The alarm went off at eight.
Mateo lay still for a mont, which was unusual. Then he rembered: match day. Pre-match training at eight-thirty, warm-up only. Daniel's instructions had been specific, no hard session the morning of a match, he needed them fresh, he needed their legs available. Mateo's body, reset by last night's point spend, felt genuinely fine. But he respected the instruction. He got up and went to wash up.
Ben Kehi was already at the mirror, brushing his teeth.
"I thought you'd be out at five again," he said.
"It's Match day," Mateo said.
"Look at that. You can learn." Ben Kehi rinsed. "Breakfast in ten. Co on fast."
They ate in the canteen - bread, eggs, orange juice. The standard match-morning food. A few other players were already there, eating quietly, the specific focused quiet of people running through the day ahead. Mateo ate without looking at his phone. Ben Kehi read through Magdeburg's lineup on his tablet.
"Rosa Marshall is their captain," Ben Kehi said. "Defensive midfielder. He ended a player's career last season - direct red from behind, fifteen-match ban. They gave him fifteen matches and he was back in January."
"I know, I heard about it" Mateo said.
"His lunges are late. He waits until you're committed to the touch and goes through the standing leg." Ben Kehi turned the tablet to show the clip. "He's been in the German Third Division for five years. He knows like every referee in this division."
Mateo looked at the clip briefly and looked back at his plate.
Ben Kehi waited for a reaction but none ca.
"You're not worried?" Ben Kehi asked. This was not entirely a question.
"No, not much." Mateo said.
Ben Kehi looked at him for a mont. Then he looked at the clip again. Then he put the tablet down.
"Right," he said. "That's Good."
The eight-thirty session was warm-up and shape work. Daniel gathered the squad for twenty minutes of formation drills - positioning patterns, press triggers, set piece organisation and then sent them for a light jog around the pitch periter. He didn't raise his voice. The energy before a ho match had a different texture than a training session, and experienced coaches understood that the morning of a match was for confirmation and calibration, not correction.
In the tactical session he ca back to Magdeburg specifically.
"Their defensive midfielder is physical and experienced," he said. "He'll make contact early, testing what you'll put up with. Don't take the bait. If you get fouled, get up. If it's bad, the referee deals with it. Your job is to make the next pass." He looked around the group. "This is the Third Division. These are adults. You're going to get hit. Your only options are to either stay down or get up and get on with it."
He looked at Mateo when he said this, briefly, in the way of a coach checking whether a young player is hearing the ssage or rehearsing their own anxiety.
Mateo's expression was the sa as it always was: attending, processing, ready to be finished with the briefing and on with the actual work.
Daniel moved on.
The team arrived at the Garden Stadium at one-thirty.
Players went to the changing rooms, organised their kit. The kit man moved through the room with the quiet efficiency of soone who had done this thousands of tis. Studs on the boots. Numbers on the backs of shirts. Everything in its place before the players needed to think about it.
In the corridor, waiting for the signal to enter the tunnel, the Magdeburg squad was already assembled.
They were older than Schalke's group, most of them - mid-to-late twenties, a few into their thirties. They had the particular physical compactness of players shaped by years of German Third Division football, which rewarded durability over elegance. Several had the build of n who had been competing at contact sports their entire adult lives.
Their captain stood at the front of the line.
Rosa Marshall was thirty-one, one tre ninety, with the kind of neck that suggested he'd done significant gym work in the service of soone's tactical plan. His forearms were heavily tattooed. He stood the way big midfielders stood - relaxed but occupying space, the implicit physical assertion of soone comfortable with the size advantage they carried.
He looked along the Schalke line until he found the player he was interested in. Then he held the look.
Ben Kehi, standing beside Mateo, felt it before he'd identified the source. He tracked the direction and found Marshall's eyes and imdiately looked away - not dramatically, just in the way of soone who had correctly assessed what they were dealing with and saw no point in the confrontation.
Mateo looked.
Marshall's eyes were already on him - not aggressive exactly, more appraising. The look of a man who had done this many tis and was running his standard opening calculation: how does this one respond to being looked at? Does the body language change? Does the stance open slightly, the shoulders roll forward, the eyes drop? Or does it hold?
It held.
Mateo looked at Rosa Marshall with the sa expression he used for tactical briefings and training assessnts and difficult passes in tight spaces: attending, neutral, not particularly moved.
Marshall held it for another two seconds. Then he turned his head and looked forward.
Hardy Hant, behind Mateo's right shoulder, leaned forward slightly and said quietly: "Be careful of that one. He's their DM."
"I know," Mateo said.
They ca out of the tunnel to sound.
More of it than last ti. The lower tier of the Garden Stadium was noticeably fuller than two weeks ago - not full, not anything close to full, but the difference was visible. Perhaps two thousand people, spread across a section of the east stand that had been near-empty for the Rostock match. Schalke scarves and blue shirts mixed with the plain clothes of people who had co because the word had gotten around, who wanted to see for themselves what the local papers and the online forums had been describing.
In the press area, behind the east stand, Tom Warrick put on his headset and watched the teams line up.
"Good afternoon." He found the register naturally - the smooth, authoritative warmth of soone who had done this many tis already. "Welco to the Garden Stadium in Gelsenkirchen for the second round of the German Third Division. I'm Tom Warrick, and today Schalke 04's youth side face Magdeburg - a team with a reputation in this division that has nothing to do with technical quality and everything to do with physical intensity."
In the broadcast window, the viewer count was climbing.
[He's there - dark hair. I can see him from here. Starting XI.]
[Magdeburg are going to try to kick him off the pitch.]
[Their DMF is Rosa Marshall - the one who broke the Dortmund kid's leg.]
[If Silva survives the first twenty minutes physically he'll run them.]
Tom continued: "The question today is not whether Schalke's midfield, anchored by their seventeen-year-old Brazilian starter, can create - we saw in the first match what that looks like. The question today is whether a physically raw teenager can produce that quality against a team that has made a tactical philosophy of eliminating technically gifted players through physical attrition."
He paused to let the viewers read the implied stakes.
"We'll find out shortly."
In the upper tier of the east stand, slightly removed from the main Schalke fan cluster, a man in a short-sleeved shirt was sitting alone.
He was perhaps forty-five, unremarkable in appearance - dium height, the kind of face that belonged in a crowd without drawing attention to itself. He had a notebook open on his knee and a pen in his right hand. He was not using them yet. He was watching the warm-up with the concentrated stillness of soone whose job was to watch.
On the seat beside him, a bag. Dark red. The club crest on the side panel - a devil, white on red, stitched cleanly.
His eyes followed the Schalke squad as they ran their final pre-match patterns. Found number Eleven. Stayed there.
The referee walked to the centre spot.
Both captains moved forward.
The match was about to begin.
Plz Drop So Power Stones.
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