are boring you. You'd rather be with your friends."
Mateo smiled immediately, shaking his head. "No, no — I'm enjoying the talk, honestly."
Patrick just laughed again, warm and unbothered, like he had expected exactly that answer. He reached out and placed a hand on Mateo's shoulder, and when he spoke again his voice was steady, deliberate, carrying the particular weight of a man who had chosen each word in advance.
"This place," he said, "it stays with you. The people, the values, the doors it opens." He paused just briefly. "And we take pride in knowing that when one of ours rises — he doesn't forget who stood with him."
Mateo received it the way he received most things said to him with genuine warmth tonight — openly, with a nod and a smile, taking the sentiment entirely at face value. He looked around the hall again as the words landed, his eyes drifting across the laughing faces, the games still going, the music, the food, the whole living warmth of the evening surrounding him on all sides.
"I know," he murmured, almost to himself, his smile growing wider as he took it all in. "I know it would stay with me for life."
He turned back to the group, still smiling.
"Okay then — bye!"
Laughter came from the cluster of executives as Mateo gave a cheerful wave, working his way through them with a handshake for each one — firm, genuine, unhurried — a laugh exchanged here, a nod there, before finally turning and heading back into the party.
Patrick watched him go.
He watched Mateo move through the hall the way Mateo always moved through spaces — naturally, effortlessly, like the room had always been arranged around him. He stopped to clap someone on the shoulder. Laughed at something a younger student said. Turned to greet a member of the kitchen staff who had called his name, accepting the embrace with ease. He was threading through the crowd in the direction of the left edge of the hall, where a cluster of students had claimed a row of chairs and were sitting together, pulling him in like a current.
Patrick's smile remained in place as he watched. Steady. Warm. Patient.
Then Mateo reached the group, dropped into a seat among them, and the laughter that erupted from that corner of the room told the rest of the story without any words needed.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Patrick's smile dropped.
Not fully. Not in any way that anyone nearby would have noticed or thought to question. Just enough — just a fraction — for the performance of the evening to peel back slightly and reveal the quieter, more calculating thing underneath.
How do I play my cards now?
The thought settled in his mind with the comfortable familiarity of something he had been turning over for a while.
There was an unofficial rule in football administration that nobody wrote down anywhere but that everybody understood completely. When a new president came into office, the executive structure around him got cleaned out. Not gradually, not selectively — cleanly. The old guard made way for the new president's people, his loyalists, the men who had been waiting in the wings for exactly this moment. It was less a policy than a law of nature, as reliable as anything in the game.
Patrick Kluivert had known this.
When Laporta came back to the presidency, Patrick had known it with the particular clarity of someone who had been in the building long enough to have seen it happen before. He was part of the old administration. And his position — academy director, the man responsible for La Masia, a place as sensitive and closely watched as any department at the club — made him anything but invisible. There was no version of events in which he was not part of the cleanup. He had been waiting for the letter with the calm resignation of a man who had already mentally prepared for bad news.
But the letter had not come.
Hours passed. Then days. Weeks folded into months, and the envelope that Patrick had been quietly bracing for never materialized. He had not gone looking for answers. He did not particularly need them — whatever was unfolding at the headquarters was its own complicated business, and Patrick had long since learned that the internal machinery of a club like Barcelona operated on its own logic, moved by pressures and conversations that rarely surfaced cleanly into the open. He did not know what was happening in those offices. He was not sure he cared enough to find out.
What he did know was that the silence had bought him something. Time. Breathing room. A stay of execution he had not expected and was not going to waste.
And now there was this — the proposed budget increase for La Masia, the one being discussed in rooms he was not yet being invited into, the one that would expand the academy's resources and, not coincidentally, the influence and importance of the people who ran it. Patrick had heard enough fragments to understand what it would mean. He did not want to leave anymore. The calculus had shifted. The job he had been prepared to lose quietly had become, in the space of a few months, something worth fighting to keep.
So he had started thinking. Carefully. Without urgency, but without stopping either.
He did not know exactly what he was going to do with this — with Mateo, with the connection he had spent the evening quietly tending to, with the goodwill he had sewn into a handshake and a few well-chosen words. He did not know if it would lead anywhere useful at all. Mateo was seventeen, about to step into the first team, his future bright and entirely open. Whether a warm memory of the academy director would ever translate into anything of value was a question with no clean answer.
