In the aftermath of the brutal second leg, the European sports media universally crowned Atlético Madrid as the absolute favorites to win the Europa League Final.
Their final opponent: Athletic Bilbao.
While Bilbao had orchestrated a charming underdog run to reach Bucharest, their domestic form had been erratic. In La Liga, Atlético held the psychological advantage, boasting one win and one draw against the Basque club this season.
Furthermore, Atlético's path to the final had been a gauntlet forged in blood. They had executed Lazio, Besiktas, Schalke 04, and Valencia.
Bilbao, conversely, had benefited from a miraculously soft draw, essentially bypassing the true European heavyweights until the final stage.
The consensus was overwhelming: Diego Simeone's men had one hand on the trophy.
But before the final in Bucharest, Atlético had three remaining La Liga fixtures to navigate.
Technically, the domestic season was essentially already over for them.
After 34 rounds:
Real Madrid
Barcelona
Atlético Madrid - 71 pts
Valencia - 63 pts
Málaga - 61 pts
Atlético held an 8-point lead over Valencia and a 10-point lead over Málaga.
Mathematically, Atlético only needed one more victory to permanently lock in third place and secure direct Champions League qualification.
The football gods had provided the perfect stage.
Matchweek 35.
Valencia traveled to the Santiago Bernabéu to face Real Madrid.
Atlético hosted Málaga at the Vicente Calderón.
If Atlético defeated Málaga, they mathematically secured the Top Four. If Valencia simultaneously failed to beat Real Madrid, Atlético officially clinched third place.
The Valencia-Real Madrid clash kicked off two hours earlier.
As the Atlético squad walked out of their hotel and boarded the team bus to the Calderón, the match at the Bernabéu was still ongoing.
But they didn't need to watch the final thirty minutes.
The scoreline told the entire story.
This was José Mourinho's legendary second season at Real Madrid.
A "Mourinho Year Two" team is universally recognized as one of the most terrifying entities in global football.
This specific iteration of Real Madrid was obliterating historical records. They were on pace to become the first team in the history of Europe's Top Five leagues to break the 100-point barrier. They had already shattered the La Liga single-season scoring record, hammering in an absurd 113 goals with matches still left to play.
Facing this absolute juggernaut, a physically and psychologically exhausted Valencia side stood zero chance.
When Carter checked his phone on the bus, the clock read 60 minutes.
Real Madrid 4 - 0 Valencia.
The match was a slaughter. Even if you gave Valencia three hundred minutes of stoppage time, they weren't coming back.
Which meant...
If Atlético Madrid defeated Málaga tonight, they officially locked up third place.
Carter stared out the window of the bus, feeling a strange sense of surreal symmetry.
His professional debut—the match that changed his entire life—had been against Málaga.
Now, the match that would definitively end Atlético's domestic war was against the exact same opponent.
If they won tonight, the final three league games became entirely meaningless. Simeone could deploy the academy kids, rest the absolute core, and spend three weeks purely preparing for the Europa League Final.
Winning tonight meant the La Liga campaign was successfully completed.
"We have to kill them tonight, boys!" Koke screamed, standing up in the aisle of the bus and pumping his fist.
"CHAMPIONS LEAGUE! WE ARE GOING TO THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE!" Carter roared, raising both arms.
"CHAMPIONS LEAGUE! CHAMPIONS LEAGUE!"
The entire bus erupted into a feral, synchronized chant, slamming their hands against the windows and roof.
For Málaga, this match was equally do-or-die.
With Valencia getting massacred at the Bernabéu, a victory at the Calderón would vault Málaga into fourth place, putting them in the driver's seat for the final Champions League qualification spot.
Málaga manager Manuel Pellegrini knew the stakes.
His Qatari owners hadn't injected hundreds of millions of euros into the club just to play in the Europa League. They demanded a seat at Europe's ultimate table.
Winning at the Calderón was traditionally a nightmare.
But Pellegrini saw a massive vulnerability.
Atlético had just survived a brutal, emotionally draining European semifinal against Valencia less than seventy-two hours ago. Their core players had to be physically running on fumes.
"Pace! Intensity! We drag them into a track meet from the opening whistle!" Pellegrini shouted in the away locker room. "Do not let them breathe! We have the physical advantage today, and we are going to run them off their own pitch!"
He turned to his midfield pivot.
