"ALE ALE ALEEEE
ALE ALE ALEEEEEEE
ALE ALEE ALEEEEEE
ONE MATCH DAY
I WENT TO THE NORTHERN GOAL
BY JUST ENTERING THE STANDS
I FELL IN LOVE!
MY HEART WAS RACING
DONT ASK ME WHY
I AM A BARCA FAN
I WILL ALWAYS SUPPORT YOU
ALE ALE ALEEEE
ALE ALE ALEEEEEEE
ALE ALEE ALEEEEEE"
The Barcelona end was small, and it did not care.
Crammed into the corner the away allocation gave them, the travelling support had brought all of it. The flags. The drums. The scarves held up over their heads in a wall of red and blue. A week ago they had walked into Madrid loud and unafraid and walked back out winners, and they had no plans to arrive any quieter tonight. The only thing they wanted different was the silver. They wanted to carry that home.
So they sang. Arms locked across shoulders, bodies rocking as one body, eyes shut, the love song for their club climbing up out of the corner with everything their chests had in them. They sang about falling for the team the first time they walked into the stands. They sang about hearts racing for reasons they could not explain. They sang it like a vow they were renewing in public.
Almost none of it could be heard.
Because this was the Metropolitano.
" ATLETI , ATLETI, ATLETICO DE MADRID
ATLETI , ATLETI, ATLETICO DE MADRIDDDD
PLAYING, WINNING, FIGHTING LIKE THE BEST,
BECAUSE THE FANS ALWAYS SHAKE WITH PASSION
WHEN YOU END UP AMONG EVERYONE, CHAMPION,
AND YOU SEE YOURSELF IN FRONT OF THE BALL
A REAL TEAM
THAT THIS EVENING OF ATMOSPHERE WILL FILL
PA PA PA PA PA
I AM GOING TO THE MANZANARES, TO THE METROPOLITANO,
WHERE THOUSANDS COME TOGETHER,
THOSE WHO ENJOY PASSIONATE FOOTBALL
BECAUSE THEY FIGHT LIKE BROTHERS, DEFENDING THEIR COLORS
ITS ATLETI , ATLETI, ATLETICO DE MADRID
WE ARE ONE
WE WOULD WIN
WE ARE TOGETHER
WE ARE PASSION
ATLETI , ATLETI, ATLETICO DE MADRID"
This was Atlético's house. Their castle. Over sixty thousand of them, and when they answered, the away corner disappeared underneath it. The anthem came down off all four tiers at once, the song they had been singing in this city for decades, the one built on passion and brothers and colours held until the breath ran out, and it filled the bowl until there was no room left in the air for anybody else's voice.
The big names were already seated.
Up in one of the VIP tiers a cluster of Atlético blood had gathered, Fernando Torres, Diego Forlán, Gabi, Diego Godín, shaking hands and slapping shoulders and dropping into their seats laughing about something only the four of them could hear. Across from them sat another group. Carles Puyol. Rivaldo. Ronaldo Nazário. Ronaldinho. All smiles, leaning over each other to talk.
Down near the sidelines, Thierry Henry, who had never really left Spain, sat with the broadcast desk. Gary Lineker on one side. Rio Ferdinand and Jamie Carragher filling out the rest. Carragher had his head tipped back, taking in the noise rolling down off the tiers, his mouth slightly open.
"The atmosphere is..." He could not find the end of it. He just lifted a hand at the stands.
"More than Anfield," Lineker said.
Carragher snapped his head around. "Now. Let's not push it."
They were all laughing.
It was not only football people, either. Rafael Nadal, fresh off winning the Barcelona Open, had found the time and was up in the stands with a smile on his face. Carlos Sainz and Fernando Alonso a few rows apart. Marc Gasol. Away from sport entirely, Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, scattered in among the executives and the money. Rosalía. Politicians. High-profile faces of every kind threaded through the seats. The whole of Spain seemed to have folded itself into one building for one night.
High above all of it, in the presidential box, Joan Laporta was laughing and putting his hand out.
Javier Tebas took it with a smile that did not quite arrive. "Your team have been very impressive."
"Yours too, President Enrique." Laporta turned and shook the hand of the Atlético president beside him, Enrique Cerezo, the same easy warmth on his face.
