120. Pre-season -6
Spain, Barcelona—a city reached after roughly three hours of flying from London.
My first impression of Barcelona was achingly blue.
“This is sunlight, this is weather. This is a place where people actually live.”
As soon as we stepped off the plane, the seniors said that under the blazing sun, and I found myself nodding along.
The sky, not a single cloud in sight, was as blue as the sea, and the dazzling sunlight made everything look golden.
It was such a good first impression of Barcelona that I suddenly felt regret that Dad and Jiu couldn’t come along.
Hmm.
Come to think of it, I’d had the same thought when I arrived in Manchester.
The thought that it was a shame I couldn’t come with Jiu. Only back then, it wasn’t because it was so nice, but rather the opposite.
Anyway, seeing as the only people I think of no matter where I go are Dad and Jiu, I really don’t know what’s become of me.
When I eat something tasteless, I think of Jiu first, and when I eat something delicious, I think of Jiu first.
When the weather is cloudy or when it’s nice, I think of Jiu first… I started wondering if I’d played with only Jiu too much since childhood.
How is it that I have only one friend?
But well… as long as I’m okay with it, isn’t that fine? I’ve always thought that one true friend is enough in the first place…
“What are you writing so intently?”
“…Huh? Ah, it’s nothing.”
“What is it? Why are you flustered? Were you writing some secret diary or something?”
“Ah, no.”
After finishing lunch at a restaurant in downtown Barcelona, while the seniors were enjoying coffee for a moment.
I had been writing something on my phone, when Bonaventura, sitting beside me, suddenly leaned in and asked, making me jump and hide my phone.
Ah, you startled me.
“He’s checking a kid’s vacation homework. Don’t bother him, man.”
“Homework? If there’s anything you don’t know, feel free to ask me anytime. I’ve been studying lately to help my kids with homework too.”
“…Yes.”
Thanks to the captain, the entire table’s attention fortunately wasn’t drawn, and I cautiously glanced around before taking out my phone again.
Honestly, it’s not a big deal… It’s just that the seniors are so mischievous. If they saw this, they would have made a ruckus teasing me loud enough to blow the roof off the place.
Anyway, I continued writing what I had been writing.
It’s not a diary; I’d just been jotting down places that seemed like they’d be nice to visit later with Dad and Jiu, starting from England.
I added the name of this restaurant we’re at right now to it.
It was my first time trying a dish called paella, and it was delicious. It tasted like something Jiu would enjoy too, so I thought it would be nice to come here together.
Come to think of it, of the things I’d noted while in England, none were restaurants.
The food is definitely better on the Spanish side.
So that’s why Jiu said they wanted to open a restaurant in England.
With Jiu’s skill, they’d have the Britons’ eyes wide open, I think.
Well… anyway.
While the seniors chatted warmly and enjoyed their richly aromatic coffee.
“…”
I gazed at the peaceful scenery of Barcelona unfolding outside the window.
I kept wondering what Dad and Jiu would be doing around now.
…
On the first day after arriving in Barcelona, we briefly toured the city, then returned to our lodging to manage our conditions with individual training.
The next day, we prepared for the match with acclimatization training and tactical training at the training ground under intense sunlight.
And today, the third day.
We took the bus through the city and arrived at a stadium that felt magnificent.
Barcelona’s home stadium, the one called Camp Nou.
“Wow, so this is how they crush the away team’s spirit.”
“Is this even allowed?”
Getting off the bus and heading toward the locker room, the seniors looked around and spoke.
Their words lacked a bit of context, but I found myself nodding too.
From the moment we got off the bus, past the entrance, to the corridor leading to the locker room…
Because everywhere the eye touched was plastered with things showing exactly what kind of team Barcelona was.
“How many times have they won?”
“You probably can’t count.”
Along both walls of the long corridor, photos were hung in a continuous row.
They were all photos of them lifting championship trophies. They had filled this long corridor with nothing but photos from when they won.
Just how many titles had they won?
If I had come here for sightseeing rather than for a match, it would have been a sight amazing enough to make my jaw drop.
But since I was in a position where I had to face them today, I couldn’t help but feel as if those photos were saying to us, “Feel just what kind of team you’ve come to face.”
As expected, it isn’t called the dream club for nothing.
A place everyone wants to go but not just anyone can enter. A place only true geniuses can enter; that is why it is the dream club.
I stand across from the players of that dream club as their opponent.
At this, a heart that had been calm until just moments ago begins to pound.
However, I was a bit puzzled.
Whether my heart had started pounding out of nervousness… or out of excitement.
I couldn’t tell exactly which of the two was making it pound more.
*
…It’s high.
The first feeling that struck me after stepping onto the Camp Nou pitch was “high.”
The height of the stands was greater than in any stadium I had ever been to.
If stands are usually divided into first and second tiers, here it felt like there was a third tier too.
Thanks to that, the very top felt almost like a mountain, and looking up at such high stands made me feel like an incredibly tiny human.
Perhaps that’s why.
The players standing on the other side of the halfway line felt bigger than usual today.
“…”
The referee is preparing to blow the whistle, and beyond him, players wearing uniforms of mixed red and blue are lined up.
Among them, the most eye-catching is the player preparing for kickoff.
That tall player with the big nose… is the striker who people say would have won the Ballon d’Or if the ceremony hadn’t been canceled two years ago.
Such a player is standing right before my eyes, and even that isn’t all.
Beside him stands a player said to be the Brazilian national team’s starting winger, behind him is a player hailed as Barcelona’s future, and beside that player stands one who Lionel Messi himself trusted the most.
Geniuses, geniuses, geniuses, geniuses.
