this match, next match
Leo knows, logically, that missing the penalty doesn’t really mean anything. He knows that Barcelona was already up 5-0 from the first leg, and that losing to Betis the way they did doesn’t really mean much. Rationally, sensibly, Leo knows this.
But Leo hasn’t gotten to where he’s gotten-to two Ballon d’Ors, to the Argentinean national team, to starting at Camp Nou all the time, every time-by accepting loss, by accepting anything less than his best. And missed penalties are not Leo’s best. Leo knows-in his heart, in his bones-that missing the penalty against Real Betis was just as meaningful as missing a penalty in the World Cup, in El Clásico, in the Olympics.
It doesn’t matter where he misses it; what matters is that he does.
When he gets to the locker room after the match, he sits down on the wooden bench in front of his things, unlaces his boots and strips off his sweaty shirt, and then he just sits there. He thinks. Thinks about what he did do and what he didn’t and how he could have fixed it and how he will.
“Hey,” Xavi says, and Leo looks up. He’s got a towel around his waist and one around his neck, and he’s wearing flip-flops. Leo likes Xavi, really likes Xavi, and respects him through and through-on the pitch, in the locker room, out in the world where football doesn’t matter at all to some people.
“You played well,” Leo says, and he means it. Xavi does what he does and he always does it well.
“Not really,” Xavi says, and he shrugs. “Can’t have, if we lost. But we have to look forward, can’t dwell on it.”
Xavi always gets like this when they lose; he speaks and thinks only logically, doesn’t hold onto loss the way Leo does. Sometimes Leo gets jealous of that fact, of how Xavi can still be the best of the best and not be so weighed down by the pressure, not be fazed at all.
“Yeah,” Leo says. “At least we won on aggregate. That’s what matters.” He tells it to himself as much as he does to Xavi. And maybe Xavi’s right, maybe he should focus on the next match rather than the one he just played, but he can’t; the next match won’t matter if he can’t iron out the wrinkles from the one before it.
Andrés walks by then, and maybe he can tell by the way Xavi’s standing, with his hands on his hips, or maybe by Leo’s face, his eyebrows pinched together and his lower lip caught between his teeth, or maybe it’s neither of these things, maybe Andrés just knows in the same way that he always just knows on the pitch. Either way, he stops and says, “Xavi’s right,” as if he was there for any part of the conversation. “You can’t beat yourself up over it; the pitch was terrible to play on, and people slip, it happens.”
“Exactly,” Xavi says. “Us losing was not your fault; it was ours, the team’s.”
And maybe that’s true; maybe even if Leo had made that one penalty, they’d still have lost 3-2. Maybe. But Leo knew what the pitch was like, had been playing on it for fifty-four minutes at that point, and so he can’t say that he was surprised by the loose grass, that he was surprised that there was mud and upturned sod.
And he knows Castro, too-not personally, but as a player, as a keeper. He knew and knows that Castro usually guesses that the penalty will be taken low, and he knew and knows that shooting high was his best bet to score. But shooting over the crossbar never puts a point on the board, never, not in any situation, and Leo knew that. Knows that.
Leo looks at Xavi and Andrés, and they’re telling him to keep his chin up, telling him that everyone has off days and that just because he’s got cojones de oro doesn’t mean he’s any different. And then they look at each other and laugh, laugh like that was the funniest joke they’d ever heard, like it was even a new joke at all, and Leo thinks that Barcelona is lucky, so lucky to have them.
Maybe-maybe-individually, Leo is better than they are. But together, as a team, they are more important to Barcelona than Leo is, more skillful than Leo could ever dream to be. The way they move on the pitch, the way they don’t need to talk at all in order to understand each other, is just so beautiful to Leo, and he can’t believe that he gets to play with them on a regular basis.
Leo has heard before that he is considered to be the face of Barcelona. Leo doesn’t know about that, not at all, but if he’s the face of the club, Xavi and Andrés are the heart, their tiki taka the beat to which the entire team moves.
