Was it the mask finally coming off? Hard to say.
The team was losing — but my body felt razor sharp, like every nerve was tuned to the right frequency.
"Hoo—!"
I stood side by side with Malek at the center circle, waiting for the restart.
The sun was sinking behind the stadium, painting a thin wash of amber across the sky.
Not a cloud in sight, and by Porto's standards, the air was unusually dry.
Compared to the bone-cracking winters of Milwaukee, this place was paradise.
A perfect day for football.
Second half — our kick.
"Manage your energy!"
Castro's instruction was clear — no high press from the front.
With the substitution cards spent, there was nobody left to bring on if someone went down.
So we dropped into a slightly defensive shape early in the half.
The plan was to absorb, draw Arouca in deeper, and then unleash in the final stretch.
This wasn't about being pushed back — it was a premeditated trap, drilled in training.
And sure enough, Arouca's attack took the bait. They hammered forward at a retreating Porto with everything they had.
The ones who wanted to score against the ones trying to hold them out.
One goal would be the hinge point of this match. We maintained our shape, tight and compact, suffocating Arouca's attempts to finish us off.
And the moment we won the ball back in our own defensive zone—
"Hey!"
We launched like a bolt of lightning. This was Castro's football — the kind built for nights when you were the underdog.
Lete to Oleg on the left, Oleg with a crisp ground pass into Casama in the center.
Tap.
Casama's dribbling ability was something nobody disputed.
It was both his greatest strength and, at times, his greatest weakness — but right now, it was exactly what was needed.
He weaved past a vicious tackle and drove forward, scanning ahead to find the link with the strikers.
Malek peeling off to the left. Me in the center, pinning Arouca's center backs.
The ball came to me. I laid it off quickly and spun—
shaking off the hand gripping my jersey—
"Push the line!"
Arouca's back four stepped up as one. A pass forward meant offside.
Funny, isn't it?
The exact situation we'd rehearsed in training, playing out in front of our eyes.
I tracked the defensive line and drifted sideways like a tightrope walker.
Curving my run rather than going straight, I exploded forward — bang — like a bullet from a gun.
Casama's pass arrived in sync — the timing wasn't bad.
Though the quality, if we're being honest, was a clear notch below Fábio's.
That gap in the finer details was exactly why Casama had always come second in comparisons with him.
The ball came in hard and slightly off — if it had been anyone else, it might have rolled out for a goal kick.
I gritted my teeth and went after it. Body leaning back, leg sliding out.
Got it.
I felt the defenders behind me slow. Their heads turned.
The ball, driven away from the congested right side, found its way to the one man who had drifted to the opposite side of the box.
João Malek.
He rolled it in simply, and erupted into celebration like he'd just won the Champions League.
Arms spread wide like an aircraft, he sprinted toward the corner flag — and look, I get it, scoring is a rush, but come on.
We're still losing. The celebration was a touch much for a goal that hadn't even leveled things yet.
Someone watching from outside might've thought we'd just taken the lead.
"Did you see him? That was deliberate."
"Wow. He's improved again this week."
"Good decision. Looks like the mask actually worked — ha."
While Malek celebrated solo, the rest of the squad surrounded me with their praise.
Honestly, I hadn't expected it to feel quite like this. Taking the mask off — it was like a blind had been lifted.
It wasn't some miraculous physical change.
The mask had forced certain habits into me through discomfort, and now those habits, having quietly taken root, were blooming naturally in a real match.
A new kind of confidence was growing. I felt, for the first time, a little closer to being an actual footballer.
53rd minute. Score: 2-1.
An early one clawed back.
The Porto fans responded warmly to seeing their young players refuse to lie down, clapping and lifting the atmosphere.
Before the restart, Moreira jogged over with the bench's instructions.
"Good pass, Jino. Coach says from now on, channel everything through you around the box."
"Got it."
"Get us the equalizer too. You look sharp today."
Before I could even answer, Moreira had already hurried back to his position.
