Gerard Piqué's luxury mansion was deathly silent, with only the giant wall-mounted TV in the living room emitting a faint blue glow. Shakira had already gone to sleep with the children. Piqué sat alone on the leather sofa, a glass of water on the coffee table with only a single sip taken from it.
His hand subconsciously reached for his pocket, but found it empty. He reached for the coffee table, but it was still empty.
The feeling was like thousands of ants crawling through his veins. Normally, this would be his golden hour for "slaughtering all sides" on Twitter. The Madrid media had just published today's editorial, and Real Madrid's mouthpieces were mocking Barça's injuries on their programs. If it were before, he would have already posted three tweets in a row, accompanied by several laughing-crying emojis, and engaged in a flame war with half of Spain's netizens.
But now, his phone wasn't with him. To be precise, on the night he promised Bartomeu he would go into "seclusion," he had locked that private phone full of social media apps into a safe. What he held in his hand now was an old-fashioned Nokia that could only make and receive calls—a "gift" from Bartomeu.
On the TV screen, Catalonia's TV3 late-night sports program was replaying. The commentator was talking animatedly: "Piqué's recent silence is worrying. At a critical moment when Umtiti is seriously injured and Mascherano is about to leave the team, our fourth captain seems to have disappeared. Is this a form of escapism? Has he already completely focused his mind on his tennis business?"
"Bullshit!" Piqué suddenly sprang up from the sofa and roared at the TV. If he had his phone in hand, he could tweet right now and make this commentator shut up. He wanted to tell the whole world: I'm not escaping! I'm at home studying tactical footage!
But he couldn't do anything. This feeling of frustration was driving him crazy. He was like a lion trapped in a cage, pacing back and forth in the living room. Anger, anxiety, the desire to express himself... all these emotions were blocked in his throat with nowhere to vent.
"Damn you, Bartomeu." Piqué gritted his teeth, staring at the old-fashioned phone, "You're torturing me."
But he didn't go to open the safe. Because he remembered that night in the car, the contempt in the eyes of the man called "Big Bear"— "Don't lose to a mercenary." That look hurt him more than any insult.
"Fine. You want to see a silent Piqué, right?" Piqué turned off the TV, and the room fell into complete darkness. "Then I'll show you how terrifying a Piqué driven mad by suppression can be."
The next morning, at the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper. It was 40 minutes before the first-team's collective training session was set to begin.
When Iñigo Martínez walked into the locker room, he was surprised to find Piqué already changed into his gear and fastening his shin guards. Usually, Piqué would arrive just in the nick of time, and once in the locker room, he'd be laughing and joking with everyone, or showing his teammates his online exploits on his phone.
But today's Piqué was frighteningly quiet. He kept his head down, wrapping bandages round and round, his movements so forceful it looked like he was trying to strangle his own leg.
"Morning, Gerard," Iñigo offered a tentative greeting. Piqué looked up. Iñigo froze for a moment. Those blue eyes were bloodshot and his eye sockets were dark, but it didn't make him look like someone who hadn't woken up; instead, he looked like a predator that hadn't eaten for days.
"Morning," Piqué's voice was hoarse and brief. No jokes, no talk about tennis. He stood up and stomped his feet hard, his cleats making a dull thud on the floor. "Let's go to the pitch. Help me practice some long passes."
On the training ground. Other teammates arrived one after another, and everyone sensed the strange atmosphere. The usual "joker" and "king of pranks" was gone. In his place was a gloomy-faced stranger with fierce eyes.
In Barça's training tradition, the "rondo" during the warm-up phase is usually the most relaxed moment. Players form a circle with two people in the middle trying to intercept the ball while those on the outside pass quickly. This isn't just a warm-up; it's an embodiment of Barça's locker room culture—usually filled with laughter and jeering, accompanied by nutmegs, mistakes, and fancy back-heel passes.
In the past, Piqué was the "noise generator" of this segment. He was always the one leading the jeers, mocking teammates who got nutmegged, and the one who liked to liven up the atmosphere with exaggerated passes.
