Chapter 169: Red

Kagawa had been an invisible ghost ever since the backheel.

Escaping a booking for his third-minute lunge had seemed lucky at first, but the afternoon quickly curdled into a personal nightmare. First came the humiliation of watching Mateo scoop the ball cleanly over his head, followed by the slow, suffocating reality of a five-goal dismantling.

Shinji Kagawa had arrived at the Westfalenstadion expecting to orchestrate the derby, only to watch an eighteen-year-old in the number 38 shirt run away with the entire afternoon. To make matters worse, he knew exactly who was sitting in the executive suites. The delegation from Manchester United had flown in specifically to evaluate him, and this fixture was meant to be his definitive audition for the biggest club in England.

Instead of putting on a masterclass, he had been reduced to a helpless bystander, while every camera in the building remained glued to the visiting playmaker.

In the seventy-third minute, the frustration finally boiled over.

Schalke were comfortably knocking the ball around to run down the clock, moving it smoothly through Mateo before feeding Farfán on the right flank. Farfán dropped his shoulder and glided past Kagawa with a casual burst of pace, breezing past him for the second time in the half. Kagawa completely lost his head. He lunged in recklessly from behind, driving his studs straight into the back of Farfán's planted ankle with raw, undisguised malice.

Farfán let out a sharp cry and crumpled straight onto the turf.

The referee's whistle blew on the spot, but the temperature on the pitch had already reached a boiling point. Mateo took two furious strides toward Kagawa before a wall of blue muscle cut across his path and shoved him out of harm's way.

It was Jermaine Jones.

Jones knew exactly where Mateo was heading and what kind of trouble awaited him. A young playmaker charging into a confrontation after a violent tackle almost always picked up a cheap booking, and Schalke could not afford to lose their primary creator to a suspension or risk a card with twenty minutes of bad blood still left to play. Jones was never going to let the teenager take the fall. He reached Kagawa well before the referee arrived, grabbed two massive fistfuls of the yellow shirt at the throat, and yanked the smaller playmaker onto his tiptoes.

Jones drew back his right fist for a split second.

The entire stadium went dead silent. Eighty thousand pairs of eyes watched Jones lift Kagawa by the jersey and thrust his face inches from the midfielder's nose, barking something raw and threatening, the entire derby balancing on the brink of an outright brawl.

Jamie Vardy locked both arms around Jones's ribs from behind, heaving with all his strength to drag the big midfielder away.

"Leave him, Jermaine!" Vardy shouted directly into his ear, digging his boots into the turf. "Drop it, mate, leave it! Look at the ref, he's already reaching for his pocket! Don't get yourself tossed off for this rubbish!"

Jones slowly uncurled his grip from Kagawa's collar. He leaned forward anyway, muttering a low, venomous warning in English that left Kagawa staring back in absolute silence.

The referee arrived, took one look at Farfán on the grass with both hands around his ankle, and reached into his pocket.

Red.

There was zero hesitation. A studs-up lunge from behind into the Achilles of a player who had already moved the ball away was the easiest dismissal the referee would make all year.

Kagawa did not bother pleading his case. He looked down at Farfán, glanced up at the red card, and began the long, humiliating trek toward the tunnel. It was the most painful walk of his Dortmund career, trudging beneath his own fans who were torn between jeering the referee and simply hanging their heads in sheer exhaustion.

Farfán managed to drag himself upright.

The physios sprayed the joint, tested the ligament stability, and offered a hand, but Farfán shoved the stretcher aside, determined to stay on the pitch. The bone was badly bruised and he was limping heavily, but his pride refused to let Kagawa walk away knowing he had forced him off.

Mateo walked up to him, eyeing the swelling around his sock. "Are you actually good to continue? Don't force it if the joint is unstable."

"I'm fine, kid," Farfán gritted his teeth, testing the ankle with a hard stamp against the grass before wincing slightly. "He took a cheap shot because he couldn't get near the ball, and there's no way in hell I'm walking off before we put a sixth past them."

"You really want a sixth?" Mateo asked, a slight smile breaking through his serious expression.

"Damn right I want a sixth," Farfán said, forcing a grin through the grimace. "I still need my name on the scoresheet today. After that, maybe I'll let the doctors ice me up. You still owe me anyway, considering you stole my goal off the crossbar."

High in the VIP box, behind one-way glass, two men in suits watched the sending-off with very different expressions.

George Trolope, a senior representative for Manchester United, swirled a glass of red wine in his hand without speaking for nearly a minute. Next to him, a Dortmund director shifted awkwardly in his leather seat, acutely aware that the prized asset they were trying to market to the Premier League had just capped off an invisible afternoon with a reckless sending-off.

"He lacks emotional discipline," Trolope said quietly, setting his glass on the wooden table. "Your boy Kagawa, I mean. We came here to observe his composure in a hostile, high-stakes atmosphere, and we got our answer. That kind of reaction doesn't survive long at Old Trafford."

"He's only twenty-one," the Dortmund executive countered quickly. "Schalke have been kicking him around all match. He was provoked."

"He was completely outplayed, which happens to young players, but the truly elite ones don't throw kicks when things go wrong," Trolope replied, smoothing the lapels of his coat. "Sir Alex still has a soft spot for him, so I won't kill the deal entirely. We might still bring him over in the summer. But frankly, he isn't the player I'll be highlighting in my report tonight."

The Dortmund official followed Trolope's gaze toward the center circle, where Mateo was casually chatting with his teammates, completely unfazed by the hostile stadium.

