The week between the bittersweet victory over Hamburg and the final, decisive match against Hertha Berlin was one of the most surreal of Mateo's life. The city of Dortmund was a pressure cooker of anxiety and anticipation.
The media was in a frenzy, dissecting every possible scenario, analyzing every tactical nuance, hyping the winner-take-all showdown for the Bundesliga title. And in the midst of it all, Mateo Alvarez, the sixteen-year-old prodigy who held the hopes of a city on his shoulders, had to study for his physics final.
It was a bizarre, almost comical, juxtaposition. One moment, he would be in a tactical meeting with Klopp and the first team, discussing how to break down Hertha's defensive block, how to exploit their weaknesses, how to win the most important match of their lives.
The next, he would be in his dorm room with Lukas, surrounded by textbooks and notebooks, trying to wrap his head around the complexities of quantum mechanics and special relativity.
