Chapter 63
***
I had absolutely no intention of taunting my opponents in this match.
Even when Lewandowski scored, I desperately held back my emotions.
And when Son Hong-min scored, I tried just as hard to rein them in.
It was partly about dignity as a manager, but more importantly, I had to be careful of the karma that exists in football.
But then, all of a sudden, a realization struck me.
‘No, wait—after today, we’re never going to see Leverkusen again anyway, right?’
The fact was that Union Berlin, a second-division club, and Leverkusen, a first-division club, would not be able to meet again this season.
At that moment, the seal on the little kid inside me broke.
I ran straight toward the corner flag where the Union Berlin fans were.
I could have taunted them right in front of the opposing bench, but I held back because that would get me carded.
‘I’m the manager now. If I can’t play in the next match, I’m in trouble.’
Once I’d become a manager, a certain sense of responsibility had settled in.
Swoooosh─!
“Hoooooo─!”
Anyway.
“Waaaaa—!”
The crowd’s cheers grew louder at the fantastic knee-slide celebration.
‘Yeah, this is how the pitch should be.’
I nodded in satisfaction to myself. Unlike the grass in Korea, Germany’s turf let me slide smoothly without any resistance.
Leverkusen’s manager started looking at me with a displeased expression—
I snorted at Leverkusen’s manager.
‘…If you had a problem with it, you should’ve won.’
The DFB-Pokal, where a first-division team and a second-division team only get to face each other once.
From that day on, the DFB-Pokal became my little playground.
***
[(Match ended) Union Berlin 2 : 0 Leverkusen.]
[Union Berlin beat Leverkusen at home to advance to the second round of the DFB-Pokal.]
[Son Hong-min simultaneously sets both the youngest appearance and youngest goal-scoring records in the DFB-Pokal.]
[Son Hong-min’s first professional appearance, first goal. “I’m grateful to Coach Park Chan-hyeok.”]
└ Haha, Hong-min, you’re the future of South Korea.
└ ...? Hong-min scored?
└ Dunno.
└ Why do I only remember Park Chan-hyeok’s celebration?
└ That knee-slide was awesome.
└ For real lol Park Chan-hyeok is just a celebration master.
[Coach Park Chan-hyeok wins Germany over with his headline-grabbing sliding celebration.]
└ Holy shit lol is it real that Bild and Kicker put this on the front page? lolllllllll
└ Honestly, that attention-seeking is fucked lol
└ Even without that, it’s front-page news because a second-division club just crushed a first-division club.
└ At this rate, are they really going to the first division? Damn.
└ The league hasn’t even started yet. Don’t get ahead of yourselves.
[Leverkusen manager Michael Skibbe strongly voiced his dissatisfaction after the match…. “The Union Berlin manager needs to learn how to respect his opponents.”]
[Union Berlin’s Park Chan-hyeok, “I know what his complaint is. But if he had won the match, would he have taken offense at my celebration? No. He would have been too busy mocking me. So let me ask again: is he really upset because I celebrated? No. Then his problem is simply that he lost.”]
└ That sounds like total bullshit philosophy, but it also seems right.
└ Wow. Why is Park Chan-hyeok so good at speeches?
└ Speaking in German gives it a totally different feel.
└ Somehow he seems really charismatic lol
└ ...What is this? This accent sounds familiar.
└ Heil, moustache...?
└ Oh shit, yeah, that’s it.
└ Why the hell did he suddenly get possessed by the spirit of the moustache?
└ Chan-hyeok, stop it already. If the Germans get riled up, it’ll be World War III, damn it.
***
Meanwhile, at the Korea Football Association.
Recently, the Korea Football Association had been running around in a frenzy.
The reason was Coach Verbeek’s voluntary resignation after finishing the 2007 AFC Asian Cup on July 29, 2007.
Coach Verbeek had been in charge not only of the senior national team, but also of the Olympic team, and discussions about appointing a national team coach were now actively underway at the association.
“All right, since the chairman is currently absent, I’ll preside over the meeting.”
The ongoing meetings of the Football Association were being led by Vice Chairman Jo Yeon-jung.
Chairman Jeong Jun was busy with matters such as the FIFA president and vice-president elections. Both Sepp Blatter and Jeong Jun had run unopposed and been elected president and vice president without a contest, but they still had to meet and talk so the chairmen of other countries’ associations wouldn’t feel slighted.
