The draw for the Champions League final opponent had been made while Dortmund were still in the air from London.
Barcelona had beaten PSG.
Two legs, three-two on aggregate, Yamal producing a performance in the second leg at the Camp Nou that the Spanish press described as the match of the season and the French press described as a robbery and the neutral press described as the kind of football that made the competition worth watching.
Richard found out on his phone when the plane landed.
Sat with it for a moment.
Barcelona.
Yamal.
The Camp Nou.
The two seventeen year olds that the football world had been comparing since January — in graphics and podcasts and broadcast debates and Tuttosport panels — were now going to be on the same pitch in a Champions League final in three weeks.
He put his phone away.
Looked out the window as the plane taxied.
Said nothing.
Jobe found him in the baggage area.
"You saw it," Jobe said.
"Yes."
"Barcelona."
"Yes."
"Yamal," Jobe said.
Richard picked up his bag. "Yamal," he confirmed.
They walked toward the exit.
"The whole world wanted this fixture," Jobe said. "Since January. Every broadcast, every comparison graphic, every — "
"I know," Richard said.
Jobe looked at him. "How do you feel about it?"
Richard considered the question honestly.
"Like it's a football match," he said. "Against a very good team."
Jobe studied him. "That's it?"
"That's it," Richard said.
Jobe was quiet for a moment.
"You're lying," he said. Not accusatorially. Just factually.
Richard walked.
"A little," he said.
The city received them the way Dortmund had learned to receive its team after important results — warmly, certainly, without the explosive release of the match nights but with the accumulated warmth of a place that had been following something across an entire season and understood where it now stood.
Chidi was outside the terminal.
He looked at Richard when he came through the doors and Richard looked back and neither of them said anything immediately.
Then Chidi said: "Barcelona."
"Barcelona," Richard said.
Chidi opened the car. They got in.
He drove for ten minutes in silence.
Then: "Yamal."
"Yes."
"Two seventeen year olds," Chidi said. "Champions League final. Munich."
"Yes."
"The whole world — "
"I know, Chidi."
Chidi drove.
Then quietly, carefully, without the usual layer of humor he put over the things that mattered most: "How are you actually feeling? Not for the press. Not for anyone. Just me."
Richard looked out the window.
The city moving past. Yellow and black. Warm May evening. A banner on a building they passed — FINALE in large letters, printed overnight, already up.
"Complicated," Richard said.
Chidi nodded.
Didn't push.
Drove him home.
The house was exactly as he had left it two days ago.
The succulent on the windowsill. The Miles Davis sleeve on the counter. The shelf in the living room — fifteen awards, the empty wall around them.
He stood in front of the shelf for a long time.
Barcelona.
The final.
The Allianz Arena — the stadium where he had scored twice in the quarterfinal, where Kane had hit the post, where Kobel had been enormous and Can had marked Musiala for ninety minutes and the draw had felt like a result they had earned rather than survived.
Now it was the venue for a Champions League final against a team that contained, in its forward line, a seventeen year old playing the best football of any teenager in Europe this season.
The comparison had been theoretical until tonight.
In three weeks it would be answered on a pitch.
He picked up his tactical notebook.
Opened it to a fresh page.
Wrote one word at the top.
Barcelona.
Then closed it.
Not yet. Rest first.
He went to bed.
Rome — Tuttosport Offices
Thursday Night
The editor was still in the office when the draw result came through.
He looked at it on his screen for a long moment.
Then sent a single message to the Golden Boy panel group:
Dortmund vs Barcelona. Blake vs Yamal. Champions League final.
The award will be decided in Munich.
Three replies came within a minute.
All three said the same thing.
Yes.
Barcelona — A Residential Area
Thursday Night
Lamine Yamal was playing video games.
His phone buzzed on the table beside him. He picked it up. Read the draw result.
Set it back down.
Kept playing.
After a minute his friend — sitting beside him on the couch, controller in hand — said: "You saw it."
"Yes," Yamal said.
"Blake," his friend said.
"Yes."
"They're saying it's the biggest final since — "
"I know what they're saying," Yamal said.
He played for another minute.
Then set his controller down.
Picked up his phone.
Searched Richard Blake.
Watched the turn on Ødegaard.
Watched the knee celebration against Real Madrid.
Watched the lofted pass over Partey and White that Saka had said he didn't think existed.
Set his phone down.
Picked up the controller.
"Good player," he said simply.
His friend looked at him. "Good player? He's seventeen and he's got ten Champions League — "
"I know what he's got," Yamal said. "He's a good player." He paused. "So am I."
He kept playing.
London — Mikel Arteta's Home
Thursday Night
He was awake at midnight.
Not from distress — from the specific restlessness of a manager whose season had ended and whose mind had not received the information yet. He sat at the kitchen table with water and his laptop and watched the draw announcement clip.
Barcelona vs Dortmund.
He thought about Dortmund's shape. About the second leg tonight — the things Arsenal had done that had not been enough and the things Dortmund had done that had been.
