“—so here’s what I’ve figured out,” Neymar said through the phone speaker.
“You can’t come to Barcelona, obviously, because if you’re here and Messi is here, then where does that leave me?”
“Presumably still on the same team,” Léo said.
“Don’t be smart.
I’m serious.
You need your own stage.
So my thinking is Real Madrid.
Go to Real Madrid, be with Cristiano, keep him honest.
You’re probably the only one in our generation who could actually do that.
He needs competition or he gets weird.
It would be good for him.” Neymar paused.
“Good for football, really.”
“You’ve thought about this a lot.”
“I think about everything.
That’s why I’m at Barcelona.” Neymar let the silence stretch, undoubtedly appreciating his own logic.
“Anyway.
Go to Brazil first.
Prove yourself.
Then Europe, then Real Madrid, then you and me will compete for every major tournament for the next ten years improving our skill.
Simple.”
Léo lay flat on his back on his dormitory bed, staring at the ceiling.
The window was cracked open.
The familiar evening sounds of São Paulo drifted in—grinding traffic, barking dogs, the heavy bass of a stereo vibrating three buildings down.
“Neymar.”
“What?”
“You’ve just entered the European scene.”
“Correct.”
“And you’ve already planned the next decade of both our careers.”
“Someone has to,” Neymar said, entirely unbothered.
“You’re not going to do it.
You’ll just show up somewhere and be brilliant and hope it works out.”
Léo opened his mouth to reply.
The battery warning cut him off.
Two sharp beeps, and the call dropped into dead silence.
Léo stared at the black screen, plugged the phone into the wall, and set it on the nightstand.
He lay back down.
For two years, he had actively avoided this conversation.
It was strange how quickly the silence had collapsed, leaving everything exactly as he remembered it.
May 26, 4 p.m.
The Estádio Moisés Lucarelli in Campinas held just under twenty thousand people.
On a Sunday afternoon in late May, under a warm, clear sky, the away end was packed with a respectable showing of São Paulo FC supporters.
They brought flags, percussion, and the relentless, demanding energy of fans who knew their club was heavily favored.
Ponte Preta was a decent side.
Founded in 1900, they were one of the oldest clubs in the country—respectable without being particularly threatening.
São Paulo had comfortably beaten them in the state championship quarterfinals just three weeks prior.
Léo sat on the bench and watched.
He had expected the pace of a first-division match to be intense.
It was not intense.
The players moved through their tactical shapes with the unhurried, grinding professionalism of men who understood they were beginning a very long season and had no intention of burning themselves out in round one.
Possession cycled sideways far more often than forward.
The pressing was selective, almost entirely advisory.
The fans in the stands generated significantly more urgency than the twenty-two men on the grass.
Thirty minutes in, Léo realized his posture had completely slumped.
“Ei.” Aloísio bumped his shoulder against Léo’s.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not.”
“Your eyes were closing.”
“The sun is directly in my face.”
“It’s four in the afternoon.”
Léo straightened his spine.
He watched Denílson cycle a safe, backward pass to the center-backs.
He couldn’t decide if he was witnessing professional tactical restraint or total apathy.
He thought he would get some minutes.
When Ramalho made the first substitution in the sixty-fourth minute—pulling Maicon for a defensive midfielder—Léo leaned slightly forward.
When the second substitution arrived in the seventy-eighth minute, he leaned further.
Aloísio stood up, yanked off his training bib, and jogged toward the technical area without looking back.
Léo stayed seated.
He watched Aloísio enter the match.
He watched the remaining twelve minutes.
He watched Lúcio casually head in a corner in the eighty-fifth minute with the brutal efficiency of a man who had scored in Champions League finals.
In stoppage time, Jadson added a second.
2-0.
São Paulo’s first points of the Serie A season.
On the bus ride back to the city, Lúcio dropped into the aisle seat across from Léo.
“I heard you had a moment this afternoon,” Lúcio said.
“The afternoon sun.”
“Right.” Lúcio stretched his massive legs out into the aisle.
“I’ll tell you something.
Your first twenty domestic matches, almost all of them are going to feel exactly like that.
The really dull ones are the ones you have to learn to survive without losing your focus.”
Léo stared out the window.
The dark expanse of the São Paulo state highway rushed past the glass.
“We play close to eighty matches a year,” Lúcio said.
“Sometimes more, if you count the commercial tours in the off-season.
Every competition stacked directly on top of the next.
