April arrived and Dortmund remembered what pressure felt like when it came from every direction simultaneously.
The Champions League quarterfinal first leg was three weeks away. Eight Bundesliga matches remained. Third place was secure but second was possible and second meant something — not the title, Bayern had made the title impossible, but second meant finishing above Leipzig and Leverkusen and arriving at next season with the momentum of a club that had rediscovered what it meant to compete at the highest level.
Schmidt managed it all with the calm of a man who had decided that the only response to complexity was simplicity. One match at a time. One session at a time. The table was a consequence not a destination and the Champions League would arrive when it arrived.
Richard had started doing his own version of this without realizing it.
Tuesday was a rest day.
He slept until eight, made coffee, stood at the kitchen window. The April morning was different to the February and March mornings — warmer, the light arriving earlier and staying longer, the garden along the back fence showing proper green now rather than the suggestion of it.
He had started eating breakfast outside on the mornings when the weather allowed. A small thing. He had a table and two chairs in the garden that Dortmund's facilities team maintained and he had walked past them for three months without using them and one morning in late March he had simply taken his coffee outside and sat in the thin early warmth and felt something shift slightly in his relationship with the place.
This Tuesday he was outside with his coffee and his phone when Ella appeared over the fence with the energy of someone who had been awake for hours.
"I need your opinion on something," she said, without preamble.
"Good morning Ella."
"Good morning. Opinion."
He looked up. "On what?"
She held up her phone. A photograph of two sofas — one grey, one dark green. "For my living room. I've been staring at this for forty minutes and I genuinely cannot decide."
Richard looked at the photograph seriously for a moment. "Green," he said.
Ella stared at him. "Just like that? No hesitation?"
"The grey will show everything. The green has character."
Ella looked at the photograph again. Then at Richard. "You have very decisive sofa opinions for a footballer."
"I bought a house in January," Richard said. "I have opinions about everything now."
Ella laughed, disappeared back over the fence, and reappeared thirty seconds later with her own coffee, leaning on the fence post with the ease of someone who had decided the fence was a perfectly acceptable place to have a conversation.
"Big match soon," she said.
"Few weeks."
"Krause has already started preparing." She smiled. "He rearranged his living room so the television has better light. He told me it was for practical reasons."
Richard smiled at his coffee.
"How is he?" he asked.
"Good. He had his checkup last week — I drove him, he pretended he didn't need the company and then talked for the entire journey." She paused. "He's proud of you. He doesn't say it in those words but he says it in every other word."
Richard nodded slowly.
"Tell him I'll come for coffee this week," he said.
"Tell him yourself," Ella said. "He'd prefer that."
She finished her coffee, gave him a wave, and went back inside.
Richard sat in the garden for a little while longer.
The morning was quiet and warm and completely ordinary.
He stayed in it as long as he could.
Wednesday was Eintracht Frankfurt away.
A Bundesliga match with the specific weight of April fixtures — not glamorous, not the kind of game that generated continental attention, but three points that the table required and that Schmidt treated with identical seriousness to every other three points.
Frankfurt were organized and physical and had beaten stronger sides at home this season. Their pressing system was designed to force mistakes in the build-up and they executed it with the discipline of a well-coached team that knew exactly what it was doing.
Dortmund handled it.
Not easily — Frankfurt pressed hard for the first twenty minutes and won two early free kicks from Dortmund errors that should have been avoided. But the shape held and the combinations began to click and on twenty-four minutes Richard dropped into the pocket between Frankfurt's lines, received from Can, turned sharply away from the press and played Guirassy through with a pass that split the defensive line so cleanly that the two Frankfurt center backs had a brief, visible moment of confusion about whose responsibility it was.
Guirassy's finish was composed. Low. Far corner.
One-nil.
Richard added a second on fifty-one minutes himself — arriving late into the box from deep, the run timed to Adeyemi's cross, a first-time finish that went in off the inside of the post with the slight fortune that goals sometimes required and never apologized for.
Two-nil.
Frankfurt pulled one back on seventy minutes through a set piece that Dortmund defended poorly — a lapse Schmidt addressed immediately from the touchline and would address again more thoroughly on Thursday morning.
Final score: 2-1.
Three points.
Third place holding. Second now two points away with seven matches remaining.
In the away dressing room Schmidt said: "The defensive set piece cost us unnecessary tension. We address it tomorrow." He looked around the room. "Otherwise — good. Three points. Keep going."
Thursday's session was the set piece correction and then an extended tactical preparation beginning the first phase of Bayern analysis. Schmidt had divided the preparation window into phases — understanding Bayern's shape first, then their pressing triggers, then their specific vulnerabilities, building the picture gradually rather than overwhelming the squad with everything at once.
The first session was observational. Forty minutes of film. Bayern's build-up patterns, their fullback positioning, the specific movement of their striker when receiving with his back to goal.
Richard sat in the film session with his notebook and wrote three things.
Then he closed it because three things were enough for the first session and more would become noise.
After the session Jobe fell into step beside him in the corridor.
"What did you see?" Jobe asked.