Then he thought about Barcelona's shape.
The two systems. The two tens.
He spent forty minutes thinking about it from a neutral analytical position — not preparation, he had no preparation to do anymore, just the mind of a football coach that did not know how to be anything else.
He closed the laptop.
Thought about what he would do if he were Arteta preparing for Dortmund.
Then thought about what he would do if he were Schmidt preparing for Barcelona.
Then thought about what he would do if he were Flick.
He sat with that for a long time.
Made a note.
Not because it was useful.
Because the mind needed somewhere to go.
He went back to bed at two.
Lay in the dark.
Thought about the lofted pass over Partey and White.
I don't think that pass existed.
It existed.
He stared at the ceiling.
Three weeks from now two seventeen year olds were going to play in a Champions League final against each other.
He found himself, despite everything, genuinely wanting to watch it.
Lagos — Akinsanya Street
Friday Morning
Richard's mother called her sister at seven AM.
"You saw it," her sister said immediately.
"Barcelona," his mother said.
"Final," her sister said.
"Yes."
"Yamal," her sister said. "That Spanish boy. They keep comparing them."
"I know," his mother said.
"Who do you think is better?"
Richard's mother was quiet for a moment.
"My son," she said simply.
Her sister laughed. "You're his mother."
"Yes," his mother said. "I am."
She changed the subject.
But after the call she sat in the kitchen on Akinsanya Street with her tea and looked at the wall where the poster had been above the desk and thought about things she was not going to say out loud.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
Or maybe in three weeks.
Depending on how the final went.
Dortmund — Brackel Training Ground
Friday Morning
Schmidt gathered the squad at ten.
He stood at the front of the large meeting room without a tactics board. Without film.
Just the room and the people.
"Barcelona," he said. "Champions League final. Munich. Three weeks." He looked around the room. "Flick's Barcelona are the best team in Europe this season outside of this competition. Yamal. Lewandowski. Pedri. Raphinha. A system built over two years with complete clarity of identity." He paused. "We respect all of it."
He looked at the room.
"We also know what we are. We know what this season has been. What this group has produced." He paused. "Madrid. Bayern. Arsenal. Three of the best clubs in the world. Gone." He let that sit for a moment. "Barcelona are next."
He held the room.
"Rest this weekend. Monday we begin." He looked at Richard briefly. "Everything we have built — this is what it was building toward."
He left.
The room was quiet for a moment.
Then Guirassy — twenty-seven goals, the platform, the invisible architecture — looked at Can.
Can looked at Kobel.
Kobel looked at Jobe.
Jobe looked at Richard.
Richard looked at the door Schmidt had walked through.
Three weeks.
Barcelona.
The final.
He walked to the car park afterward with Lukas.
They walked in silence for a moment.
Then Lukas said: "Yamal."
"Yes," Richard said.
"How much have you watched him?"
"All season," Richard said honestly. "Since January."
Lukas nodded slowly. "And?"
Richard was quiet for a moment.
The honest answer.
"He's the most naturally talented player I've watched since I started watching football properly," Richard said. "His touch. His confidence. The way he accelerates into spaces that shouldn't exist." He paused. "He's genuinely exceptional."
Lukas listened.
"And?" Lukas said again.
Richard looked at him.
"And I'm better," Richard said.
Not loudly. Not for performance. Just the flat honest certainty of someone who had looked at the comparison clearly and arrived at a conclusion they were not going to pretend they hadn't arrived at.
Lukas looked at him for a moment.
Then nodded once.
"Good," he said.
They reached the car.
Chidi was there.
He looked at Richard.
"Ready?" he said.
Richard got in.
"Monday," he said.
"Monday," Chidi agreed.
He drove them home.
That evening Richard sat in the garden.
The May evening warm. The garden green. The city audible in the background — Dortmund processing the final the way it processed everything, with the accumulated certainty of a place that had watched its belief proven so many times this season that the default setting had shifted from hoping to expecting.
He sat with his coffee and his thoughts and the specific quality of three weeks stretching ahead of him — preparation and matches and everything that came after the final, the summer, the decisions, the uncertain future that Evan was managing and Amara was projecting and he had not yet been ready to fully face.
He did not think about Barcelona specifically.
He did not think about Yamal specifically.
He thought about the game.
About what the game asked of him and what he gave it in return. About the relationship between a player and a pitch that had started on a dirt surface in Lagos and had brought him here — to this garden, this city, this final in three weeks.
About the poster above the desk.
About where the road was going.
He did not know.
That was the honest truth.
He did not know where the road was going after Munich. The decision was real and approaching and would require everything from him that the football did not — the honest, clear-eyed navigation of his own future, his own ambitions, the things he wanted from the game beyond what this season had already given.
He would know when he knew.
Krause had said that.
The same certainty as the turn.
He looked at the garden.
Drank his coffee.
Went inside.
Picked up his tactical notebook.
Opened it.
Barcelona.
Began.