But Patrick Kluivert had not kept his position this long by discarding possibilities before they had fully formed.
He was not certain. But he was not ready to give up hope either.
His eyes drifted back across the hall to the corner where Mateo was sitting, laughing at something, entirely at ease, entirely unaware — and Patrick watched him for a moment longer before his smile quietly returned, settling back into place like a mask that had only slipped for a second.
Oblivious to every quiet calculation happening behind him, Mateo finally cut through the last of the crowd and reached the table.
He dropped into the empty chair with the full dramatic weight of a man who had earned it, letting out a long breath as he sank back.
"Phew." He exhaled, rolling his shoulders. "I can finally sit."
His friends looked at him from around the table. Casado smiled, leaning back in his chair.
"Finally," he said. "It looked like they were never going to free you."
Mateo laughed, shaking his head. Of the forty-five minutes he had been at the party, Patrick and the executives had accounted for more than half of it — a long stretch of handshakes and carefully chosen words and the kind of conversations that required him to stay present and attentive even when his feet were tired.
Fermín studied him with mild horror.
"It must have been so boring," he said, with the conviction of someone who would rather sit through a double training session than make small talk with a group of suits. "I genuinely cannot imagine what you guys were even talking about for that long."
Mateo just laughed again, lifting one shoulder in a shrug.
"It wasn't that bad, honestly," he said. Then he shook his head, leaning forward and planting his elbows on the table. "Forget about that though — what were you guys talking about?"
Gavi straightened slightly.
"We were talking about the intra-squad tournament."
Mateo's eyebrows shot up. His face opened into a look of genuine surprise, mouth pulling into a grin.
"Ooh — that's right." He sat up. "The match against the B team." He reached forward and picked up an unopened drink from the middle of the table, cracking it open as he smiled. "When is the match again?"
He took a sip, already smiling at the thought of it, entirely at ease — and entirely missed the looks that passed between his friends in the small silence that followed. The slight hesitation. The complicated edges around their expressions.
"I cannot wait for us to be the first team in history to beat the B team," he said, laughing lightly as he lowered the drink.
Then he looked up and saw their faces.
The laughter faded just slightly. He glanced from one to the next — Gavi, Balde, Casado, Fermín — each of them wearing some version of the same careful, uncomfortable expression.
"What's wrong?"
They shifted. Gavi opened his mouth.
"Well, it's — uhm—"
"The match is on the sixth of next month," Balde said, finishing it cleanly.
Fermín picked up the thread immediately. "The second leg against City is on the fourth."
Mateo listened to both of those facts, placed them next to each other in his head, and nodded slowly.
"Ooh — yeah," he said. He thought about it for a second, then smiled again. "That's not a problem though. At most we should be back by the fifth. I can make it."
The words landed and nobody immediately agreed.
Casado was the one who said it, his voice careful and even.
"Yeah, but — you guys have another La Liga match that weekend as well." He paused. "With how tight the league is right now, I'm sure the club won't want you tiring yourself out."
Mateo opened his mouth.
"Dude." Gavi cut across him, not unkindly, but firmly. "You need to rest. The league and the Champions League are way more important than an intra-squad match." He held Mateo's gaze, his voice settling into something more serious beneath the surface. "Just stay fully fit for those. You don't need to worry about us." He let a small smile through. "Trust us — we would still make history."
Balde jumped in before the moment could get too heavy, his energy lifting the temperature immediately.
"Yeah, man, exactly." He waved a hand, and then a grin spread across his face, the serious topic apparently already behind him. "Besides — no need to worry about us. I've got this new trick I've been working on." His eyes lit up. "Just wait and watch my goal. I'm telling you—"
Fermín turned to look at him with an expression of profound, unhurried skepticism.
"It's a straight run down the left side and a cut inside," he said flatly. "It never goes any further than that."
"It's NOT that—" Balde started, sitting forward.
"Then what is it?" Casado asked from the other side, his voice mild and innocent, a small smug smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
Balde turned to him. His mouth opened. The words did not come immediately.
"Well — it's — ehm—" He faltered, his eyes flicking between Casado and Fermín, both of whom were now watching him with identical expressions of polite, expectant amusement. "I would take the ball, and then I run—"
"To the left," Fermín said helpfully.