Just as written on the tactical analysis sheet, the landscape was filled with nothing but geniuses no matter where I looked, to the point an empty laugh almost escaped me.
That I was standing facing such players as opponents made this moment feel surreal once again.
Yeah.
It’s surreal. Like a dream.
That’s probably why.
Even at a moment like this, I’m not particularly scared.
I just want the whistle to blow quickly.
I want to see.
I want to see with my own eyes and learn from the play of those great geniuses.
So, having shaken out my legs and prepared to dash forward at any moment…
Beeeeep!
The moment the long-awaited whistle blew, I kicked off the ground and leaped forward.
The match had begun.
*
“Push the line up! Don’t drop back!”
“Watch your side! Keep the line!”
At the shouts coming incessantly from all directions, I busily looked around and moved my feet.
Today’s formation for us is 4-3-3.
Our opponents responded with the same formation.
Rat-a-tat!
Before the match, the manager had said that Barcelona is a team that tries to have the ball for as long as possible.
In other words, they play football that raises possession and uses it to increase the time they spend attacking, thereby creating more scoring chances.
Thwack!
He said what makes this possible is each player’s ball retention ability and passing play.
Most of them possess the ability to easily shake off ordinary pressure, and their passing is excellent as well, so they don’t easily give the ball to the opponent.
Therefore, he said that pressing high against them could easily become a choice that only causes stamina drain, but despite knowing that, we decided to play a high press today.
We did it because it’s pre-season.
Opportunities to test our high press against a team of Barcelona’s caliber are rare.
He said if we could trouble Barcelona with our high press, we could trouble nearly any team.
And now, about eight minutes into the first half, I understood exactly what he had meant.
Thwack!
Thwack!
In the opponent’s back area, the passes circulate without a moment’s rest.
So we busily moved to predict directions and cut off passing lanes…
Thwack!
Even so, the opponents found passing lanes like magic and kept the ball moving.
I had certainly felt that pressing wasn’t easy when facing Man United too, but these guys were tricky in a different way.
For one, the passing timing was so fast that it was hard to keep up with my eyes; I had to change my decisions every second as I moved, and even when I predicted the direction and closed in on the player with the ball, it was difficult to easily take it away.
They were all so good at keeping the ball and passing it that it almost felt like they were toying with us.
Even though we’d been applying pressure for several minutes now, we were merely preventing their advance, unable to steal the ball or force a long pass.
And at the center of it all… is that player.
Number 5, Sergio Busquets.
Thwack!
He receives the ball near the right side in front of the box.
Romero nearby rushes in, and our central midfielder Amrabat approaches.
It was a position where stealing the ball could immediately lead to a shot, yet in that dangerous area, he merely stood in place looking around, and then…
The moment Amrabat charged in first…
Tap!
He changes direction with a composed body movement.
And with just that one move, he completely escapes the pressure.
It was possible because the direction he turned was exactly the one that allowed him to escape the pressure from Amrabat and Romero.
So when I rush in…
Thwack!
He simply gives a light pass back to a defender, rendering my movement useless.
…And this process was already repeating for the umpteenth time.
“Hoo—”
Thanks to that, I’m running out of breath, and my feet feel like they’re gradually slowing down.
It was natural, having run around pressing for nearly ten minutes.
Then, shouts from my teammates behind me reached my ears like a chain of falling dominoes.
“Drop back!”
“Behind the line!”
A declaration that we’re temporarily abandoning the high press.
A shout signaling that our first tactical attempt had failed.
At that shout, the teammates on both sides retreated, and I too exhaled and stepped backward.
However, this did not mean a temporary truce. Freed from our pressure as we retreated, the opponents soon began turning their bodies toward our side.
Thwack!
Perhaps the attack starts with him as well.
The ball moves to Busquets’ feet, and he begins slowly dribbling up at barely a jog.
And as he does, he scans our position behind me with his eyes…
“…”
From that gaze, I felt an inexplicable chill.
Even though he was clearly standing on the same field as us, it somehow felt like he was looking down at us from the sky.
*
The first high press ended in failure, but the fortunate thing was that the opponents couldn’t easily break through our dropped-back defense.
We matched our lines as best we could, tracked their movements, and killed space, so they couldn’t easily play forward passes either.
Even in our half, they just circulated the ball around as they had in the back.
Just how long did they plan to keep passing it around?
It even made me wonder if they had come out to practice passing against us.
It was around then, as I was cautiously watching from below the halfway line.
Thwack!
The ball came near me.
The one who sent it was Busquets, and the one who received it was a player named Gavi.
…I’d heard he was a player who had taken a spot on Barcelona’s first team at the age of seventeen.
At this, feeling an inexplicable sense of rivalry, I stepped in to block his way.
“…”
“…”
Then the opponent, with me in front of him, twitched his body and swung his feet as if he wanted to try a one-on-one.
So I watched his body, lowered my stance, and waited briefly.
Rat-a-tat!
The opponent kicked the ball to my right and dashed out, and I too turned my body to the right and moved my feet.
And, I put my body into his path first.
Thud!
As a light impact was felt behind my back, my body bounced forward.
However, I didn’t lose my balance.
I just kept running naturally and stopped the ball with the sole of my foot.
Even then, the opponent kept charging at me, so I stuck my hip back to fend off that challenge for a moment.
Tap!
While pushing the opponent away, I used the recoil to create distance and spun around the ball.
Then this time, the opponent lowered his stance and began watching me.
It felt as if he was saying it was my turn, but for some reason, I didn’t feel like avoiding it.
Tock!
I began tapping the ball with my instep and approaching the opponent.
Maybe because we’re similar in age.
I wanted to win.