The atmosphere inside the Arena Națională in Bucharest was nothing short of a hostile, suffocating cauldron of noise.
The Romanian night sky was completely obscured by a thick, acrid cloud of red and blue smoke billowing from the dozens of illegal flares that had been smuggled into the stadium by the rabid Steaua București ultras.
The air tasted of sulfur and anticipation.
Over fifty-five thousand fans were packed shoulder-to-shoulder in the steep, towering concrete terraces, jumping in absolute, terrifying unison.
The synchronized, rhythmic stomping of their feet sent literal, physical shockwaves reverberating through the underground tunnels and up through the pristine, heavily watered grass of the pitch.
They were singing, chanting, and screaming at deafening volumes, desperately trying to create an intimidating, hellish environment to rattle the multi-million-pound superstars of Manchester City.
But as the legendary, operatic chords of the UEFA Champions League anthem began to blare from the stadium’s massive PA system, drowning out the roar of the crowd for a brief, magical minute, Natán Comas felt absolutely zero fear.
He stood in the traditional pre-match lineup, wearing his sleek, neon-orange and dark-blue Manchester City away kit, his hands clasped firmly behind his back.
The goosebumps that erupted across his arms in the cool Eastern European air weren’t born of anxiety; they were born of pure, unadulterated, electric anticipation.
He was like a tightly coiled spring, packed with an immense, terrifying amount of kinetic potential just waiting to be violently released.
The grueling, psychological warfare he had endured under Pep Guardiola over the last seven days had completely stripped away the lazy complacency that had begun to rot his game under the previous management.
The exhausting wind sprints, the screaming tactical lectures, the benching against Sunderland—it had all served a singular, brilliant purpose.
Natán’s mind was sharper, his body was lighter, and his hunger for goals was absolutely ravenous.
He felt an intense, vibrating energy pulsing in the very marrow of his bones.
The anthem concluded.
The crowd erupted into a final, deafening crescendo of boos and whistles directed at the English side.
The players broke off from the line, engaging in their final, rapid pre-match rituals.
Natán bent down, adjusting his neon-green shin guards, pulling his socks high over his heavily bruised calves, and taking a deep, centering breath of the flare-scented air.
Be a killer, Pep’s voice echoed relentlessly in the back of his mind.
Smell the blood in the water.
Move the ball.
The referee, a stern-faced official from Italy, checked his watch, raised his arm high into the air, and blew the sharp, piercing blast of the whistle to officially begin the Champions League qualifier.
From the absolute first millisecond the ball rolled off the center spot, Natán was an absolute blur of terrifying, high-octane motion.
Steaua București, clearly attempting to set a physical, aggressive tone early in front of their rabid home support, immediately tried to cycle the ball across their defensive backline to establish possession.
They didn’t even get past their second pass.
Natán, operating on the right wing, didn’t wait for the opposition to organize.
He triggered the high press with the speed and ferocity of a heat-seeking missile.
He sprinted diagonally across the pitch, completely cutting off the passing lane between the Steaua left-back, Alin Toșca, and the left-sided center-back.
His closing speed was so unnatural, so immensely explosive, that Toșca panicked entirely.
Instead of attempting a composed, tactical pass through the midfield, the Romanian defender was forced to hastily hack the ball out of bounds for a cheap, early Manchester City throw-in.
Pep Guardiola, standing on the edge of his technical area in a tailored black suit, immediately clapped his hands rapidly above his head, roaring his approval at the teenager’s relentless defensive work rate.
The game quickly settled into a tense, high-speed tactical rhythm.
Manchester City completely dominated possession, circulating the ball with the rapid, hypnotic tick-tack precision that Guardiola demanded.
But unlike the sterile, sideways U-shape passing that had plagued their first half against Sunderland, today the ball was moving with vertical, aggressive intent.
Natán was entirely plugged into the complex matrix of the system.
He wasn’t just standing static on the chalk of the touchline waiting for service.
He was dynamic, fluid, and incredibly intelligent with his movement.
When Pablo Zabaleta pushed high up the flank on an overlapping run, Natán would immediately drop deep into the right half-space, dragging his marker with him and offering a short, reliable passing outlet for Fernandinho.
When Kevin De Bruyne drifted wide, Natán would instantly cut inside, acting as a secondary striker alongside Sergio Aguero to overload the Steaua center-backs.
