Chapter 200: The Shadow

During the training week leading up to Barcelona, Magath came up with an assignment that caught the entire squad off guard.

He pulled Mateo out of the free roaming role behind the strikers and put him through grueling, repetitive drills for a completely different task: pure man-marking. He wasn’t asking him to sit deep like an anchor either. He wanted a constant shadow attached to one specific man.

“Xavi,” Magath kept repeating, standing out on the windy practice pitch in the chilly morning air. “Forget about roaming into open spaces this week. You match his every step. Pick him up from the opening whistle and stay glued to him for ninety minutes. Stick to his right shoulder so he can never open his body and turn forward. Make him pass backward every time he gets the ball. You are the lid on Xavi. The second we poke it away from him, you turn back into our playmaker and we break forward immediately. Understood?”

Mateo found the tactic a bit unusual, but he had seen Magath’s strange ideas pay off enough times to buy in.

He ran the routines until his legs burned. Lock onto the reserve midfielder wearing the yellow bib. Cut off the passing lane into his feet. Block the half-turn. Win the loose ball, then immediately sprint into open green turf.

The idea had real logic behind it. If Mateo pressed high to win the ball, Schalke would instantly have their best passer already sitting in Barcelona’s half while their midfield scrambled back. Smother him, take the ball, spring the counter. Over and over.

In the film room later that afternoon, Magath tapped his knuckles against the projector screen, highlighting Xavi’s movement.

“Everything they build runs through his boots,” Magath explained, scanning the quiet room. “Take away his turn, and you take away half of their rhythm. You cannot stop everything Barcelona does. Nobody does that. But you can disrupt half of it.”

Magath turned his gaze squarely toward Mateo.

“When Messi drops deep to collect the ball from midfield, do not go chasing after him. Let him come into your zone. He wants to drag our center-backs out of position. Let him try. You will already be clogging that pocket. Can you run flat out for ninety minutes without slowing down?”

Mateo met his eyes. “Yeah, I can do it.”

“Good,” Magath said, clicking off the projector. “That is our plan. We stick to it.”

Mateo understood the gamble. Under normal circumstances, asking your most dangerous creative player to run around tracking an opponent felt like a waste. It sounded like an admission that you were terrified of the opposition. Guardiola would almost certainly expect Schalke to pack ten men inside their own penalty box and pray, because that was how most visiting clubs approached the Camp Nou.

Barcelona would never expect Mateo to follow Xavi across the pitch like a second shirt, cutting off their rhythm at the source and then leading the counter-attack the second possession changed hands.

Mateo ran the drills until the positioning became second nature. Smother, steal, spring. By Thursday afternoon, his calves and hips ached in places he had never felt before, but the rhythm of Xavi’s movement had settled deeply into his head.

Mateo tuned out the off-pitch noise that week, leaving the contract talk and media chatter to Carvajal. His focus was entirely on dealing with Xavi at the Camp Nou. He ate right, slept early, and kept his head strictly on football.

On Tuesday morning, the team boarded their flight for Spain.

A large crowd of Schalke supporters packed into the departures area, holding blue-and-white banners and singing club anthems. They were realistic about the odds. Everyone understood how terrifying Barcelona looked on paper, but the fans showed up anyway, proud that their club had clawed its way into the final four of Europe.

Farfán sat next to Mateo on the plane, looking totally relaxed with a bag of snacks. Jones was sitting two rows ahead, tapping away nervously on a portable video game and glancing out the window every few minutes.

“You’re awfully quiet over here,” Farfán remarked, tossing a peanut into his mouth.

Mateo rested an arm on the armrest. “Just running through Xavi’s habits in my head.”

“Forget overthinking his name,” Farfán said with an easy shrug. “Just read where he wants to move, and get your boots there first. That is all the manager is asking from you. Get there first, work hard for ninety minutes, and don’t tire out. The rest of us will handle our assignments.”

Mateo looked out the window at the thick cloud cover. Farfán was right. Keep it simple. Be there first, and never stop running.

They were going up against arguably the greatest club side in modern history, in front of nearly one hundred thousand hostile spectators, with a starting eleven assembled on a fraction of Barcelona’s wage bill.

Yet sitting in that airplane seat, Mateo did not feel overwhelmed. People had spent the entire season listing all the reasons Schalke would fall apart, and the team had proved them wrong every month. Maybe Barcelona were completely unbeatable at home. Maybe not. Mateo simply wanted to step onto the grass and see for himself.

By Wednesday evening, the team bus pulled into the streets of Barcelona.

The entire city seemed focused on the match. Most shops had pulled their metal shutters down early, and thousands of supporters walked toward the stadium dressed in blue and deep red, chanting club anthems in the warm evening air. There were so many people crowding the intersections that the Schalke bus could only crawl forward.

What struck Mateo most was the total indifference from the crowd.

The fans outside did not boo or bang against the bus windows. They barely even looked up at the Schalke crest. To them, the visiting German side was just an easy hurdle on the way to the final at Wembley.

Magath sat right at the front with his arms crossed.

Mateo pressed his forehead lightly against the cool window glass, watching the Camp Nou’s massive concrete towers rise against the evening sky. His pulse picked up with pure excitement