But today, the atmosphere was eerily strange.
A rondo was underway. Messi, Suárez, Piqué, Busquets, and several substitutes formed a circle. Semedo and Digne were the ones in the middle trying to win the ball.
The ball reached Denis Suárez's feet. Facing pressure, Denis wanted to show off his footwork; instead of choosing the safest sideways pass, he tried to use a fancy rabona to pass the ball to Piqué beside him. The pass was a bit floaty and lacked power. Although Piqué stretched out his leg to stop the ball without losing possession, it was clearly a showy piece of ball handling.
"Ha! Nice!" Denis Suárez smiled and clapped his hands, and several young players around him laughed along, getting ready to cheer.
"Stop!" A thunderous roar suddenly erupted across the training ground.
Everyone's smiles instantly froze on their faces. Piqué stepped on the ball, pinning it to the turf. He didn't pass it out; instead, he stared dead at Denis Suárez.
"What's so funny?" Piqué's voice was Newspaper cold Newspaper a wind from an ice cellar.
Denis was stunned: "Gerard? It's just a warm-up..."
"Warm-up?" Piqué walked toward Denis step by step. He was a head taller than the other man, and the pressure he radiated at this moment made Denis subconsciously take a step back. "That rabona was 0.5 seconds too slow. If the person in the middle wasn't Digne, but Modric or Kroos, this ball would have been intercepted!"
Piqué pointed at the ball under his feet, the veins on his neck bulging: "Where are we? We are at the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper! El Clásico is in half a month! Do you think this is a circus? If you want to perform acrobatics, go to La Rambla!"
The whole field went deathly silent. Even Messi stopped his stretching exercises and looked at Piqué in surprise. In Barça's first-team training, getting angry over a showy move that didn't even lose the ball was simply unheard of. What's more, the person getting angry was Piqué, who usually loved to play around the most.
"Gerard, relax..." Semedo, standing nearby, tried to smooth things over.
"Shut up!" Piqué turned his head sharply, his eyes Newspaper fierce Newspaper a wolf guarding its food. "Nobody is going to coast through this! Iñigo, that basque person, tore his leg up sliding to cover a position, and we're here laughing and playing with rabonas?"
He kicked the ball hard back to Denis Suárez. The ball traveled extremely fast, hitting Denis's shin guard with a loud "thump." "Again! Use the arch of your foot to pass! Fast! Accurate! If anyone dares to play fancy tricks in my zone again, I'll break their leg!"
Denis Suárez was so scared his face turned pale, and he nodded hurriedly: "Yes... yes."
Training continued. But it was no longer that relaxed and pleasant rondo. Every pass became a delivery charged with tension. Piqué was like an overseer; even a touch that strayed slightly too far from the foot would draw a fierce glare from him.
On the sidelines, Valverde watched this scene with his mouth slightly open. He turned to the assistant coach and asked, "Is that really Piqué? Has he been possessed by something?"
In the shadows of the stands, Bartomeu lowered his binoculars, a satisfied curve appearing at the corner of his mouth. "That's withdrawal symptoms, Ernesto," he whispered to Robert Fernández beside him. "When a chatterbox loses his microphone, his desire to express himself transforms into a desire for control. This suffocating desire for control is exactly the quality a defensive leader needs most. Right now, he's even harder to deal with than Puyol."
After training ended, Piqué was called to the Chairman's office.
At this moment, he had just finished showering, and heat was still radiating from his body, but his expression remained gloomy. "Chairman, if you're here to ask about Twitter, I've already deleted it," Piqué said, getting straight to the point in a blunt tone. "If you're here to ask about the Davis Cup, I've already given my secretary full authority. I'm just a football-playing machine now. Are you satisfied?"
"Very satisfied." Bartomeu pointed to two newspapers on the desk—Marca and Newspaper. The front pages were still discussing Barça's "defensive crisis," including no small amount of questioning regarding Piqué's form.