Tebas had not wanted to come. Atlético and Barcelona were both still among the clubs hanging on to the Super League idea, and sharing a box with the pair of them was not how he had pictured his evening. But this was the match that decided the title, and the president of the league did not get to skip the match that decided the title, not even for people he privately considered two-faced.
His assistant had shown him the projected figures before he left. Substantial. Lower than the Clásico, yes. But with every other game in the country kicking off at the same time, and a dozen other things factored in, it was still the second most-watched match of the season. Bigger, even, than the first Clásico back in the autumn.
"His Majesty is arriving."
The three of them turned toward the door, rising, and there he was. King Felipe VI, coming in with a smile and a small crowd of executives around him, the federation president Luis Rubiales among them, beaming like the football man he was.
The room dipped into a round of half-bows. "Your Majesty."
"Come on, come on. None of that." Felipe waved it down, laughing, moving along the line and shaking hands as he went. "We all came here to watch good football. That is all we are."
He reached Laporta. Tebas. Cerezo.
"My daughters wanted to come, you know." He grinned. "They are not at all happy with me. I think I will be made to watch the whole thing again at home tonight, like it or not."
The box laughed with him.
There was a reason for all of it. A reason the Madrid police had been ringed around the stadium since the afternoon. A reason the whole country felt like it had quietly stopped to look at one place. This was the time where the season comes down to ninety minutes. Before the night was finished, one of these two teams was going to walk off this pitch holding the trophy, crowned champions of Spain. La Liga, 2020/21.
The best team in the country.
...
Down in one of the family sections of the VIP area, a different kind of scene was going.
This time the club had set it up properly. For the Clásico the families had been scattered, but tonight someone had decided the players' people deserved a space of their own, a long sectioned-off area with seats and room to stand, and Isabella's family had ended up in it. So, it turned out, had another.
"You must be Mateo's mother."
Isabella turned. A woman was standing in front of her, smiling, warm. Isabella looked at her once, then again, the second look slower than the first.
"Ah, yes. That's me." She smiled. "Hello."
"I'm—"
"Antonella," Isabella said.
Antonella stopped, a little taken aback.
Isabella laughed. "I'm a huge Barça fan. Of course I know who you are." She spread a hand at the people around her. "My whole family is, actually. Here, let me." She turned. "This is my husband, David."
"Lovely to meet you." David put his hand out and Antonella shook it.
"And this is my mother, and my sister-in-law."
Grandma Nuria had insisted on coming. She knew her body would not let her travel for the Champions League final, and she was not about to miss this one. She took Antonella's hand in both of hers and patted it. "Hello, dear."
"Hello," Antonella said, and turned to Nora, who hugged her instead.
"This is my brother-in-law, Andrew." Andrew gave her hand a brief businesslike shake. "And this is my niece, and her best friend."
Aina and Olivia stepped up to greet her.
"Aww." Antonella looked between the two girls. "You two are so cute."
They both laughed.
"My brother's meant to be here somewhere," Isabella added, "but he decided he'd rather be down with the fans in the stands." She laughed at the thought of it.
Then Antonella turned and brought her own people forward. "And this is my family. My mother and father-in-law." She gave their names. Isabella and David shook their hands, and Antonella turned to her side. "Everyone, this is Mateo's parents."
Messi's mother's eyes went wide. "Your son is so talented."
Isabella laughed. "And yours is, well. I don't think I even need to finish that one."
The whole group went up, both families laughing together.
Antonella looked around. "Wait. Where are the boys?"
Heads turned. Everyone started scanning the section.
Celia pointed. "Is that not them over there?"
The three of them were off in an open corner, running, chasing each other, shrieking with laughter, completely unbothered by the title decider about to take place beneath them.
"Boys!" Antonella called. "Come here."
They came running. Thiago first, then Mateo, then Ciro wobbling at the back on his short legs, arms pumping.
"Wait for meee," Ciro called in his small voice.
"Don't leave your brother behind," Antonella scolded.
Matías, Messi's brother, scooped Ciro up off the ground mid-run. "I've got him."
The kids reached the group still going, Thiago skidding to a stop and throwing both arms up. "First! Hahaha!"
"You cheated!" Mateo shoved him. "You were closer, you didn't even start from the line—"
The grandparents were already laughing.