In the sixth minute, City was patiently recycling the ball deep in their own half.
John Stones, the elegant, ball-playing English center-back, received a pass from Claudio Bravo.
Stones took a heavy touch forward, assessing the landscape of the pitch.
Natán, who had just completed a grueling fifty-yard sprint to press the Steaua goalkeeper moments prior, was currently jogging slowly backward near the halfway line, his hands resting on his hips, taking a brief, three-second window to catch his breath.
He was looking at the ground, assuming Stones would simply play a standard, five-yard pass sideways to Aleksandar Kolarov to continue the slow build-up.
But John Stones had immense, elite vision.
The center-back saw that Steaua had pushed their defensive line incredibly high up the pitch in an attempt to compress the space.
He saw the massive, gaping acres of green grass behind them.
And, without any hesitation, Stones leaned back, opened his hips, and launched a spectacular, sixty-yard, defense-splitting long ball diagonally over the top of the entire Romanian team, aiming precisely for the right wing.
Natán was completely caught flat-footed.
He hadn’t seen the pass coming at all.
By the time he registered the distinct thwack of Stones striking the leather and snapped his head up to track the flight of the ball, he was two seconds late to react.
The ball sailed beautifully through the smoke-filled Bucharest sky, dropping perfectly into the massive pocket of space behind Toșca.
Natán scrambled, engaging his afterburners in a desperate attempt to make up the lost ground, his neon-green boots tearing up chunks of the pitch.
But his initial hesitation had cost him dearly.
Toșca, reading the flight of the ball perfectly, managed to win the footrace, executing a heavy, sliding clearance that sent the ball flying into the lower tiers of the stands.
A massive roar of approval erupted from the Steaua ultras, cheering the solid defensive intervention.
Natán pulled up sharply, his chest heaving, his boots skidding on the grass.
A sudden, sharp spike of frustration flared in his chest—not at his teammate, but entirely at himself.
The old version of Natán, the arrogant kid who had played under Manuel Pellegrini, would have thrown his hands up in the air and complained that the pass was too hard or poorly timed.
He would have blamed the center-back for making him run for nothing.
But not today.
Today, Natán understood the assignment.
Instead of complaining, Natán turned around, locked eyes with John Stones standing sixty yards away, and raised his hands high above his head.
He clapped his hands together loudly, offering a genuine, highly appreciative thumbs-up to the English defender.
Stones had done exactly what Pep had begged the team to do at halftime against Sunderland—he had rewarded the possibility of the run.
Natán realised with a sudden, thrilling clarity that his teammates were actively looking for him now.
They trusted his pace.
They wanted to launch him into space.
The tactical synergy was finally clicking into place.
I won’t miss the next one, Natán promised himself, shaking the tension out of his arms and jogging back into position.
He didn’t have to wait very long to make good on that promise.
In the ninth minute, the absolute, terrifying brilliance of the Manchester City attacking machine finally roared to life.
It started with a brilliant piece of defensive grit from Fernandinho.
The Brazilian midfielder intercepted a sloppy pass in the center circle, immediately absorbing a heavy tackle before poking the ball forward to Kevin De Bruyne.
De Bruyne received the ball on the half-turn in the right-center channel.
The Belgian maestro didn’t even need to take a second touch to set himself.
His brain processed the geometry of the pitch with the speed of a supercomputer.
He kept his head up, his pale blue eyes scanning the disorganized, retreating Steaua defensive line.
Natán saw De Bruyne get the ball.
This time, there was absolutely zero hesitation.
Natán didn’t jog.
He didn’t wait.
He exploded off the mark with the terrifying, violent acceleration of an Olympic sprinter jumping the starting gun.
He made a brilliant, slicing diagonal run from the right touchline directly toward the penalty area, timing his movement perfectly to stay just inches onside.
De Bruyne saw the neon-green boots blur into his peripheral vision.
Without breaking his stride, De Bruyne executed a surgical, defense-splitting through-ball.
He slid the pass along the slick, wet grass with immaculate, devastating precision.
The ball threaded the needle perfectly between the Steaua left-back and the left-sided center-back, completely bypassing the entire defensive structure.
Natán didn’t even have to break his stride to receive it.