"And cut inside," Casado finished.
"WHY all this grilling—" Balde threw his hands up, exasperated. "Just wait until the match. You'll see your answer then."
The whole table broke into laughter — easy, loud, the kind that had no agenda behind it. Even Mateo was smiling wide, shaking his head at Balde, who was doing his best to look dignified and not quite managing it.
Then Mateo looked at them. All of them. His smile stayed but something shifted slightly underneath it — something quieter, more deliberate.
"Guys."
They settled. One by one they looked at him.
"Thank you," he said. "Genuinely. Thank you for worrying about me." He looked around the table at each of them, his voice carrying the particular weight of someone who means what they are saying without any performance around it.
They were all smiling back at him now, the warmth of it mutual and easy.
Mateo held their eyes for a moment longer.
Then he continued.
"But." He let the word sit for exactly a second. "Nothing — and I mean nothing — is going to stop me from playing in that match."
Gavi's brow furrowed immediately. "Mateo, come on. You need your energy for—"
"I know what I need," Mateo said, cutting across him, not harshly but without room for negotiation either. He leaned forward slightly, his voice steady and sure. "Listen to me. The Champions League matters. The league matters. I know that. I know what those matches mean and I will be ready for every single one of them." He paused. "But that intra-squad match?" His eyes moved across the table. "Playing with you lot — which could be our one last time, properly, before everything changes — that is just as important to me." His jaw was set. "I would not miss it for the world."
The quiet warmth of the moment lingered for just a second longer before Mateo's smile broke back into something lighter, the serious edge dropping away as quickly as it had arrived.
"Besides," he added, his voice lifting, "the league match later is a home match against Real Sociedad."
Casado looked at him. "Why does that matter?"
Mateo opened his mouth. Something crossed his face — a quick calculation, the faintest flicker of a thought he apparently decided not to finish out loud.
"Well — uhm." He stopped. Shook his head slightly. "Don't worry about that." A small pause, his voice settling into something simple and final. "Just know I'm playing that match."
Around the table, smiles had crept back onto every face — quiet and fond and entirely unsurprised.
Gavi shook his head slowly, a resigned nod following close behind it.
"Not like anyone can stop you anyway," he said. "Stubborn boy."
The table erupted. The laughter came easy and loud, the kind that had accumulated over years of knowing exactly who someone was.
Fermín let out a long, exaggerated exhale as the laughter settled, pressing a hand to his chest like a man releasing a weight he had been carrying.
"Phew." He laughed again, shaking his head. "Honestly — I'm so happy you're playing. Our chances of winning without you are really slim."
The lightness of it didn't quite mask the truth underneath, and Casado confirmed it with a slight frown, his voice taking on the measured tone of someone who had been thinking about this seriously.
"Yeah," he said. "The Barça B squad are filled with massively talented people. The coach himself isn't even sure we can win."
Balde nodded, his expression sobering just slightly.
"And it doesn't help that some of the players they loaned out came back during the last transfer window." He leaned back, muttering it almost to himself. "Those are people with real professional experience."
Mateo leaned forward, a response already forming.
"Well—"
"Mateo?"
The voice came from just off to the side — gentle, familiar, cutting cleanly through the table chatter. Mateo turned, and everyone else turned with him.
A small group had approached from the direction of the serving area, clustered together with the particular quiet warmth of people who had rehearsed coming over and were now slightly nervous about it. Mateo looked at them for half a second before recognition broke across his face.
"Mrs. Rosa—"
The middle-aged woman at the front of the group smiled the moment he said her name — a full, genuine smile, the kind that came from somewhere deep and unhurried.
"Mateo," she said, her voice soft and sweet, like she was tasting the name.
She let her eyes drift across the table. "Hello, boys."
"Hi, Mrs. Rosa," the group chorused back, a small ripple of warmth moving through the table.
She smiled at them all, then turned her attention back to Mateo with the focus of someone who had come here with something specific to say and intended to say it properly.
"Seeing as you're leaving soon," she began, folding her hands in front of her, "the whole kitchen staff decided we wanted to do something for you."
Mateo's face brightened immediately, leaning forward in his chair.
"Oh — what's that?"
