Chapter 104
[Goooooooal─! Jakub Błaszczykowski's shot ripples the back of Union Berlin's net!!]
[Jakub Błaszczykowski roars in celebration! Huh? The broadcast camera suddenly cuts to Union Berlin's bench?]
[Oh…! Oh no! Hamstring!! It's his hamstring! Jürgen Klopp collapses onto the pitch, clutching his hamstring! ]
[Manager Park Chan-hyuk, who was nearby, lets out a hollow laugh and helps Jürgen Klopp up.]
[Yes. Aren't the two known to be close friends? Maybe that's why they seem to act alike.]
└ Fuck, I was wondering why this felt familiar—Park Chan-hyuk already wrecked his cruciate ligament with a celebration?
└ The legendary knee slide lol
└ He traded a celebration for a cruciate ligament
└ Park Chan-hyuk = Korean Klopp lol
└ Park Chan-hyuk's cruciate ligament went first, so doesn't that make him the original?
└ Then Jürgen Klopp is German Park Chan-hyuk.
└ But Jürgen Klopp's been around longer?
└ Then he's Korean Klopp.
└ German Park Chan-hyuk and Korean Klopp. This is glorious.
└ Guys, do you know what's really scary?
└ What is it?
└ Those two are both football managers attracting attention in Germany.
└ German football is doomed lol
***
To beat Dortmund, Union Berlin deployed its best eleven.
Union Berlin started in a 3-5-2 formation, with Lewandowski and Yannick Voigt up front, and Son Hong-min, Thomas Maier, Shinji Kagawa, Luka Modrić, and Yuto Nagatomo behind them.
The back three once again featured the Brazilian connection, while Manuel Schmidt guarded Union Berlin's goal.
Although Dortmund had scored the opening goal right at the start of the match.
It had been more a matter of bad luck than a tactical problem.
‘Football is a sport played by people, not machines.’
I clapped from the touchline to encourage the players, then turned and looked toward Son Hong-min.
I could see Lee Young-bo constantly talking to Son Hong-min from the moment the match began.
Son Hong-min seemed unable to focus on the match because the senior player kept talking to him,
and he merely smiled awkwardly at Lee Young-bo's words.
‘I know that feeling.’
It was like a department manager coming to a newly hired rookie and bombarding him with old-man jokes.
Even if he would eventually become a world-class player, Son Hong-min was still young.
Unless he was a regressor like me, it was only natural for him to freeze up or suffer a mental shutdown when a legendary senior player spoke to him.
After all, wasn't Lee Young-bo a legend of the 2002 World Cup, the tournament that inspired most Korean players to dream of becoming footballers?
‘……Should I teach him the secret of executing a vicious tackle at the halfway line so the seniors and juniors can exchange warm feelings?’
Just as I was seriously considering passing on my secret weapon, the referee's whistle signaled the restart of the match.
Dortmund's formation today was 4-2-3-1.
Weidenfeller was in goal, with Lee Young-bo, Subotić, Hummels, and Antonio Rukavina forming the back four in front of him.
Sebastian Kehl, Zidane (not that Zidane), and others were positioned ahead of them.
‘……There isn't really anyone worth setting my sights on.’
Dortmund was currently dominating through Jürgen Klopp's tactics rather than the players' ability.
After playing against Mainz in the second division, Jürgen Klopp and I had become friends, and from that day onward, we discussed tactics extensively.
As a result, Klopp's tactics had developed rapidly.
‘I feel like I gave away too much….’
Well, I may have gone a little overboard because I was so excited to discuss tactics with the man who would lead Liverpool's revival.
Even so, I didn't regret it.
By talking with Jürgen Klopp, I had been able to refine my own tactical philosophy.
Tactics, by nature, developed through interaction with an opponent.
Tactics conceived alone, without an opponent, were nothing more than delusions.
And Jürgen Klopp wasn't the only one whose tactics were developing rapidly.
The Bundesliga's football tactics as a whole were developing faster than in the previous timeline.
Bayern Munich had even tried transplanting Thomas Tuchel's football before rolling back to Jürgen Klinsmann.
Human history itself was like that—where there was progress, there was also regression.
‘This must be Klopp Chang-seop's blessing for Union Berlin to win the title, too.’
Anyway, after Union Berlin's promotion last season, and now that it was racing at the top of the league again this season, Bundesliga teams—not just lower-division ones—had begun analyzing my tactics.
In fact, having my tactics analyzed wasn't a problem.
If someone came up with a better tactic, I could learn from it.
Besides, I still had plenty of future tactics I hadn't used yet.
However, Union Berlin's biggest problem at present was the reputation that ‘prospects chosen by Park Chan-hyuk’ were guaranteed to succeed.
