Chapter 12
***
Thomas Tuchel, who had become captain of the sinking Union Berlin, swallowed a groan.
“We’re short on players.”
Most of the regular starters, the moment Union Berlin was relegated,
either terminated their contracts or transferred to other teams.
It couldn’t be helped. A fourth-tier wage made normal life impossible. The gap between semipro and amateur was even bigger than the gap between pro and semipro.
And from the club’s perspective, it wasn’t a bad thing that their contracts had been terminated.
Union Berlin couldn’t afford the weekly wages of semipro players like them.
And among them were players who, instead of mutually terminating their contracts, transferred while leaving the club with at least a little transfer fee.
Some players even donated blood, gave the money to Union Berlin, and then transferred.
Anyway.
Union Berlin had to fill in the players who had left.
To get through a season stably, they needed at least 22 players,
but considering how little time remained until the league started, Union Berlin could probably manage only 19 at most.
‘Nineteen players... that’s bleak.’
In fact, a small roster wasn’t just Union Berlin’s problem.
The other fourth-division teams were also running small rosters because of budget problems.
‘If only we had one more player. Preferably someone cheap, smart enough to accept my tactics, and who wouldn’t demand much in wages....’
One day, while Thomas Tuchel’s worries deepened.
“Ah! Why are you rushing out there! Hold the line and stick it out!”
Tuchel spotted him.
‘...Found you.’
A top-tier slave with no transfer fee, coach-level tactical understanding that didn’t even need mentioning, and wages that just needed to be reasonable.
Thus, Park Chan-hyuk, who was playing as a defensive midfielder in the mini-game and organizing the players’ positions, caught the eye of Thomas Tuchel, that greedy landlord.
And that evening.
“I’m really sorry to ask this, but could you also play as a player?”
Thomas Tuchel immediately made Park Chan-hyuk a player-coach offer.
“…Hah. It can’t be helped.”
Park Chan-hyuk flashed an angry expression for a split second, but knowing the club’s situation, he didn’t refuse Tuchel’s offer.
Even after Park Chan-hyuk became a playing chief coach after Tuchel’s persuasion, Union Berlin’s recruiting continued.
Fortunately, because Union Berlin’s name had become widely known in the media, they were able to sign fairly good players for a fourth-division side.
It was still before money had truly poured into football as a sport, and there were plenty of Don Quixote types chasing something called romance.
- You absolutely have to sign that player over there!
However, among the players recommended by Park Chan-hyuk,
‘I still have no idea why he strongly recommended this player.’
there were also players Thomas Tuchel simply couldn’t understand at all.
***
After finishing my interview with Thomas Tuchel, I returned to the office.
There was still work left to do.
Life at Union Berlin, a sorry-ass club that would make even a crappy Korean company cry, was absolutely fantastic.
‘Why... won’t this work ever end?’
One of my great achievements was giving the chairman both middle fingers when he said he’d build an overnight room for employee welfare.
‘Still, you should sleep at home.’
Anyway, separate from me getting ground down in real time, the club’s situation was gradually improving.
That was because, after seeing the fans willingly bleed for the club, the bank approved a loan.
Of course, the chairman pouring in his personal money seemed to have looked good to the bank as well.
While checking the club’s financial status, I suddenly felt something was off.
‘...Wait, isn’t this front-office work, for fuck’s sake?’
I didn’t know exactly when it started, but board responsibilities had naturally started piling onto me.
The next day, after sensing something strange,
I asked the chairman whether he wasn’t going to hire a new sporting director, and I got nonsense in response.
“Have you perhaps considered taking on the sporting director role as well?”
A chief coach, player, and sporting director, huh....
“Haha. Don’t fuck with me.”
That day, I showed some guts by unleashing a torrent of curses at the chairman’s unfunny joke.
The chairman’s face looked serious, not like a joke at all, but I pretended not to notice and looked away. No matter how much they wanted to save money, if this kept up I might really die.
Anyway, even though I’d cursed the chairman to his face that day, it wasn’t a problem.
Because by grinding ourselves down day and night to protect the collapsing Union Berlin, a sort of camaraderie had begun to form.
Up to now, I’d been venting my complaints at the bigwigs of the sorry-ass club Union Berlin,
but in truth, not only manager Thomas Tuchel but also chairman Dirk Zingler was getting ground down just like me.
‘Should I really have run away back then?’
Well, even if I went back to the past again, I think I’d make the same choice.
Because whenever I saw Union Berlin’s devoted, passionate fans, my heart pounded like crazy.
Honestly, until now I’d never understood Europeans when they said football was life.
But after coming to Union Berlin, I understood it perfectly.
For them, football truly was life itself.
‘Well... not bad.’
Compared to how I’d fought tooth and nail in my previous life just to draw even a few spectators, the atmosphere here was heaven to me.
The facilities were worse than back then, but the sense of reward had increased severalfold.
I stood up to fight off the sleepiness washing over me.
The moment I heard a sound by my ear and turned to stare out the window, the scout window popped up.
[Name: Yannick Voigt.]
Current stat: ☆
Potential: ★★★★★
Position: Striker.
I quietly nodded.
He had five-star potential.
If he could unlock all of that potential, he had the ability to play in the top division.
His current stats were trashed, though....
Maybe he’d quit football because of some unfortunate personal matter and only recently taken it back up?
A boy who quit football because of unfortunate personal circumstances and then made a successful comeback at Union Berlin—the very embodiment of romance.
‘Krrr. That’s romance.’
Anyway, his age of 24 felt a little late for a prospect, but there was also the case of Jamie Vardy, who made his Premier League debut at 27.