Rosa's smile deepened. She held it a beat, the way people do when they know the answer is going to land well.
"We know you," she said simply. "We know how you eat — how you'll be out there, busy, and you'll start grabbing food from anywhere and everywhere just because it's convenient." She gave him a knowing look that said she had watched this exact pattern for years. "So — so that you wouldn't be eating out so much and forgetting yourself — we made you a full week's worth of your favourite."
She glanced to the side, and one of the staff members stepped forward, both hands extended, carrying a large flask — wide and heavy, clearly full, the warmth of it almost visible.
Rosa took it and held it out to him.
"Escudella i Carn d'Olla," she said. "Enough to last you."
Mateo stared at it for a moment before reaching out and taking it with both hands, the weight of it settling into his palms.
"When you eat it," Rosa said quietly, "we hope you remember us."
Before Mateo could find the words to respond, a voice came from the back of the group — one of the younger kitchen staff, calling out over the heads of the others.
"And if you're ever back here and you're hungry — just come to us. We'll make sure you eat well."
Another voice, from somewhere to the left: "Yes — and make sure you watch what you eat out there. Remember to—"
And then, just like that, it opened up. One by one, each of them found something to add — a reminder, a piece of advice, a quiet instruction wrapped in the language of people who had been feeding him and watching over him for years. Watch your portions. Don't skip breakfast. Sleep well. Don't let them work you without rest. The words came layered on top of each other, warm and slightly chaotic and entirely genuine, a small avalanche of care from people who had expressed it, for as long as Mateo had been here, primarily through food.
Mateo sat in the middle of it all, the flask resting in his hands, and smiled.
"Thank you," he said. "Thank you, thank you—"
He was already standing before he finished saying it, pushing his chair back and stepping forward, arms opening. Mrs. Rosa was the first — she stepped in without hesitation, and then the whole group came with her, a warm, slightly chaotic huddle of embraces, hands on his back and his shoulders, a couple of them laughing softly as they held on.
Mateo laughed too, his voice slightly muffled somewhere in the middle of it all.
"Thank you — all of you. I'm genuinely going to miss you."
"We're always here, kiddo," someone said into the hug.
"Always here," Rosa confirmed, her voice firm and fond.
A hand reached up and ruffled his hair with no hesitation whatsoever, the way you only touch someone you've known since they were small.
Mateo pulled back eventually, still smiling, and looked down at the flask in his hands, running his thumb along the side of it.
"I genuinely cannot wait to eat this," he said.
The group laughed — light and happy and satisfied with themselves.
Rosa smoothed her apron, composing herself with the air of a woman who had accomplished what she came to do.
"Okay then," she said, beginning to gather her people with small gentle gestures. "We'll leave you boys to talk."
She started moving away, her group falling in behind her. Then she paused — just briefly — and glanced back over her shoulder.
"And make sure you don't give any to your friends," she said, pointing once at the flask. "Those are for you."
Balde made a sound like he had been personally wounded.
"Awnn — come on, Mrs. Rosa—"
She smiled serenely, entirely unmoved.
"Bye, boys."
And she walked away.
Mateo was still mid-laugh as he lowered himself back into his chair, setting the flask carefully on the table beside him, shaking his head.
Casado stared at the flask with an expression of deep, genuine mourning.
"That's true though," he said, groaning. "With Mateo gone — who is going to get us snuck snacks now?"
The table collapsed into laughter, loud and helpless, the kind with no bottom to it.
"Is this working?"
The voice crackled through the speakers without warning — sudden and loud enough to make half the room flinch. Heads turned in every direction at once, conversations cutting off mid-sentence, chairs scraping as people twisted around trying to locate the source.
It did not take long.
Mateo found him standing in the middle of the room, a microphone held slightly too close to his mouth, Alejandro crouched beside the speaker setup with the expression of a man doing his best.
Mateo's mouth fell open.
"Gaffer?"
The word came out before anything else could — pure, unfiltered shock, his eyes wide, sitting completely upright in his chair. Because the man standing in the middle of the hall with the microphone was not Koeman. It was not anyone from the first team setup. It was Óscar López — the former coach of the Barça under-19 side, the man who had left his post only recently, the man Mateo had spent years playing under.
