Football: Maxed Out The Wrong Stat

The press conference room was not the size it usually was for a Bundesliga away match.

Magath noticed this as soon as he walked in. There were more people. The cameras were more numerous. Several faces he didn't recognise, which meant outlets that didn't normally send reporters to a Schalke away fixture had sent someone tonight. He counted at least three journalists he associated specifically with the Munich press, the kind of reporters who covered clubs they were interested in acquiring players from.

He sat down. Raúl sat beside him.

Normally it would have been the goalscorer, the Man of the Match sitting here. Raúl had scored one goal. Mateo had scored one and assisted three, had been announced Man of the Match over the PA, had held the small trophy on the pitch. He was the obvious choice for this chair.

Magath had made a different choice.

He'd pulled Raúl aside in the tunnel. "For the press conference. You're with me."

Raúl had looked at him. "Mateo should-"

"Yeah I know who should but I'm still telling you." He'd held Raúl's gaze for a moment. "He's seventeen. Let the room wait."

Raúl had nodded. He understood enough about protecting young players from early exposure to accept this without further question. He'd seen what happened to the ones who got famous too fast.

In the changing room, when Magath had announced it, several players had glanced at Mateo, waiting for the reaction. Mateo had looked up from his boots and said: "Fine." His mind was on the Equipment Chest. The press conference was the least interesting thing in the room to him at that moment.

The first question came from the Frankfurt Sports Newspaper.

Standard opener. How did Magath assess the match, the result, the performance? He gave the standard answer — competitive game, both teams created chances, pleased with the result, still work to do.

The second question came from a reporter in the third row that Magath didn't recognise.

"Mr. Magath, your seventeen-year-old midfielder tonight. One goal, three assists against a Bundesliga side. Can you tell us more about him? Where does he come from? How long has he been at the club?"

Magath had been thinking about this moment since Stiel Hall had said the word "Bayern" on the pitch.

He picked up the microphone.

"Mateo Silva — yes." He paused, arranging the words. "Look, I think there's been some misunderstanding about what happened tonight. The boy is seventeen. He's been with our first team for three weeks. He was only playing because Bujerab is injured, if Bujerab were fit, Silva wouldn't have started."

A few keyboards clicked. He kept going.

"His passing is decent. But his defensive work is poor. His physical conditioning needs improvement. His experience at this level is essentially zero, tonight was his first Bundesliga match. One good performance doesn't mean anything. The Bundesliga will find his weaknesses very quickly." He set the microphone down. "He's a prospect. A young prospect who needs time and development. That's all."

The room was quiet for a moment.

Raúl, sitting beside him, looked at the ceiling briefly, which was his version of an expression.

The reporter from the Munich Sports Daily, Magath had registered his press credential when he sat down — raised his hand.

Magath pointed at him.

"Mr. Magath, thank you. I want to make sure I understand correctly." The reporter's tone was careful, journalistic. "You're saying that tonight's performance of one goal and three assists against Frankfurt, a team that came into this match unbeaten was achieved by a player who is still adapting to the Bundesliga, whose defensive work is poor, and who only started because your first choice was injured."

"That's correct."

"So what you're describing is a player who, at below his best and in an unfamiliar environment, produced one of the more complete individual midfield performances of the Bundesliga round." The reporter held his pen still. "If he improves further, if he adapts, as you say he still needs to do, what does that look like?"

The room was very quiet.

Magath stared at the reporter.

He had seen this coming. He had known, somewhere in the back of his mind, that the undersell had a flaw in it, that describing a superlative performance as the product of poor circumstances was not, in fact, the same as describing a mediocre player. The two things were logically incompatible and this reporter had understood that immediately.

He opened his mouth.

Closed it.

"I think," he said carefully, "that all young players need time to-"

"Of course," the reporter said. "But you've just told us this young player performed at this level while still improving. That's the story, isn't it? Not that he was good tonight. That he might be significantly better."

Raúl, beside him, had found something very interesting to look at in the far corner of the room.

Magath pulled the microphone closer and spoke for another ninety seconds — careful, neutral, adding nothing specific. He wrapped it professionally. He thanked the room. He stood.

As he walked out he heard the keyboards already moving, the specific sound of reporters writing the angle they had decided on within thirty seconds of the question being answered.

In the corridor, Raúl fell into step beside him.

"You were protecting him," Raúl said. Not a question.

"I was trying to."

"The reporter understood what you were doing." Raúl paused. "They all did. It definitely didn't work."

"I know it didn't work." Magath kept walking. "I had to try anyway. The contract situation is a problem, if every scout in Europe knows exactly what we have, that five-hundred-thousand clause becomes a deadline, not a number."

Raúl was quiet for a moment. "How fast can you fix it?"

"Fast enough if the club moves tonight. Not fast enough if someone makes an offer tomorrow morning." He pushed through the door to the team area. "Hughes is already on it."

Raúl glanced back toward the press conference room, where the sound of ongoing questions and answers was just audible.

"For what it's worth," Raúl said, "I believe the reporter's version."

Magath stopped walking.

He looked at Raúl.

"So do I," he said. Then he kept moving.

In the changing room, Mateo was sitting in the corner.

His phone had two messages from Ben Kehi, one saying "I watched the whole thing" and one saying simply "I told you." He was reading them with the slight smile of someone receiving exactly the message they'd expected.

Around him his teammates were talking, changing, the noise of a winning away dressing room, the particular warmth of a group that had been through something difficult together and come out on the right side of it. Farfán was beside him, still looking slightly stunned, the expression of a man who would need until the morning to fully process what had happened to him in the seventy-eighth minute.

"How did you know I was there?" Farfán said.

Mateo looked at him.

"I shouted your name," he said.

"Before that. You'd already hit it before you shouted."

Mateo was quiet for a moment.

"I knew where you'd be," he said finally. It was the most accurate thing he could say.

Farfán looked at him for a long moment. Then he leaned back against the wall.

"I'm just going to stop asking," Farfán said.

"Probably for the best," Mateo said.

Outside, Magath was already on his phone.

Plz Drop Some Power Stones.

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