"Okay. Enough." Antonella caught one of them by the shoulder. "All of you. If I have to—"
"Okay, okay, they're only playing." Jorge waved a hand, smiling at his grandsons.
Antonella looked at her father-in-law. She had long since given up. She shook her head and turned back to Isabella with the patient face of a woman who had been outvoted by her in-laws on the subject of these children many times.
"These are my sons." She nodded at the boy on Matías's arm. "That's Ciro. The youngest." She pulled the next one into her side. "This is my first, Thiago."
"Mooom." Thiago squirmed out of her grip.
Everyone laughed.
"And this troublemaker here." She put a hand on the last one's head. "This is Mateo."
She looked at the three of them. "Boys. This is the other Mateo's parents."
Thiago's eyes went huge. "Seriously?"
Isabella laughed as Antonella leaned over. "They're huge fans of your son."
The kids rushed forward at once, and little Mateo got there first, frowning up at Isabella.
"So you're big Mateo's parents." He folded his arms. "Why did you give him my name?"
Isabella laughed. "Well, isn't it the other way round? He came first."
"Yeah." Thiago pointed at his little brother. "Big Mateo is older than you. You copied his name, sweety."
"So do you not like sharing your name with him?" Isabella asked, grinning down at little Mateo.
"No, I like it." He said it firmly. "It's because of him I support Barcelona now. Normally I'd have supported Atléti."
The whole group lost it, both families laughing at the boy and his folded arms.
Antonella looked at Isabella and David while it went on around her. She still remembered the small comedy of when the other Mateo had come by her house, how she had caught herself thinking he looked a little like Leo. Now, with both parents standing in front of her, she could see it clearly. The boy had taken both of them and mixed them into one face.
She moved closer to Isabella as the kids ran off again, and the two of them fell into the easy talk of two mothers who had just realized they had the same worries. They talked about the game, both of them dropping their voices the way you did when you were saying a thing you did not want to say too loudly. Whether their boys would be okay out there. Whether tonight was the night. Isabella admitting she had barely eaten all day. Antonella laughing and saying it never got easier, never, not once in all these years, and Isabella saying that was not at all what she wanted to hear, and the two of them laughing through the worry of it.
"Nella. You're here."
They turned at the voice.
Isabella's eyes went wide, her mouth opening slightly.
Beside her, Thiago and Mateo had already taken off. "Milan! Sasha! You came!" The two of them sprinted toward two boys who had arrived alongside the woman who had spoken.
"Shakira." Antonella was already moving to her, smiling. "It's so good to see you."
The two women came together, kisses on both cheeks, a real hug.
Mateo's family had quietly lost their minds.
Aina grabbed Olivia's arm and pinched it. "This isn't real. Tell me that isn't—"
"Shakira," Olivia breathed. She could not make herself believe that one of her own idols was standing fifteen feet away.
Nora had both hands on Nuria's shoulders. "Mother. Mother. Mother, that's—that's—"
"Compose yourself." Nuria swatted her hand. "Do not embarrass me in front of her."
Antonella pulled back from the hug. "It's been far too long."
"I know." Shakira squeezed her arm. "Are you coming to the dinner?"
"For sure."
Shakira glanced past her then, to the small group standing a little way off, the cluster of people she did not know who were openly staring at her with their hands halfway to their mouths.
"And those are...?"
Antonella followed her eyes and smiled.
"Come. Let me introduce you to someone."
The families had fully started arriving now, the section filling, the noise of it rising under the larger noise of the stadium.
And then, somewhere below them, it began.
...
"Are you ready?"
Peter Drury's voice came down into the broadcast, low, unhurried.
"Ready?" Jim Beglin, beside him. "Peter, we've been ready since about a hundred chapters ago."
Peter laughed. "Ha. Ha. And yet you cannot deny the author, knows exactly what he is doing. There is just something so..." He searched for it. "Something so deeply satisfying about a payoff that arrives after a build-up this long."
"Well." Jim. "It does not quite beat the author glazing himself, but no, I take your point. I am wholeheartedly pumped for this one."
"You should be. Every single time I have had the privilege of calling this Barcelona side this season, there has been something close to magic in it."
"And tonight you set that against Simeone's Atlético." Jim exhaled. "I'd brace yourself."
"The two best teams in Spain." Peter let out a long breath of his own. "Yes. This is going to be something."