The pass was weighted to absolute perfection, dropping right into his path just inside the right edge of the penalty area.
Suddenly, the deafening roar of the 55,000 Romanian fans turned into a collective, panicked gasp.
Natán was isolated in a pure, one-on-one scenario with Alin Toșca.
The Romanian defender was backpedaling frantically, terrified of the teenager’s pace, desperately trying to keep his body between Natán and the goal.
Natán slowed his momentum drastically, bringing the ball under his complete, hypnotic control.
He stared Toșca directly in the eyes.
This was his kingdom.
This was the exact, highly specific scenario he had spent thousands of hours perfecting on the training pitches of Catalonia.
Natán initiated a rapid, blindingly fast stutter-step, his boots hovering over the leather.
He dropped his right shoulder aggressively, selling a devastating body feint.
Every single cue screamed that he was going to use his explosive pace to burn Toșca down the outside line toward the byline.
Toșca completely bought the lie.
The defender shifted his entire weight to his left side, preparing to turn and chase.
In a fraction of a second, Natán punished the mistake with lethal, unapologetic cruelty.
He chopped the ball violently backward with the inside of his right boot, shifting it cleanly onto his magical, dominant left foot.
The sudden change of direction was so immense, so incredibly sharp, that Toșca’s ankles practically buckled.
The defender was left twisting helplessly in the wind, stumbling awkwardly onto the grass as Natán completely blew past him into the center of the penalty area.
The angle to the goal was now massively, beautifully open.
Florin Niță, the Steaua goalkeeper, rushed off his line, spreading his massive frame to try and close down the shooting lane.
Natán didn’t panic.
He didn’t smash the ball blindly.
He opened his hips elegantly, wrapping his left foot entirely around the side of the ball.
He struck it with a delicate, masterful sweeping motion, prioritising finesse over power.
The ball left his boot with a heavy, vicious curl.
It bypassed the sprawling fingertips of the desperate goalkeeper entirely, arcing majestically through the dense, flare-scented air.
It seemed to hang suspended in time for a brief eternity, bending perfectly around the far post before kissing the inside of the side netting.
1-0 City.
The net bulged violently.
The absolute, deafening silence that instantly descended over the massive Romanian crowd was the most beautiful sound Natán had ever heard.
He didn’t run to the corner flag.
He immediately spun around, a massive smile splitting his face, and sprinted directly toward Kevin De Bruyne.
“What a ball, Kev! What a ball!” Natán screamed in joyous English, ruffling De Bruyne’s blonde hair aggressively as Aguero, Silva, and Nolito swarmed them in a massive, celebratory huddle.
Over by the technical area, Pep Guardiola simply pumped his fists with a sharp, satisfied nod, taking a quick sip from his water bottle.
It had taken less than ten minutes for the tactical plan to yield devastating results.
But Natán was far from finished.
The goal had merely been an appetizer.
The adrenaline was now pumping heavily through his veins, supercharging his senses and elevating his game to an entirely different stratosphere of performance.
When the match restarted, the Steaua București manager, Laurențiu Reghecampf, immediately realized the catastrophic danger his team was in.
He could not afford to leave his left-back isolated against the Spanish teenager in a one-on-one ever again.
He frantically waved his arms from the touchline, screaming at his players to make a severe tactical adjustment.
The Romanian side adapted.
For the next five minutes, every single time the ball was played out to the right flank, Natán was instantly met by a suffocating, aggressive double-team.
Toșca would step up to engage him, and Gabriel Enache, the hardworking right-winger who had dropped deep to help defend, would immediately collapse onto Natán’s left side, completely blocking off his preferred route to cut inside.
It was the exact same defensive strategy Portugal had utilized to neutralize him in the Euro 2016 final.
They were trying to put him in a tactical straitjacket, forcing him to pass the ball backward and killing the momentum of the attack.
In the fifteenth minute, David Silva picked up the ball in the midfield and sprayed a beautiful, lofted pass out to the right wing.
Natán killed the ball with a velvet touch, his neon-green boot cushioning the leather perfectly onto the wet grass.
He was standing right on the chalk of the touchline, twenty five yards away from the goal.
Instantly, Toșca and Enache arrived.
The two Steaua players formed a human wall, dropping their hips and preparing to physically batter the teenager if he tried to force his way through the center.
