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"Atlético Madrid Complete Three-Goal Away Comeback! King Lance Delivers Perfect Performance with Two Goals and One Assist!"
"Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Lance All Score as La Liga's Three Giants Each Win This Round."
"Twenty-eight rounds into the league, Lance has scored 36 goals, leading second-placed Messi by 10 and Cristiano Ronaldo by 13.
Although both Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have been finding the net regularly, neither can match Lance's pace. Since his debut, this Asian player has averaged more than a goal per game without exception.
In the history of football, there has simply never been anyone quite like him.
The only remaining question is whether Lance can break Messi's 50-goal record."
The brace against Valencia had quietly taken Lance's tally to 36 league goals.
"Fun fact: Atlético Madrid played twice a week all through February, and Lance was rested for one league game. Otherwise he would probably be past 40 already."
"I thought Torres, Agüero and Falcao were all god-tier strikers, but Lance is on a completely different level."
"150 million, every euro well spent."
"A natural goal machine."
"Someone tell me I'm not dreaming. Atlético Madrid actually have a player like this?"
Atlético fans were going absolutely mad.
For so long, they had watched helplessly as Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi hogged the top of the scoring charts season after season. Now it was finally an Atlético Madrid striker's turn to put up those kinds of numbers. Leading Messi by 10 goals. Go ahead and try to close that gap.
Barring a season-ending injury, the La Liga Golden Boot was already Lance's.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi fans could only turn to Twitter to vent.
"What does the Golden Boot matter? Trophies are what count."
"Just a reminder that Barcelona are top of the La Liga table."
"Real Madrid's focus is the Champions League. We've won the league too many times to get excited about it."
Atlético fans read all of this and felt nothing but amusement. They loved seeing how much people resented Lance and yet could do absolutely nothing about it.
La Liga Matchday 29: Atlético Madrid vs. Deportivo La Coruña.
Before the match, Barcelona had beaten Getafe 6-0 and Real Madrid had beaten Las Palmas 4-0. Atlético fans were barely surprised anymore.
"So they just bully the weaker sides to inflate their numbers, do they?"
"That's La Liga for you."
"Go on then, keep smashing the minnows."
It was entirely normal for Real Madrid and Barcelona to run up cricket scores against the bottom half. Messi scored twice, cutting the deficit to eight goals. Cristiano Ronaldo grabbed a hat-trick, slowly reeling Messi in and edging closer to Lance. Both sets of fans immediately took to Twitter to needle Atlético supporters.
"See? Cristiano Ronaldo will catch up. Watch."
"Messi is your Golden Boot winner. It's only a few goals, he'll overtake him."
"The all-time scoring record still belongs to my Messi."
Then Atlético Madrid kicked off.
"OHHHHHH, hat-trick!!!"
"Lance, a thunderous long-range strike, the third goal!!!"
"Atlético Madrid lead Deportivo La Coruña 3-0!"
Real Madrid and Barcelona fans stared in disbelief.
Seriously? You're padding your stats too now?
Only seven minutes into the first half, Lance received a pass from Griezmann in the attacking third, used the muscle memory of Nagi Seishiro to flick the ball past a defender inside the box with a deft touch, and finished with a crisp volley.
1-0.
Deportivo set up deep, desperate to contain Lance on behalf of Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo everywhere across Spain. But Lance's Atlético teammates were equally determined, and even when chances fell to them, they held back deliberately, engineering openings for Lance instead.
It left Lance somewhere between touched and exasperated.
"Why are you doing this? If you'd shot earlier we'd have won sooner!"
"No chance. We need you to break the record."
"That's right, Lance! Fifty goals! Don't forget, fifty goals!"
The Catalan media, led by Mundo Deportivo, had been hammering away at Messi's 50-goal record for days, arguing that Messi's peak scoring rate was superior and therefore Messi remained the greater player. Never mind how many of those goals were penalties. Rewriting history in real time, apparently.