And then, finally, all of it fell away. The screaming tiers. The kids walked out hand in hand. The flags and the chants. The tweets and the photos going up by the thousand. The retired legends in the VIP rows. The celebrities. The executives. The king of the country in his box. Even the families in their section.
All of it settled, in the end, onto the twenty-two men who were actually going to do this.
Ter Stegen. Jordi Alba, Gerard Piqué, Ronald Araújo, Sergi Roberto. Sergio Busquets, Frenkie de Jong, Pedri. Ousmane Dembélé, Mateo King, Lionel Messi.
Jan Oblak. Kieran Trippier, Stefan Savić, José María Giménez, Renan Lodi. Marcos Llorente, Koke, Thomas Lemar. Yannick Carrasco, Ángel Correa, Luis Suárez.
Right now, this was all that mattered.
The game began.
Carlos del Cerro Grande walked the centre of the pitch, taking a last look around, checking his assistants, checking the goals, checking the clock. He came to the middle and looked at Mateo, who was standing over the ball.
Mateo nodded. "Yes."
The referee nodded back and stepped away.
The whistle blew.
"And we are off," Peter Drury said. "Barcelona get us started. And watch what Atlético do, Jim, or rather, watch what they do not do."
"No press," Jim said. "Not a man. They have dropped straight back into their shape."
"Of course they have. You know this picture. We all know this picture. The two banks, the lines so close together you could not slide a sheet of paper between them. This is Simeone. This is what he is. This is what has won this club a league, taken them to two European finals, carried them to the top of the table this season." Peter's voice settled. "There is no reason on earth for them to abandon it now."
"It is not pretty," Jim said. "But it works."
"Pretty does not lift trophies, Jim. By the end of the next ninety minutes, whatever the football looks like in between, one of these two clubs will be champions of Spain."
"Sit down, sit down, it is starting."
A long way from Madrid, in a darkened room in west London, the Chelsea squad of 2020/21 had gathered in front of a screen. Their own final was waiting in Porto, and one of these two teams was their opponent for the UCL final, they had come to watch them.
Somebody flicked something at Mason Mount, who shoved it away without looking. Toward the back, Rüdiger had folded himself into a seat next to Kanté.
On the screen, Mateo made a run off the shoulder of his marker. Atlético closed it instantly, two men sliding across, the space gone before he reached it. He checked, turned, and rolled the ball back to Dembélé.
Rüdiger leaned toward Kanté. "What do you think the gaffer has in mind for them?"
Kanté looked over his shoulder. At the back of the room, on his own, Tuchel sat with his eyes fixed on the screen, not moving, not blinking, taking the whole thing apart in his head.
Kanté looked back at the match and shrugged.
"I am not sure," he said. "But we had better start getting ready. I can tell you for a fact, that is going to be a very hard match."
On the pitch, Mateo was already asking for it again.
"Here. Here!" He came short, calling, and De Jong slid it into his feet. He took one touch and turned, and there it was in front of him. The two red-and-white banks. Ten men behind the ball. No gaps. No lanes. The bus, parked, the doors welded shut.
I hate this thing.
Then he saw Pedri. A small flick of the hand, a step into a half-pocket of space that had not been there a second ago.
Mateo went.
He dropped his shoulder past the first man, dragged the ball across the second, and as Lodi stepped to close him he threaded it through the gap, a through ball sliced into the channel for Dembélé bursting toward the box.
"OOH!" Drury's voice lifted. "Dembélé in behind!"
The Atlético line screamed.
"OUT! STEP OUT! WITH HIM!"
Dembélé reached it first. He faked the shot, the whole of his body selling it, and Trippier bought it, planting to block a ball that never came. Dembélé skipped past him and whipped it low across the face of goal.
Mateo was flying in at the back post.
A boot got there before him. Savić, stretching, toeing it clear, the ball spinning away off the front of his foot and out for a throw before Mateo's leg could reach it.
"Cleared! Cleared by Savić!" Drury. "And that, Jim, is the other half of this team. They sit, and they sit, and the moment you find a way in, somebody in red and white is exactly where he needs to be."
"Last-ditch, but they do not panic doing it," Jim said. "That is years of drilling. They have done that a thousand times on the training ground."
Mateo clicked his tongue, watching the ball go out.
And Atlético did not stay back.