When they’re gone, off to the showers still laughing and joking, Leo takes off his boots and his shin guards. He doesn’t get up though, not just yet, and from seven lockers down, Gerard throws one of his balled-up socks at Leo’s face.
“Hey,” Gerard yells, and his voice bounces off of the walls and sounds louder than it should. “Are you moping about the penalty?”
“No,” Leo says, and he smiles lightly, forced. When Gerard asks if he is moping, Leo has learned through experience, the correct answer is always no. He shoves his feet into his flip-flops and gets up, heads to take a shower.
As he passes Gerard, Gerard snaps a towel at the back of his legs, and Leo jumps as if someone was shooting at his feet.
“Que viva la noche,” Gerard starts singing quietly when Leo looks back, “viva el amor.”
“No,” Leo says, and he holds his hand out as if that will actually do anything, as if that will actually stop Gerard when he’s got his mind set on something.
“Su nombre me sabe,” Gerard continues, only this time he’s standing up and shaking his hips slightly, his voice getting louder and louder with each word, “a besos de pasión.”
It’s something stupid that they used to do, him and Gerard, something that they did back in the early stages of La Masia, back when they were kids. Cesc would get frustrated and cry when he played poorly-and he did, he played poorly from time to time, just like any other footballer, just like Leo and just like Gerard-and so they would sing Cesc’s favorite songs and force him to dance in a conga line, with him in the middle so he couldn’t escape. It would always end with him laughing, collapsed on the floor and fighting for air, his face split in half by his smile.
Leo doesn’t work like that, doesn’t work like Cesc, and over the years people have learned that when Leo is upset, it’s best to just let him stew and then sleep it off. Gerard didn’t learn, never learns.
“Que viva la noche, viva el amor,” he’s singing, and he’s right behind Leo, his hands on Leo’s sides and his fingers digging into Leo’s skin. He forces Leo to shake his hips as he herds Leo to the showers. “Hay magia de luna en mi corazón. Sing it with me, Leo! Que viva la noche, viva el amor!”
“Su nombre me sabe,” Leo deadpans, and he rolls his eyes. “Now let me shower.”
“Fine, fine,” Gerard says, and then he walks away, yelling, “Sing it with me, Puyi! Viva la noche, viva el amor!”
Leo turns on the shower as Puyi hollers, “Su nombre me sabe a besos de pasión!” and as Leo lets the hot water beat down on his shoulders, he thinks, The pitch was in bad shape everywhere, and, Should’ve known, should’ve known.
Barcelona did not lose today because Leo missed the penalty; Leo knows this, is neither stupid enough nor egotistical enough to think that the performance of the team rests solely upon his shoulders. But had Leo made the penalty, maybe things would have turned around. Maybe the momentum would have shifted and they would have scored to equalize in the remaining thirty-six minutes. It’s not that outrageous of a maybe.
By the time Leo steps out of the shower, the locker room is dead silent. The clock on the wall tells him that bus call isn’t for another ten minutes, but the guys have never liked to just stand around once they’re ready, and they didn’t have time to joke around with the Betis squad before the match.
Leo walks back to the lockers with a towel slung low around his waist and water from his hair dripping down the back of his neck. He learns that he’s not alone; Ibrahim’s there, standing half a locker room away at the number twenty spot and pulling his pants up over his hips.
Leo likes him, likes Ibrahim as much as he can like someone that’s more or less a stranger. He’ll fit in well, Leo thinks; will be a good addition to the squad. He’s hungry to play, Leo can tell by the look in his eyes.
They dress in silence for the most part, because Ibrahim doesn’t really speak Spanish and because Leo doesn’t really know what to say. The silence is comfortable, though, and so Leo doesn’t mind.
But then Ibrahim clears his throat, and it makes Leo look up and at him because it didn’t sound like he was clearing his throat just for something to do; he was clearing it to speak.
“Don’t be sad,” he says, and his voice is thick, his Spanish slow, as if his tongue was too big for his mouth, “because you-because you didn’t-”
He waves his hands as if to make up for his lack of vocabulary with gestures, and Leo smiles. He doesn’t have an ear for languages and can only imagine what Ibrahim’s going through, playing for a team that he cannot understand and that cannot understand him.