They were explicitly daring him to try and go outside.
They were banking on the fact that he was so heavily reliant on his left foot that he wouldn’t possess the confidence to drive down the line with his weaker right foot.
They had severely underestimated his evolution.
Natán didn’t even attempt a step-over.
He didn’t try to force a complex, messy dribble through the two massive bodies.
He assessed the geometry of the double-team in a fraction of a second.
The inside was a death trap.
The outside was open, but the angle to the goal would be incredibly tight.
He chose the outside.
With a heavy, audacious touch, Natán pushed the ball straight down the touchline with the outside of his left boot.
And then, he engaged a level of raw, track-star speed that genuinely terrified the entire stadium.
He exploded past Toșca and Enache before they could even react.
The acceleration was so sudden, so incredibly violent, that he completely bypassed the double-team in just two massive, sprinting strides.
Natán tore down the flank, reaching the very edge of the baseline.
He was running out of pitch rapidly, the white out-of-bounds line approaching fast.
The angle to shoot was completely nonexistent.
He had to cross it.
But instead of trying to loft a high, floating cross into the chaotic, crowded penalty area where the towering Romanian center-backs held a massive physical advantage, Natán utilized a much deadlier, highly precise technique.
Without breaking his stride, he completely contorted his hips, wrapping his right foot around the ball.
He didn’t cross it; he drove it.
He smashed a low, terrifyingly hard, flat pass directly across the face of the six-yard box.
The ball skimmed violently across the slick, heavily watered grass, buzzing past the desperate, lunging legs of the Steaua defenders like a low-flying missile.
It bypassed the near post, completely eliminated the goalkeeper from the equation, and arrived perfectly in the center of the danger zone.
Sergio Aguero, possessing the predatory, hyper-aware instincts of a great white shark smelling blood in the water, had anticipated the driven cutback perfectly.
The legendary Argentine striker had ghosted away from his marker, arriving at the six-yard line at the exact millisecond the ball arrived.
Aguero didn’t need to take a touch.
He didn’t need to smash it.
He simply opened the blade of his foot and executed a calm, clinical tap-in, redirecting the high-speed cross straight into the back of the empty net.
2-0 City.
The stadium plunged even deeper into a state of stunned, miserable silence, broken only by the jubilant screams of the small, traveling contingent of Manchester City supporters tucked away high in the upper tier.
Aguero wheeled away in celebration, pointing immediately at Natán.
The striker jogged over, pulling the young winger into a massive hug.
“Perfecto, Natán! Perfecto!” Aguero shouted in Spanish, slapping him heavily on the back.
“What a ball! I didn’t even have to move my foot!”
Natán grinned widely, completely out of breath but buzzing with an addictive, euphoric high.
He looked over at the touchline.
Pep Guardiola was giving him a massive, exaggerated thumbs-up, clearly thrilled that his winger had the tactical maturity to recognize the double-team and exploit the outside channel instead of selfishly forcing the play inside.
Two goals in fifteen minutes.
The game was rapidly turning into an absolute rout, and Natán was conducting the orchestra with a terrifying, flawless precision.
The Romanian side was completely shell-shocked.
Their entire defensive game plan had been shredded.
Their manager was screaming wildly from the touchline, but the players looked completely disorganized, their morale shattered by the sheer, overwhelming quality of the English side.
In the twentieth minute, the slaughter continued.
Manchester City won a corner kick on the right side of the pitch after Raheem Sterling’s shot was heavily deflected out of bounds.
The Steaua defenders, exhausted and terrified, immediately began engaging in a physical, chaotic wrestling match with Stones, Otamendi, and Fernandinho inside the penalty area, expecting a traditional, high, looping cross into the box.
Kevin De Bruyne jogged slowly over to the corner flag, placing the ball carefully on the white arc.
He raised his hand, pretending to signal a set-piece routine to the big men in the box.
But De Bruyne didn’t cross it.
Natán, operating purely on instinct and a telepathic understanding with the Belgian playmaker, had ghosted away from the edge of the penalty area.
He sprinted toward the corner flag, arriving completely unmarked.
De Bruyne took a short, rapid two-step run-up and passed the ball quickly along the grass to Natán’s feet, initiating a devastating, rapid-fire short corner routine.