An Atlético midfielder picked up the loose clearance and did not hold it. One touch, head up, and he launched it forward at once.
"And here they go the other way!" Drury, climbing. "This is the sting in it! They drop you in, they soak you up, and then, like that, Suárez is away! SUÁREZ IS FREE!"
Suárez had peeled off the back of the line and the ball was dropping into the space behind Piqué, and for a half-second the goal opened up in front of him.
Araújo turned and ran.
The two of them went for it together, the old striker and the young defender, stride for stride down the right channel, the Metropolitano rising. Araújo got there first. A fraction first. He reached it and slid it back to Ter Stegen as Suárez arrived a beat too late and barrelled into him, the two of them tangling and going down in a heap by the byline.
"Araújo gets there!" Drury. "And Suárez lets him know about it! Shoulder to shoulder, and the young man wins it. That is some recovery from Ronald Araújo."
"He had to be perfect there," Jim said. "A half-yard slower and that is one-nil. He was not a half-yard slower."
On the touchline, Simeone was already up out of his area, both arms going, voice cracking across the pitch.
"LA LÍNEA! HOLD THE LINE! DO NOT GIVE THEM THE SPACE! HOLD IT HOLD IT SQUEEZE IN"
Down the other end, Koeman stood with two of his assistants leaning in at his shoulder, one of them sketching something in the air with his hand, the other talking fast about overloading the half-spaces, about pulling a centre-back out, about how to crack the block.
Koeman listened for a moment.
Then he raised a hand.
"Enough." He kept his eyes on the pitch. "Let's trust the players for now."
And the game went on.
It came in waves after that, and the waves were all red and blue.
The 3rd minute. Alba overlapped down the left and stood up a cross that Giménez headed clear before it could find Mateo. The 6th. Messi drifted in off the right, dropped his shoulder, slipped a pass between Koke and Lemar that had the whole near side of the Metropolitano on its feet, and Sergi Roberto's first-time ball back across the box was hacked away by Lodi. The 7th. Dembélé went at Trippier on the outside, beat him once, beat him again, and Savić read the cutback and stuck out a leg to kill it.
The 9th was the one that hurt.
Barcelona built it slow, then quick. De Jong to Busquets to Messi and back. Then Pedri picked it up at the edge of things and the picture changed. Atlético tried to break out, Llorente carrying it forward, and Pedri stepped across him and lifted it off his toe clean, and Barcelona were gone the other way before the red shirts could turn.
Mateo was in the box.
Two of them folded onto him at once, Savić in front, Giménez at his back, the two centre-backs sandwiching him so hard he could barely find the floor.
"You all do know I'm seventeen, right?" he shouted, half-laughing, shrugging a shoulder against the squeeze. "Right?"
The ball came in anyway. Pedri had drifted into the half-space and slid it through, and as two defenders stepped to him he sidestepped one, lost his balance against the second who leaned his whole weight onto him, and with his body falling sideways and a man draped across his back he still got his right foot through the ball.
"OH, PEDRI!" Drury.
The shot flew. Oblak threw himself across his line, full stretch, and the ball skidded off the face of the post and away.
Mateo was on the turf where the sandwich had dumped him. He pushed himself up onto an elbow and shook his head, watching the chance die. He glanced sideways, off the pitch, to where the silver of the La Liga trophy sat waiting on its little plinth at the edge of the grass, lit up, ready for whoever earned it.
He looked at it for half a second.
Then he carried his eyes away. His first professional title match, and he did not let himself think about the trophy again.
Across the city, in a different building entirely, the whole of La Masia had been turned over to one screen.
They had cleared the big hall for it. Final day. The club had set the place up for the academy to watch together, rows of teenagers in club kit packed into the room, the noise of them rising and falling with every Barcelona move.
In a corner near the front, four boys.
"I hate how this lot play." Gavi had his arms crossed, glaring at the screen.
"This haram rubbish." Balde shook his head. "Just sit there. Eleven men in the box. It's not football."
"It is football, though." Fermín leaned across them. "They are the best defensive side in the country, what do you want them to do?"
"Better get used to it," Casadó put in. "It only gets worse when you go pro. And this is nothing. Wait until you play Getafe."
On screen De Jong tried to wriggle through midfield and Koke went straight through the back of him.
Gavi shot up out of his seat. "What! Ref! REF! REF!"