The referee's whistle cut through the air — round two, properly underway.
Arouca seemed to conclude that the goal had come from a lapse in their own defensive concentration — their 2-0 lead making them complacent.
Whatever the reason, their players dialed the aggression back up.
Tweet! Tweet! Tweet!
Bodies kept colliding in the midfield. The referee's whistle barely left his lips.
The culprit this time — number 23, Eriksson, the same man who had put Pires out of the game in the first half.
Already on a yellow, he received his second.
"It wasn't deliberate! I was going for the ball!"
Desperate to avoid the red card — what a performance.
He'd kicked Casama's calf hard enough to look like a martial arts strike.
Casama's dribbling had been making him look foolish, and his temper had finally snapped.
He kept protesting in the referee's face — but there was never any chance of that working.
"Pathetic."
That aside — Casama needed checking.
More precisely: with no substitutions left, could he keep going?
When the shin guard came off, his calf was already swollen and red.
"I'm fine. It's nothing."
"That's a serious lump."
"Do you have any idea how hard it was to even get here? This is nothing."
Casama insisted, and the trainer gave the bench an okay signal — a circle with his hand.
63rd minute. Eleven against ten.
Arouca pulled off both their strikers and replaced them with defensive players.
An open declaration — they were parking the bus in front of their goal.
We didn't even need to wait until the planned 70-minute tactical shift.
Thwap, thwap! Tha-thwap!
A man up, and the opposition sitting deep — space began opening up across the midfield.
The ball moved faster than Arouca could foul it.
Casama found Yahaya at right back, who played it wide.
A cross into the center would be the obvious next move, but the box was a maze of bodies.
Arouca's fullback and center backs had wrapped around me like a second skin — even jumping was almost impossible.
Thud!!
The cross cannoned off a center back's head and ricocheted out beyond the box.
Casama retrieved it — but threading a killer pass wasn't in his repertoire the way it was in Fábio's.
What this situation needed was something to unlock it, one moment of quality.
Without a dangerous long-range threat in his locker, the ball kept getting recycled back to the flank.
This time it went left to Oleg.
"Hey!"
Frustrated, I drifted outside the box.
Malek and the midfielders were also scrapping for space inside, so something had to give.
Come on, Oleg. Let's try something.
I darted through the tangle of players inside the penalty area, drawing a sweeping half-circle before breaking out beyond the arc.
"Give it!"
Oleg had read the intention. A perfectly timed low pass, driven hard along the ground.
One defender still attached to me as I shifted left.
I used the momentum of the run and drove a left-footed in-front shot without breaking stride.
Thwap!!
When it came to shooting, the confidence was absolute. From an angle nobody had anticipated, the ball left my foot with a curl on it.
Its trajectory — bending away from the left post on release — slowly, imperceptibly began to turn inward.
The goalkeeper, caught flat-footed by the early shot, could only swivel his head and watch.
Top left corner.
Not a thunderbolt — the white ball moved almost gracefully, before nestling into the net.
I turned and looked at the Arouca defender still clenching my jersey in his fist.
"Want to keep it?"
"What?"
"When I get the number nine, I'll give it to you. Right now it's a bit complicated."
"…"
Number 45.
Ferreira was wearing the nine, so four plus five it was.
I pointed at the digits on my back with both hands and gave the world my celebration — fashionably late.
The pose lasted about two seconds.
Then the players in the blue-striped shirts descended on me like a herd.
Wild energy, raining blows down on my back and the back of my head.
Even mid-pile-on, I stole a glance at the bench. Moreira was being called over urgently — next tactical instructions already being relayed.
※
"Don't hold back on the shots!"
Matos's voice cut through from the bench, already hoarse, rasping like gravel but no less sharp for it.
Past the 75th minute, Moreira drove a low, rapid cross from the right — and Malek connected first time.
Agonizingly close. A fingernail's width away from going in.
The stadium exhaled in collective disappointment.
