Klaus catches it on the drop, and for a moment his body does what nine years of instinct tells it to do shape shifts wide, head half-turns toward the six-yard box where a teammate is already screaming for the ball across.
He doesn't cross it.
By the time the shout reaches him his mind is already somewhere else entirely — already through the wall, already past the keeper, already in the net. He strikes it clean, the kind of clean that makes the sound arrive a half-second before the eye can process what's happened, and the wall does the only thing a wall can do against a ball hit like that: nothing. They watch it go over them like men watching weather.
The keeper is already moving before it clears the wall, a desperate backpedal turned into a leap, hand stretched to a ball that is, for one full second, genuinely going in.
It doesn't dip.
Not enough. Not quite enough. It sails a hand's width over the crossbar and into the net behind the goal, and Klaus stands with his hands on his hips watching it go, no visible reaction at all, like a man checking the time on something that hasn't happened yet.
COMMENTATOR (broadcast, translated): "Oh, that is close. That is the closest Klaus has come to breaking this deadlock all afternoon, "
The match keeps its shape for a while after that. Then, somewhere around the seventy-fifth minute, it stops being a contest between two teams and starts being a slow, deliberate siege.
Real Blanco find another gear nobody in a Vittoria Milano shirt particularly wants to admit exists. The ball starts staying at their end longer. The runs start coming in waves instead of alone. Vittoria Milano stop trying to build anything of their own and settle into the only shape left available to them bodies behind the ball, boots first, every clearance a small, unglamorous act of survival.
Shots come and go. One clips a shin and loops behind for a corner. One sails high and wide, more relief than danger. One is swallowed up clean by the goalkeeper, who's earning every minute of his evening now.
Real Blanco don't need a goal from open play. They need one moment, and everyone in the stadium every player on both teams, every voice in the away end still hoarse from singing his name an hour ago knows exactly who is capable of manufacturing something out of nothing.
Except Klaus hasn't had nothing to manufacture with. all match.
Marco has seen to that.
PANELIST 1 (broadcast, translated): "They've thrown everything at this in the last fifteen minutes and Klaus still hasn't had a clean sight of goal in open play. That is remarkable containment ."
But containment costs something, and by the eighty-third minute Marco can feel exactly what it's costing. His legs are heavier than they were an hour ago. His recovery runs are half a stride slower than the ones that started the match. There is only so much one man can absorb alone, and the whole stadium seems to sense the exact moment the arithmetic starts to turn.
It turns in the eighty-third minute.
Klaus finds a gap nobody sees coming not a gap Marco left, just a gap that opens for a fraction of a second between two other bodies, and Klaus is already running through it before anyone else has finished registering it exists. The pass arrives perfectly weighted into his stride. Suddenly there's nothing in front of him but grass and a goalkeeper.
He doesn't hesitate. Low, driven, aimed for the far corner with the kind of certainty that makes goalkeepers give up on shots like this before they've even dived.
The keeper is beaten. Everyone in the stadium knows it's beaten, in the half-second before the ball reaches the line.
Marco doesn't know how he gets there. Later, he won't be able to explain it in words that make it sound like anything other than instinct overriding a body that had every reason to have nothing left a last desperate stretch, studs dragging turf, throwing every remaining inch of himself between the ball and the goal.
He gets a foot to it. It cannons away off the outside of the post instead of the inside.
He goes down hard immediately after, the momentum of the challenge carrying him into the post itself, and for a moment he doesn't move at all.
The medics swarm the pitch, the stadium gone quiet in that specific way crowds go quiet for an injury regardless of which shirt is down. Klaus stands a few yards off, hands on his head, watching along with everyone else.
Marco gets up. Slowly, favouring one side, waving off the stretcher with a small, stubborn shake of his head. He wants to finish it.
Injury time arrives with the scoreline still goalless and Real Blanco still circling.
The corner comes in the third minute of stoppage time, and it's total chaos the moment it's delivered , the 18 yard box is packed, Real Blanco's own goalkeeper up with the rest of them, everyone chasing the same small percentage of a miracle. The delivery is dangerous, whipped in hard and low, and the keeper gets a glove to it but not enough of one. It spills instead of holds, straight back out into the mess of bodies at the edge of the six-yard box.
A Real Blanco midfielder gets there first, snaps a shot at it on the half-volley blocked, Marco's body somehow still there, still willing, still throwing itself in front of things it has no business reaching this deep into the ninetieth minute.
The ball cannons off him, clips the underside of the bar, and rolls almost gently, almost apologetically into the one space on the entire pitch where nobody expected it to land.
Right at Klaus's feet.