"Look, they're still scolding you," Bartomeu said with a smile. Piqué glanced at the newspapers, his fist instantly tightening, a vein on his neck throbbing: "Those bastards... they have no idea what kind of state I'm in right now."
"Want to refute them?" Bartomeu handed him a pen and a piece of paper. "Come, write it down. Write down all your anger toward these reporters and your disdain for Real Madrid."
Piqué paused for a moment and took the pen. The words he had been holding back for days flooded his mind like a deluge. He wanted to write "Shut your filthy mouths," he wanted to write "I'll show you all who the world's number one center-back is," he wanted to write "Cristiano Ronaldo's Ballon d'Or can't be saved at the Bernabéu."
The tip of the pen touched the paper, carving deep marks in a vent of frustration. But halfway through writing, he suddenly stopped.
He looked up, meeting Bartomeu's deep eyes. "You're playing me, Chairman." Piqué threw down the pen. "You want me to vent it out, so that this energy dissipates. Right?"
The look of appreciation in Bartomeu's eyes grew even stronger. "Gerard, you truly are clever." Bartomeu stood up, crumpled the paper with only a few words written on it into a ball, and threw it into the trash can.
"Anger is fuel. If you write it on paper or post it on Twitter, it burns away. You'll get a momentary thrill, then become empty." "But if you keep it bottled up inside, pressing down on it like a compression spring. One day, two days, ten days..."
Bartomeu walked up to Piqué and poked his chest with a finger: "Wait until December 23rd. When you're standing in the player tunnel at the Bernabéu, when you hear eighty thousand Real Madrid fans booing you. Then you can let this volcano, suppressed for a whole month, erupt entirely."
"At that time, you won't be playing football. You'll be a killer."
Piqué took a deep breath. He felt that the fire of frustration in his chest hadn't gone out; instead, it had turned into a piece of red-hot coal, burning him with pain but also giving him infinite strength.
"I understand," Piqué's voice was low. "I'll hold it in. No matter how much they scold me."
"One more thing." Bartomeu took a USB drive out of a drawer. "This was edited overnight by the tactical analysts. It's about all the movement habits of Cristiano Ronaldo and Benzema in their last ten matches, especially their counter-attacking lines when facing a high press."
"Take it back and watch it. Stop watching Netflix, stop watching the news. Engrave every frame of this into your mind." "Iñigo Martínez has good physical attributes, but he lacks experience. You're the veteran; you have to tell him whether Cristiano Ronaldo will go left or right in the next second."
Piqué took the USB drive and gripped it tightly in his hand: "Leave it to me. I'll study Cristiano Ronaldo until I know him better than his own mother."
December 9th, the day before La Liga Round 15. The whole Barça team headed to Villarreal's Estadio de la Cerámica.
For the pre-match press conference, Valverde brought Piqué along. This caused a stir in the media circle. Piqué's "disappearance" from social media over the past few days had already sparked various speculations, and reporters were rubbing their hands in anticipation, prepared with a belly full of sharp questions.
Flashbulbs flashed frantically. Piqué sat in front of the microphone, expressionless, like a statue.
"Gerrard! I'm a reporter from Newspaper. You've recently disappeared from social media, and there are rumors that it's because the club is dissatisfied with you and forcibly banned your account. Is that true?"
It was a provocative question. The old Piqué would have definitely shot back with, "Your imagination is much higher than the quality of your articles." But today, Piqué only gave the reporter a cold look and leaned into the microphone: "Next question."
The whole room went into an uproar.
"Gerrard! Regarding Umtiti's injury, the outside world believes that the current Barça defense is vulnerable, and your chemistry with new signing Iñigo Martínez is also being questioned. What's your take?"
Piqué remained expressionless: "We are training. We are gelling. Watch the match on Sunday. Next."
"Gerrard! Cristiano Ronaldo just won the Ballon d'Or, and he said he is the greatest of all time..."
"He is an excellent player." Piqué interrupted the reporter, his tone Newspaper flat Newspaper if he were reading an instruction manual. "Congratulations to him. We'll see each other at the Bernabéu. Next."