“The penalty,” Ibrahim says, and he smiles as if remembering the word was a victory for him.
“You need to score to win,” Leo says, and he says it slowly so that Ibrahim can understand, can take the words and sort them out in his head. “I am sad.”
Ibrahim nods and shrugs on his jacket, but he doesn’t say anything, and Leo thinks, This is not what Ibrahim needs. Thinks, Ibrahim wants to not be alone. Thinks, He doesn’t speak Spanish, can barely understand.
They’re silent for a minute longer, and when Ibrahim speaks, he doesn’t look at Leo.
“This match,” he says. “It was my first time to start.”
And Leo-Leo didn’t even realize. Not everything is about him, he knows, even though he forgets from time to time. And while he’s been sitting there, upset about a penalty missed while playing for a club that loves him and has loved him since the beginning, Ibrahim has been weighed down by not playing well himself for a team that he can barely even call his own. It makes Leo feel worse to know that no one knew because Ibrahim is new, unfamiliar, Dutch.
“Hey,” Leo says, and he catches Ibrahim by the wrist as he walks past Leo to the door. Ibrahim looks at him and it’s still there, the look in his eyes, and Leo thinks, He’ll do. “Next match is your match.”
“Maybe,” Ibrahim says, and he says it with a smile and the shrug of one shoulder. Leo realizes that he hasn’t let go of Ibrahim’s wrist.
“I know,” Leo says. “Next match is yours.”
“Next match is ours,” Ibrahim says, and he smiles then, really smiles, wide and unrestrained, and Leo thinks absently that he looks beautiful like that, that he should look like that all the time. And then Ibrahim leans down and presses his lips to Leo’s, chaste and quick, and Leo recognizes that his heart is pounding by the time Ibrahim pulls away.
Ibrahim smiles again, ducks his head down a little as he readjusts the strap of his bag on his shoulder, and then heads out the door. He leaves Leo sitting there on the bench, half dressed and stunned, and Leo suddenly can't wait, thinks, Next match.
But Leo hasn’t gotten to where he’s gotten-to two Ballon d’Ors, to the Argentinean national team, to starting at Camp Nou all the time, every time-by accepting loss, by accepting anything less than his best. And missed penalties are not Leo’s best. Leo knows-in his heart, in his bones-that missing the penalty against Real Betis was just as meaningful as missing a penalty in the World Cup, in El Clásico, in the Olympics.
It doesn’t matter where he misses it; what matters is that he does.
When he gets to the locker room after the match, he sits down on the wooden bench in front of his things, unlaces his boots and strips off his sweaty shirt, and then he just sits there. He thinks. Thinks about what he did do and what he didn’t and how he could have fixed it and how he will.
“Hey,” Xavi says, and Leo looks up. He’s got a towel around his waist and one around his neck, and he’s wearing flip-flops. Leo likes Xavi, really likes Xavi, and respects him through and through-on the pitch, in the locker room, out in the world where football doesn’t matter at all to some people.
“You played well,” Leo says, and he means it. Xavi does what he does and he always does it well.
“Not really,” Xavi says, and he shrugs. “Can’t have, if we lost. But we have to look forward, can’t dwell on it.”
Xavi always gets like this when they lose; he speaks and thinks only logically, doesn’t hold onto loss the way Leo does. Sometimes Leo gets jealous of that fact, of how Xavi can still be the best of the best and not be so weighed down by the pressure, not be fazed at all.
“Yeah,” Leo says. “At least we won on aggregate. That’s what matters.” He tells it to himself as much as he does to Xavi. And maybe Xavi’s right, maybe he should focus on the next match rather than the one he just played, but he can’t; the next match won’t matter if he can’t iron out the wrinkles from the one before it.