Arouca's goalkeeper launched a goal kick toward the right back. With no need to push for more, Arouca were perfectly happy to kill time deep in their own half.
"Press them!"
"Malek — get on him!"
With only ten men, Arouca couldn't match us physically anymore.
Lete anchored the back four close to the halfway line while the players ahead of him cranked up the pressure.
Forced into a desperate clearance, Arouca lost the ball — and we rebuilt.
Casama's pass found Galeno.
Without a moment's hesitation, Galeno went straight into a 1v1 isolation.
Is this what they call samba football?
Footwork that belonged in a highlights reel. Step-overs so quick the eye could barely follow, and then the sideline was his.
Galeno, racing toward the byline, spotted Casama arriving inside the box.
He cut the pass low and hard — Casama took it in his stride and struck.
"No— NO— NOOOOO!!"
Lete's agony said everything. The ball deflected off a defender's boot and reversed direction instantly.
Arouca's midfielder Coelho brought it down on his chest and played it forward.
Fernandes — standing right alongside Lete — burst through.
Porto's players streamed back in pursuit.
Concede now and the match would be nearly impossible to win.
Moreira, Casama, Iralha — all going flat out — but this wasn't going to be easy.
Then.
Lete, beginning to lose the footrace, went for the tackle — all in, no hesitation.
Miss it and Arouca were clean through on goal. But he clipped the ball cleanly —
Thwap!!
— and was back on his feet instantly, turning the counter into a counter of their own.
For the first time all match, the Arouca players who had been barricaded in front of their goal were caught out in the open.
"Jino!!"
"Go!!"
The Porto players flooding back into defense all spun around at once.
The ball bounced and rolled toward the corner of the penalty area.
I overtook every Arouca defender between me and it, sprinting at full tilt.
But it was drifting away — I reached it a split second before it crossed the goal line.
"Hoo—!"
I killed it just in time and immediately turned. Two center backs right on top of me.
Waiting for teammates would take too long. This one was mine to take.
Defender Alves moved to seal off the right side and herd me out over the byline.
Same position, same scenario as the Braga match.
The defender planted both feet wide as if he already knew my weakness — blocking the space before I could use it.
"Think I'm still the same player?"
I shifted the ball from my right foot to my left and hugged the byline, driving forward through the narrow channel.
Osei, covering from behind, saw the unexpected move and scrambled to adjust.
Once I had pace built up, changes of speed in a dribble were something I backed myself on.
Thud!
A sharp deceleration — then a wide cut to the right.
Osei, lunging to force me out, lost his balance and went down.
A shooting angle, just barely. Had to finish before the next defender arrived.
"Damn."
Just as I planted to shoot, Alves's hand clamped onto my shoulder.
The balance went for a fraction of a second — enough to break the timing.
Calling the foul was borderline enough that the referee let it go.
So I extended my arm right back at Alves, keeping him at arm's length.
I cocked the right foot back again for one more attempt—
"Get in and tackle him!"
The grounded Osei screamed at left back Buquiá.
Stay calm.
The tackle was coming at exactly the wrong moment. I released the tension in my leg and nudged the ball one more step to the right.
Buquiá slid through — and missed completely.
I was looking almost straight at goal now.
No more thinking. No more timing. Just swing.
Boom!!
The defenders scattered like leaves in a storm, every head turning at once.
Whether they were praying their goalkeeper would save it—
"Come on!!"
My roar answered them before their heads had finished turning.
3-2. The comeback complete.
But that wasn't the end.
With Arouca throwing everything forward in the final minutes, I won another physical battle against their defenders — and without breaking stride, rolled a backheel into Casama's path that left them all standing still.
Casama finished it calmly. The net rippled.
Castro burst off the bench and launched an uppercut into the air.
No need for false modesty.
Tonight's match—
I won it.
After the final whistle, the local Porto media seemed to agree — covering me in a little more detail than usual, as if finally taking proper notice.