Mateo was already smiling — the kind that arrives before you have given it permission — turning to his friends with wide eyes.
"You guys didn't tell me he was coming—"
He looked from one face to the next. Gavi and the others were already exchanging glances of their own, eyebrows raised, a ripple of genuine surprise moving around the table.
"I didn't know either—"
"I called him," Fermín said, slightly bewildered, "but he said he couldn't make it—"
Up at the front of the room, Óscar turned slightly toward Alejandro, who was straightening up from the speaker setup, and said simply, "Thank you."
Alejandro gave him a single nod, his voice low and satisfied. "I'm happy you could make it."
Óscar allowed himself a small smile. "Wouldn't miss it for the world."
He turned back to face the room — microphone in hand, the full weight of everyone's attention now pointed squarely at him — and cleared his throat.
There was a brief, high-pitched whine of feedback from the speaker.
Óscar winced, held the microphone slightly further away, tapped it once, and looked out at the crowd with the expression of a man who had spent years commanding training pitches and was finding that a microphone was an entirely different animal.
"So — uhm." He tapped it again. Feedback. He moved his hand. More feedback. He tried a slightly different angle, found something that worked, and nodded to himself once, satisfied.
"Right." He exhaled. "I was going to open with something very clever about sound equipment but I think the sound equipment has made its feelings on that very clear."
A wave of laughter moved through the room, the tension of the awkward moment dissolving immediately.
Óscar smiled, more comfortable now, and straightened up.
"Well — let's get to what I'm really here for. What we're all here for."
He raised one hand and pointed directly across the room.
"Mateo King."
The hall filled with applause — immediate, full, rolling from every corner at once, hands clapping, a few whoops cutting through the top of it, the sound bouncing off the walls and the ceiling in a warm, enveloping wave.
Óscar let it go for a moment, then raised the same hand in a calming gesture, his face shifting into mock seriousness.
"Okay, okay — let's stop that. Please." He shook his head gravely. "The last thing any of us need right now is his head getting any more swelled than it already is."
The applause dissolved back into laughter. Someone near the back called out something in agreement. Mateo, from his table at the edge of the room, dropped his head forward with a laugh, shaking it slowly.
Óscar smiled at him for a moment — warm, fond, the joke fully delivered — before he settled, his posture shifting into something quieter.
"Mateo." He said the name simply, like it was enough on its own. "I've known this kid for over four years now." He glanced out at the room. "And I'm sure most of you know him too — and given how naughty he is, I'm fairly confident every single person in this building has at least one story about him."
A ripple of emphatic agreement moved through the crowd. Nods, knowing looks, a scattering of laughter from people who were clearly already thinking of their particular story.
From somewhere near the side wall, Alejandro's voice came through, completely serious, without a moment's hesitation.
"Amen to that."
Another wave of laughter. Óscar pointed at him in acknowledgment.
"Exactly. Thank you, Alejandro." He paused, letting the laughter settle. "But I'm going to tell you a story you don't know."
The room shifted. The laughter wound down. Óscar glanced to the side, his eyes finding Mateo across the hall — and Mateo, from his table, went still, watching him with quiet attention, something unreadable crossing his face.
Óscar held his gaze for just a moment, then looked back at the room.
"It was early last year — around this time, actually." He gathered himself, the memory clearly coming back with some weight to it. "We had a tournament. The Mediterranean Youth Cup — out in Italy." He paused. "Some of you may have heard about it. Most of you probably haven't heard the full version."
He exhaled slowly.
"That trip was — to put it as politely as I can — an absolute disaster."
A few uncertain laughs from the crowd. Óscar nodded, confirming it.
"I am not exaggerating. We arrived and within the first two days, six of our players went down with food poisoning. Not sniffles — proper, serious food poisoning. Then the accommodation situation fell apart. Then we had a scheduling mix-up that nearly cost us our first match. We were jet-lagged, we were rattled, morale was somewhere around zero, and I—" He stopped. "I was standing in a hotel corridor at half past ten at night genuinely considering pulling the whole squad together in the morning and telling them we were going home."
The room was quiet now. Properly quiet — the kind that comes when a story has everyone and is not letting go.
"And that's when he came in."
He pointed again. Across the room, at Mateo.
