"Are you serious."
Mateo Lahoz had stood up from the chair in his home office. The phone was still pressed to his ear. His face was doing nothing to hide what he was feeling. The joy was full and undisguised and his free hand was already running through his hair in the small reflex of a man trying to find somewhere to put the energy.
"I thought you said it would be harder to sort out."
He was talking into the phone, still surprised, still processing the news he was hearing.
His friend on the other end of the line was John, one of the Refereeing Operations Managers at UEFA. They had come close over the years through the slow accumulation of post-match dinners and committee circuits and the small professional friendships that built up between people who worked at the same level of the same industry for long enough.
"Yeah. That was how it was expected to go."
John's voice had the slightly puzzled quality of a man delivering news he himself was still working through.
"There was supposed to be a whole committee meant to assemble. The whole thing was on the calendar. The brief was being prepared."
"And."
"And then this morning came. And the whole case got dropped."
Lahoz stopped pacing.
"Not just yours," John continued. "Most of the investigation cases we had on the table got dropped. The whole queue was cleared. I have not seen anything like it in my time here."
Lahoz wanted to say something. The breath was already in his chest.
"That's—"
"Well. It does not matter." John cut him off, his voice softer now, kinder. "You are finally off the investigation. That is what matters."
Lahoz exhaled. The full long exhale of a man who had been holding his breath for two weeks and was only now allowed to let it out.
"Yes. Yes. That is all that matters."
A pause on the other end.
When John spoke again, it was almost a whisper.
"Also. You did not hear this from me."
"Okay."
"Everywhere here is chaos. Honestly. The reason your investigation got dropped, the reason all the cases got dropped, is because nobody could be bothered to run them anymore. The whole department has moved on to something else."
Lahoz registered the tone.
"What is happening?"
"It is just chaos. Lahoz. I am not exaggerating. Things are happening here you would not believe. Some of it about the Super League directly. Some of it. Sensitive situations. Other things connected to it. There are emergency meetings every three hours. People sleeping at their desks. The work that was being done last week, all the regulations and the investigations, none of it is moving. All the resource is on the legal coordination."
He paused.
"Just be careful, alright. The dust will settle eventually. When it does, things might look different. I do not know in which direction. But just be careful."
He laughed. A small laugh, slightly forced.
"I guess congratulations are still in order though."
Lahoz laughed with him.
"Thanks, John. Honestly. This was just the news I needed to hear."
"Okay then. Goodbye. I need to head back."
"Bye."
The line cut.
Lahoz looked at the phone for a moment. The screen still lit. The call duration sitting at four minutes and twelve seconds. He stared at it.
Then he started shouting.
"Yes. Yes yes yes."
His arms came up. Both fists. Pumping. The celebration of a man who had nobody to celebrate with and was going to do it anyway.
"Yes."
Footsteps in the hallway. Fast.
"What is going on?"
His wife came around the doorway. Her face was already in worry. The hand at her chest. The kind of expression a person wore when they had heard shouting and were not sure whether they were about to find out something terrible or something silly.
The smile on Lahoz's face did not move when he saw her panicked face. If anything it grew.
"The investigation has been called off."
He said it fast. Excited.
His wife's face changed in the space of a breath. The worry went. The joy came in.
"For real?"
"Yeah. I just got a call from John. He said—"
He shook his head, calming himself down, getting the sentence right.
"Well. He said the investigation is off. The whole thing."
"Honey, I am so happy for you."
She was already moving. She laughed, the kind of laugh that ran on relief, and jumped into him, both arms around his neck. He caught her, laughing too.
He held her there in the middle of his office and he laughed, and even as he laughed he was feeling, in his own body, the stress of the past two weeks finally beginning to leave him.
This was not the first time he had been investigated. He was a referee. Investigations came with the territory and he had survived them before. But this time had been different. The case had been blown up so much, talking points across so many platforms, columnists writing daily, social media campaigns calling for sanctions that went well beyond a simple suspension or ban. Even Lahoz, who had faced almost everything the job could throw at a man across his fifteen years, had this time felt afraid. Afraid that maybe it would not be as simple as it had been before. Afraid that the noise had become its own kind of pressure that the institutional people around it would eventually have to bend to.
