Chapter 161: The Tunnel

Jürgen Klopp had been in a foul mood ever since the European whistle blew in Rome.

AS Roma had knocked his young Dortmund squad out of the Champions League, and he simply could not stomach the manner of it. Losing to Real Madrid, Barcelona, or Manchester United would have been understandable.

Going out to Roma felt entirely different. His high-pressing youth storm, the team that had electrified the Bundesliga and caught Europe's eye, had been eliminated by an opponent he considered an equal at best, and that disappointment sat heavy in his chest.

So he'd done what a professional does. Folded the disappointment away and turned everything toward the league. Without the Champions League, the Bundesliga title was the season, and letting that slip away as well was completely off the table.

His assistant stepped through the doorway with an iPad tucked under his arm.

"Schalke have entered a closed training camp," the assistant said, closing the door behind him.

Klopp looked up from a stack of scouting sheets, his brow furrowing. "A camp? Where?"

"We don't know where, Jürgen. It's completely private. Somewhere secluded down south, but nobody can nail down the location."

"A training camp? In the middle of March?" Klopp leaned back, thoroughly irritated. Modern European teams simply did not disappear into retreats during the spring run-in. "What is Magath planning now?"

His assistant offered a helpless shrug because the details were impossible to trace. Whatever tactical adjustments Schalke were working on, they were doing it behind closed doors where zero media could pry, meaning Dortmund would enter the most critical Ruhr Derby in years completely blind to the opponent's setup.

"And Shinji?" Klopp asked, deliberately changing the subject to a headache he actually had some influence over. "Did his agent get back to Michael about the extension?"

"He rejected the terms," the assistant replied quietly. "His camp made it clear he wants to test the waters in England once the season wraps up."

Klopp let out a long, weary breath and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Shinji Kagawa had been his project. He had scouted him from the Japanese second tier, built an attacking system around his quick feet, and turned him into one of the most electric playmakers in Central Europe. Seeing a player you personally nurtured eye the exits the moment his profile exploded was a bitter pill to swallow. Klopp understood the pull of the Premier League, but it still stung.

"Then let him go," Klopp said, his voice firm and decisive. "If his heart is set on Manchester, he can leave in June. I am not going to spend my week begging any player to wear this badge."

He pulled the Schalke technical file back across the desk, quickly realizing the data was largely useless because their most important tactical tweaks were unfolding inside a secluded bunker.

He dropped the papers with a quiet sigh.

Whatever Magath was cooking up, Dortmund would have to figure it out under the lights on Sunday.

The German sports press endured a thoroughly miserable week.

Schalke occupied second place, stood as the lone Bundesliga survivor in the Champions League, and possessed the league's three biggest media darlings in Mateo, Vardy, and Jones. Yet the entire operation had simply vanished. Journalists found nothing to work with outside the gates, with open training cancelled and the squad strictly off-limits. The most heavily scrutinized team in Germany had simply vanished four days before the country's fiercest derby, leaving reporters scrambling to fill the sports pages with guesswork and fluff.

The squad finally reappeared in Gelsenkirchen on Friday morning, looking relaxed and offering zero useful information to the cameras.

Over in Dortmund, the local fan base approached the derby with noticeable anxiety. The painful exit in Rome was bad enough, but watching their blue-clad rivals across the valley march deep into Europe rubbed salt in the wound. To the Dortmund faithful, seeing Schalke advance while their own team stumbled felt completely backward. Fans comforted themselves in local beer halls by claiming Schalke had simply landed an easy draw with Valencia, insisting luck was the only reason the Royal Blues were still alive in Europe.

They desperately needed that narrative to hold true on the pitch.

During the pre-match press conferences on Saturday afternoon, the contrasting energy between the two managers could not have been more striking.

Magath arrived in a jovial mood, leaning back comfortably in his chair.

"Football is always full of unpredictable moments," Magath told the room when a Dortmund journalist asked if he genuinely believed Schalke could silence the Westfalenstadion. "Of course we believe we can take all three points. We are sitting one single point behind them. A victory puts us at the top of the Bundesliga table with eight weeks to go. For an opportunity like that, I expect my players to run until they collapse."

Klopp sat behind the same microphones an hour later with a storm brewing behind his eyes.

Nearly every reporter badgered him about the European collapse against Roma, picking at the wound until a journalist from a local Gelsenkirchen publication politely asked if Klopp had "any tactical advice to share with Schalke ahead of their quarter-final."

Klopp stared straight at the reporter, his smile turning frosty.

"As far as Borussia Dortmund is concerned, the only thing that matters right now is the league," Klopp said in a clipped, cold tone. "We do not waste a single second worrying about tournaments we are not playing in."

