Chapter 67: The Rainbow
Farfán played it to Mateo and kept running.
He was carrying the energy of the counter in his legs, the specific momentum of a player who had been waiting for this space and was not going to stop now. His run continued past the point where he'd released the ball, taking him up the right flank and toward Frankfurt's defensive line.
Altıntop had tracked the pass. He was already moving to cut the return ball - positioning himself between Mateo and the corridor back to Farfán, arms slightly out, reading the obvious option.
Mateo pulled the ball back and went himself.
A quick turn, ball shifting to his left foot, and he was moving into Frankfurt's half before Altıntop had reacted to the change in direction. Annan was making a diagonal run on the left. Raúl was central, pulling Russ with him. The space was opening.
Then Kittel arrived - arriving hard from the right side, closing fast, his body angled to force Mateo toward the congested centre.
Mateo played it to Pliatsikas before the press completed.
One touch, right foot, angled away from Kittel's approach, finding Pliatsikas in space on the right. Bypassed Kittel in the same motion, turning through the space Kittel's run had left, continuing his own forward movement.
Kittel turned to follow.
Pliatsikas received, drove at Zavilas - head up, assessing. He had options: forward to Raúl, back to Mateo, carry it himself. He chose to carry, one sharp touch past Zavilas's right side. The movement opened a diagonal to his left.
Kittel had abandoned tracking Mateo and committed to closing Pliatsikas instead. The decision was understandable - Pliatsikas was in a dangerous position, driving toward the box. Kittel had to deal with the immediate threat.
Pliatsikas saw him coming and rolled it back left, outside of the right boot, the ball curving away from Kittel's recovery run, finding Mateo in the inside-left channel.
Mateo had the ball with one defender between him and the goal area.
Russ had tracked Raúl across to the near post, which left the right side of the box underdefended. Fährmann was on his line. Zavilas was behind Mateo, still recovering. Kittel was mid-recovery, ten metres away.
And Farfán was running.
He'd been running since he'd passed the ball to Mateo at the start of the counter - head down, straight line, not looking at where the ball was or what was happening in the midfield. He was just running into the box. The specific kind of run that experienced players made when they trusted that someone else was going to find them.
He'd already passed the last Frankfurt defender.
The overlay lit up.
A red line to the right side of the box, curving - not a straight pass, a ball that needed to travel over Russ's covering position and arrive on the far side of the penalty area. A ball that had to look like a shot to deceive Frankfurt's defensive shape and land like an assist.
Mateo struck it with the outside of his right foot, putting everything behind it.
The contact was heavy, the kind that deformed the ball visibly for a fraction of a second. It flew up over Frankfurt's defensive line on a low arc, carrying the topspin that would bring it down quickly, the curve generated by the outside-of-boot contact bending it toward the right side of the goal.
"Farfán-!"
He shouted, one word, as the ball was in the air.
Farfán had been looking down at the pitch ahead of him, tracking his own run. His head turned at the sound.
The ball hit him on the forehead.
It was not a deliberate header. It was not a carefully timed attack on the ball. It was a man turning his head at the sound of his name and meeting something that was already there.
The contact redirected the ball, the spin off the forehead changing its trajectory sharply, angling it upward and across the face of goal. Fährmann had been moving toward Farfán, reading the incoming ball's original line. The deflection took it over his outstretched hands and under the crossbar.
The ball hit the back of the net.
SWISH!
Fweet—!
4–2. 78th minute.
Fährmann turned and looked at the net for a moment.
Farfán stood in the penalty area with an expression that suggested his mind was still catching up with events. He'd been running. There had been a shout. Something had hit him on the head. The crowd had made a noise. These things had happened in that order and he was still assembling them into a coherent sequence.
Raúl was the first to reach him, arriving at speed, getting a shoulder into Farfán's ribs in the specific embrace of someone who had scored enough goals to know what a debut goal felt like to the person who had scored it.
"Farfán! You're incredible!"
Farfán looked at him. "Did I just score?"
"Yes, you scored."
Farfán's face did something complicated. He'd been at two clubs as a professional. He'd scored in training, in cup matches, in league games at lower levels. He'd never scored a Bundesliga goal. For a player who had come to Schalke 04 as a fringe signing and spent most of his time on the bench or at right-back, this moment had felt theoretical for a long time.
It was no longer theoretical.
Annan arrived and piled on. Then Pliatsikas. Then Mateo, who got there last because he'd been standing still watching the net to confirm the ball had actually crossed the line.
Raúl caught his eye over Farfán's shoulder.
"How did you know he'd be there?" Raúl said.
"The line showed right," Mateo said.
Raúl looked at him for a moment. "The line."
"I knew where it was going."
Raúl accepted this without pressing it further. After twenty years of football he had learned to accept that some things players couldn't fully explain, the instinct that told a striker which way to move before the ball came, the awareness that developed over thousands of hours until it stopped feeling like thought and started feeling like sense.
He assumed Mateo's version of that thing was unusually developed.
He had no idea how right he was.
On the touchline, Hughes Yves steps up beside him, hands jammed deep into his coat pockets. "Right call on the sub, Boss. Changed the whole energy.
"Magath doesn't answer right away. He just watched Farfán engulfed by a mob of teammates. Beyond them, the stadium scoreboard flashes the new reality: 4 - 2.
Magath finally looks away from the celebration, his face a mask of cold, unbothered calm. "My substitution," he says, his voice flat, leaving no room for debate.
"Brilliant call," Yves repeats, flashing a quick, knowing grin. "Seriously."
Magath turns his head just enough to catch his assistant's eye. "Write it down somewhere."
"Ahead of you," Yves mutters, already tapping his temple. "It's memorised."
Tom Warrick had been quiet for a moment after the goal.
When he spoke, he kept his voice even.
"Farfán - his first Bundesliga goal for Schalke. A deflection off his forehead from Silva's outside-of-boot delivery." He paused. "The pass was struck toward a position on the right side of the penalty area. Farfán was running there with his head down. When he turned. The ball hit him." Another pause. "I genuinely cannot explain from here how Silva knew Farfán would be in that position. Farfán didn't know himself until the shout."
He set his pen down.
[The ball curved. In the air it curved. Like a rainbow.]
[Tom's right - watch the replay. Farfán's head is completely down until the shout. He didn't know the ball was coming until it arrived.]
Stiel Hall, on the opposite touchline, stood with his hands in his pockets and looked at the pitch.
The score was 4–2 with twelve minutes left. His team had pressed for an hour, created good chances, reduced the deficit twice. They'd done the right things. They had still lost.
He thought about what he would say to his players afterward, and decided to be honest with them: they had played well, and a seventeen-year-old had found a way through them regardless.
That was football sometimes.
Plz Drop Some Power Stones.
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