CHAPTER 195: SAN MAMÉS

Lukas didn’t sprint wildly. He didn’t tear off in hysteria.

He jogged — slowly, deliberately — toward the corner flag, a small, knowing smile on his lips , nodding to himself like a man confirming a prediction written long ago as he stared at the sea of red and white in front of him. Most with hands on their heads, some with mouth aghast. The boos had turned into stunned murmuring, then into something close to awe.

Skhiri reached him first, leaping onto his back, yelling in his ear:

"I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT WORKED! YOU’RE A GENIUS, MAN!"

Then the rest piled in — Ekitike, Götze, Larsson, Collins, all crashing into a heap of limbs and joy.

Behind them, the Bilbao players stood motionless, staring at the teenager who had just beaten them with a one-touch ambush routine, executed as coldly as a veteran No. 10 in a Champions League final.

Andrés Cordero delivered the finishing line, his voice thick with disbelief and admiration:

"Lukas Brandt has come to the cathedral of football... and tonight, there will be no mass in San Mamés — not if he has anything to say about it."

The boos didn’t return.

Only the tension did.

Because suddenly, everyone in the stadium, the home fans included, knew — this tie had just come alive.

The match resumed with an intensity that felt almost combustible. Bilbao were furious that their early advantage had evaporated, and Frankfurt sensed blood in the water after Lukas’ outrageous free-kick routine and his ruthlessly struck finish. The San Mamés roared back to life, desperate to tilt the momentum toward the home side again, but Eintracht were no longer rattled. They were awake.

From the kickoff, the pace quickened. Passes were zipped with more venom, tackles arrived half a heartbeat quicker, and both teams looked convinced that the next goal would set the tone for the entire tie.

Bilbao pushed first.

In the 33rd minute, Williams drifted inside from the left and found Jauregizar between the lines. Jauregizar released Sancet down the middle with a delicate little reverse pass that threatened to split Koch and Theate. Sancet took it in stride, opened his body, and unleashed a right-footed shot toward the bottom corner. Kaua read it brilliantly, sprang low to his left, and pushed the ball away with a firm wrist, drawing a sharp gasp from the entire stadium.

"Kaua! Oh what a save from the young Brazilian goalkeeper!" Chris Wittyngham exclaimed as the replay showed the goalkeeper’s fingertips redirecting the ball inches past the post.

Frankfurt responded almost instantly.

Skhiri won the ball after the corner was cleared and poked it forward to Larsson, who had drifted toward the left touchline. Larsson lifted his head, saw Lukas peeling away from de Marcos into a pocket of space, and sent the ball toward him. Lukas controlled with his chest, let the ball fall, and with instinctive confidence turned inside as the midfielders converged.

He spotted Ekitike making a diagonal run behind Vivian. Without hesitating, Lukas wrapped his foot under the ball and lifted a perfectly weighted lob from just shy of the halfway line. It sailed in a slow, elegant arc over the back line, and Ekitike burst onto it, beating the trap with inch-perfect timing.

"This might open up! Ekitike is through!"

The goalkeeper, Agirrezabala, sprinted out of his box, arms wide, trying to force the striker to rush the decision. Ekitike saw the keeper off his line and attempted a first-time chip with his left foot. The ball rose beautifully. For a moment it looked certain to drop into the net.

But it kept rising.

It clipped the crossbar with a dull, hollow thud and bounced harmlessly out of play.

Ekitike slapped his hands together in frustration. Lukas held his head for a second before clapping his teammate on, telling him to keep going. It was the right idea.

The San Mamés, jolted by the near-disaster, roared again — and Bilbao pushed forward.

In the 40th minute, de Marcos surged down the right and clipped in a cross on his weaker foot. The ball curled sharply toward the penalty spot where Sancet timed his leap perfectly. He met it cleanly, redirecting it downward and toward the far post. It was the kind of header that scores nine out of ten times.

But Kaua refused.

The young Brazilian goalkeeper exploded to his right, got two strong hands behind the ball, and pushed it wide for another corner. Even the CBS commentators couldn’t contain the admiration.

"Kaua is having the half of his life! That is unbelievable reflex goalkeeping!"