The delivery was blunt and sharp, cutting through the room like an icy wind. Even the neutral journalists shifted awkwardly in their chairs, recognizing the query as a deliberate needle disguised as courtesy. Klopp refused to give them the reaction they wanted, cutting the conference short and storming down the corridor.

Magath caught the clip on the hotel television later that evening and shared a dry chuckle with his staff. Letting Dortmund stew under pressure was ideal. His squad was rested, drilled, and ready to let their boots do the talking.

Inside the away dressing room at the Westfalenstadion, the bass from eighty thousand roaring supporters vibrated straight through the floor tiles.

Magath stood by the tactical board, delivering his final instructions with absolute clarity.

"Jones, you are the lock on the front door today," Magath instructed, pointing firmly at the center circle on the pitch diagram. "You do not vacate the pocket in front of our center-backs for anything. If Kagawa or Götze attempts to slip between the lines, you step across immediately. If you need to pick up a yellow to kill a rapid transition, do it without hesitation. You stay deep and protect the spine."

Jones gave a resolute nod, his fists tightly clenched inside his match tape.

"Farfán, you are pairing directly with Silva in advanced areas," Magath continued, pivoting toward the Peruvian winger. "I want you making aggressive, direct runs across their defensive pairing to pull Subotić out of position and carve open operating lanes for Mateo. Run at their fullbacks with pace. Give them genuine headaches."

Farfán offered a confident smirk and nodded.

"Anthony, you are returning to the starting eleven alongside Jermaine," Magath said, looking at Annan. "Whenever you spot an open passing corridor, drive forward into it. Mateo will deliver the ball into your stride."

Magath paused, stepping into the center of the room to catch every player's eyes.

"This is the most hostile arena in the country. Eighty thousand supporters who despise the colors we are wearing. The South Stand alone holds twenty-five thousand people singing at the top of their lungs, and every single one of them wants to see us crumble today." He let the tension linger for a beat before his voice hardened. "Our objective is remarkably simple. We take their energy away. We make eighty thousand people completely silent. There is no sweeter feeling in professional football than taking the air out of this stadium. Go out there and quiet them down."

The squad pushed back their wooden benches and rose together with a collective cheer.

The concrete tunnel beneath the stands felt like a narrow wind tunnel of deafening sound.

Both starting lineups formed two parallel columns along the tiled corridor, royal blue jerseys lining up against bright neon yellow. The roar filtering down from the pitch carried a physical weight, pressing against the chest like a heavy vibration. At the front of the line, Farfán rolled his neck to shake off the nervous tension. Just behind Mateo, Jones stood completely still, staring blankly ahead as he dialed in his physical focus.

Mateo stood in line feeling remarkably calm. The hostile wall of sound did not rattle his nerves; it sharpened his peripheral awareness, narrowing his concentration onto the grass ahead.

As the match officials stepped toward the pitch and Mateo's studs clicked onto the artificial turf bordering the tunnel mouth, the Westfalenstadion's full acoustic fury washed over him, and a familiar digital chiming sound chimed clearly inside his mind.

[Ding... Mission triggered.]

[Take the Summit: win the Revierderby.]

[Difficulty: SSS.]

[Reward: Golden Skill.]

Mateo stopped for half a step, then kept walking so nobody would notice.

Golden Skill.

He turned the phrase over and got nothing back. Every reward the system had ever handed him had been a card, and every card he understood: player cards that copied a real footballer's move, the Perfect Partner card, the upgrade card sitting unused in his inventory. He knew what all of those were before he opened them.

This was completely new ground. It said skill, not card, and he had nothing to compare it to. A technique, an attribute boost, or something else entirely, the system was keeping quiet until the job was done.

He wouldn't get a clear answer until the final whistle confirmed a victory, and the triple-S difficulty tier was an outright red flag. The system had handed him plenty of A-rank and S-rank tasks when the stakes were massive, but it had never stacked three of them together like that.

Whatever the system thought was coming today, it rated this harder than anything it had ever asked of him.

Mateo raised his chin, looking straight up toward the towering South Stand. Twenty-five thousand Dortmund supporters stood shoulder to shoulder, screaming with pure venom, desperate to watch his side crumble under the pressure. Instead of feeling the heat, a quiet, almost reckless calm settled behind his ribs, pulling at the corners of his mouth.

"Give us everything you've got," Mateo murmured under his breath, his words lost beneath the deafening roar. "Let's see how good you really are."

The referee tucked the match ball under one arm and stepped toward the tunnel mouth.

Both squads followed him out, stepping straight into the afternoon glare and the thunderous noise of the Westfalenstadion.

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