If You Can't Beat Them, Join Them (2)

***

After I provoked St. Pauli, time passed quickly.

I was up all night analyzing St. Pauli's tactics, so unfortunately I couldn't pay attention to the St. Pauli coach's reaction.

“Chan-hyeok! Chan-hyeok! Did you see this?”

One day, while I kept up that 'voluntary forced' overtime.

Yannick Voigt came up to me holding a newspaper.

“What is it?”

“Judging by your reaction, you still haven't seen it. Read this first.”

He handed me the newspaper, looking flustered by my sudden words.

“Ugh. I'm busy, so this better not be something trivial.”

I snatched the newspaper Yannick Voigt handed me and quickly started reading.

'Ugh. Hurry up and bring out smartphones already. This is a pain in the ass.'

It's funny, but my attachment to analog aesthetics right after regression only lasted a moment. By now, all that sentiment had disappeared, and my body wanted convenience. I missed the future where I could summon things with a single finger.

Anyway.

[St. Pauli manager Holger Stanislawski gives Park Chan-hyeok advice. 'If it were me, I'd have broken free of Tuchel's shadow long ago.']

The St. Pauli manager's response was even beyond what I'd imagined.

In fact, most of those managers were older, so even when I provoked them, they would often just ignore it.

Probably because they figured that getting into a shouting match with a kid would only hurt them.

Even when they did argue back, most of the time they would use the interview to lecture the younger man.

When dealing with people like that, it was hard for me not to lose motivation too.

But St. Pauli's manager was on a completely different level from those old-timers.

He answered provocation with provocation, and he made pointed remarks about the relationship between me and Thomas Tuchel.

Unless you're a twin-headed ogre, no team can have two heads.

Even Leverkusen would later try a co-manager setup, but it ended with all sorts of problems and one of the managers leaving the team, didn't it?

Union Berlin was no different from Leverkusen in that regard.

Because of Thomas Tuchel's notoriously prickly personality, I was the one managing the squad.

It was fair to say Union Berlin was, in its own way, a co-manager setup too.

I instinctively realized what he was getting at from the St. Pauli manager's interview.

'This guy's a lot like me.'

To anyone watching, it was clearly an attempt to drive a wedge between me and Thomas Tuchel.

They say there's such a thing as hating your own kind in this world, but I think I felt more joy than hate.

Until now, there had been no manager who fired back like St. Pauli's coach.

My heart was pounding like crazy, and the little kid inside me cheered and started running backward.

'Huh? Both Van Persie and Adebayor were at Arsenal.'

Anyway, St. Pauli had sent a nice gift, so this time it was my turn to return the favor.

[St. Pauli manager, 'Park Chan-hyeok should stop being Tuchel's lackey now and start minding his own bread and butter....']

[St. Pauli manager, 'As long as he doesn't get out from under Thomas Tuchel's shadow, he won't grow.']

To live up to Yannick Voigt's sparkling-eyed expectations, I quietly picked up my phone and contacted the media outlet I'd recently grown closer to.

***

[An off-pitch war of words in the third division draws football fans' attention.]

St. Pauli's manager fired back at Park Chan-hyeok's provocation, and things heated up in an instant.

Though it was only the third division, it was a battle of wills between the first-place and second-place teams. The feud between the two was enough to draw the media's attention.

For the press, too, it must have been an irresistible temptation.

[St. Pauli manager Holger Stanislawski mocks assistant coach Park Chan-hyeok. 'Since you're still young, taking over an eighth-division team would be good experience.']

[Assistant coach Park Chan-hyeok to Holger Stanislawski…. 'It must be nice being old.']

└ Could someone summarize the two interviews?

└ St. Pauli manager: a punk like you is made for the eighth division

└ Park Chan-hyeok: You're already ancient, and you're still managing a third-division team.

└ Roughly like that, I guess.

If two grown adults were going to fight so childishly while throwing away their dignity, not airing it would have meant losing our qualifications as journalists.

And the reactions from Union Berlin and St. Pauli weren't bad either. For lower-league teams, even this little bit of recognition was something to be grateful for.

If it went too far, there was the issue of damaging the club's image, but worrying about that would be a luxury lower-league teams can't afford.

The financial crunch that hit Union Berlin was only two years ago. The wounds from when the squad was dissolved and staff were laid off still hadn't healed.

Lower-league clubs never know when they might suddenly go bust. Especially when the country's economy is bad like it is now, it's basically like walking the knife's edge of bankruptcy every day.

