The media storm, once a hurricane, had settled into a relentless, grinding gale.
The narrative of "Barcelona's Blunder" had become a permanent fixture in the sports news cycle, a reliable story to be dragged out and re-examined after every goal, every assist, every masterful performance from Mateo.
It was, as Lukas had so aptly put it, a story they were milking until it was bone dry. For Mateo, the endless repetition had become a source of profound weariness.
His achievements were no longer just his; they were inextricably linked to a narrative of another's failure, a constant reminder of a past he had tried to move beyond.
But the past has a way of reaching out, and in the third week of his newfound global fame, it reached out with a particularly grimy hand.
The hand belonged to a man named Ricardo Vargas, a notorious Spanish tabloid journalist whose reputation was built on sensationalism and a complete disregard for privacy.