"Their left side," Richard said. "When the fullback pushes high their center back covers wide. It creates space centrally that their eight is supposed to fill but doesn't always reach in time."
Jobe nodded slowly. "I saw the same thing."
They walked in comfortable silence for a moment.
"Have you played at the Allianz?" Richard asked.
"No," Jobe said. "You?"
"No."
"Different to the Bernabéu apparently," Jobe said. "More enclosed. The noise stays inside rather than going up." He paused. "Bayern fans are not quiet."
"Neither are ours," Richard said.
Jobe smiled. "No. They're not."
Friday evening Richard went to Krause's for coffee as promised.
The old man opened the door before he knocked — again — and led him through to the kitchen where the coffee was already made and two cups were already set out, which meant Krause had been expecting him at this specific time and had prepared accordingly without mentioning it.
They sat at the kitchen table.
Krause's living room was visible through the open door — the television repositioned, Richard noticed, at a slightly different angle. He said nothing about it.
They talked about football the way they always talked about football — historically, comparatively, with the specific pleasure of two people who loved the game at different distances but with equal depth. Krause talked about the European nights he had attended over four decades. The ones that had broken his heart. The ones that hadn't.
"1997," he said. "We reached the final. I was there. Paris." He looked at his coffee. "The noise in the stadium when we scored — I felt it in my chest for a week afterward."
Richard listened properly.
"Bayern," Krause said eventually.
"Bayern," Richard agreed.
The old man was quiet for a moment. "They are very good," he said. "I will not pretend otherwise. They have been very good for a long time." He looked up. "But so were Madrid."
Richard nodded.
They sat with that for a moment.
"The scarf," Krause said. "You have it?"
"On the kitchen table," Richard said. "I see it every morning."
Krause nodded once. The nod of someone who had needed to know that and now knew it.
They finished their coffee.
Richard thanked him and stood to leave.
At the door Krause said, without turning around: "Second place is possible. Seven matches." A pause. "Don't let Bayern distract from it."
Richard stood in the doorway. "Schmidt says the same thing."
"Schmidt is correct," Krause said simply.
Richard smiled and went home.
Saturday was Bayer Leverkusen at home.
A match with direct table implications — Leverkusen in fourth, three points behind Dortmund, a win for them closing the gap and reigniting the race for the European places.
The match was the best Dortmund had played in the league all season.
The system that Schmidt had been building around Richard was fully visible now — not as a novelty, not as something that required explanation, but as a mature, functioning structure that the players executed with the ease of complete familiarity. Guirassy's movement creating the spaces. The width disciplined and consistent. Richard operating in the half-spaces with the freedom of a player whose teammates had stopped needing to think about where he was going and had started simply trusting he would be there.
He was there on twelve minutes — arriving late into the box from the right as Brandt's cross dropped, finishing first time on the volley, low and precise.
He was there on thirty-three minutes — dropping deep to receive, turning away from Leverkusen's press, driving forward and playing Adeyemi through with a pass that split the defensive line and produced a second goal that the stadium received with the roar of a crowd that had seen the move before and still couldn't believe how cleanly it worked.
Leverkusen pulled one back early in the second half — a good goal, well worked, the reminder that fourth-place clubs in the Bundesliga were not obstacles but opponents. Schmidt made two adjustments immediately and Dortmund absorbed the pressure professionally.
The third goal came on seventy-eight minutes. Guirassy heading in a Lukas cross with the authority of a striker who had been waiting patiently for exactly that delivery.
Three-one.
In the dressing room afterward the mood was the best it had been all season. Not loud — controlled, warm, the specific satisfaction of a performance that had expressed exactly what the team had become.
Schmidt said: "Second place is one point away. Six matches remaining." He paused. "And the Allianz Arena in ten days."
Both things were true.
Both things required everything.
That evening Chidi drove home through a city that was fully alive with April warmth — the first real warmth of the year, the kind that brought people outside and onto terraces and into parks and produced the specific energy of a population that had been waiting for this temperature since October.
"Amara sent you something," Chidi said.
Richard looked at him. "How do you know that?"
"Your phone buzzed three times while you were in the shower and you left it on the kitchen counter and I didn't read it I just saw her name."
"You just saw her name."
"The preview was visible," Chidi said with dignity. "I wasn't reading. I was observing."
Richard picked up his phone.
A message from Amara sent at eight-fifteen.
Watched the match. The third goal was almost unfair. Also — the quarterly financial review documents are ready when you have time. No rush, this week or next. A pause in the message thread. Then, four minutes later: Also the Leverkusen left back had no idea what was happening to him all night. Just an observation.
Richard read it twice.
Typed back: I'll look at the documents Monday. And the left back was trying his best.
Her reply: His best wasn't enough. Neither was his positioning. Anyway. Monday for the documents.
Then: Good match, Richard.
He put the phone in his pocket.
Chidi was watching the road with the expression of someone exercising enormous restraint.
"Not a word," Richard said.
"I'm driving," Chidi said peacefully.
The city moved past the windows, warm and yellow and alive, all the way home.