"Secondly... Carter. The exact second he touches the ball, I want a suffocating double-team. Do not let him turn. Do not let him breathe. If you have to foul him, foul him hard. But do it near the halfway line! Do NOT give him a free-kick anywhere near our penalty box!"
Pellegrini clapped his hands violently. "You all know what this means! We win tonight, we take fourth place! We go to the Champions League!"
The allure of the Champions League was the ultimate drug for any footballer.
"We break them tonight! Fourth place is ours!" Isco roared, his eyes burning with absolute determination.
Both teams stepped onto the pitch with absolute, bloodthirsty intent.
From the opening whistle, the match descended into a frantic, chaotic sprint.
True to Pellegrini's instructions, Málaga executed a ruthless, targeted hunting protocol against Carter.
The moment the teenager received a pass, the trap snapped shut.
Málaga players lunged at him with reckless aggression, entirely willing to burn their stamina. If Carter showed the slightest intention of breaking the line or playing a forward pass, they cynically hacked him down.
Within the first ten minutes, Carter had been violently fouled three times.
Because the fouls occurred entirely in the center circle, the referee kept his cards in his pocket, allowing Málaga to repeatedly disrupt the tempo without consequence.
No matter how lethal Carter's free-kicks were, he couldn't score from the halfway line. This wasn't an anime; physics still applied.
13th minute.
Carter received the ball once again near the center circle.
Before he even took a touch, Santi Cazorla and Jérémy Toulalan launched themselves into a synchronized, aggressive double-team.
They intended to execute the exact same protocol: trap him, strip the ball, or foul him.
But this time, Carter was ready.
For the first twelve minutes of the match, he had been passively feeling out the neurological changes triggered by the [Pablo Aimar: The Agile Clown] module.
His center of gravity felt lower. His dynamic balance was completely unnatural. His neurological response time had effectively halved.
He was done calibrating.
Let's test the limits.
"OH!"
A collective gasp swept through the Vicente Calderón.
Nobody in the stadium could process exactly what had just happened.
One second, Carter was completely boxed in by Cazorla and Toulalan.
The next second, the American teenager had miraculously phased through the microscopic gap between the two veterans and was accelerating violently into the Málaga half.
He didn't look for a pass. He put his head down and initiated a terrifying solo run directly at the Málaga backline.
Veteran center-back Martín Demichelis stepped up to confront him.
Carter didn't slow down. As he approached Demichelis, he executed two impossibly rapid, consecutive changes of direction.
The sheer velocity of the lateral shifts snapped Demichelis's ankles, leaving the Argentine defender completely stranded.
Having carved open the space, Carter unleashed a vicious, driving shot with his right foot.
BOOM.
The ball rocketed off his boot, whistling past the goalkeeper's fully extended fingertips and tearing into the roof of the net.
The entire stadium stared in absolute, stunned silence for a fraction of a second.
The fluidity. The shift in gravity. The sheer speed of the directional changes.
Carter had never, ever moved like that before.
"GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!!!"
"Absolute magic! Carter secures his eleventh league goal of the season!"
"A breathtaking solo run! But how on earth did he escape the double-team from Cazorla and Toulalan?!"
Up in the broadcast booth, the Spanish commentators were genuinely baffled.
They immediately looked down at their monitors, waiting desperately for the replay.
The television directors knew exactly what the world wanted to see.
A super slow-motion, zoomed-in replay of Carter receiving the ball in the center circle appeared on the screens.
The Breakdown:
As the ball arrived at his feet, Carter used the outside of his right boot to aggressively drag the ball outward, violently forcing Toulalan to commit his body weight to the outside lane.
But before the ball even fully completed the outward motion...
Carter's right foot snapped back, dragging the ball violently inside. In the exact same microsecond, he used his left foot to tap the ball forward again.
La Croqueta.
The legendary, high-speed double-touch executed with such terrifying stride frequency that Cazorla and Toulalan were left tackling empty air.
"Good god... his foot speed..."
The lead commentator's voice trembled. "How can a man of his size possess a stride frequency that rapid?!"
It wasn't just the commentators who were paralyzed by shock.
Down on the touchlines, Diego Simeone and Manuel Pellegrini both stared blankly up at the jumbotron, their jaws slightly slack.
Who the hell is that?
Read ahead with 70+ chapters now with daily updates!
@patreon.com/Authorizz