"Silva," Trolope murmured, testing the sound of the name. "Sir Alex sent me here on a specific scouting brief for Kagawa. He never told me to keep tabs on the kid running Schalke's entire game. Even so, I'd be neglecting my job if I didn't push his name across the desk. David Gill will certainly want a file on him, and Sir Alex is going to ask plenty of questions."

Down on the drenched pitch, Mateo had no idea he was being studied by the biggest club in world football. His focus was entirely on Farfán's ankle, the ticking match clock, and the sixth goal his winger had just demanded from him.

Dortmund pulled all ten remaining shirts deep inside their own eighteen-yard box, desperate to avoid any further humiliation over the final fifteen minutes.

Yet with fifteen minutes left in the Ruhr Derby, an enraged home support, and tempers fraying on both sides, the afternoon was far from peaceful.

The decisive strike of the 2014 Champions League final arrived in the 114th minute, born out of an impossible flash of body balance that no exhausted center-back on earth could have anticipated.

Sergio Busquets controlled the ball near the center circle. The Catalan pivot was one of the few men in yellow-and-red who seemed completely immune to the frantic tempo, continuing to do what he had spent his entire career mastering: anchoring the backline, distributing clean ground passes, and protecting the geometry of the side while everyone else stumbled through cramps.

He scanned the pitch and immediately locked onto Lorenzo's run.

Lorenzo had dropped into the gap between Bayern's midfield line and their center-backs, the exact pocket Philipp Lahm had patrolled with surgical precision for most of the opening ninety minutes. But the Bayern captain was physically spent now, his recovery steps half a yard slower, leaving that central corridor wide open for the first time all night.

Busquets fired a crisp, punchy pass straight into Lorenzo's feet twenty-two yards out.

Jérôme Boateng closed in instantly, throwing himself into one final, desperate defensive stand after an extraordinary individual performance. He committed his momentum to Lorenzo's right side, fully expecting the young forward to roll his hips and attack the goal along his stronger shooting angle.

Lorenzo gave him the exact bait he wanted to see.

He dropped his right shoulder, shifted his center of gravity, and pushed the ball a couple of inches wide as if preparing to drive directly into the box. Boateng bought the feint with everything he had, lunging his entire frame outward to block what looked like a certain cut inside.

In an electric, fluid motion that completely defied the fatigue of extra time, Lorenzo dragged the ball back with the sole of his right boot, scooped it behind his standing leg, and spun cleanly to the left. Boateng was left completely stranded. His studs skated across the wet grass as his momentum dragged him in the wrong direction, his knees tangled, and he stumbled heavily onto the turf.

That single hesitation opened a clear yard of daylight right on the arc of the D.

There was no time to reset his posture or take another settling touch. Dante was already flying across to cover the space with a desperate slide, while Manuel Neuer was rapidly closing down the angle. Lorenzo took the strike mid-spin, catching the ball on the half-turn with the outside of his laces, snapping his foot through the leather with practically zero backlift.

It was an exquisite blend of pure technique, flawless spatial awareness, and the freakish physical freshness preserved by weeks of elite physiological conditioning. Where any other striker's tired legs would have produced a scuffed, fluttering shot, Lorenzo's muscles had the explosive torque to drive the strike cleanly.

The ball screamed toward the bottom left corner, skidding furiously off the slick Lisbon grass.

Neuer launched himself across the goalmouth at full stretch. The greatest goalkeeper in world football, who had already pulled off three impossible stops tonight, threw his huge frame into the air one last time to save the season.

His fingertips grazed the leather.

The touch was simply too light.

The ball skipped past his glove, smashed into the side netting, and rattled inside the goal, triggering an earth-shaking detonation of noise from thirty thousand traveling Barcelona supporters.

Bayern Munich 3, Barcelona 4.

For two full seconds, Lorenzo simply stood frozen in his tracks.

He didn't sprint toward the bench, nor did he slide onto his knees. He stayed planted at the edge of the box, watching the ball rest quietly in the back of the net as if double-checking that reality had actually caught up to his dreams. Then the wall of sound hit him, the weight of sixty-five thousand roaring voices crashing down from the stands, and the blue-and-red shirts flooded over him.

Neymar arrived first at a dead sprint, screaming at the top of his lungs as he leaped straight onto Lorenzo's shoulders. Messi arrived half a second later, wrapping his arms around both of them with wide, wild eyes, followed closely by Iniesta, Pedro, Alba, and Dani Alves. Piqué and Busquets threw their heavy frames on top of the pile, and even Víctor Valdés ran eighty yards down the pitch to throw himself into the celebration at the edge of the Bayern box.

"LORENZOOOOO!" Santiago's voice gave out completely, cracking into hoarse, unvarnished emotion over the live broadcast. "He has won it! He has surely won it for Barcelona! Lorenzo Valentini sends Boateng to the ground with a sensational turn and slips it past Manuel Neuer! Four-three in the hundred and fourteenth minute! An absolute masterpiece in Lisbon!"

Inés was shaking her head in complete disbelief, leaning so close to the commentary desk that her voice distorted slightly. "Look at the balance on that turn, Santiago! In the 114th minute, when every single man on that pitch is running on sheer fumes, he produces the sharpest piece of skill in the entire match! Boateng committed, Lorenzo rolled the ball away, and the finish into the bottom corner was sheer perfection. That right there is the moment that decides the European Cup."

Down at the bottom of the suffocating pile of celebrating players, Lorenzo looked up through the tangle of arms and jerseys, catching his breath as a wide, uncontrollable grin spread across his face.

Six minutes of stoppage time to survive. Six minutes, and the treble was theirs.

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