"Sit down, boy." Alejandro's voice came from the back of the hall.
Gavi stayed up, pointing at the screen. "Come on. That is a yellow. How is that not a yellow?"
"Do not worry about it. Just keep watching."
Gavi groaned and dropped back into his chair.
Alejandro watched the screen for a moment. Then his voice came again, quieter, almost to himself.
"As long as that is their game." He paused. "Then this is ours."
The boys looked back at him.
"No defence in this world holds Barcelona's attack."
Back on the pitch, away from all of it, away from every expectation hanging over them, the players were getting frustrated.
The 13th minute. Barcelona at full flow, the ball zipping through them, Messi and Dembélé combining, Alba and De Jong piling forward to make the numbers. A burst of tiki-taka at the top of the box, one touch, one touch, one touch, and they tried to go through the eye of it.
The eye closed. Mateo tried to spin into the gap and three red shirts swallowed him, and Oblak came charging off his line and smothered the loose ball at his feet.
"Shut down again," Jim Beglin said. "Honestly, you have to take your hat off. Every single question Barcelona have asked, Atlético have had the answer."
Savić and Giménez found each other in the box and slapped hands, beating their own chests, roaring at one another.
"Vamos! Come on! Like that!"
Mateo got up and dusted himself off. He looked back toward Pedri and Messi and held both his hands up, an apology, a sorry, couldn't get through.
Messi waved it off. Then he turned and looked at the wall of red and white reorganising in front of their goal.
So this is how they want to play it.
He rolled his shoulders.
Let's play.
"Seventeen minutes in," Drury said. "And we told you it would be a hard, tight, brutal contest, the two best sides in the country going at one another. But look at this. Look at the numbers, Jim."
"Seventy-nine percent possession to Barcelona. Three shots, two on target. Atlético, almost nothing. It is completely one-sided."
"And yet."
"And yet it is nil-nil," Jim said.
"Possession does not win you football matches," Drury said. "Goals do. That is the only number that lifts the trophy at the end of the night."
The 19th minute.
Simeone was on the edge of his area, watching, arms folded, and at last it came. Atlético's first real attack of the match.
De Jong tried an ambitious shot from distance and it cannoned off a red shirt and spun loose, and Trippier was onto it in a flash. He took one touch to settle it and then swung a long, raking ball clear across the pitch to the far side.
Correa took it down.
"And here, at last, come Atlético!" Drury, lifting. "Correa with it, and Barcelona are caught upfield!"
The Barcelona players scrambled back. Correa drove at Sergi Roberto and put his body across him, all of it muscle and angle, shrugging the right-back off and surging on. Ter Stegen came alive on his line, edging out, narrowing it.
In the stands the Atlético fans who had been singing stopped singing. They grabbed each other. Sixty thousand of them leaned forward at once.
Simeone was off his bench and at the touchline.
Correa beat Roberto. He carried it into the area and lifted his head, and there was Suárez tearing into the middle, Piqué half a yard behind and losing.
"Correa, looking for Suárez—"
The cross came low and hard across the face.
Piqué slid. Araújo stretched. The ball threaded between them both. And Ter Stegen came off his line and spread himself wide and huge.
"SUÁREZ!"
The whole stadium had the goal scored. The away corner had the goal scored. Suárez had the goal scored. He arrived onto it and swung his boot through it from six yards.
PFFT.
The ball hit Ter Stegen's glove.
For a frozen half-second nobody could process it. Suárez's eyes went wide. No. No, no, no. Ter Stegen's eyes, on the other side of it, were screaming the opposite thing. Yes. Yes. YES.
The rebound bounced up off his palm. Suárez lunged to get back to it. So did Araújo, who had never stopped running, and Araújo got there first and lashed it away off the line and out for a throw.
"HE SAVED IT! TER STEGEN! TER STEGEN GOT THERE!" Drury had gone fully up. "Suárez cannot believe it! The Atlético fans cannot believe it! Simeone cannot believe it! This is football! This is the very heart of it! What a save! What an unbelievable save! This is the Ter Stegen the Barcelona faithful fell in love with! The airlines are open and the sky is covered! An absolutely monstrous stop!"
On the touchline Simeone reeled back, both hands going to his head, a strangled "AHHH" tearing out of him. Behind him two of his assistants had jumped up and were groaning at the sky.
