Chapter 52
***
“I’m joking. Give me a little time to think.”
I asked for some time, saying I needed to sort out my thoughts over Chairman Dirk Zingler’s sudden proposal.
Chairman Dirk Zingler nodded and asked me to give him my answer before the season ended. Since the season still wasn’t over, there was a little time left.
Thomas Tuchel didn’t say anything in particular. It was his own way of showing consideration, of not interfering with my choice.
And time passed quickly.
Amid the club’s turmoil, Union Berlin clinched the league title.
“Scheiße(shit)! Let’s play a match we won’t be ashamed of in front of the fans!”
“Union!!”
The squad, whose nerves had been rattled by one bad development after another, snapped out of it after seeing the fans step up voluntarily to renovate the stadium.
Before long, there were only two matches left in the league season.
I still hadn’t decided what choice I would make.
If I wanted a guaranteed stable future, following Thomas Tuchel was the right choice.
Because the combination of Tuchel and me had been remarkably stable.
And if I threw a fit and asked for a co-manager setup, it might even be possible.
If our instructions conflicted, we’d have to give way on tactical matters, but Tuchel might get better results if he left squad management and board relations to me and focused on tactics.
‘A co-manager setup should count as clearing the mission too, right?’
I didn’t know which team Thomas Tuchel was going to, but wherever he went, it would definitely be a first-division club, and that was clearly the fastest shortcut to clearing the mission.
‘...By the way, which team is he really going to?’
Based on his current results, the odds were high that he’d head to Borussia Dortmund.
‘Then the Klopp-Tuchel route at Dortmund is going to change, huh.’
Going to Dortmund together and lifting a Champions League trophy wouldn’t be bad either. Even if Dortmund was currently in financial trouble, it was still a club on a much bigger scale than Union Berlin.
But if both Tuchel and I left, it was also true that Union Berlin’s future would be a concern.
If history had stayed on its original course, Union Berlin was fated to keep grinding away in the third division next season too.
History had been twisted by Thomas Tuchel’s and my intervention.
‘If we don’t get the club’s atmosphere under control, we might tumble back down to the fourth division.’
And I was also worried about the Korean students studying in Berlin who had come to Union Berlin trusting me. If things stayed this way, history could repeat itself and leave them neglected without proper care.
‘Come to think of it, there’s Yannick Voigt and Leon Han too.’
It wasn’t as if they had stayed at Union Berlin just because of me.
Still, there was no denying that I had a decisive influence.
And so, after wandering the streets lost in thought for a long while,
Union Berlin’s home stadium, Stadion An der Alten Försterei, came into view.
Before I knew it, I had walked all the way to the home ground.
We had begun rebuilding the stadium with fans’ donations and volunteer work, but the construction site was in appalling shape, beyond words.
“Dem Morgengrauen entgegen, ziehn wir gegen den Wind.
(Toward the dawn, we will march against the wind.)
“Wir werden alles zerlegen, bis wir Deutscher Meister sind. (We will tear everything apart until we become German champions.)”
But even in that situation, smiles remained on the fans’ faces.
“Huh? Isn’t that Chanhyeok over there?”
“Chanhyeok! We’ll build the stadium, so don’t worry! We’re still pretty strong, you know.”
When the Union Berlin fan who spotted me shouted, the fans around him came rushing over in a swarm.
At that moment, I decided on my answer to Chairman Dirk Zingler’s proposal.
‘A man.’
Apparently, I had invested too much here to leave.
***
The next day.
I declared to Chairman Dirk Zingler that I would stay.
I had decided to become the captain of the ship called Union Berlin.
But before my official inauguration as manager, I went to persuade Thomas Tuchel. I still thought there was room to talk him around.
But Tuchel firmly rejected my offer.
“Why!”
I protested Tuchel’s curt answer,
and Tuchel answered with an indifferent expression.
“It’s Munich.”
“Munich?!”
“The team that sent the managerial offer was Munich.”
That day, I cursed Tuchel out with every swear word in the book.
“You fucking bastard, you should’ve said that first.”
“Well, you didn’t say you were staying.”
Thomas Tuchel gave me a dumbfounded look at the sudden outburst.
“You didn’t ask, did you?”
I had nothing to say to Tuchel’s words.
Even if my social skills had improved, it was my own fault for forgetting that my opponent was Thomas Tuchel.
***
After hearing where Thomas Tuchel was headed, I gave up on trying to persuade him.
After all, it was Bayern Munich.
The Bayern Munich that was known as one of the so-called ‘Reva-mun’ clubs, symbols of the 2010s.
If I were ever offered the Bayern Munich manager’s job, I was confident I’d accept without even looking back.
Anyway, the DFL (German Football League) allowed Union Berlin’s promotion after seeing that the club had started rebuilding its home ground.
I continued thinking about ways to make money.
Memories of working my ass off at a poor fan-owned club came back to me.
‘I need money.’
I hated to say it, but we had enough manpower.