The stress on him these past few days had been so intense even his wife had been able to read it on him. Easily. Which was why she was on him now, laughing, both arms around his neck. She had been carrying it with him.
"I'm so happy for you, dear."
She was still hanging on him. She pulled her face back enough to look at him properly. The two of them, in the middle of his office, just looking at each other with the particular kind of expression that arrived when one person had been carrying something and the other person had been carrying it with them. He smiled. He laughed once more, small and real.
She kissed him. Soft. Quick. On the lips.
She came down off him.
"Thanks, dear."
"So what now?"
"Nothing. It's cleared. There is nothing to do."
He glanced at his watch.
"Ooh. Dear, I need to start going."
He moved across the office and started zipping his bag at the side, putting his water bottle in, tucking his keys into the front compartment. His wife stood watching him, arms folded over her chest now, the smile still on her face.
"Off to the gym?"
"Yeah."
He came back to her. Pecked her on the lips.
"Love you."
"Love you too."
He was almost at the door when she remembered.
"That's true. I am going to cook your favourite dish. Let us celebrate this."
She said it urgently, the way people said things they had only just thought of and were committing to before the thought escaped.
He smiled at her.
"Sounds good."
Lahoz stepped out of the house. The bag over one shoulder. He was off to the gym. As a referee it was pretty standard stuff, the running up and down a pitch for ninety minutes meant fitness was the floor of the job and was not optional, not now and not ever.
Thankfully for Lahoz, despite the UEFA suspension and the investigation, La Liga had not taken to the noise. Despite how many people/media and many more had called and protested, La Liga had ignored all of it. So he was preparing for his next match. With his ref duties for the upcoming Euros not yet announced, this was, for now, his last match of the season.
Real Madrid versus Barcelona.
...
While Lahoz received great news today, the same could not be said for the Barcelona first team.
After waking up with Balde's leg on his chest and Casado's armpit in his face, Mateo had flung the two of them away and headed inside to have his bath. He woke them up so they could also freshen up. He came out to find Pedri at the door with a thermos his brother had just brought, the contents of which turned out to be homemade soup that Pedri's mother had sent.
They joined Olivia at the table. Sat there gisting, laughing, the boys still tired in the good way and the conversation dipping into giggling and back out again. Aina was still asleep. Her share of the soup was covered with a plate and left for her.
Adrián came to pick them up. They left the complex building at the same time as Olivia, whose Uber was already waiting outside.
Reaching the club, Mateo and Pedri saw what Gavi and the rest had been talking about for the entire car ride. The protesters were still there. The same crowd from yesterday, except not the same crowd, because the crowd had clearly slept there. Mateo and Pedri were shocked.
There were sleeping bags piled near the railings. Backpacks against the walls. People still lying down at this hour, blankets thrown over them. Camping chairs. Coolers. The placards from the day before were stacked in piles, ready to be picked up again as the day refreshed. It was very clearly a crowd that had decided it was going to outlast the people it was protesting against.
And this was still early in the morning. Lord knows how much more would come when the day fully started.
The mood in the car came down.
The van went around to the back to enter through the staff gate. After shaking hands and saying goodbyes, the two groups split up. Balde, Gavi, Casado, and Fermín headed to the La Masia side of the training complex to start their own day. Mateo and Pedri headed to the first team locker room.
Reaching the locker room. The boxers, the singlets, just standard stuffs.
Despite the fact that just two days ago they had been in England in the semi-finals of the Champions League, beating Manchester City, one of if not the favourite of the entire competition. Despite the fact that they already knew who their opponent would be in the final. Despite all of that, the morning's locker room conversation had been guaranteed by what they had all just driven past.
The mass of people at the gates outside, with their placards and their sleeping bags, had set the topic.
"I heard that any player who performs in the Super League wouldn't be able to play in the World Cup."
Iñaki Peña said it from his side of the room. He was shoving something into his locker as he turned around to address the room.
"That's not possible."
Umtiti shook his head as he laced his boot.
"Yeah no way. Can they even do that?"
Pedri had pulled a sock halfway up his calf and was sitting on the bench.
Iñaki shrugged.
"I'm not sure. But apparently they said the FIFA president is on board with UEFA and said so."
Piqué looked over from his locker.
"Who is they?"
"Yeah. Who?"
Alba was pulling a shirt over his head as he said it.