Despite the end-to-end chaos, Lukas remained the gravitational center of Frankfurt’s play. Every time the ball came near him, the stadium erupted into boos — but the boy seemed almost indifferent to the noise. He attempted take-ons, drove through midfield traffic, and forced Bilbao’s defenders to scramble every time he accelerated.

In the 44th minute, he cut inside from the right flank, drove between Jauregizar and Lekue, and unleashed a low shot from twenty-five meters that forced Agirrezabala into a diving save. The rebound nearly fell to Götze, but Vivian reacted quickly enough to hook it clear.

The fourth official signaled two minutes of added time. Bilbao cooled the tempo, and Frankfurt dropped into shape, wary of conceding right before the break.

The halftime whistle finally blew.

The score remained 1–1, but the entire stadium knew the match was already becoming something special — shaped by raw emotion, frantic energy, heroic defending, and one teenage star who refused to shrink in one of the harshest cauldrons of noise in Europe.

The players took their positions for the second half, the noise inside San Mamés swelling again as the referee checked both goalkeepers and then raised his whistle to his lips.

"Second half underway in Bilbao," Cordero said as the ball rolled from the centre spot. "All square on the night. All square in this quarter-final tie. Forty-five huge minutes ahead."

From the first touch it was obvious Athletic had come out with a different edge. Their press, already aggressive in the first half, now had a frantic sharpness to it. Every pass from Frankfurt’s back line was chased, every touch met with a body, an elbow, a shoulder. The crowd could feel it and fed it, roaring with every duel, whistling with every white shirt that dared keep the ball for more than a heartbeat.

Frankfurt tried to play through it instead of over it. Larsson dropped between Koch and Theate, calling for calm, palms down. Brown pushed a little higher on the left to offer an outlet. Lukas, who had spent much of the first half prowling between the lines, took two or three steps deeper, hovering near the centre circle to give his defenders a target.

Theate finally spotted him.

Under pressure from two red-and-white shirts, the Belgian took a touch out of his feet and, the moment he saw three metres of grass around Lukas, zipped the ball into him. It skidded quickly across the slick surface, straight at the number 49’s boots.

Berenguer was already sprinting in from the side. Sancet, who had just been further up, read the situation and dropped, angling his run to close from behind. The noise rose another notch as the home fans realised who was about to receive the ball.

"Here we go again," Wittyngham murmured. "Every time Brandt gets it, the whole stadium tightens."

Lukas stepped to meet the pass, shoulders relaxed, body slightly side-on. The ball came in hard. At the last instant he let it roll a fraction further than expected and rolled his left foot over it, cushioning and shifting it in one movement. The touch nudged it through the little gap between Berenguer’s legs as the winger lunged in, a clean nutmeg, the ball popping out the other side just as Lukas spun.

He pivoted around Berenguer’s trailing hip like it was a training cone.

"Oh my word," Cordero laughed. "He’s sent Berenguer for a hotdog!"

As he turned, Sancet was already on him. The midfielder grabbed a handful of Lukas’s shirt, yanking him back. Lukas tried to ride it, leaning forward into the contact, using Sancet’s grip as momentum. He still managed to toe the ball forward with his right, looking to slide it into Götze, but the pass came up short and was hooked clear by de Marcos.

The whistle went immediately.

FWEEE!

"Foul, and a very obvious one," Wittyngham said. "He’s just not letting him turn."

The referee was already walking towards them with the yellow card out. Sancet released Lukas’s shirt with a tiny shrug, hands up in mock innocence. Lukas bent over, hands on his knees for a moment, catching his breath. Then he straightened and jogged away without complaint, adjusting his sleeve.

"It’s quite clear what the message is," Cordero added. "If Brandt turns, if he faces you, bring him down. Even if it costs a booking."

The free kick was taken short and nothing came of it, but the pattern was set. For the next ten minutes, every time Lukas tried to receive on the half-turn, there was a body on him. A clip to the ankle. A nudge on the hip. A shirt tug. Just enough to break his rhythm, to stop him carrying the ball into space.

Frankfurt, to their credit, refused to panic. Larsson kept recycling the ball, Koch and Theate took extra care on their passes. But the margin for error shrank with every Athletic press.

And in the 58th minute, the error came.