Throughout the entire press conference, Piqué was extremely concise. No matter how the reporters tried to provoke him with topics of politics, business, or rivals, he was like a cold stone, impervious to everything, without any emotional fluctuations.
Sitting next to him, Valverde rubbed his nose uncomfortably. He had never seen Piqué like this. Meanwhile, below the stage, those Madrid reporters who had originally planned to manufacture a big news story suddenly felt a chill down their spines.
The "Loudmouth Piqué" who loved to talk trash was gone. In his place was a cold-blooded defender who had not only deleted Twitter but also seemed to have deleted all "nonsense" functions. This silence was more intimidating than any trash talk.
December 10th, 20:45, Estadio de la Cerámica. Villarreal vs Barcelona.
This was the most important tough battle before El Clásico. Villarreal possessed two extremely fast forwards, Bakambu and Bacca; such a configuration was practically born to exploit the space behind Barça's defense. This was also the first major test for the new partnership of Piqué and Iñigo Martínez.
Before the match started, in the locker room. Piqué was tying his shoelaces. Iñigo walked over, seemingly wanting to say some words of encouragement. "No need to speak." Piqué stood up, half a head taller than Iñigo. He patted the basque person's shoulder, "Today you're responsible for challenging for the first ball. Anyone who gets through, leave them to me. If Bakambu manages to get past me even once, I'll retire."
Iñigo was stunned. Wasn't that a bit of an exaggeration? Bakambu was one of the top three forwards in sprint speed in La Liga this season. But he saw Piqué's eyes. There wasn't a hint of a joke in them.
The match began. Just Newspaper expected, the Yellow Submarine started a frantic attack behind Barça's lines from the first minute. In the 15th minute, Trigueros sent a through ball from midfield. Bakambu took off.
It was a typical offside trap break. Iñigo Martínez failed to intercept the ball because he was slightly slow to press. Bakambu sprinted with the ball, with only one line of defense left before him—Gerard Piqué.
If it were the old Piqué, or the Piqué from a few days ago, he might have jockeyed back while waiting for teammates to recover. But today's Piqué did not retreat. The moment Bakambu started, he had already predicted the line. He didn't lung blindly; instead, he used his body to block the inside line, sticking to Bakambu like a plaster.
Bakambu tried to beat him with raw speed. But he was surprised to find that this tall guy, who usually looked a bit casual, was incredibly fast today. That energy that had been suppressed for so long had transformed into pure explosive power at this moment.
The moment they entered the penalty area, Piqué timed it perfectly and went into a sliding tackle. "Bang!" Man and ball together, clean and decisive. Bakambu went down, and the ball was cleared away.
After getting up, Piqué didn't celebrate or shout. He just gave the grounded Bakambu a cold look, then turned to Iñigo and said: "Watch your position. Don't make me cover for you next time."
Iñigo nodded, but his heart was in turmoil. Is this the true strength of a World Champion center-back? When he is no longer distracted, this kind of dominance is simply suffocating.
The entire match turned into Piqué's personal defensive showcase. In the 35th minute, he cleared Bacca's cross with a header. In the 60th minute, he predicted and intercepted Rodrigo's through ball. In the 80th minute, he won a header in the opponent's box, nearly scoring.
On the offensive end, he also demonstrated the "spear" role Bartomeu had mentioned. Because of Iñigo's steady defense on the left, Piqué dared to drive forward with the ball. In the 72nd minute, it was Piqué who, after winning the ball in the backfield, carried it thirty meters forward, disrupting Villarreal's defensive formation before passing to Busquets, which eventually led to Messi assisting Suárez to break the deadlock.
2-0. Barça kept a clean sheet against their opponent.
Post-match statistics were released: Gerard Piqué: 7 clearances, 4 interceptions, 100% aerial duel success rate, 0 fouls. Passing accuracy 94%. Even more terrifying was the running distance: 11.2 kilometers. For a center-back, this was a crazy figure. He had almost covered the entire right half of the pitch.