Then Simeone caught himself. He set his jaw. He clapped his hands, hard, twice.
We should have buried that. I just hope it does not come back to bite us.
He clapped again and waved his side up for the corner.
At the other end, Koeman had nearly gone down to the turf with the fright of it and was now standing with both hands clasped, mouthing something that looked a lot like thank you to nobody in particular. The Barcelona corner had gone insane.
"TER STEGEN! TER STEGEN! WE LOVE YOU TER STEGEN!"
The players were no different. Piqué, Araújo, Alba, Busquets, all of them around him, hands on his head, his shoulders, roaring at him. Ter Stegen took it, laughing, then pushed them off and pointed.
"It's not over! Job's not done! Get this corner away, come on, lock in!"
Off to the side, Suárez stood in a daze.
He was looking at nothing. His hands had come up halfway and stopped. How. How did that. He had hit it perfectly. Six yards. Perfectly. And it had not gone in.
He blinked it away.
No. There's still time. There's a whole match.
He turned. He found Trippier walking across to take the corner. He pulled himself straight, rolled his neck, set his feet. And something behind his eyes hardened all the way down.
I'll show every last one of them.
I want to win.
"And that," Drury said, the broadcast still catching its own breath, "is the best chance of the match. You told them, sit deep, give Barcelona the ball, you do not want it, your moment will come. And it came. And Luis Suárez, a man who has had a most interesting season in his relationship with that opposition, could not finish it. But for the Atlético supporters, who are loving every second of this, that is a very good sign."
"It is the loudest this place has been since kickoff," Jim said. "They smell it now."
The corner came in. Bodies wrestled in the six-yard box, Ter Stegen barking, "Off me! Get off me!", a shirt pulled, an arm across a back. Trippier looked up. The referee watched it, whistle ready, and let it run.
Trippier swung it in.
Suárez saw it the whole way. He started his run, and Llorente peeled off and screened Araújo, putting his body in the way, holding him off the spot.
"He's free! He's free!" Araújo shouted, fighting to get round.
Suárez had a yard. He rose. He shut his eyes and met it.
PFFT.
The same flat smack of leather on glove.
For the second time inside two minutes, Ter Stegen got the better of him, palming the header up and away. It dropped for Carrasco, who lashed it first time, and the ball flew high over the bar.
"WIDE! Over the top from Carrasco!" Jim. "But Atlético are in this match now, no question, no question at all. They have woken up and the place has woken up with them."
The 27th minute.
The back and forth had climbed to its peak. The match had become enormous, both ends singing over the top of each other, the whole bowl roaring.
Up in the family section, nobody was talking.
Olivia sat with her hands knotted together, her eyes on Mateo even in the long stretches when the ball was nowhere near him. Every time the big screens cut to a tight shot of him, she could see it. The sweat he kept wiping off his brow. The hazel eyes she had been learning by heart, fixed and hard now, holding a focus she had never seen on him when it was just the two of them. Her heart was going fast for him. She just wanted him to win. If there had been anything in the world she could have done to help, she would have done it without a second's thought.
And whatever she was feeling, multiplied by a hundred, was still short of what was moving through Antonella beside her.
There was no comparing the two. A new love of a few weeks, however pure, however real, set against over twenty years. Against the boy from Rosario she had known since they were children, against three kids and four years of marriage and all the seasons before that. He had won this kind of night a dozen times over. It changed nothing. She still could not loosen the knot in her chest every single time her husband walked out for a game that mattered this much.
She watched him drift across the screen, small and far below, and held her own hands, and waited.
Back on the pitch, neither of them had any idea what their women were thinking up in the stands, and neither of them could have spared the thought to wonder. Mateo's whole head was one question, how do I break this open, how do I win my first one, turning it over and over. Messi's head was somewhere else entirely.
The café. The whole season. The friends pushed out one by one. The meeting with the kid, the promise the two of them had made that day. The red card. The first leg against PSG slipping away. The European nights they had clawed back since. The restaurant that afternoon, Luis across the table, the look on his face when he said it. The pressure of this exact moment. And under all of it, the thing that had never left him, the want.
The mind was a strange and beautiful machine. It could run all of that in the space of a single second.
And then it could make a man do what came next.
"Here! Here! Drive the middle, let's go!"
