Chapter 10
Thomas Tuchel left Stuttgart.
After leaving behind the promise that Augsburg would call and telling me to wait quietly.
“Ooh. Tu-men...!”
I silently praised Thomas Tuchel. It was because he had found me a new job after my study-abroad stint ended.
We’d fought like hell for the past year, but when Tuchel handed in his resignation and actually left, Stuttgart tried to keep him.
Judging by the fact that they still kept Tuchel after all that fighting, it seemed his ability was recognized apart from his personality. Come to think of it, if he could win the league after all the young, talented players had been sucked up into the first team from the so-called Magath kindergarten, that alone proved his ability.
Anyway, Thomas Tuchel left.
The club’s situation grew worse by the day.
Because the manager and players who could be called key members started leaving the team due to financial problems.
First, Magath, the first-team manager who oversaw the “Magath kindergarten,” left for Bayern Munich, and Kevin Kuranyi and Aleksandr Hleb headed to Schalke 04 and Arsenal, respectively.
‘Damn, Magath is a legend. Stuttgart and Bayern Munich are even derby rivals...’
Well, it didn’t seem to be on the same level as Real Madrid and Barcelona. In fact, transfers between the two clubs happened all the time.
Usually, it was Stuttgart getting its players poached by Bayern Munich.
In no time at all, Stuttgart’s squad had been torn to pieces.
[Bayern Munich Is the Main Culprit Behind the Bundesliga’s Declining Competitiveness....]
[With Rivalry Gone, Only Capital Remains.]
Stuttgart’s local paper naturally poured out criticism toward Bayern Munich.
[After players and coaches, are they even taking managers now?]
Well, in the Bundesliga, this was an everyday occurrence. When a team’s ace grew unhappy, betting on Bayern Munich was right nine times out of ten. This time, it was a manager rather than a player.
[Stuttgart Appoints Matthias Sammer as Manager.]
Even though the key players were leaving, it still didn’t feel like Stuttgart was about to be relegated.
The Stuttgart bench and youth team were still packed with top-class players.
The two I was most interested in were...
‘Mario Gomez and Sami Khedira.’
For the record, I didn’t manage to get close to them. I approached them to become friends, but they kept me at arm’s length.
‘Well, if they’re competing for a starting spot, I guess that makes sense.’
They were busy looking after their own place in the squad, so who would have time to hang around with some Asian from the East?
‘Tough bastards.’
There’s always a reason top-class players become top-class.
Well, still, I did get a little closer to Sami Khedira.
We were both born in ’87, so we were the same age. In fact, we even played together on the U19 team. And Sami Khedira was one of Thomas Tuchel’s prized disciples. For the record, the other one was me. I was just building up to that.
Anyway, Khedira wasn’t the type to talk much, so it took quite a while to get close, but we showed fantastic chemistry in U19 matches.
Playing alongside Sami Khedira felt incredibly reassuring. Technically he was rough, but he ran his heart out in every match. In many ways, he was the type managers loved.
Word had it that Tuchel had gone to war with the board over Sami Khedira’s first-team promotion in the middle of the season....
‘Even if he’s crazy, surely not that crazy.’
I sincerely hoped it was just a rumor.
In any case, the person I truly became close with at Stuttgart was Philipp Lahm.
If it were up to me, I’d want to use that friendship to sign Philipp later on if I became a manager, but that would probably be difficult.
By then, he’d surely be an irreplaceable core player at Bayern Munich.
‘What. His stats went up that much in such a short time?’
I clicked my tongue inwardly after looking at Philipp Lahm’s attributes.
His growth speed was so incredible that, as a fellow footballer, it made me feel downright inadequate.
‘Is this why I became a football player...’
Anyway, before I knew it, my last day in Stuttgart had come.
Today, I was leaving Stuttgart, a place I’d grown attached to over the past year.
But I wasn’t lonely or wistful.
“Everyone, thanks for coming out to see me off.”
“You told us to come out, asshole.”
Everyone I’d become close with during my time in Stuttgart had come out to send me off on my departure day.
“Adios.”
“Chan-hyuk, that’s Spanish.”
“I know, idiot. Anyway, take care without this big brother around.”
“I’m three years older than you, asshole.”
