The morning after the Hertha Berlin match, Mateo woke to the sound of his phone buzzing incessantly on the nightstand. He groaned, reaching for it with one hand while rubbing the sleep from his eyes with the other.
The screen was flooded with notifications messages, social media mentions, news alerts. All of them about him, about the twenty minutes that had changed everything.
Across the room, Lukas was already awake, sitting at his desk with a bowl of cereal and his laptop open. He glanced over at Mateo with a knowing grin. "Good morning, superstar. Sleep well?"
Mateo signed back groggily. "What time is it?"
"Seven-thirty. And you, my friend, are trending on Twitter. Again." Lukas turned his laptop around to show Mateo the screen. The hashtag #AlvarezIsBack was trending in Germany, with thousands of tweets praising his performance, analyzing his passes, and celebrating his return.