Mateo had the ball off Pedri and he bellowed it across, and Messi was already moving before the words finished.
"And here come the two hearts of Barcelona," Drury said, his voice tightening. "Are Atlético ready for this?"
Mateo took it forward himself first, the ball glued to his right foot. Thomas Lemar stepped to him and Mateo put his body across him, chest out, shielding, dragging the ball one way to pull Lemar's weight with it. He watched the defender's eyes. He watched his feet.
Then he slid it straight through Lemar's legs to the man beyond.
The Metropolitano gasped. So did the broadcast.
Mateo was already going down as he played it, his balance gone, and as he fell he had time for exactly one word. Fuck. He scrambled, both hands on the turf, hauling himself back up.
"Messi has it—"
Peter Drury's voice had not landed before it began.
The first defender was glued to the ball, following it, and Messi met it on the move and with one touch took it away from him, swaying his body over it, watching the man's legs slide past where the ball used to be. A second Atlético shirt came at him from the side and Messi turned, a full spin, the ball rolled around the outside of his own foot and away, and the second man was gone too. Behind him the first one had recovered and stretched out a leg, growling, lunging for it, and Messi simply dragged it clear and went.
He did not get far.
A third one was there.
Because this was the thing about them. You could beat one, you could beat two, you could even beat three, and the fourth would appear, and behind him the fifth. This was Atlético Madrid. This was the reason they had the best defence in Spain and one of the best in all of Europe this season.
Too bad they had run into Messi tonight.
The third one hit him. A real hit, full and heavy, the wham of it carrying to the touchline. Messi felt it go up through his ribs. He gritted his teeth. He kept the ball. The defender went down clinging to him and the two of them tangled, both of them grabbing for the loose ball on the grass, and a fourth red shirt came charging in to finish it.
Messi got there with his hands.
One palm flat on the turf, his whole core lifting him, and he turned himself over the top of the ball, spinning on the ground, his hand pivoting his weight while his foot stayed welded to it. He rolled it away from the fourth man's slide and came up onto his feet in one motion.
"Oohh—" Drury, climbing, and again it was not over.
He pushed it wide to Dembélé. Dembélé gave it back first time, instantly, and Messi was into the box.
One more came.
He was no different from the four before him.
Messi shifted left, shifted right, his shoulders selling a thing his feet never did, and the last defender committed and was beaten. Oblak panicked off his line. He came out, arms spreading, trying to make himself a wall.
The ball was already on the left foot.
Always the left foot.
It came off it from a distance no shot should have been possible at, the ball almost under his own body, and it fired anyway. And in the half-second the ball was in the air, with everything riding on it, Messi's mind did the thing it did, ran the whole reel one more time in the space of a breath.
Luis. The focus this time was Luis. Their years. The trophies lifted when it was only the two of them. The dinners, the laughing, the goals built between them. The way it had ended, the board, the door, his friend shipped out. The fight he had put up for him and lost. The look in Luis's eyes that very afternoon across the table. I want to win.
Messi closed his eyes.
Sorry, mi amigo. I also want to win.
"GOOOOOAAAAALLLLLL! GOOOAAALLLL! GOOOAAALLLL!"
Peter Drury came apart over the top of a stadium turning itself inside out. Right now he represented what every Barcelona fan seeing this were feeling what every neutral felt seeing that insane goal.
"He has done it AGAIN! He has done the impossible AGAIN, and how many times must this man do the impossible before we simply accept that for him it is not impossible at all! Four of them! Five of them! The finest defence in Spain, the wall that has held all night, and he went through the whole of it on his own, on the floor, off his back, off his hand, and onto that left foot! Always that left foot!
"And the Colchoneros, who have given everything, who have defended like lions in their own den, even THEY are stood there amazed! Because what else can you do! What else is there to do but stand and watch!
"Oh, Barcelona. Oh, the supporters in that little corner. Be thankful tonight. Be thankful you have him wearing your colours. Be thankful this club, of all the clubs on this earth, is the one he chose to give his whole life to. For the Lord is Messiful, and He has given them the greatest there has ever been!
"And on the final day, away from home, against the team sitting first in the land, he has gone and settled it! If this match ended this very second, Lionel Messi has just handed Barcelona the title of champions of Spain!
"Barcelona one. Atlético Madrid nil."
A/N
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