The Steaua defense, completely caught sleeping, panicked.
Gabriel Enache, realizing the immediate danger of Natán possessing the ball just outside the right edge of the penalty box, broke entirely from his defensive line.
He sprinted wildly toward the teenager, his eyes wide, his body entirely out of control, desperate to close down the shooting angle before Natán could inflict any more damage.
Natán saw him coming.
He didn’t panic.
Natán took one heavy touch inside, driving directly into the corner of the penalty area.
Enache arrived like a runaway train, dropping his hips to execute a heavy, suffocating block.
Natán cocked his left leg back massively, selling the illusion that he was about to unleash a terrifying, full-power strike toward the near post.
Enache, terrified of conceding a third goal, bought the fake completely.
The defender threw his entire body forward in an act of sheer desperation, launching into a massive, fully extended slide tackle to try and block the anticipated shot.
But Natán didn’t shoot.
He executed a flawless, devastating Cruyff turn.
He chopped the ball sharply behind his standing leg, completely arresting his momentum and dragging the ball backward, away from the sliding defender.
Enache went flying helplessly past him on the slick grass, completely removed from the play, sliding like a man on an ice rink.
The crowd gasped.
Natán had completely humiliated the defender.
The path to the goal was now massively, beautifully open.
Natán pushed the ball forward with a heavy touch, stepping directly into the heart of the penalty area.
He raised his head, locking eyes with the terrified goalkeeper, and drew his left foot back to finally pull the trigger and curl the ball into the top corner.
But Enache, desperate to make amends for his catastrophic mistake, realized he had been completely beaten.
As he slid past, the defender threw his trailing leg out wildly.
The heavy, studded boot caught Natán squarely on the back of his right Achilles instead of the ball.
At full speed, the contact was devastating.
Natán’s standing leg was completely swept out from beneath him.
He was sent flying through the air, crashing heavily onto the wet turf, tumbling head over heels into the penalty area in a tangle of limbs.
The Italian referee, who had been standing just five yards away with a perfect, unobstructed view of the foul, didn’t even hesitate for a microscopic second.
He blew his whistle forcefully, pointing straight and aggressively at the penalty spot.
Penalty to Manchester City.
The Etihad away end erupted into a frenzy of cheers.
The Steaua players immediately swarmed the referee, waving their arms and protesting wildly, but it was completely useless.
It was a stonewall penalty, a reckless, desperate challenge born of pure frustration.
Natán sat up on the wet grass, wincing slightly as he rubbed his sore ankle.
He was fine; it was a heavy clip, but nothing was broken.
He slowly climbed to his feet, wiping a streak of green mud off his cheek.
He looked toward the penalty spot.
Sergio Aguero, the designated penalty taker for Manchester City, had already retrieved the ball.
Natán remembered the Sunderland game.
He remembered standing over the spot, heavily considering taking the penalty himself to secure his hat-trick, before ultimately unselfishly handing the ball to Aguero to build the striker’s confidence.
He didn’t expect the favor to be returned.
He turned around, preparing to jog to the edge of the box to wait for the rebound.
“Natán!”
Natán stopped, turning his head.
Sergio Aguero was standing near the penalty spot.
He didn’t look angry, and he didn’t look possessive.
The legendary striker smiled broadly, flipping the heavy leather match ball effortlessly into the air.
He caught it and extended his hands, offering the ball directly to the nineteen-year-old winger.
“Take it,” Aguero said simply in Spanish, nodding his head toward the spot.
“Are you sure? You are the taker.”
“I am,” Aguero chuckled, tossing the ball softly to Natán.
“But I owe you one from Saturday. Take it, kid. Get your goal.”
Natán caught the ball, feeling the rough texture of the synthetic leather against his palms.
A massive, profound surge of gratitude and confidence flooded his chest.
He nodded to the veteran striker, whispering a quiet “Gracias,” before turning and walking purposefully toward the penalty spot.
He placed the ball carefully on the white dot, spinning it slightly so the UEFA Champions League stars were facing perfectly upward.
He stood up, taking four long, measured steps backward.
He placed his hands on his hips, taking a deep, slow breath, staring directly into the eyes of Florin Niță.
The Steaua goalkeeper was jumping up and down on his goal line, waving his arms frantically, desperately trying to intimidate the teenager.