“First, to improve the Olympic team’s results and to focus the senior team on the World Cup and international tournaments, let’s separate the managers of the Olympic team and the senior team.”
Vice Chairman Jo Yeon-jung ordered that the senior national team coach and the Olympic team coach be separated.
“Agreed!”
“Is it unanimous?”
“Unanimous!”
The Football Association directors did not object to Jo Yeon-jung’s words.
That just meant bigger rice bowls for themselves.
“If there is anyone dissatisfied with separating the national team coaches, please raise your hand and then speak.”
It was hard to openly oppose it while worrying about what their seniors and juniors would think.
Anyway, the current executives of the Football Association hoped that the national team would achieve good results in international competitions.
After witnessing the explosive rise in football popularity following the huge success of the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup,
‘Haa…. Those were good times.’
But after failing to achieve the kind of results they’d hoped for on the international stage at the 2006 World Cup and the 2007 Asian Cup,
signs that football’s popularity was beginning to fade became visible, and the Football Association executives started worrying that it might slip back to the way it had been before.
Naturally, that made sense. They were football people too.
People who had even played the game themselves because they genuinely loved football.
They sincerely wanted Korean football to keep developing.
And if football popularity faded, that would also mean the association executives’ rice bowls would shrink.
Anyway, with the 1988 Seoul Olympics behind them, the Olympics were being held in Asia for the first time in 20 years.
The Football Association executives hoped Korean football would post good results on the international stage and come back to life once again.
So the Football Association executives kept meeting day and night, forgetting sleep, as they continued discussing who should be the next coach of the Olympic team and the senior team.
“Well, there was that guy in Germany. Wasn’t there some friend coaching in Berlin? How about appointing him?”
And so it was natural that Park Chan-hyeok’s name came up as a candidate for national team coach.
“Well…. It might be a little difficult with that guy. He only just took the job, and his first season has only just started, hasn’t it? Calling him in this situation would be a bit difficult, right?”
“Ahem, if the country calls, shouldn’t he come running at once?”
“Heh heh… that guy is out there promoting Korean football in Europe, so don’t be too hard on him. Anyway, if he beat a first-division German team, that’s a good thing.”
“Haha. Exactly. It means Korean football has risen that much. Looking at the 2002 World Cup, those Europeans might not be all that after all.”
Park Chan-hyeok was the man who satisfied both of the conditions the Football Association executives wanted.
The two things the current Korea Football Association executives wanted were these.
He had to be someone who could get good results in international competitions, and if possible, the national team coach should be a Korean rather than a foreigner.
“Why should we be using Korean money to line foreign coaches’ pockets? We need to nurture capable local coaches too.”
They genuinely believed that Korean football could hold its own on the world stage.
They thought Korean coaches were no less capable than foreign coaches.
‘That brat Park Chan-hyeok did it, so why couldn’t I.’
‘If I got good results, I could become a coach who went abroad.’
Because Park Chan-hyeok himself was proving that in Germany.
“Hey, I’ll back the coach you’re pushing for the national team, so recommend me for the Olympic team.”
And some of them began openly revealing their greed for the coaching jobs.
***
Over the past few days, strange things had been happening to me.
Messages with bizarre content had been pouring in.
Even though the phone numbers were different, the message contents were all pretty much the same.
- I’m so-and-so, a Football Association executive, so please back me or whoever I’m backing.
In my previous life, I wasn’t part of the mainstream of Korean football.
That means I didn’t know anyone in the Korea Football Association.
And in this life, it was the same—I still wasn’t part of the mainstream of Korean football.
In other words, I had no one to contact.
‘Is this some new scam?’
I didn’t bother with it and blocked every one of the messages.
I wasn’t free enough to waste time on petty nonsense like that.
What mattered to me now was coming up with a name worthy of the new stadium.
The existing name, ‘Stadion An der Alten Försterei,’ was fine, but I strongly argued that a new stadium should have a new name.
Was it because Chairman Dirk Zingler couldn’t simply ignore the request of a major shareholder like me? He accepted, while setting conditions.
“Then tell me the stadium name you have in mind; we’ll decide it by fan vote later.”
I kept thinking about it after that day.
‘The kind of atmosphere I wanted for the stadium....’
The stadium I wanted had only one requirement.
A stadium where the home team would win overwhelmingly.
A stadium that would become hell for visiting teams.
In that sense, a place that could become a graveyard for Germans....
“...Stalingrad?”
That day, I came up with a new name for the home stadium.
Of course, that name was never actually used.