"I was in that corridor trying to figure out how I was going to tell seventeen teenagers that we were cutting the trip short and flying home, and Mateo — stubborn as always, completely immune to the concept of a closed door — found me."
A small, deeply fond smile crossed his face.
"I don't know how he knew where I was or what I was thinking. I hadn't said a word to anyone. But he stood there and looked at me and said—" Óscar paused, collecting the memory precisely— "'Gaffer. We're not going home.'"
He let that land.
"Not a question. Not a suggestion. We are not going home."
He shook his head slowly, like he was still slightly amazed by it years later.
"I told him to go to sleep. He didn't move. So I told him the situation — all of it, the logistics, the players who were sick, the mess we were in — thinking that once he understood the full picture he'd accept it and go to bed." Óscar laughed quietly. "He did not accept it and go to bed."
Laughter moved warmly through the hall.
"Instead," Óscar continued, "he turned around — right there in the corridor — and he went and got the rest of them. Every single player on the squad, sick or not, tired or not, he got them up and he brought them together. And then he talked to them."
He paused.
"I stood at the back and I watched a seventeen-year-old boy look his teammates in the eye and say — how can we give up? We haven't even started yet. Everything that's gone wrong has gone wrong before we've even kicked a ball. That's not a sign we should leave. That's a sign we're being tested. And I don't know about you — but I don't fail tests."
The room was completely still.
"He went around every single one of them. The ones who were ill — he sat with them. The ones who were deflated — he found the specific thing to say to that specific person, because he knew all of them well enough to know the difference. He was laughing, he was loud, he was refusing — absolutely refusing — to let a single one of them stay in that dark place. By the time he was done, those boys were ready. I could see it. Something had shifted completely."
Óscar's voice dropped slightly, the performance of the story giving way to something more genuine underneath it.
"In all my years as a coach — all of them — that was the first time I have ever been taught a lesson by one of my own players."
He was quiet for a moment.
"Never give up." He said it simply, without decoration. "It sounds so simple. It sounds like the kind of thing you put on a poster and stop actually hearing after a while. But standing in that corridor, watching him mean it — completely, with everything he had — I heard it like it was the first time anyone had ever said it." His voice was low now, sincere in the way that comes through without effort. "We gathered ourselves. We licked our wounds. And we went and we played."
"Of course, we lost." Óscar said, his voice shifting — and then the smile broke wide open across his face —
The hall erupted.
Laughter rolled from every corner at once, loud and helpless and building on itself, the kind that comes from a punchline that lands precisely because of everything that came before it.
Óscar waited it out, nodding patiently, entirely pleased with himself.
"Got decimated," he continued, raising his voice cheerfully over the dying waves of laughter. "Absolutely dismantled. Throughout the entire tournament. And we flew home three days later after we couldn't make it out of the group stage."
The laughter surged again, louder this time — not cruel, but the pure, delighted kind that only comes when a story is being told by someone who has made full peace with it. People were leaning on each other. Someone near the back had their head thrown back completely. Even the executives along the wall were laughing properly, suits and all.
Óscar let it run. He was still smiling — and then, gradually, something shifted in the smile. It stayed, but deepened. Became something quieter and more certain underneath the lightness.
He drew himself up slightly.
"But."
The word came out differently from everything before it — not louder, just more grounded, carrying its own weight.
"We did not give up."
The laughter settled. Not forced out — it simply found its natural end and rested there, the room breathing again.
"We fought," Óscar said, his voice steady and full, "until we physically could not fight anymore. Every single match. Every single minute." He paused. "And honestly — honestly — those were some of the best days of my life."
He said it without any performance around it. Just the plain fact of it, offered to the room.
"At the very least," he said, a small smile returning, "it is one I will never forget for as long as I live."
A quiet warmth had settled over the hall. People were still, faces soft, smiles sitting gently on nearly every one of them — the kind that come not from amusement but from something more like recognition, like being reminded of something true. The students, the staff, the coaches — all of them held in the same easy stillness, watching him.
Óscar looked out at them for a moment, then continued.
"The reason I'm telling you this story," he said, "is so that you all know — because I think it matters that you know — that despite the stubbornness—"
He began counting on his fingers.
"—the hard headedness. The mischievousness—"
"The lateness—" someone called out from somewhere in the crowd, the word arriving with the speed and confidence of a person who had been personally affected.