Iñaki paused. The pause lengthened.
"Its, ehn, well. I saw it on Instagram."
The room responded all at once.
"Bahhh."
"Instagram."
"Iñaki, my brother."
Alba was laughing properly. "So you just saw something online and started running with it?"
Piqué laughed too. He turned to face the room properly, his big frame leaning against the locker.
"Yeah. Listen. Boys. We need to stop believing everything we see online. Especially right now. With everything going on, there are accounts running stories that are completely made up. It is too risky to act on any of it. Most of it is wrong anyway. If you see something on Instagram, your first response should be to assume it is wrong and only update if a real source confirms it. Otherwise you walk into training thinking you are banned from the World Cup because some account with eight thousand followers wrote it."
Iñaki took it on the chin. He was a young keeper. The senior players took the piss out of him because they liked him. He knew it.
The room had started getting back to changing.
Then Ter Stegen made a sound from his locker.
"What."
He was looking at his phone.
Everyone looked at him.
Messi frowned. "What's wrong, are you good?"
Ter Stegen looked up. Then at his phone again. Then back up.
"Its. Its."
He braced himself.
"I just saw that UEFA is banning any team who is participating in the Super League from playing in the Champions League."
Despite hearing such horrible news, the locker room was actually calmer than it might otherwise have been. Piqué and Alba's whole speech about Instagram had landed twenty seconds ago. The boys were primed.
So they took the piss out of Ter Stegen.
"What's wrong with our keepers today."
"Is the glove getting to them?"
"Is your own news from Facebook? Ha ha."
The room was laughing.
Ter Stegen heard them. He did not take any offence. He just raised one hand. He waited for the noise to come down.
"It's from Sky Sports."
The laughing stopped.
"What."
"Are you serious?"
"You sure it is not a fan account? Those things are hard to spot."
Hearing it was Sky Sports, one of the most reliable news sources in the entire world of football, the calm that had been there just moments ago quickly evaporated. The players closer to Ter Stegen moved over to check his phone for themselves, to confirm what he had said was actually posted by Sky Sports. Others quickly pulled out their own phones. Mateo was one of them.
He opened the Sky Sports app. The story was there. Pinned to the top.
"It's true. They posted it."
The room went off.
"Are you all for real?"
"Can they even do this?"
"Well if the club wants to leave, what's the point of playing UCL?"
"No way they can actually do this."
"Wait, is it immediate effect?"
Messi saw what was happening. He stood up from his locker and raised one hand.
"Calm down. Calm down. You all know that even those news sites—"
"Fabrizio just posted it also."
Araujo's voice came from across the room, his phone already up.
"Are you for real?"
"So it's true?"
"BBC also just posted about it."
"People are saying it's why Chelsea and the rest of the Prem teams have left the Super League. So they can play in UEFA."
"But didn't the news just come out?"
"Yeah, but maybe UEFA had already sent the ultimatum to the clubs before they released the news."
"Wait, shouldn't we also leave then?"
"But that makes no sense. What concerns Manchester United with the Champions League. They are not even in it next season."
"Yeah, or even Spurs. Maybe they had left for a different reason."
"It does not matter. They—"
"Marca just posted it also."
"Even The Athletic."
The locker room was now properly going. Voices over voices. Phones held up.
Mateo's voice cut through, smaller.
"So what's gonna happen to us now."
"Nothing."
Messi's voice came out loud this time. It cut everything off. The chatter in the room dropped at once, the way it always dropped when Messi raised his voice, which was rare enough that when he did it the whole room turned at once.
"Nothing is going to happen."
He let it sit.
"Boys. Listen to me. We should not be panicked. Every single one of you knows what we have done to reach this stage. What we have sacrificed to reach this stage. And yes I know the news that is floating around here, I am seeing the same news you are. But this is not our job. This is not our problem to solve. We have a board. We have a sporting director. They are paid to handle this. We trust them to do that."
He paused.
"I assure you, all of us, we are going to Porto. We are going to lace our boots. We are going to play in the Champions League final. So we need, now more than ever, to focus. Make sure our minds are straight. So that we do not just go there. So that we go there and we win it."
The room was quiet. They had heard him.
Dembélé raised his hand.
"We know but—"
He was lifting his phone.
Messi cut him off.
"But nothing."
He raised both hands now, palms down.