‘Please, become Union Berlin’s Jamie Vardy.’
I hoped he’d blossom successfully at Union Berlin.
***
Yannick Voigt.
There wasn’t some dramatic reason why he gave up football.
As a child, he thought he possessed the greatest talent in football.
Because he learned what the coaches taught him faster than his peers did.
But when he ran into a dazzling talent in the youth national team, someone he couldn’t even hope to match on pure ability alone,
Yannick Voigt quit football.
He told his parents and the club that he’d lost interest in football, but the real reason was that he couldn’t accept the fact that he’d been a frog in a well.
The reason he recently became interested in football again was something very trivial.
Recently, the girlfriend he had started seeing liked football.
He said something full of swagger in front of his girlfriend.
“If I played right now, I’d be flying around even in the fourth division.”
“You?”
“I’m telling you, I was once called up to the youth national team.”
“When the hell was that?”
Maybe his childhood memories had also made him take football a little too lightly.
“Just watch. I’ll prove it.”
Yannick Voigt was offended by his girlfriend’s words, which seemed to subtly look down on him,
and immediately put in an application to Union Berlin, which was recruiting players through a tryout.
He wasn’t worried about passing the tryout.
Because he thought he could at least play in the amateur fourth division.
But he failed to show anything at the tryout.
‘Ha.... Damn, what am I supposed to tell Andrea? This is embarrassing.’
Yannick Voigt felt he’d been cut and clutched his head.
But luckily, he caught the eye of the chief coach and got through.
After hearing that he’d made it, he approached an Asian man who looked like a club official and asked,
since there had objectively been several players who performed better than he did.
No matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t understand why they were cut and he made it.
But the Asian coach’s answer that followed left even the pride-filled Yannick Voigt speechless.
- Yannick! You have the potential to play in the Bundesliga. It’s a little late, but if you work hard even now, you can still become a good player.
The young chief coach’s belief in him—stronger than his own belief in himself—was almost overwhelming.
But strangely, he didn’t dislike that pressure.
Maybe that was why.
From that day on, he stayed late into the night and trained individually.
After the tryout, he’d also broken up with his girlfriend.
There was only one reason he stayed at Union Berlin, which didn’t even pay him any money (amateur contract).
‘Damn. I’m a fool for getting swayed by that stupid talk too.’
Because he had to live up to the chief coach’s expectations, even if only a little.
The sound of kicking balls echoed through Union Berlin’s training ground late into the night.
“Yannick, if you keep going any longer, you’ll risk injury. Stop now.”
That was until Chief Coach Park Chan-hyuk, who had been watching Yannick Voigt train from the window, hurried down to stop him.
***
The process of me being appointed chief coach at Union Berlin wasn’t smooth.
Once word spread that a rookie manager and an Asian chief coach would be taking the helm at Union Berlin,
the fans of Union Berlin poured out their complaints.
Well... it was only natural.
In response to the angry fans, the chairman chose to face the backlash head-on.
[Chairman, “We will do everything we can to survive. Thomas Tuchel and Park Chan-hyuk were the best choices we could make.”]
Then, surprisingly, the fans’ reaction subsided.
‘Did he use some kind of hypnosis beam or something?’
Well, maybe what mattered to the fans was that the club wasn’t giving up even in the worst situation.
[The combination of a young manager in his thirties and an 18-year-old Asian chief coach—can Union Berlin pull off an upset?]
Or maybe, in Union’s history of resisting the system, they felt this moment was the most Union-like of all.
Anyway, the fans decided to trust the club for now.
And they didn’t stop at bleeding for the club; they kept taking additional actions. Buying tickets in advance and raising donations were part of that.
“Wir sind Union. Und das ist unsere Antwort. (We are Union. And this is our answer.)”
A fan’s answer to a reporter’s question about why they were going this far was etched into the hearts of every club employee.
Although the media were pointing to Union Berlin as a likely candidate for relegation to the fifth division,
“We’ll take first by a landslide this season and go straight to the third division!”
The atmosphere inside the club wasn’t bad.
Because amid the club’s financial crisis, the club, the fans, the players, and the coaching staff had all come together as one.
***
Union Berlin’s player recruitment was now complete.
Union Berlin had 21 players, me included.
Most of the players were registered as amateurs, and some had signed semipro contracts.
As a result, most of the players were also juggling other jobs.
Yannick Voigt, Union Berlin’s Jamie Vardy, was also working at an auto parts factory in his day-to-day life.
Thomas Tuchel looked full of complaints about the environment that kept the players from focusing on football,
but thanks to my talk with Tuchel beforehand, we got through it without any major problems.
Sadly, my duties as chief coach surprisingly included taking care of Thomas Tuchel’s mental state.
Anyway, I smiled awkwardly and joined the training.
“Chief coach, train with us!”
“Ah. Captain. Sure.”
For the record, I was the one breaking the pecking order here.
Being a player-coach is awkward enough. A playing chief coach, though?
‘How does this even make sense?’
***
Time flew by, and it was August 5, 2005.
The league opener against FC Anker Wismar was approaching.
Unfortunately for Union Berlin fans, the match was an away game.
Since it wasn’t far from Anker Wismar’s home ground, quite a lot of Union Berlin fans came to the stadium.
“Dem Morgengrauen entgegen, ziehn wir gegen den Wind.
(Toward the dawn, we march against the wind.)”
I focused on the Union Berlin chant coming from the away section.
Sunlight and the sound of the fans’ cheers.
On this fine day that could be called my chief coach debut....
“Chan-hyuk! Focus on the match.”
I went onto the field to play.