A ripple of laughter. Óscar pointed in the direction of the voice without missing a beat.
"Especially the lateness—"
"We get the point."
Mateo's voice cut cleanly across the room from his table at the edge of the hall, dry and perfectly timed.
The laughter that followed was enormous — the whole room going at once, heads dropping, people grabbing the arms of whoever was next to them. Óscar pointed at him, shaking his head, laughing himself now.
"Despite all of that," he said, steadying himself, bringing it back, his voice finding its footing again beneath the last of the laughter — "the boy who would not give up on his team. The one who was the only light in a corridor at half past ten at night when everything had gone wrong. The one who got up and went and found every single one of his teammates and refused — absolutely refused — to let them stay in the dark."
His voice had lost its levity now entirely. What remained was something clear and direct, the voice of a man saying something he had thought about for a long time and was finally saying out loud in the right room.
"That is the real Mateo King. That is why we are all standing here tonight with smiles on our faces. Because I am certain — looking at all of you — that you have seen it too. You have all, at some point, in some corridor or training pitch or dorm room or dining hall, seen exactly who this kid is." He looked around the room slowly. "And what a soul he is."
He stopped.
His jaw shifted slightly. He pressed his lips together for just a moment — the particular expression of someone trying to decide whether they are going to win a quiet internal battle.
They were not going to win it.
His eyes grew bright. He blinked, once, deliberately — and it did not fully help.
From across the hall, Balde cupped his hands around his mouth.
"You're almost there, Gaffer—"
The room burst out laughing again — warm and affectionate, nobody unkind, just the laughter of a group of people who loved the man at the microphone and were happy to laugh with him at this particular moment.
Óscar wiped the corner of his eye with the back of his hand — quickly, efficiently, in the manner of a man officially refusing to acknowledge what his face was doing.
"I'm good," he said. "I'm good."
He cleared his throat. Straightened up.
"Mateo."
Just the name. And the room went still again — completely, instinctively, the way rooms do when a specific kind of moment arrives and everyone present recognises it at the same time.
Óscar looked across the hall, past all of it — past the balloons and the banner and the crowded tables and the smiling faces — until his eyes found Mateo sitting at the edge of the room.
Mateo was looking back at him. Completely still. His elbows were on the table, his hands loosely together in front of him, and his eyes — though he would not have admitted it to a single person at that table — were not entirely dry at their edges.
"This success you have right now," Óscar said — quietly, directly, as though the rest of the room had temporarily ceased to exist and he was simply talking to him — "I need you to know how much you deserve it."
He let that sit for a moment before continuing.
"Every early morning. Every session when your body was done but you stayed anyway. Every time you chose the team over yourself. Every time you laughed when it was hard and pushed when you had nothing left. The positivity, the leadership, the love you poured into this place and into the people around you — all of it." His voice was low and unhurried, each word placed with care. "You sowed every single one of those seeds. And I am so — so happy — that you are finally standing in the harvest of what you grew."
He paused.
"I am so happy for you. Genuinely. From everything I have."
Óscar caught it. Smiled.
"Now that you are moving on from here," he continued, "I want you to hear this clearly — what you have achieved, where you are standing tonight, the debut, the goals, the recognition — all of it — this is not your ceiling." He shook his head slowly, with the absolute certainty of a man who has watched him for four years and is not guessing. "This is your floor. You are just getting started. Everything you have shown us is only the beginning of what you are."
Across the hall, Mateo's jaw shifted slightly. His eyes were bright now, unmistakably. He looked down for just a second — a single quiet second — and then back up, and a small, helpless chuckle escaped him as he muttered, just loud enough for the friends around him to hear—
"Trust."
The hall was utterly, completely silent.
Not the silence of emptiness — the silence of a room full of people who are all feeling the same thing at the same time and have no need to fill it with noise.
Óscar looked at him for a long moment.
Then he smiled — full, and warm, and final.
"This isn't goodbye," he said. "This is a celebration. A celebration of the next step in you becoming exactly who you are meant to be, Mateo."
He stopped.
Drew a breath.
And then, in a voice that carried to every corner of the hall — not because he was shouting, but because every single person in the room was already leaning in to receive it —
"Congratulations."
A/N
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