As always, the problem was money.
With back-to-back championships secured, promotion to the second division was now confirmed.
Even aside from the money going into the stadium construction, there were plenty of other expenses to cover.
‘We need to renew the players’ contracts, pay the licensing fees, and make signings too.’
I slowly went over all the places the money needed to go.
‘Ah. We also need to pay for the stadium rental while the reconstruction is underway.’
There were more places money needed to go than I’d thought.
‘Should I shake down my little sister for cash?’
I said shake down, but in truth it was practically my own money. The 50+1 stake in the investment company my little sister had founded was mine.
For reference, Park Jeong-a owned most of the shares in a messaging app through that investment company.
The reason my stake was slightly larger than my little sister’s was because she had asked for it.
It wasn’t anything special; she just didn’t like having her name known to the world.
‘Oppa, I want to be rich without anyone knowing I’m rich.’
I didn’t know if that was even possible, but for now I decided to help her as best I could.
Anyway, since it was my own money rather than someone else’s, I had to be careful.
Apple stock had gone up a lot, but it still had plenty of room to rise.
This was before the smartphone, the great invention said to have changed the world, had even been released.
Steve Jobs had unveiled the smartphone in January, and the stock was rising, but...
once sales really got going after launch, the stock was certain to pump again.
I kept thinking about ways to make money,
‘...Maybe I should sell bricks.’
and came up with a new solution.
***
Park Chanhyeok immediately got to work with Kim Seonmyeong.
“Will this actually sell?”
“If it doesn’t sell, that’s that. Let’s put it up first.”
And that day, a post went up on Union Berlin’s website.
[Notice: Our club is open for business as usual.]
Hello. (omitted.) The phrases written by those who help out with one side of the standing section at our home ground will be engraved there. Please take part.
Notice: Words that may offend many people may not be allowed to be used on the stadium wall.
Notice 2: This is a nonrefundable product.
└ Ahahaha, ten thousand won per character? Count me in lol
└ I was going to donate anyway, but they’ll even engrave my name on the bricks? I’m in right away.
└ This is technically a donation too, so is it tax-deductible?
└ Hard to say. This is more like buying a service than making a donation, isn’t it?
└ Hmm. Then I guess I’ll have to donate separately too.
└ What happens if someone writes something like Sieg Heil? lol
└ Ugh. Read the warning, idiot.
└ Wouldn’t they not know if we wrote it in Korean?
└ The head coach and the website admin are Korean, you moron.^^
***
The sale of phrases to be engraved on the standing seats got a hotter response than expected.
[Power Sex!]
Of course, there were also a few trolls causing trouble.
‘This is decent enough. We can actually use it.’
At least it was better than the Heil moustache. When Chairman Dirk Zingler asked me what it meant, cold sweat poured down my back.
And the surprising thing was that donations were coming in not only from Korea but from Japan as well.
“…What does this one even say?”
If Union Berlin made it to the first division, it seemed like we could go on a tour of Asia next.
‘We need to pull in China money before China goes dark.’
Anyway, word about Union Berlin started spreading through all sorts of channels,
and people from all kinds of places bought Union Berlin’s special service.
‘As expected, legal graffiti is irresistible.’
Among them, there were quite a lot of inscriptions from couples.
‘Why would you want to immortalize something that might become a cringe memory later?’
As a senior in life, I felt sorry for them, but since we’d already taken the money, I decided to engrave it quietly.
We sold all of the amount we’d originally planned, and succeeded in securing enough funds.
Among the stadium construction volunteers, there was a friend studying fine arts, so we asked them to design the engraved text.
‘Oh. This looks better than I expected.’
Maybe because the letters from different countries were mixed together, it had its own charm.
‘Who am I? The founder of creative economy.’
At this point, couldn’t we seriously call this creative economy?
It felt a bit like I’d become Bongi Kim Seondal, the con man who sold the Daedong River’s water.
***
Thomas Tuchel succeeded in ending on a high note in the final match.
Tuchel bid farewell to the Union Berlin fans,
and the Union Berlin fans sent off the man who had led the team for the past two years with applause.
“Damn, it’s not some shabby team like Dynamo, so if it’s Munich, I can’t really complain.”
Tuchel’s destination had already been made public, and the fans didn’t try to stop him from heading to Bayern Munich either.
Bayern Munich was a club whose stature was on an entirely different level.
“Please fix your rotten personality so you won’t get fired before your contract is up.”
I offered a word of parting encouragement to Thomas Tuchel as we prepared to say goodbye.
“Are you cursing me right now?”
Of course, the person hearing it didn’t seem to take it that way.
“See you in the first division.”
“Yeah, we’ll be up soon.”
Anyway, our partnership ended with a hug.
And from the next day on, I began carrying out my duties as manager in earnest.
‘Znicz Pruszków... There was a team like this too, huh.’
The very first thing I did was travel to sign a striker who had been playing in Poland’s third division.