The entire stadium was holding its breath.
The deafening roar of the ultras had completely died down, replaced by a tense, suffocating silence.
The weight of the moment hung heavily in the air.
The referee blew his whistle.
Natán began his run-up.
He didn’t attempt a cheeky stutter-step.
He didn’t try to wait for the goalkeeper to commit to a dive.
He didn’t even try to execute his trademark, delicate finesse shot into the corner.
Natán reached the ball, opening his hips slightly.
But at the absolute last possible millisecond, he snapped his body entirely closed.
He whipped his left foot across his body with terrifying, violent mechanics.
He put his laces entirely through the center of the ball, prioritizing pure, unadulterated, raw power over placement.
He aimed directly for the right side of the net.
The ball exploded off his neon-green boot.
It traveled with such immense, blinding velocity that the stadium cameras struggled to capture its flight.
Florin Niță guessed the right way.
The goalkeeper launched his massive frame into the air, fully extending his arms, executing a brilliant, text-book dive toward the right post.
But it simply didn’t matter.
The penalty was hit too hard.
The ball ripped through the humid Bucharest air like a meteor, flying past the goalkeeper’s outstretched fingertips a full half-second before his hand even arrived at the spot.
It smashed violently into the side netting, rattling the heavy steel stanchion of the goalframe with immense force.
3-0 City.
Twenty minutes on the clock.
Natán sprinted toward the corner flag, sliding dramatically on his knees across the wet Romanian grass, letting out a primal, cathartic roar into the night sky as his teammates piled enthusiastically on top of him.
He had two goals and an assist, he had drawn the penalty, and he was absolutely, undeniably dismantling the Romanian champions single-handedly.
For the next fifteen minutes, the match essentially turned into an elite, high-stakes training ground exercise.
Manchester City completely toyed with their opponents.
The ball was moving with such rapid, hypnotic fluidity that the Steaua players were quite literally chasing shadows, their lungs burning, their morale entirely destroyed.
Natán was completely, entirely in the zone.
He was operating in a state of absolute, effortless flow.
Every touch was perfect.
Every pass found its target.
He was drifting inside, floating centrally, completely ignoring rigid positional boundaries to exploit the massive gaps in the disorganized Steaua midfield.
In the thirty-eighth minute, the sheer, undeniable absurdity of Natán’s performance reached its absolute, stunning climax.
City was patiently passing the ball around the edge of the Steaua penalty area.
David Silva played a short, simple pass to Natán, who had drifted centrally, operating essentially in the number ten role just outside the ‘D’ of the penalty box.
Natán received the ball with his back to goal.
He was instantly pressured by two desperate Steaua defenders, Kaboul and Muniru, who stepped up aggressively, terrified of letting him turn and shoot with his lethal left foot.
But Natán didn’t try to turn.
He played a lightning-fast, one-touch pass backward to Sergio Aguero, who was hovering ten yards away.
As soon as the ball left his foot, Natán spun rapidly on his heel, making an explosive, darting run straight through the microscopic gap between the two converging defenders.
Aguero, displaying his elite link-up play, recognized the brilliant one-two combination immediately.
The Argentine striker played a perfectly weighted, first-time return pass right back through the defense, sliding the ball directly into Natán’s path inside the penalty area.
Natán burst through the defensive line, entirely bypassing the double-team.
He was in on goal again.
The remaining Steaua center-back, desperate to stop the slaughter, lunged forward recklessly, throwing his entire body directly into the path of Natán’s left foot, absolutely terrified of the impending, trademark finesse shot.
The defender completely over-committed, selling his soul to block the left side.
Natán saw the desperate lunge.
He processed the defender’s momentum in a fraction of a millisecond.
And then, he executed a piece of skill so outrageously brilliant, so utterly disrespectful, that it defied logic.
Natán didn’t touch the ball.
As the return pass from Aguero rolled across the wet grass, perfectly setting up a left-footed strike, Natán executed a massive, exaggerated dummy.
He stepped over the ball with his left leg, letting the leather roll completely across his body, entirely ignoring his dominant foot.
The Steaua defender went flying past him, wildly attempting to block a left-footed shot that was never going to happen.
The ball rolled perfectly onto Natán’s significantly weaker, highly neglected right foot.