"We do not know anything about the news other than that it has been posted. To know more, we just need to all calm down. Before training, me and Busquets are going to go and speak with the management staff. We will get to the bottom of this. So before that, you all should not trust anything you read. We have a management team here. We should trust them. We can talk to them. We should wait, hear them out, and get a better understanding of what is really going on. Instead of allowing uncertainty and panic to spread."
The room held the silence for a beat.
"Messi is exactly right."
The voice came from the doorway.
Koeman.
He was leaning slightly against the door frame, arms folded, having clearly heard enough of what Messi had said to know which side of it he was endorsing.
Some of the players started up immediately.
"Gaffer, have you heard the news?"
Koeman cut them off.
"I have heard. I have heard. And on that note, I want to introduce someone who can better explain the situation to you. Who can put your minds at ease."
He turned to the door.
"Mr Laporta. If you will."
The locker room turned.
"Is that the president?"
"Wow. For him to come here. Is it that serious then?"
"Are we seriously banned?"
The whispers ran around very fast, very low, the players talking to whoever was nearest them in hushed tones. They watched Joan Laporta, the president of FC Barcelona, walk into the first team locker room in a shirt that hardly fit him properly across the shoulders and stand at the front of the room next to Koeman.
He laughed.
A small, slightly self-deprecating laugh.
"Haha. I did not want the first time I met you all properly to be like this."
He gestured at himself, at the situation, at the room.
"But I guess the situation warrants it."
He took a breath.
"First off. Let me start by saying."
He paused. He looked around.
"You all will play the Champions League final."
The room calmed visibly. You could see the shoulders coming down.
Laporta continued.
"I promise you all this. Your hard work will not be in vain. I assure you all. You will not be denied your rights."
He waited for that to settle. He saw it settle.
"Now that that is out of the way. I also want to apologise. And to thank you."
He looked across the room. His eyes paused on Messi.
"I know that the position the club has put you in over the last forty-eight hours has been difficult. The instruction not to speak about the Super League. The pressure that has put on every one of you. I know it has not been easy. I know some of you have been asked questions you did not have answers to, and you held your tongue anyway, because we asked you to."
He paused.
"That trust means a great deal to me. To the board."
Messi nodded. Once. Slow.
The appreciation between them was understood without anything being said.
"And I want to promise you, in return, that we will live up to it. The decisions we are making at the institutional level are decisions made with the players' interests at the centre. You will be informed of what you need to be informed of, when you need to be informed of it. And you will be protected. Every one of you. From whatever fallout comes."
He nodded once.
"Thank you, boys."
He turned and walked out, Koeman following him.
The locker room was quiet for a few seconds after the door closed.
After the talk with President Laporta, the team finally came down to normal. Getting the reassurance of the club's president was very effective and reassuring. They calmed down. They stopped talking about the Super League. They put their heads down and got on with what they were here to do.
FC Barcelona had four games left this season.
But these four games could make or break the entire season. And the crazy thing was that there was not a single easy game on the schedule. Apart from the obvious heavyweight match with Chelsea in the Champions League final, the league itself was not any easier. They were chasing Atlético Madrid with three points behind. Their next three matches each featured a team in the top five of the league, starting with Real Sociedad, who were the lowest among the next three league games at fifth in the table, just behind Sevilla by a single digit. Then they still had Real Madrid. And then, of all the possible schedule alignments, none other than Atlético Madrid themselves on the final matchday. Third and first respectively.
Four games.
Four very high mountains to climb.
The Barcelona players were training their minds out by the time they got onto the pitch. The captain's words and the president's words had worked on the room. The intensity in the warm-up was the intensity of professionals who had remembered, in the last twenty minutes, what they were actually here for.
Mateo was in the middle of a stamina set. Six laps of high intensity, the kind that turned the lungs into a question by the third lap and an answer by the sixth. He was driving through it.
He did not have his Kimmich mentality cheat. The system had not activated it. He could not, for whatever reason the system held its reasons. So he was running on his own mind today.
It was enough.
He was as locked in as he could possibly be. Be it Real Sociedad. Be it Real Madrid. Be it Atlético. Be it Chelsea. Whatever was in front of him, he was ready to face them all.
But before then. Before facing those mountains.
He had something very important to take care of first.
A/N
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