Andrés walks by then, and maybe he can tell by the way Xavi’s standing, with his hands on his hips, or maybe by Leo’s face, his eyebrows pinched together and his lower lip caught between his teeth, or maybe it’s neither of these things, maybe Andrés just knows in the same way that he always just knows on the pitch. Either way, he stops and says, “Xavi’s right,” as if he was there for any part of the conversation. “You can’t beat yourself up over it; the pitch was terrible to play on, and people slip, it happens.”
“Exactly,” Xavi says. “Us losing was not your fault; it was ours, the team’s.”
And maybe that’s true; maybe even if Leo had made that one penalty, they’d still have lost 3-2. Maybe. But Leo knew what the pitch was like, had been playing on it for fifty-four minutes at that point, and so he can’t say that he was surprised by the loose grass, that he was surprised that there was mud and upturned sod.
And he knows Castro, too-not personally, but as a player, as a keeper. He knew and knows that Castro usually guesses that the penalty will be taken low, and he knew and knows that shooting high was his best bet to score. But shooting over the crossbar never puts a point on the board, never, not in any situation, and Leo knew that. Knows that.
Leo looks at Xavi and Andrés, and they’re telling him to keep his chin up, telling him that everyone has off days and that just because he’s got cojones de oro doesn’t mean he’s any different. And then they look at each other and laugh, laugh like that was the funniest joke they’d ever heard, like it was even a new joke at all, and Leo thinks that Barcelona is lucky, so lucky to have them.
Maybe-maybe-individually, Leo is better than they are. But together, as a team, they are more important to Barcelona than Leo is, more skillful than Leo could ever dream to be. The way they move on the pitch, the way they don’t need to talk at all in order to understand each other, is just so beautiful to Leo, and he can’t believe that he gets to play with them on a regular basis.
Leo has heard before that he is considered to be the face of Barcelona. Leo doesn’t know about that, not at all, but if he’s the face of the club, Xavi and Andrés are the heart, their tiki taka the beat to which the entire team moves.
When they’re gone, off to the showers still laughing and joking, Leo takes off his boots and his shin guards. He doesn’t get up though, not just yet, and from seven lockers down, Gerard throws one of his balled-up socks at Leo’s face.
“Hey,” Gerard yells, and his voice bounces off of the walls and sounds louder than it should. “Are you moping about the penalty?”
“No,” Leo says, and he smiles lightly, forced. When Gerard asks if he is moping, Leo has learned through experience, the correct answer is always no. He shoves his feet into his flip-flops and gets up, heads to take a shower.
As he passes Gerard, Gerard snaps a towel at the back of his legs, and Leo jumps as if someone was shooting at his feet.
“Que viva la noche,” Gerard starts singing quietly when Leo looks back, “viva el amor.”
“No,” Leo says, and he holds his hand out as if that will actually do anything, as if that will actually stop Gerard when he’s got his mind set on something.
“Su nombre me sabe,” Gerard continues, only this time he’s standing up and shaking his hips slightly, his voice getting louder and louder with each word, “a besos de pasión.”
It’s something stupid that they used to do, him and Gerard, something that they did back in the early stages of La Masia, back when they were kids. Cesc would get frustrated and cry when he played poorly-and he did, he played poorly from time to time, just like any other footballer, just like Leo and just like Gerard-and so they would sing Cesc’s favorite songs and force him to dance in a conga line, with him in the middle so he couldn’t escape. It would always end with him laughing, collapsed on the floor and fighting for air, his face split in half by his smile.
Leo doesn’t work like that, doesn’t work like Cesc, and over the years people have learned that when Leo is upset, it’s best to just let him stew and then sleep it off. Gerard didn’t learn, never learns.
“Que viva la noche, viva el amor,” he’s singing, and he’s right behind Leo, his hands on Leo’s sides and his fingers digging into Leo’s skin. He forces Leo to shake his hips as he herds Leo to the showers. “Hay magia de luna en mi corazón. Sing it with me, Leo! Que viva la noche, viva el amor!”
“Su nombre me sabe,” Leo deadpans, and he rolls his eyes. “Now let me shower.”
“Fine, fine,” Gerard says, and then he walks away, yelling, “Sing it with me, Puyi! Viva la noche, viva el amor!”
