Chapter 192: The Ball He Couldn't Hit

Mateo stood over the third free kick, took a quiet breath, and tried to trigger the skill.

A sharp blue prompt flashed across his vision.

[Set Pieces skill unavailable. Match uses remaining: 0 of 2.]

He nearly laughed out loud, right there on the grass with the wall squared up and Adler crouching in his stance. Two uses per match. There had been a hard cap all along, and this crazy system had waited until the 78th minute of a title clash to point it out.

You could have warned me about that earlier, he thought.

The system interface updated immediately.

[Match skill activations scale with your base Set Pieces attribute. Base attribute 70: two uses. Skills may be drilled without restrictions inside the Virtual Training Camp to raise baseline proficiency. In competitive fixtures, match limits remain active.]

The reality hit him cold.

When he first unlocked Beckham's Curve, his base set-piece rating had jumped from sixty-six to seventy, and he had simply stopped training it. Why grind dead balls every day when a specialized skill guaranteed a lethal strike? He had poured his hours into stamina and vision instead, and it had never cost him until now.

Twenty-three yards out. René Adler in the form of his life.

Mateo did the math. An unassisted strike with a base rating of seventy was never beating a keeper who had just fingertipped his best effort onto the crossbar. Forcing a shot here was giving the ball away.

He was not going to shoot.

The alternative clicked into place immediately. Leverkusen had set a five-man wall strictly for a shot, and Adler was already leaning toward his far corner. The entire defense had gambled on one outcome.

Which meant they were completely blind to anything else.

Mateo caught Farfán's eye on the edge of the box. He gave a quick flick of his eyes toward the space five yards to his right. Farfán, who had spent the entire campaign learning how Mateo moved, drifted casually toward the flank like a player heading back into coverage, giving a tiny nod in return.

Mateo took four strides on his approach, leaning his upper body as if he intended to whip the ball over the tallest head in the wall. He watched Adler's cleats shift an inch toward the far post.

Instead of striking the leather, Mateo gently rolled a short, five-yard pass across the turf.

Farfán was already moving into the open pocket. Leverkusen's wall froze, completely confused by the routine. Adler was caught mid-step, leaning the wrong way.

Farfán met the rolling ball first-time and clipped a return pass right back into Mateo's stride.

Mateo took the ball on the half-turn, moving at speed toward the penalty spot with the entire Leverkusen backline scrambling to recover. The box opened up completely before his eyes.

Zico's Vision locked onto the space.

He spotted Huntelaar's run before the striker even took his second stride. The gap between Friedrich and Reinartz opened for a split second, and Mateo slid a disguised, rolling ball right through the seam. The pass had just enough cushion on it to drop perfectly into Huntelaar's path, bypassing three retreating defenders in one clean stroke.

Huntelaar collected the ball with his first touch, putting himself one-on-one with Adler six yards out.

It was the exact duel Leverkusen had spent eighty minutes trying to prevent. Adler rushed off his line, spreading his arms wide to smother the near post. But Huntelaar had built a world-class reputation on these exact finishes. He stayed calm, let Adler drop to the turf, and clipped a low shot across the keeper toward the far corner.

Adler threw an arm out in desperation, but the ball was already past him.

Fweet—!

2-1, Schalke 04.

The away end in the upper tier went wild. Huntelaar sprinted toward the corner flag, roaring at the top of his lungs, and Mateo leapt straight onto his shoulders with a huge grin on his face.

The goal came from basic pitch awareness, a quick one-two, and a sharp through-ball that caught Leverkusen off balance. Beating Adler with a clever routine felt far more rewarding than simply relying on an automated skill.

Leverkusen threw everyone forward for the final ten minutes, sending Ballack and Kießling into the box to contest high crosses. Neuer took command of his area, claiming two dangerous headers out of the air to protect the lead until the final whistle blew.

Schalke walked away from the BayArena with a 2-1 victory. They had survived an hour of suffocating pressure against their closest rivals and found a way to win anyway, keeping Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund at a safe distance in the title race.

Later that evening, on the quiet team bus heading back down the motorway toward Gelsenkirchen, Mateo opened the system interface.

He stared at the number on the blue screen.

[Set Pieces: 70.]

He had grown comfortable, letting a flashy skill carry his dead-ball output while neglecting the underlying technique. Adler had exposed that complacency on the pitch, leaving him stuck over a dead ball with no answers.

Fair enough, he thought, staring at the number. No shortcut lasts forever.

If he wanted more than two shots a game, he'd have to earn them. The system gave him the sandbox, but the reps were on him. Every hour he put into the training camp would bump that rating up, unlocking extra uses when he needed them and making his normal strikes sharp enough that keepers actually had to sweat.

He closed the menu and leaned his head back against the bus window, watching the streetlights slip past in the dark.

A Champions League semi-final against a European giant was waiting, and the league title was just a few weeks away. Mateo smiled to himself, closed his eyes, and decided his first stop tomorrow morning would be the training ground to take a couple hundred free kicks the hard way.