For Advance/Early Chapters:
patreon.com/Shadownarch_
Marca had spent thirty years cultivating the particular relationship between its editorial line and the players who wore white. The La Liga Best XI had, in previous seasons, reflected that relationship in ways that were not always strictly footballing. The voting panels, the weighting of domestic league performance against continental campaigns, the language used to frame one player's statistics against another's, all of it carried the accumulated bias of an institution that knew which club bought the most advertising.
This winter, the global vote made the editorial bias beside the point. The numbers arrived faster than any framing could contain them.
In the ESPN Sur studios, Santiago and Inés presented the results.
"The voting portals have closed," Santiago said, "and the margins are historic. Lorenzo has claimed the La Liga Mid-Season MVP with over fifty percent of the global vote, bypassing both Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. In the history of the poll, no player has led by this margin against those two names simultaneously."
Inés had the breakdown on screen. "Thirty-two goals in fifteen league appearances. Five in the Super Cup. Eight in the Copa del Rey. Fourteen in the Champions League across group stage and knockout rounds." She set the pen down. "He is eighteen goals away from Messi's single-season La Liga record of fifty, with twenty-two rounds remaining. The record is within range."
"And the consecutive scoring record," Santiago added. "Messi's twenty-one consecutive La Liga matches with a goal. Lorenzo is currently five matches away from equalling that standard. We are watching the systematic disassembly of benchmarks that were set by the same player who sits beside him in the front three every week."
The screen showed the finalized half-season Best XI, selected by thirty European sports editors alongside the public vote.
La Liga Mid-Season Best XI (3-4-3):
GK: Thibaut Courtois - Atlético Madrid.
DF: Filipe Luís - Atlético Madrid / Aymeric Laporte - Athletic Bilbao / Sergio Ramos - Real Madrid
MF: Antoine Griezmann - Real Sociedad / Ivan Rakitić - Sevilla / Bruno Soriano - Villarreal / Tiago Mendes - Atlético Madrid
FW: Cristiano Ronaldo - Real Madrid / Lorenzo - FC Barcelona / Lionel Messi - FC Barcelona
The Argentine feed ran immediately.
[Imagine a frontline of Ronaldo, Lorenzo, and Messi. The sheer talent and presence on the pitch would be absolutely overwhelming for any opponent.]
[It is surprising to see Courtois win best goalkeeper after Lorenzo managed to score five goals against him just this past August.]
[To be fair to Courtois; Atlético's defense has otherwise been a fortress this season. It is just that Lorenzo plays at a completely different level than most forwards.]
[Having Griezmann operating in his breakout Real Sociedad role on the wing creates a fascinating tactical setup. He would naturally drift inside to act as a playmaker, leaving wide spaces open for Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi to exploit.]
[With Filipe Luís and Sergio Ramos anchoring the backline ahead of Courtois, this team is defensively elite. Laporte's inclusion adds excellent left-footed distribution from deep.]
A week later, the biting winter chill of Zurich did nothing to reduce the gathered energy outside the Opera House. Thousands of fans from across the continent had travelled to stand behind the barricades. The floodlights turned the red carpet white. Black sedans arrived at precise intervals as the evening began.
In the ESPN Sur media enclosure, the field reporter was already working the crowd.
"Who takes the Ballon d'Or tonight?"
A fan in a Portuguese flag didn't hesitate. "Cristiano. Sixty-nine goals in the calendar year of 2013. Champions League top scorer. His absolute peak."
The Barcelona supporters nearby disagreed loudly. "Messi won the league! Madrid won nothing! This is a fixed vote and everyone knows it!"
"What about the Puskás?" the reporter asked an older fan in a plain white Madrid shirt — no name, no number, the kind of shirt that predates the era of names.
The man shook his head slowly. "Be objective. That award was decided the moment the boy from Barcelona ran sixty yards at Stamford Bridge. Cleared a goal off his own half, turned, beat six players, finished past Čech. Zlatan's bicycle kick against England is a work of art — a genuine work of art. But Lorenzo did it in a Champions League knockout against Mourinho's organised block and it was twenty-eight seconds from tackle to net. There is no debate."
The digital feeds across South America were fixed on the same point, not the Ballon d'Or race, which belonged to a longer conversation about what a seventeen-year-old's debut season meant against a full career, but the simple fact of a seventeen-year-old entering the shortlist at all. The youngest player in the award's history to be considered a legitimate contender.
In the Buenos Aires feed, someone had put two photographs side by side: Messi at seventeen, and Lorenzo at seventeen. Messi had fifteen La Liga appearances that season. Lorenzo had fifteen La Liga appearances this season. The goals column read differently. The comments beneath the photograph ran to thousands of responses, and most of them were variations of the same two words: too early.
Too early to compare. Too early to say. Too early to know what this means against everything that came before. And yet the photograph existed. And yet the numbers were there. And the seventeen-year-old was about to walk into a building full of people who had spent a decade arriving at what he had reached in five months.
The red carpet was still filling. The cameras were still flashing. The evening had not yet properly begun.
[Zurich. FIFA Year-End Gala — Evening of the ceremony.]
Plz Drop Some Power Stones.