Ninety minutes. That’s all football ever gives you. Ninety minutes to become a legend or a meme. Ninety minutes to prove you deserve the badge on your chest.

And here we are, deep into stoppage time, and I can feel the weight of the entire world pressing down on me. Champions League Final. The match little kids dream about when they’re juggling a ball in their backyard. The match every pundit swore I was too young, too reckless, too raw to handle.

Scoreboard says 1–0. Not to us.

The roar of the stadium is deafening, the kind of sound that rattles your bones, but all I can hear is my pulse in my ears. My lungs are on fire, my calves screaming, and yet I’ve never wanted anything more in my life. Not a golden boot, not a record, not even a bloody Ballon d’Or.

Just this. Just the ball at my feet, one last chance.

The pass comes in from midfield, perfect weight, perfect spin. The defender’s on me instantly, but I drop a shoulder, cut inside, and the world narrows. Thirty yards, twenty, then the box. I barely notice the keeper rushing out. I swing, clean and true, and time slows as the ball slices past his glove.

Top corner. Net bulging. On the reboot, another one.

The stadium explodes.

I don’t even think. My legs are moving before my brain catches up, carrying me away from my teammates, away from the pitch, straight to the stands where I know she’s waiting. Cicely. My girl since we were kids, my anchor through every storm, my sweet girl who somehow still gets shy when cameras catch her in the stands.

I scale the barrier like a man possessed. Security yells, cameras flash, and there she is—eyes wide, hands clapped over her mouth, wearing my jersey with the number stitched across her back.

“Cice!” I shout, voice hoarse, and her face crumples like she might cry.

I don’t give her the chance. I grab her by the waist, hauling her against me, and kiss her like the world’s ending. Because in this moment, in front of millions, none of it matters except that she’s here, that she believed in me even when I was just a boy with scuffed boots and wild dreams.

Her fingers knot in my hair, pulling me closer, and I swear I’ve never heard a louder cheer in my life—not from the fans, not from my teammates, but from my own chest. Like my heart is screaming, finally, this is yours.

When I pull back, she’s laughing and crying all at once, and I press my forehead to hers. “Told you I’d score for you,” I whisper.

“You always do,” she says, voice shaking. “God, I love you.”

And I grin like an idiot, because forget the trophy, forget the cameras catching every second of this—I’d run the length of the earth just to hear those words.

Behind me, my teammates are piling on, dragging me back toward the pitch, chanting my name, but I steal one more kiss before I let them. The kind that tells her exactly what she is to me. Not a footnote, not a background cheerleader, but the reason I play, the reason I fight, the reason I breathe.

The commentators will probably talk about the goal for decades, replay it from every angle, write think pieces about my career trajectory and what it means for the club’s legacy. But me? I’ll remember the way Cicely’s hands trembled on my cheeks, the way her smile broke through her tears, the way the whole bloody world could have burned down around us and I wouldn’t have cared, because I had her.

The final whistle blows minutes later, and the stadium becomes chaos. Confetti rains, medals are handed out, and I lift the trophy with my teammates, grinning for cameras, but my eyes keep finding her in the stands. She’s still there, clapping, glowing, the only thing steady in the madness.