Football: Maxed Out The Wrong Stat

Mateo came back from training at ten past ten.

He'd been at it since five-thirty — longer than usual, not only because the attribute bar required it but because the Twente match had shown him specific defensive weaknesses he wanted to address while the memory of them was precise. The moments where he'd been beaten, where Chadli or Janssen had moved past him in ways that weren't foulable, where his positional reading had been a half-step slow. He'd run the scenarios in drills against the rebound wall, working positioning angles, until his legs had given him the specific information that enough was enough for one session.

He found Carvajal sitting right on the floor next to his dormitory door.

Not leaning comfortably against the wall, but slumped right there on the hard floor, back wedged against the door frame, legs stretched straight out, and a notebook balanced open on his knee. He looked exactly like a guy who had spent maybe three hours sleeping somewhere miserable and had been wide awake since long before Mateo even left.

"You look terrible," Mateo said.

"Thank you," Carvajal muttered. He stood up slowly, moving with the highly cautious care of a man whose lower back was actively protesting the floor. "I've been waiting for about two hours. Your phone's off."

"I'm really sorry."

"I have a ten o'clock meeting with Reinhardt," Carvajal said flatly.

Mateo glanced down at his watch. "It's ten past ten."

"I'm aware of that." Carvajal gestured toward the door. "Can we go inside? I just need five minutes, and then I've got to run."

They stepped inside and sat — Carvajal taking the desk chair with his notebook open, Mateo dropping onto the edge of the bed. Carvajal got straight down to business with total efficiency. He'd been in the game long enough to know the exact difference between what a player actually needed to hear and what was just noise, and he didn't waste time.

"Twelve calls from clubs last night," Carvajal started. "A few serious ones. Bayern are prepared to make a move either in January or at the end of the season, whichever you prefer. There's genuine interest from at least two other top-six clubs in Europe — but I'm waiting for written offers before I give you names. Oh, and Carl from Manchester United called at two in the morning just to confirm that Ferguson's offer is still very much on the table."

"Carl called you?"

"Yes. He said he couldn't reach you directly."

"Right, yeah. My phone was off."

"Yes." Carvajal scribbled a quick note without further comment. "Look, the landscape is exactly what we expected after the Twente match. You put on a show in the Champions League, so the clubs that were already scouting you have kicked things into high gear. None of this changes our baseline strategy, though. Unless you want it to."

Mateo shook his head.

"Good. My main priority this morning is the Reinhardt meeting." Carvajal snapped the notebook shut. "Here's where we stand. He already agreed to the eighty-twenty image rights split last week. The only real sticking point left is the contract length — he wants two years, you don't. The compromise I'm going to pitch him is a two-year deal, but with a tri-party clause."

"You mentioned that before."

"Here's how it works mechanically: any future transfer requires the simultaneous signatures of the club, the player, and the player's representative. All three of us sign, or the deal is dead in the water. This means Schalke can't sell you off to some random club you have no interest in — they can't go behind your back. A two-year commitment suddenly becomes perfectly acceptable because you keep full veto power over where you end up."

Mateo chewed on that for a second. His biggest worry about signing a longer contract had always been the same: that Schalke would eventually sell him to the highest bidder, completely ignoring whether it actually made sense for his development. The tri-party clause completely killed that risk. Even with a two-year commitment, he still held all the cards.

"And if Reinhardt doesn't accept it?"

"Then we just wait it out until the end of the season and you walk away as a free agent," Carvajal said, standing up. "At which point Schalke gets absolutely nothing, and we get everything. Trust me, he'll accept it. He doesn't have any leverage here." He scooped up his jacket from the back of the chair. "Oh, one more thing — the buyout clause. They're going to want to set a new figure. My advice? Let them pick whatever number they want. Whatever they come up with will be their headache to defend, not ours."

"Why?"

"Because if they set it too low, we just ignore it and leave on a free anyway. And if they set it astronomically high—" Carvajal's lips twitched into something close to a smirk — "it hits the headlines and makes Schalke look like they value you at some insane price tag. Which is just a different kind of marketing asset for us."

