The meeting that would determine Mateo's future at the club was scheduled for a Tuesday morning in May 2013, in the same sterile conference room where his contract complications had begun months earlier.
The morning air in Barcelona carried the scent of spring blossoms from the gardens surrounding the Camp Nou complex.
Unlike the formal, intimidating atmosphere that had characterized their previous encounter two months earlier, this meeting carried the relaxed air of executives who assumed they were merely collecting a signature on terms that desperation had already negotiated.
Sandro Rosell entered the conference room with the unhurried stride of a man who believed the outcome was predetermined, his greeting to Mateo and Don Carlos perfunctory but lacking the calculated coldness that had marked their previous interaction.