It had wound the entire Atlético squad up. You say Lance can't break the record. You say Messi's 50 goals can never be matched. Fine. Watch us.
So throughout the first half, despite a string of clear opportunities, they stubbornly refused to pull the trigger.
It was not until the second half that the floodgates opened.
In the 62nd minute, Saúl delivered a cross. Torres headed it down towards the penalty spot, and Lance arrived right on cue, nudging the ball past one man with the tip of his boot, then gliding past another with a sharp Cruyff Turn, weaving through the box with that unmistakable footwork.
Deportivo's defenders were spinning in circles, but they still couldn't stop him.
2-0.
Lance's league tally stood at 38 goals.
In the 81st minute, Lance drove into the 36-metre zone. Spotting the goalkeeper positioned slightly off his line, he shaped as though to pick out Griezmann, dragging the defender's weight across.
Then he let fly.
Without the full power of the Hyuga Kojiro template behind it, the sheer obsession with goals and victory ignited the Tiger Soul from within. An ultra-long-range thunderbolt screamed into the net.
3-0.
Hat-trick.
29 rounds played. 39 goals.
His lead over second-placed Messi stretched to 11 goals.
With just nine rounds remaining, maybe, just maybe, Lance truly had a chance at the 50-goal record.
The football world erupted.
"The Eastern Demon Arrives! Lance's Hat-Trick Destroys Deportivo La Coruña as He Soars Clear at the Top of the Scoring Charts!"
Even Barcelona's manager Luis Enrique threw in the towel.
Luis Enrique: "The Golden Boot race is not something we concern ourselves with. Barcelona's mission is to win trophies. We are competing on all three fronts."
Messi: "My goal has always been winning. As long as we lift trophies, I don't care about the scoring charts."
And elsewhere: "Cristiano Ronaldo in Alleged Nightclub Altercation with Fans. Madrid Police Investigating."
Saúl read through the headlines, laughing to himself.
"No ability but still trying to compete for the Golden Boot. I told them weeks ago to give it up."
"It proves that no amount of posturing matters against genuine quality."
"Cristiano Ronaldo must be devastated."
"He gets devastated on a daily basis at this point."
What had started as a quiet personal rivalry between Lance, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Messi had gradually become a full team mission. Saúl was waving the flag louder than anyone, more animated about the whole thing than Lance himself.
"Look, you lot need to focus on actually playing football. Next time you have a chance, just shoot it yourselves. All this selfless passing is exhausting."
Lance said it with a grin, but there was a genuine point underneath the joke. In a real high-stakes match, wasting clear-cut opportunities to set up a teammate was a risk nobody could afford. Every chance was fleeting.
He glanced at the system panel.
[System Upgrading... Please wait]
Still at it.
"When exactly is this upgrade going to finish?"
Well, since awakening his muscle memory, he could already draw on a portion of each template's ability. He would have to manage with that for now.
La Liga Matchday 30: Sporting Gijón vs. Atlético Madrid.
Lance broke the deadlock in the 46th minute, piercing the goal with a long-range shot. Atlético led 1-0 away from home and fully expected to see the game out comfortably.
Then Sporting Gijón woke up.
Swift, incisive counterattacking football tore through Atlético's shape and levelled the score.
1-1.
Not ideal, but not a disaster. They would just score again.
Lance was not particularly concerned.
Then this happened.
"Lance!!! What a pass!!"
An outside-of-the-boot chip found Saúl arriving on the weak side. With Griezmann and Torres both tightly marked, Saúl was completely free. He was through on goal from inside the box. It was practically a tap-in.
He hesitated.
After shaking off his marker, instead of pulling the trigger, he tried to dribble further and lay it back to Lance. The intention was written all over him, and the defender read it instantly. The ball was intercepted, and Sporting Gijón nearly broke away on the counter.
"What are you doing?! Why didn't you shoot?!"
"Sorry, I..."
Saúl looked like a child who knew exactly what he had done.