Nobody is near him. Nobody could have planned this, not the finish, not the run, not the ricochet that delivers it, it is pure, uncomplicated luck, the kind that finds certain players their whole careers and finds Klaus one more time tonight. He doesn't need to do anything difficult with it. He taps it in the way another man might tap in a conversation, easy, almost bored, like the ball owed him this.
Real Blanco's bench empties. Players sprint the length of the pitch toward the corner flag, toward their own fans, toward the noise. Klaus doesn't run far. He doesn't need to the celebration finds him instead, arms wrapping around him from every direction, and somewhere underneath the pile of teammates his face is the only one in the frame that doesn't look like it's celebrating anything at all. Just satisfied, just finished.
By the time the ball is back on the centre circle for the restart, everyone in a Vittoria Milano shirt already knows it doesn't matter. The referee blows for full time thirty seconds later and it's over.
It's a friendly. It will change nothing in any table, count for nothing in any record book, be forgotten by most of the football world within a month. Marco's face doesn't know that. Marco's face looks like a man who just lost a final.
The handshakes happen the way they always happen some warm, some perfunctory, players from both sides finding old teammates or friends from national teams, a few genuine embraces, a lot of tired nods exchanged by men who gave their bodies to something that officially meant nothing.
Marco makes his way down the line. Klaus is a few players ahead of him, working through his own row of handshakes, and for one long moment as the two lines cross near the tunnel, they are close enough that it has to happen.
They look at each other.
Nothing else does.
No hand extended. No word offered. Klaus's eyes hold Marco's for perhaps a second and a half long enough for it to register as a choice and not an accident before he turns and walks toward the tunnel, boots echoing on concrete, gone before Marco's mind has assembled a single word worth turning back for.
Marco stands there a beat too long. Something hot moves through his chest, fast, and for a second it looks like he might actually go after him, might say something, might demand something, might finally force the four words neither of them has said in months out into the open air of a stadium tunnel.
He doesn't.
He turns instead, walks the other way, jaw tight, and says nothing to anyone the entire length of the corridor.
Klaus, as the only goalscorer, is the one they want in front of the cameras.
REPORTER: "Tough game today?"
KLAUS: " Vittoria Milano put up a real fight. Good discipline, good shape. We need to be far better than we were today if we want to start the season the way we're planning to."
REPORTER: "Klaus you were up against your brother today, and a lot of people watching would say he got the better of you for most of the match. What do you have to say to that?"
Klaus looks at the reporter for a moment. Not angry. Not much of anything at all.
KLAUS: "If that will be all, I'll be going."
He's already walking before the microphone is fully lowered.
The internet, predictably, does not let it go quietly.
@SantosWatch: "'If that will be all, I'll be going.' Not even a real answer. Just left. His own brother just played the game of his career against him and Klaus couldn't give him one sentence."
@GlobalFutbol: "People keep asking why these two don't speak. Watch that clip back. I think we just got the answer in real time."
@FutebolPuro: "Genuinely feel for Marco here. Man saves a certain goal, nearly gets injured doing it, holds the best striker on the planet to almost nothing for 80 minutes, and still gets treated like he isn't in the room."
@TaktikFussball: "Unpopular opinion but Klaus doesn't owe the media a family therapy session live on camera. Whatever's between them is between them."
Patrick comes round the next afternoon expecting to talk numbers. He doesn't get the chance.
MARCO: "I don't want to sign it."
PATRICK: "Marco—"
MARCO: "I don't want to be tied down here. Not for four years, not for five, whatever they're offering. I want to move somewhere bigger. I want to actually win something. I don't think I can do that here."
Patrick sits down slowly across from him, the kind of slow that's really just buying a few seconds to choose his next words carefully.
PATRICK: "You're saying this the day after the match you lost. That's not a coincidence, Marco, that's grief talking, not strategy."
MARCO: "It's not grief. It's clarity."
PATRICK: "It's one match. A friendly. It changes nothing about what this club thinks of you, what the fans think of you, you saw the reaction last night, they're not calling for your head, they're furious on your behalf. This team wants you. They've wanted you enough to put a real number in front of you before the season's even started. There is no transfer interest right now, Marco. None. Not a whisper. I would know."
Marco doesn't answer that directly. He's staring somewhere past Patrick's shoulder, somewhere that isn't in the room at all.
PATRICK: (softer) "I'm not going to make you sign anything today. I'll tell the club we need a little more time a week, whatever you need to actually think straight instead of thinking angry. But don't let one night decide something this big. That's not you. That's the version of you that's still standing in that tunnel."
Marco says nothing else. Patrick lets himself out quietly a few minutes later, the way you leave a room when there's nothing left to add to it.
Marco stays where he is long after the door closes stretched out on the couch, one arm over his eyes, staring at nothing in particular on the ceiling, turning the same handful of thoughts over and over without arriving anywhere new.
END OF CHAPTER 39