With that, he slipped out the door.

Reinhardt's office had been rearranged since the last time Mateo had been in it — a different chair configuration, the window blinds at a different angle. Reinhardt himself was behind his desk, in his suit jacket despite it being a Thursday morning, with the dark circles of someone who had also spent the night not sleeping particularly well.

Carvajal had already been in the office for forty minutes by the time Mateo walked in at eleven.

Mateo read the room the second he crossed the threshold. Reinhardt's shoulders were slumped just a fraction lower than usual — the classic tell of a man who had watched a negotiation spiral completely out of his control. Carvajal sat across from him with his notebook already snapped shut. The heavy lifting was clearly done.

"Mateo." Reinhardt stood up, offering a hand. "Glad you could make it."

"Of course," Mateo said, shaking it.

"I think we've landed on something we can all live with." Reinhardt gestured toward an empty chair. "Mr. Carvajal and I have been hammering out the fine print. I'll admit, a two-year deal with a tri-party clause is... unconventional. But given the current circumstances, I'm willing to sign off on it and take it to the board."

"And the image rights?" Mateo asked.

"Eighty to you, twenty to the club for official club commercial activity." He said it with the specific brevity of a man who had fought for a different number and lost. "That's confirmed."

"What about the buyout clause?"

Reinhardt hesitated. He had clearly spent the last twenty-four hours agonizing over this — weighing the fallout from the Twente match, the sudden avalanche of overnight offers, and his grueling morning session with Carvajal. He'd done the math.

"One hundred million euros," Reinhardt said flatly.

Carvajal didn't blink. Mateo's expression didn't change either.

One hundred million was a number designed to be both a shield and a massive statement. It was high enough to scare off any casual suitors, and loud enough that anyone debating Mateo's market value would have to respect it. Back in 2010, that was an astronomical, unrealistic price tag for a seventeen-year-old. It was simply Reinhardt planting a flag in the sand.

"Sounds good," Mateo said.

Reinhardt blinked, looking at him with a hint of surprise. He'd clearly braced himself for pushback, and the total lack of it threw him off balance.

"Right. Good," Reinhardt muttered.

Reviewing the actual paperwork took another forty minutes. Carvajal went over every single line with a fine-tooth comb, while Mateo read through the pages at his usual unhurried, methodical pace before signing the bottom of both copies.

It was a done deal.

By the time Mateo made it back to his dorm, it was just past noon. The club's PR department had already dropped an official statement — Schalke 04 are delighted to announce that Mateo Silva has renewed his contract for a further two years and the exact buyout figure had leaked to the press almost instantly, which was undoubtedly exactly what Reinhardt wanted. The internet was already losing its mind.

Mateo sat down on the edge of his bed and finally switched his phone back on.

Forty-nine missed calls.

He scrolled through the wall of notifications. Most were from random, unrecognized numbers — likely commercial sponsors who had ignored the instruction to go through Carvajal. But thirty-eight of those calls were from Carl.

He tapped Carl's contact and put the phone to his ear.

It didn't even ring out; it went straight to the automated voicemail. The number you have dialed is currently unavailable. Please leave a message after the tone...

Mateo waited for the beep.

"Hey Carl, it's Mateo. I just signed a renewal with Schalke — you've probably seen the headlines by now. Look, I haven't forgotten what you said about reaching out first if things changed. My agent is Carvajal now. When the time is right, we'll talk." He paused for a beat, clearing his throat. "Do me a favor and tell Sir Alex that I read what he said about Scholes and Beckham. I know exactly what kind of player he's looking for. I'm not at that level yet. But I'm working on it."

He hung up, powered the phone right back off, and grabbed his gear for training.

Carl's name sat frozen at the top of his call log, those three brief seconds of voicemail the only real closure he had time for right now.

It would just have to be enough.

Plz Drop Some Power Stones.

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