And so, I parted ways with Stuttgart, which you could almost call my old club.
***
Once my study-abroad stint in Stuttgart ended, I headed to Berlin, where my family was. My parents welcomed their jobless son just as they always had.
“You worked hard.”
When my father patted me and said that, tears almost welled up before I knew it.
Our family talked about all the things that had happened.
“Chan-hyuk, what do you think?”
“About what?”
My mother had been planning to open a Korean restaurant near the house, but my younger sibling had fought hard to stop her.
‘We almost ended up with the absolute worst possible image of Korean food.’
Later, I’ll have to praise my sibling behind my parents’ backs.
My father was learning German and practical skills.
As much as he’d struggled all this time, he could have just rested easy.
“You work when you’re young. Dad isn’t old yet.”
He says he gets restless if he doesn’t do something.
It seemed working had become a habit etched into his body.
My younger sibling was going to school while continuing to invest.
While I waited at home for Thomas Tuchel’s call.
News from around me came in one by one.
None of the players who had gone abroad for study had received contract offers.
With no results to show, the association seemed to be seriously wondering whether it should keep the project going.
Still, I wasn’t worried.
The project that had produced Son Heung-min wasn’t going to collapse so easily.
‘No way... I hadn’t really done anything in Korea, so would there really be a problem?’
***
A month after I returned home.
- Sorry.
A message of apology arrived from Thomas Tuchel.
After talking with Tuchel.
He had tried to bring me in as a youth coach at Augsburg, where he’d become head of youth development.
But it seemed the Augsburg board had opposed hiring me as a coach.
‘Did he end up fighting the Augsburg board because of me?’
Well, I could understand the Augsburg board too.
Their existing staff were already occupying the youth coach positions. It would have been awkward for me to squeeze in.
“Since even getting a job through Tuchel’s connections didn’t work out, I guess it’s time to start looking for work.”
After getting enough rest at home, I started preparing to obtain a Class B license. To qualify for the exam, I needed 40 hours of field experience.
But unfortunately, there was no place for Asians in German football.
There was an attitude that some guy from football’s periphery had no business teaching anyone.
To put it in terms Koreans would understand, imagine a kid wanting to learn football going to a nearby club, only to find someone from China or Southeast Asia teaching there.
What parent would trust their child to that football club?
My position in Germany was exactly like that.
Even though perceptions had improved a little thanks to the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup,
Europeans still saw Korea as a football backwater.
“Oh. This club is great because you can learn Asian football here.”
Still, the more educated and sensible parents tended to phrase it politely.
The less cultured and less educated ones would just blatantly say, ‘I can’t leave my kid with that yellow bastard.’
‘Didn’t he realize he was the one making life harder for his own son?’
If rumors spread that a parent was racist, could their child live a normal school life?
The neighborhood would just be full of pseudo-Nazis.
Well... as you sow, so shall you reap.
Watching the kid squint his eyes like his parents, I thought the little brat looked rotten to the core.
“Kid, it seems you’ll live a truly splendid life just like your father.”
That day, after I finished blessing the child with all my heart, I got fired from youth coaching.
It was because the child’s parents heard it and went berserk.
Honestly, I didn’t understand why that was a problem.
‘What. Is he aware his own life is already a train wreck?’
Even after that, I applied to several places, but there weren’t many clubs willing to take on an Asian coach.
‘Is this why a country’s standing matters? If Korea had the standing it would have in the future, at least I wouldn’t have been called a fucking yellow bastard. I’m especially missing you today. BDS, Bang Joon-ho, Son Heung-min, Let’s go.’
I was kicked out of three football clubs near Berlin in just one month.
And then one year passed.
‘This is all because of the Germans, who are so hostile to other races...!’
Just as I was slowly blackening inside over my endless, hopeless life as an unemployed bum, with no end in sight...
“My Germany needs a revolushun!”
“Oppa, quit talking nonsense and come eat because Mom said so.”
“…Yeah.”
A team that had recently been relegated from the third division because of chronic financial trouble and had since fallen into the fourth-tier NOFV-Oberliga Nord came looking for me.
“Sir, I’ve come to bring you some good news.”
“I don’t play games.”
With a slightly cultish air.