The morning after the championship dinner, Mateo woke to find himself at the center of a media storm unlike anything he had ever experienced.
His phone, which he had left on silent overnight, was buzzing with an endless stream of notifications. Messages, mentions, tags, articles it was a deluge of digital noise that was both exhilarating and overwhelming.
He sat up in bed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and opened his social media apps. The first thing he saw was a trending hashtag: #MateoMagic. He scrolled through the feed, his eyes widening with each passing post.
There were videos of his goals, slowed down and analyzed from every conceivable angle. There were memes of his celebration, his face frozen in a moment of pure, unadulterated joy. There were fan art tributes, some beautiful, some bizarre, all created with a passion and a love that was truly humbling. The world, it seemed, had fallen in love with the mute boy from Málaga who had conquered Germany.
