The Allianz Arena was ten days away.
Richard knew this the way he knew everything important — not as a countdown but as a presence, a weight that existed in the background of every training session and every meal and every quiet moment in the house without demanding attention but never fully leaving.
He had learned to work alongside that presence rather than against it.
Monday's session was the second Bayern film phase.
Schmidt had moved from observation to specifics — Bayern's press triggers, where they committed bodies forward and where they left space in behind, the moments in their defensive shape where the structure thinned if Dortmund moved the ball quickly enough.
Richard sat with his notebook. Wrote four things. Closed it.
After the session the analysis team sent the squad a statistical breakdown of Bayern's season — a document Richard read properly that evening at the kitchen table with his dinner, the numbers telling a story the film had already suggested.
Bayern's fullbacks averaged the highest attacking distance of any fullbacks in the Bundesliga. Which meant when they pushed forward the space in behind them was real and consistent and available to a team quick enough to find it before it closed.
He wrote one more thing in his notebook.
Then he called Lukas.
"The fullback space," Richard said.
"I've been thinking about it since Friday," Lukas said.
"We need to talk to Schmidt."
"He already knows," Lukas said. "Thursday's session. Watch."
Richard closed his notebook.
"How's your knee?" he asked. Lukas had taken a knock in the Leverkusen match — nothing serious, the medical team had cleared him, but Richard had noticed him favouring it slightly in Monday's session.
"Fine," Lukas said. "Managed."
"Tell me if it changes."
A pause. "Yes, mother," Lukas said.
Richard laughed and hung up.
Tuesday he went to the bakery on Märkische Strasse.
The woman behind the counter — she had told him her name was Helga in February and he had not forgotten — looked up when he came in with the expression she always used for him now, somewhere between warmth and the specific satisfaction of someone whose prediction had proven correct.
"The Bayern match," she said.
"Ten days," Richard said.
She put his usual order in the bag without him asking — two rolls, one pastry, the orange juice — and set it on the counter. "My husband says you will score."
"What do you say?" Richard asked.
She looked at him over the counter with the directness of a woman who had been making bread since five in the morning and had no time for anything less than honesty.
"I say you will score twice," she said.
Richard paid and left.
Wednesday was a Bundesliga match. Mainz at home.
A game that existed in the table as a necessity — five matches remaining, second place now level on points with Dortmund after Leipzig's win the previous weekend, every point carrying the weight of two competitions simultaneously.
Schmidt named the strongest available side. The message was clear: the league did not pause for Europe.
The match was straightforward in the way that home matches against mid-table opposition were sometimes straightforward — not easy, Mainz were organized and made Dortmund work for everything, but the quality differential expressed itself gradually and inevitably.
Brandt opened the scoring on twenty-two minutes — a free kick delivered with the precise bend that had made him one of the best dead-ball specialists in the league, curling over the wall and inside the far post with Mainz's goalkeeper a half-step wrong.
Richard doubled it on forty-one minutes. A combination with Guirassy that had become almost automatic — Guirassy holding, laying off, Richard arriving late from deep and finishing first time across the goalkeeper. The seventeenth goal of his season across all competitions. The eleventh in the Bundesliga.
He was aware, without making it the point, that Guirassy led the Bundesliga scoring charts with twenty-three goals — twelve ahead of him. The assist chart was closer. Brandt sat top with sixteen. Richard had thirteen. Three behind with five matches remaining.
Not a chase. Just a number he carried the way footballers carried such numbers — present but not prioritized.
Guirassy added a third on sixty-seven minutes, his twenty-fourth of the season, converting a penalty with the calm of a man completing a routine task. The stadium acknowledged it warmly — a striker in the form of his life, largely because the system around him had been redesigned to make his job precisely what he was best at.
Three-nil. Three points.
Second place back in Dortmund's hands on goal difference.
In the dressing room afterward Schmidt was brief. "Good. Clean. The league is in our hands." He paused. "Bayern in eight days. Thursday we begin the final preparation phase."
He left.
Can looked at Kobel.
Kobel looked at the ceiling.
"Eight days," Can said.
Thursday's preparation session was the most detailed of the build-up.
Schmidt introduced the specific shape he wanted for the first leg — a variation that Richard had been feeling the edges of for two weeks but now saw fully for the first time, laid out on the tactics board with the clean logic of something that had been thought through completely.
The fullback space was central to it.
When Bayern's fullbacks pushed high — which they did consistently, which was both their greatest attacking strength and their structural vulnerability — Dortmund's wide players would hold their width rather than tuck in. This kept Bayern's fullbacks from recovering centrally. Which opened the channel in behind for Richard to arrive into on the diagonal.
The movement required precise timing. Too early and the offside trap caught it. Too late and the space had closed.
Schmidt ran it twelve times in the tactical phase.
On the third attempt Richard arrived too early. Schmidt stopped it.
"Again."
On the seventh attempt the timing was exact — Richard arriving into the channel at the precise moment the pass was played, the space open, the angle to goal clear.
Schmidt said nothing.
Which meant correct.
On the twelfth attempt it happened at match speed without hesitation.
Schmidt blew the whistle. "Good. That is enough for today."
Walking off the pitch Lukas appeared alongside Richard.
"He ran it twelve times," Lukas said.
"I know," Richard said.
"He ran the Bochum combination six times before the first match. He ran the Madrid shape eight times before the second leg."
Richard looked at him.
"Twelve times means he really wants this one," Lukas said.
Friday was lighter — recovery, technical work, nothing taxing. The kind of session that existed to keep the body sharp without asking it for anything it would need to preserve for Tuesday.
Richard finished early and drove — he had passed his test in March, quietly, with Lukas in the passenger seat providing German translations and Chidi waiting in the car park outside — to the supermarket two streets from the house.
It was the kind of errand that had become normal without him noticing. Shopping list on his phone, the specific brands he had learned to look for, the particular bread from the second shelf that was better than the one at eye level. He moved through the supermarket with the ease of someone who lived here, which he did, which still occasionally surprised him.
At the checkout the woman ahead of him in the queue turned around while her items were being scanned and looked at him with the brief recognition of someone placing a face they knew from a screen.
"You're the footballer," she said. In German, which he now understood well enough to follow.
"Yes," he said. In German, which he now spoke well enough to use.
She nodded, satisfied. "My son has your name on his shirt." She said it simply, as information rather than as a thing requiring a response.
"Tell him thank you," Richard said.
She paid for her shopping and left.
Richard put his items on the belt and thought about a boy somewhere in Dortmund wearing his name on his back and felt the weight of it — not heavily, not anxiously, just honestly, the weight of something real.
He drove home.
Made dinner.
Sat at the kitchen table with his tactical notebook and the Bayern analysis documents and worked until ten.
Then he looked at his phone.
A message from Amara sent at nine-forty-seven.
The Adidas contract final draft came through from Evan. I've reviewed it. Everything we asked for is in there. When you're ready to sign just let me know.
He typed back: I'll read it this weekend.
Her reply was immediate for that time of night.
Take your time. It's not going anywhere. A pause. Then: Neither is Bayern apparently. Good luck Tuesday.
He read it twice.
Set the phone down.
Picked up the tactical notebook.
Eight days had become seven.
The Allianz Arena was getting closer.
And somewhere in the city, in a living room with a repositioned television, an old man in a Dortmund scarf was already waiting.