In the mixed zone, reporters swarmed, trying to get Piqué to talk. "Gerrard! Congratulations on the victory! This should be your best performance of the season! Is it because you deleted Twitter?" "Gerrard! Regarding the upcoming El Clásico, is there anything you want to say to Real Madrid?"
Piqué stopped in his tracks. Beads of sweat still hung on him, and his gaze remained cold. He looked at the camera and said only one sentence: "We kept a clean sheet at Camp Nou. We kept a clean sheet at the Estadio de la Cerámica. That's all I have to say."
After saying that, he turned and left, leaving behind a cool and cold silhouette.
Back on the Barcelona bus, Piqué sat in the last row, holding that old-fashioned Nokia. Without a smartphone, he couldn't browse the news or see the fans' praise. The feeling was still somewhat empty, and the desire for interaction in his body was still restless.
Just then, the phone rang. The screen displayed: Bartomeu.
"Hello, Chairman." Piqué answered the phone, his voice a bit tired but very clear.
"I watched the match, Gerrard." Bartomeu's voice came through the receiver, mixed with the hiss of a burning cigar. "Great job. Bakambu will probably have nightmares tonight."
"It was alright." Piqué rubbed his aching thigh. "That basque person is indeed good. He's very steady on the left, so I dared to push forward."
"He's the partner you deserve." Bartomeu changed the subject. "How's the withdrawal reaction? Still feel like posting a tweet to show off?"
Piqué laughed; it was his first sincere laugh in days. "To be honest, yes. Just now on the bus, I wanted to post that photo of me tackling Bakambu. But I only have this crappy Nokia in my hand."
"Hold it in," Bartomeu said. "This is just the appetizer. Save up that desire to show off. Think about it: if you keep a clean sheet at the Bernabéu against Cristiano Ronaldo, who has five Ballons d'Or, what kind of rush would it be to tweet then?"
"That would be a nuclear-level rush," Piqué admitted.
"Good. One more thing." Bartomeu's voice became low. "Besides football, I know you care about money too. Open the SMS inbox on that old phone of yours; I just sent you a number."
Piqué opened the message. It was just one line: [BTC: 14,500 USD. HODL.]
"What does this mean?" Piqué asked.
"It means your investment has nearly tripled," Bartomeu said calmly. "But I'll say the same thing: don't move. Now is not the climax. Just like you are on the pitch, wait patiently for that most fatal moment."
"Is this money prepared for the winter window?" Piqué reacted quickly. "You want to use this money to buy players?"
"You're the future Chairman; I won't hide things from you," Bartomeu admitted. "If Umtiti's injury makes us look vulnerable, then I will give all of Europe a surprise in the winter window. And this money is the ammunition."
"Gerrard, you guard the goal on the pitch. I'll guard the vault off the pitch. We are partners."
Piqué held that cheap plastic phone but felt Newspaper if he were holding the whole world. "Understood, partner. For El Clásico, I will lock the door tight. Even if I have to use my head to block it."
Hanging up the phone, Piqué looked out the window. The bus was entering the Barcelona city area. On the roadside billboards, the photo of Cristiano Ronaldo holding the Ballon d'Or was still eyesore. The media was still hyping up that Real Madrid would prepare a "hell" for Barça at the Bernabéu.
Piqué closed his eyes. His mind was no longer filled with complex business proposals or Twitter wars. His mind only held that GIF he had watched ten thousand times from the USB drive: Cristiano Ronaldo doing his habitual stepover at the edge of the box, then cutting to the right.
"To the right..." Piqué murmured in his heart, "I'll be waiting there."
The Piqué who was once impetuous, talkative, and distracted was dead. Sitting here now was a Gerard Piqué who had turned himself into a precision instrument for revenge and glory. Beside him, Iñigo Martínez was wearing headphones, quietly looking out the window.
Not many words were needed. These two shields, left and right, had finished their tempering. They were only waiting for the fires of the Bernabéu to test their quality.