‘……It'll become difficult to sign players cheaply from now on.’
Clubs trying to sell their prospects would obviously play hard to get when Union Berlin came calling, trying to drive up the price.
In the process, Union Berlin might have no choice but to sign players against its better judgment.
If a starting player suffered an injury, after all, we would have to sign someone to fill the gap.
For reference, signings like that weren't good not only for the present but for the future, either.
If we kept making deals like that, it would only be a matter of time before we became suckers… no, Man U… no, Manchester United.
‘Then is the answer automatically the youth academy?’
If Union Berlin consistently produced good players through its youth system, its reputation would grow. And that reputation would continue supplying it with talented prospects.
If that happened, Union Berlin could become Germany's Barcelona.
Consistently developing and producing good prospects wasn't impossible when we had scouts, either.
Unlike professional players under contract with a club, prospects had somewhat more freedom to transfer.
‘Even now, there are two of them: Ji-won Jo and Leon.’
And Union Berlin's current prospects had fairly decent potential. There simply weren't enough players rated six stars or higher; the youth team had more five-star prospects with potential on Yannick Voigt's level than expected.
Parents who had heard rumors about the state-of-the-art facilities at the Eisen und Blut (Iron and Blood) training ground sometimes came to Union Berlin with their talented children.
Some even moved from other countries to Köpenick after hearing rumors that I was good at developing players, entrusting their children to me.
Wanting their children to receive a good education and succeed was something parents all over the world had in common.
And on top of that… Back when Union Berlin was still in the lower leagues,
it had scoured the entire Berlin metropolitan area to find prospects.
‘It wore me down, but I did sign a lot of good prospects.’
Oh, and even among players with the same five-star rating, there were differences.
One could be a fully developed five-star prospect practically on the level of a six-star, while another might have barely earned five stars.
You could think of it as the difference between a one-star Qi Refining cultivator and someone at the Great Perfection of Qi Refining.
Both were in the Qi Refining stage, but they weren't treated the same, were they?
The same applied to football scouts.
‘The more stars there are, the greater the differences within that rating.’
Anyway.
Against Dortmund, the unusually spry Roberto Lewandowski scored a goal.
“Hoooooo─!”
I ran toward Jürgen Klopp and proudly showed off my perfectly healthy hamstring.
It also carried the message: Your team's striker is incredible.
***
‘If Yannick hadn't quit football halfway through—or, no, if he'd met Boss just a little earlier, what kind of player would he have become?’
Roberto Lewandowski often found himself wondering that whenever he looked at the recently improved Yannick Voigt.
It was hard to believe that a nameless footballer had grown this much in only four years after meeting Park Chan-hyuk.
‘Boss seems to know exactly what I need to do to grow quickly.’
Lewandowski felt lucky to have met Park Chan-hyuk so early.
As Lewandowski nodded at Park Chan-hyuk, Thiago Silva blocked Dortmund's attack, and Union Berlin's counterattack began.
Luka Modrić's pass went to Lewandowski, who naturally spun around and shook off Subotić.
With Son Hong-min making a run into the space behind him, Lee Young-bo had been dragged into the defensive line.
Lewandowski's choice was Yannick Voigt.
Yannick was Union Berlin's current go-to scorer, after all.
Even Lewandowski, who was proud of his own ability, couldn't deny it.
Although he was still only a prospect, he was learning a great deal from Yannick's movement and play.
And Yannick Voigt and Roberto Lewandowski were close friends. By now, they could tell what the other was thinking just by looking into each other's eyes.
In fact, Lewandowski was the type of person who kept work and his personal life strictly separate, but recently, he had been making an effort to approach his teammates more actively.
That had been Park Chan-hyuk's advice.
He had advised Lewandowski that understanding his teammates would allow him to play a little better.
Lewandowski followed Park Chan-hyuk's advice immediately.
There wasn't even a moment of hesitation.
Park Chan-hyuk had never been wrong so far.
‘Last season, Boss talked about getting promoted to the top flight, and this season we're genuinely challenging for the league title.’
He mingled with Union Berlin's players, and as a result, the team's chemistry grew even stronger.
And what Lewandowski liked most about Park Chan-hyuk's advice was—
- Boss, what do you call this?
- TikTok. It's an app my younger sister just launched. What do you think? Is it fun? Should I make a channel and use it to manage stress?
It was an app called TikTok.
After assisting Yannick Voigt's goal, Lewandowski danced to a TikTok-trending challenge with Yannick Voigt by the corner flag.
└ Aaaaaagh, my eyes! What is that?!
└ Oh. A man whose dancing skills all went into football.
Park Chan-hyuk had unleashed poison upon the world.