The appearance of the unfamiliar uncle-and-nephew pair attending the trial did not attract any attention from anyone at Real Madrid, even though they had already passed the club's trial.
For Real Madrid, young prospects like them appeared every year in unknown numbers, and just as many were missed. Everyone was used to it, because youth development had always been an industry with an extremely high elimination rate, especially at a club like Real Madrid.
If one day a child who had once brushed past Real Madrid went on to become an outstanding top-level star, Real Madrid would spare no expense to bring him in at a huge price. That was Real Madrid's business strategy.
However, in recent years, with wealthy conglomerates such as Man City and Paris Saint-Germain flooding into football, Real Madrid had been forced to invest more money, to the point that Florentino had to adjust and change the club's business strategy.
The team had returned from its long journey to Japan and would soon face its final match before Christmas.
Because Real Madrid had gone to Japan to compete in the FIFA Club World Cup, it had one postponed Copa del Rey match and one postponed La Liga match from the sixteenth round.
In the sixteenth round of La Liga, Barcelona had beaten Atletico Madrid four to one with Messi's brace, overtaking Real Madrid to move into first place, three points clear at the top of La Liga.
With those two goals, Messi had moved into second place in the scoring chart with twenty-five goals, just one behind Yang Yang's twenty-six. Everyone was also looking forward to the summit clash between Messi and Yang Yang.
Since the postponed match had been scheduled for January, Real Madrid clearly could not catch up with Barcelona before the winter break.