As the economy grew, the German government was congratulating itself on reform successes, but strangely enough, ordinary people's lives seemed to be getting harder.

Because Union Berlin was such a fan-friendly club, that felt even more starkly.

Anyway.

Because of the recent controversy, the Union Berlin vs. St. Pauli match was confirmed for nationwide broadcast, and the two teams were expected to reap a pretty tidy sum from the national broadcast alone.

It was shaping up to be a situation everyone could be happy with.

[Thomas Tuchel, “Don't drag me into this moronic fight.”]

Only Thomas Tuchel, dragged out of nowhere into the two men's war of words, was expressing his displeasure.

[St. Pauli manager, after taking shots at the assistant coach, now going after the manager? 'Thomas Tuchel? There's definitely a tendency to overrate him....']

[St. Pauli manager: 'The fact that an assistant coach under a manager is running wild is a Tuchel leadership problem.']

Apparently stung by the word 'moron,' St. Pauli's manager suddenly started taking shots at Thomas Tuchel.

'Picking a fight with that rotten bastard Tuchel? The guy's got guts.'

At the sight of St. Pauli's manager provoking Thomas Tuchel, Park Chan-hyeok murmured in admiration.

And a few days later.

'I can't lose either.'

Park Chan-hyeok, fired up with a sense of rivalry against St. Pauli's manager, released a new interview.

[Park Chan-hyeok, internal sabotage? Toward Thomas Tuchel…. 'Tuchel has a somewhat fussy side to him.']

[Thomas Tuchel flies into a rage over Park Chan-hyeok's 'fussy' remark.]

***

'Cold.'

Once Union Berlin's finances had stabilized somewhat, scout Schmitz Lewandowski, who had returned to the club, let out a quiet sigh in the office, where a chilly silence hung in the air.

Because of the nature of scout work, which kept him out on outside assignments a lot, the club's recent mood was so tense it felt like walking on thin ice, enough for even him to notice.

'How did it come to this?'

The incident had started with Park Chan-hyeok's interview.

An unprecedented thing had happened at Union Berlin: the assistant coach publicly taking a shot at the manager through the media.

Thomas Tuchel, who had been lenient with Park Chan-hyeok until then, unusually voiced his displeasure strongly, and Union Berlin's atmosphere froze over in an instant.

'If I'm not careful, I might get fired the moment I get back.'

Since the two of them were effectively the ones who had rebuilt the collapsing Union Berlin, he naturally started worrying that their fight might lead to Union Berlin's downfall.

'Huh? Why are those two smiling?'

As he lost sleep every day worrying about the club, he saw Thomas Tuchel and Park Chan-hyeok chatting happily and then bursting out laughing.

He could only stand there blankly for a long while.

***

After I provoked Thomas Tuchel in the media, Union Berlin's atmosphere was shattered. So much so that even Chairman Dirk Cingler contacted me to ask what was going on.

- Have no doubt.

- No, tell me what's going on.

- Shh. If you know any more, you'll get hurt.

I sent Chairman Dirk Cingler a message telling him not to worry.

In fact, it wasn't something to worry about.

My relationship with Thomas Tuchel was still fine after the interview.

Thomas Tuchel's media outburst was all an act too.

The St. Pauli manager's interview made it clear his goal was to drive a wedge between me and Tuchel, so falling for it would have made us idiots, wouldn't it?

I thought we'd turn the St. Pauli manager's intentions back on him, and Tuchel and I decided to play along with St. Pauli's clumsy little trick.

Well, rookie manager Tuchel was against winning in such a cowardly way, but I pushed hard.

'Yeah, winning is all that matters.'

Maybe it was the difference between someone who came up through the standard route and someone who clawed their way up from the bottom.

'After going through my interim-manager days, my mindset definitely got stronger about winning first and asking questions later.'

Anyway.

'By now, the St. Pauli manager must be panicking, right?'

Even the St. Pauli manager couldn't have expected his own interview to be this effective.

He must be barely suppressing his laughter, calling it a lucky break that exposed the rift between me and Tuchel.

'Oh, go ahead and laugh all you want for now.'

I can't wait to see what expression the St. Pauli manager makes when he walks into the stadium full of hope and sees Tuchel and me standing there arm in arm, all buddy-buddy.

And a few days later.

The day of the Union Berlin vs. St. Pauli match drew near.