If this ended 1-1, or worse if Sporting Gijón nicked a winner, Atlético would drop behind Barcelona and Real Madrid would leap above them. Barcelona had been frighteningly consistent this season, dropping almost nothing. Atlético could not afford to slip up.
Simeone had been about to pull Saúl off immediately, but seeing Lance already tearing into him, he held back, deciding to wait and see.
Sporting Gijón dug in, bodies behind the ball, closing every gap. The connection between Lance, Griezmann, and Torres was severed. The left-side combinations they usually executed with such precision had no room to breathe. Only Saúl's side offered any looseness, but the blunder had made everyone reluctant to involve him. His confidence was clearly rattled.
Lance could not afford to share that hesitation. He had to back his teammate.
In the 83rd minute, sensing that Sporting Gijón were getting ready to run the clock down, Lance spotted a sliver of space, shaped to play it to Griezmann, then suddenly executed a Cruyff Turn, leaving the defender behind, and threaded a sharp diagonal ball through the defensive line.
Monster Pass!
Muscle memory channelling the instincts of Bachira Meguru, hoping Saúl would read it.
"Saúl!!!"
The young man burst forward onto the ball. He was clean through.
"Please."
This time, Saúl did not hesitate. A clean, low finish. The goalkeeper had no chance.
"Goooooal!!!"
2-1.
Atlético Madrid had won it. Three points snatched from the jaws of a scare.
"You nearly gave us all heart attacks, brother."
"Dinner is on you. Non-negotiable."
"I know, I know... I'm sorry. And Lance, thank you. Thank you for still trusting me with that pass."
Saúl was close to tears.
He had redeemed himself, and he knew it. If that mistake had ended up costing them the title, he would never have forgiven himself.
"Because we are brothers. We go into every battle together."
Lance squeezed his shoulder and left it at that.
But privately, Lance was registering something that had been building for a while.
More and more teams were working out how to disrupt Atlético's left flank. The understanding between Lance and Griezmann was no longer a secret. Opponents were cutting the connection deliberately, and when they succeeded, Atlético's attack stalled. That pushed more responsibility onto Saúl, who was a versatile, hardworking player, but not someone with the individual quality to terrorise a top side on his own.
Against weaker opposition, Saúl could still find moments. But against the likes of Real Madrid and Barcelona, he would be ruthlessly targeted.
Lance's own movement near the box was also becoming predictable. More analysts were picking it apart. If he did not find a way to create new variations and open up different avenues of threat, the matches ahead would be very hard.
Simeone was thinking exactly the same thing.
After the final whistle, he sat with his coaching staff late into the night, going over the problem from every angle.
They found no answer.
"Honestly, Lance is already exceptional," Simeone said, spreading his hands.
"We have always expected so much from him, asking him to execute different things in different systems. The truth is, every player has only a handful of things they are truly outstanding at, and Lance has pushed those things to an extraordinary level. If he were only average, he would not have scored 40 goals. We cannot ask for the impossible."
"Then what do we do? Manchester City, Barcelona, and Real Madrid will all target the left-side combination and build their defensive plans around cutting it off. If we cannot find a way through, we are in serious trouble."
"We take it one match at a time."
Meanwhile, in the north-west of England.
At the Manchester City training ground, Pellegrini was putting the squad through a defensive shape session.
"Yes, move that way!!"
"Keep it simple. Lance's off-the-ball movement is not unpredictable. When he doesn't have the ball, ignore him and lock onto the others!"
"Exactly, keep moving, stay active!"
On the pitch, De Bruyne, part of the attacking group watching the defensive work, was frowning slightly to himself.
Pellegrini, the so-called Chilean Engineer, had a gift for fine tactical detail. The defensive structure they were building would genuinely hamper Lance. Based on everything De Bruyne knew about his friend, he worried Lance might find himself suffocated.
Could he find a way through this?
Emotionally, De Bruyne wished him well.
But when the match kicked off, De Bruyne wanted to win. He wanted Manchester City in the semi-finals.
"Sorry, Lance. We're coming for you."