The angle was tight.
The goalkeeper, Niță, was rushing out aggressively, trying to close the distance.
Natán didn’t hesitate.
He swung his right leg back and struck the ball with the instep of his right boot.
It wasn’t the cleanest strike of his career, lacking the terrifying power and wicked spin of his magical left foot, but it was incredibly accurate.
The ball rolled across the grass, completely beating the sprawling goalkeeper.
It traveled toward the far left post.
The entire stadium held its breath, watching the slow, agonizing roll of the ball.
Clang.
The ball hit the inside of the left post with a loud, metallic ping.
But instead of bouncing outward, it deflected sharply along the goal line.
It rolled entirely across the length of the open net, agonizingly close to crossing the line, before striking the inside of the right post.
Clang.
For a microscopic fraction of a second, the ball seemed to hover perfectly on the white chalk, defying the laws of physics, before the heavy, residual spin finally pulled it backward, trickling softly over the line and coming to a dead rest in the back of the net.
4-0 City.
The absolute sheer absurdity of the double-post goal completely shattered whatever tiny shred of resistance the Romanian crowd had left.
The stadium was entirely, profoundly silent.
The Steaua players completely collapsed.
Several of them literally dropped to their knees on the wet grass, staring blankly into the night sky, completely broken by the sheer, overwhelming quality of the nineteen-year-old Spaniard who was destroying their Champions League dreams.
Natán simply stood near the penalty spot, a massive, brilliant smile spreading across his face, shaking his head in absolute disbelief at the ridiculous fortune of the double-post bounce.
He was immediately swarmed by his ecstatic teammates, completely buried under a mountain of celebrating sky-blue shirts.
Seven minutes later, the Italian referee mercifully brought the whistle to his lips and blew sharply twice.
Halftime.
The Manchester City players slowly began the walk toward the tunnel, completely exhausted but buzzing with an immense, intoxicating high.
They had executed Pep Guardiola’s tactical vision to absolute, ruthless perfection.
They were leading 4-0 away from home in a Champions League qualifier, effectively ending the tie before the second leg in Manchester had even been played.
As Natán jogged lightly toward the tunnel, wiping a thick layer of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, he casually glanced up at the massive, glowing electronic scoreboard hanging high above the stands.
STEAUA BUCUREȘTI 0 – 4 MANCHESTER CITY
Comas (9′, 38′), Aguero (15′), Comas (21′ PEN).
Natán slowed his jogging to a complete walk.
He stared at the giant, illuminated letters spelling his name three times.
He blinked, his exhausted, adrenaline-fueled brain slowly crunching the mathematics of what he had just accomplished.
He had a hat-trick and an assist.
In forty-five minutes.
He let out a slow, heavy breath, a profound, undeniable sense of awe washing over him.
He thought back to the previous season under Manuel Pellegrini.
He had played relatively well, yes, but the Champions League campaign had been a grueling, frustrating struggle.
He had spent the entire tournament isolated on the wing, fighting for scraps of service, completely reliant on individual moments of brilliance to make an impact.
He had managed to score five goals across the entire, massive European campaign.
It had been considered a wildly successful debut season for a teenager in Europe’s most elite competition.
But right now, standing on the pitch in Bucharest, under the intense, maniacal guidance of Pep Guardiola, he had just scored three goals in a single, solitary half of football.
He had nearly matched his entire output from the previous season in forty-five minutes.
The realization hit him like a physical shockwave.
The grueling, agonizing tactical lectures, the screaming in the tape room, the relentless demands for him to drop deep and track back, it wasn’t a punishment.
It was a terrifying, brilliant blueprint designed to unleash his absolute, maximum potential.
By forcing him to engage with the system, Pep had completely unlocked the game for him.
He wasn’t just a flashy winger anymore; he was a complete, unstoppable footballing weapon.
Natán looked down at his neon-green boots, a slow smile curling onto his lips.
He couldn’t wait to see her on Sunday.
He couldn’t wait to tell her about the hat-trick.
But right now, he had forty-five more minutes of football left to play.
He jogged down the dark tunnel, his cleats clacking loudly against the concrete, following his teammates into the dressing room.
He felt absolutely invincible.
He was playing the best football of his entire life, and the scary, undeniable truth was that he was only just getting started.