Leo turns on the shower as Puyi hollers, “Su nombre me sabe a besos de pasión!” and as Leo lets the hot water beat down on his shoulders, he thinks, The pitch was in bad shape everywhere, and, Should’ve known, should’ve known.
Barcelona did not lose today because Leo missed the penalty; Leo knows this, is neither stupid enough nor egotistical enough to think that the performance of the team rests solely upon his shoulders. But had Leo made the penalty, maybe things would have turned around. Maybe the momentum would have shifted and they would have scored to equalize in the remaining thirty-six minutes. It’s not that outrageous of a maybe.
By the time Leo steps out of the shower, the locker room is dead silent. The clock on the wall tells him that bus call isn’t for another ten minutes, but the guys have never liked to just stand around once they’re ready, and they didn’t have time to joke around with the Betis squad before the match.
Leo walks back to the lockers with a towel slung low around his waist and water from his hair dripping down the back of his neck. He learns that he’s not alone; Ibrahim’s there, standing half a locker room away at the number twenty spot and pulling his pants up over his hips.
Leo likes him, likes Ibrahim as much as he can like someone that’s more or less a stranger. He’ll fit in well, Leo thinks; will be a good addition to the squad. He’s hungry to play, Leo can tell by the look in his eyes.
They dress in silence for the most part, because Ibrahim doesn’t really speak Spanish and because Leo doesn’t really know what to say. The silence is comfortable, though, and so Leo doesn’t mind.
But then Ibrahim clears his throat, and it makes Leo look up and at him because it didn’t sound like he was clearing his throat just for something to do; he was clearing it to speak.
“Don’t be sad,” he says, and his voice is thick, his Spanish slow, as if his tongue was too big for his mouth, “because you-because you didn’t-”
He waves his hands as if to make up for his lack of vocabulary with gestures, and Leo smiles. He doesn’t have an ear for languages and can only imagine what Ibrahim’s going through, playing for a team that he cannot understand and that cannot understand him.
“The penalty,” Ibrahim says, and he smiles as if remembering the word was a victory for him.
“You need to score to win,” Leo says, and he says it slowly so that Ibrahim can understand, can take the words and sort them out in his head. “I am sad.”
Ibrahim nods and shrugs on his jacket, but he doesn’t say anything, and Leo thinks, This is not what Ibrahim needs. Thinks, Ibrahim wants to not be alone. Thinks, He doesn’t speak Spanish, can barely understand.
They’re silent for a minute longer, and when Ibrahim speaks, he doesn’t look at Leo.
“This match,” he says. “It was my first time to start.”
And Leo-Leo didn’t even realize. Not everything is about him, he knows, even though he forgets from time to time. And while he’s been sitting there, upset about a penalty missed while playing for a club that loves him and has loved him since the beginning, Ibrahim has been weighed down by not playing well himself for a team that he can barely even call his own. It makes Leo feel worse to know that no one knew because Ibrahim is new, unfamiliar, Dutch.
“Hey,” Leo says, and he catches Ibrahim by the wrist as he walks past Leo to the door. Ibrahim looks at him and it’s still there, the look in his eyes, and Leo thinks, He’ll do. “Next match is your match.”
“Maybe,” Ibrahim says, and he says it with a smile and the shrug of one shoulder. Leo realizes that he hasn’t let go of Ibrahim’s wrist.
“I know,” Leo says. “Next match is yours.”
“Next match is ours,” Ibrahim says, and he smiles then, really smiles, wide and unrestrained, and Leo thinks absently that he looks beautiful like that, that he should look like that all the time. And then Ibrahim leans down and presses his lips to Leo’s, chaste and quick, and Leo recognizes that his heart is pounding by the time Ibrahim pulls away.
Ibrahim smiles again, ducks his head down a little as he readjusts the strap of his bag on his shoulder, and then heads out the door. He leaves Leo sitting there on the bench, half dressed and stunned, and Leo suddenly can't wait, thinks, Next match.