State championship, Serie A, Copa Sudamericana.
If we played every single one of those fixtures at Champions League intensity, we’d have no squad left by September.” Lúcio paused.
“The Brazilian calendar is punishing.
So we’ve found a way to manage the load without physically destroying ourselves.”
“So everyone just—”
“Everyone manages.
Yes.” Lúcio offered no apology.
“The important matches, the rivalries, the knockouts—you’ll feel the difference.
You’ll feel it in your legs during the warm-up.
You’ll hear it in the crowd.
You’ll see it in how the opposition looks at you before kick-off.
Tonight was not one of those matches.
Tonight was a professional obligation executed correctly.”
Léo absorbed that.
“When do I get one of the important ones?”
Lúcio leaned his head back against the seat.
“Keep showing up early.
Ramalho noticed.”
May 30.
Morumbi on a Thursday evening felt entirely different than the dead-rubber Copa Libertadores match two weeks prior.
This was the home opener of the Serie A season, and the city cared.
By six o’clock, an hour before kick-off, the third tier was packed.
By six-thirty, the main stands were overflowing, and the ultras section behind the south goal was generating a wall of noise that vibrated against the concrete.
Sixty-seven thousand seats, and São Paulo FC had spent recent seasons underperforming the attendance numbers of their bitter rivals.
Tonight felt like a massive debt being called in.
The opposition was Vasco da Gama, traveling up from Rio de Janeiro.
Founded in 1898, with four Brazilian Serie A titles to their name, they were a traditional powerhouse.
Romário had exploded out of Vasco, returned to Vasco after conquering Europe, and eventually retired there at age forty-one.
The current Vasco squad lacked a Romário, but they were not a courtesy opponent.
Their shape in the opening minutes was organized and lethal.
Sitting on the bench, Léo immediately felt the difference in tempo from the Ponte Preta match.
Both teams were awake.
Both teams meant it.
Tenth minute.
Denílson stepped up, intercepted a sloppy pass in the midfield, turned, and launched a sixty-yard diagonal over the top.
Fabiano found space behind the Vasco left-back, controlled the ball cleanly on his chest, and played a rapid one-two with Sylvinho overlapping on the flank.
Sylvinho drove into the channel and cut it back into Fabiano’s run.
Fabiano hit it first-time, right-footed, aiming low for the far post.
Vasco’s goalkeeper, Alves, managed to drag his fingertips across the ball, pushing it wide.
Léo was half out of his seat.
He forced himself back down.
Three minutes later, Vasco countered.
Their right winger, Éder Luís, took the ball out wide, dropped his shoulder, and sliced inside past two São Paulo midfielders.
He drove a hard, flat cross across the penalty area.
Carlos Tenório arrived unmarked at the back post and threw himself at the ball, steering a heavy header toward the corner.
It missed by an inch.
The collective exhale from sixty-seven thousand people sucked the air out of the stadium.
The match ground into an aggressive stalemate.
Neither team could convert their chances, both backlines holding firm under pressure.
The half-time whistle blew at 0-0.
The Morumbi crowd roared as the players walked down the tunnel—a specific, impatient noise demanding a breakthrough.
Léo stood at the tunnel entrance, his neon training bib still over his jersey.
Ramalho stopped beside him and grabbed his arm.
“Warm up properly,” Ramalho ordered.
“You’re on at the start of the second half.”
Léo’s chest tightened.
He had been waiting for this since April.
He stood up a fraction straighter.
Aloísio jogged past him toward the dressing room.
He caught the slight shift in Léo’s posture, grinned, and bumped him hard in the shoulder.
“Vamos, Léo,” he said.
“Show them.”
During half-time, the substitutes filtered back out onto the pitch to stay warm.
Léo stepped out of the tunnel and onto the Morumbi grass.
The noise was different from pitch level.
Up in the stands, the sound was directional.
Down in the center circle, the bowl of the stadium trapped the roar and threw it back down from every angle.
He had stood in this stadium before, but never like this.
Never as a contracted player.
Léo stood still, staring up into the blinding glare of the floodlights.
Something slammed into the side of his head.
Léo stumbled, spinning around.
Aloísio stood ten meters away, bouncing a football on his thigh.
His expression was split evenly between a wince of apology and a massive grin.
“I thought you could handle it,” Aloísio shouted over the crowd.
Léo rubbed his temple, walked over, and picked the ball up off the grass.
He started his warm-up.