144. Tense Shoulders — 4
Show me.
If someone asked what I’d heard most since joining the national team, I supposed it would probably be “Show me.”
I’d heard it so often that I’d started to mistake it for some kind of trending cheer among the national team players.
Like how people just shout “Fighting, fighting.”
So much so that whenever I tried to do anything at the training ground, everyone habitually told me to show them.
It was always prefaced with titles like youngest national team player, Serie A top scorer, Italian Player of the Year.
Because of that, to be honest, it was very uncomfortable.
It was already a place where I couldn’t be comfortable, and with everyone looking at me with eyes full of expectation, I was self-conscious even when I was just walking.
For some reason, I felt like I shouldn’t slouch, like I had to walk coolly, and so on.
Anyway, every time I heard those words, I’d feel an inexplicable itch in my throat and a desire to hide somewhere, but from the beginning, I tried to get used to it by reminding myself of the resolution I’d made when boarding the plane to Korea.
If you asked what that resolution was… well.
It was childish, so I wouldn’t tell anyone, but it was simple.
To become a cooler person.
I’d been sick of myself always getting scared, avoiding things, hiding, and putting things off.
Hadn’t I come here because I wanted to become someone who no longer ran away or hid?
Honestly, everything felt like a burden, and faced with the cheers of fans right after leaving the airport… far from feeling grateful, I’d wanted to turn around and board a plane back to Rome, but I suppressed it all, bearing down with the thought that I had to withstand this much to become a greater player.
So before entering the stadium, I had made promises to myself over and over: that the expectations Korean fans placed on me were natural, that it wasn’t something to hate but something to accept gratefully.
But… I guess humans are animals that can’t change overnight.
Seeing as how, while pacing around the touchline warming up like this, I was thinking that I’d be fine playing next match as long as I didn’t have to go in today.
Waaaaaaah—!
The first half passed in a blur, and around the time over twenty minutes had passed in the second half.
Had it been about five minutes since I’d started warming up at the coach’s call?
In the middle of watching the match, I looked up at the screen at the erupting cheers…
“…”
I immediately turned my head and pretended not to see.
… I don’t know why they keep putting me up on the screen when I’m outside the stadium.
There are plenty of seniors next to me, too.
I felt like shutting off the power of the camera following me around, but of course I only thought that—I didn’t have the courage to actually do it.
Honestly, it wasn’t my first time receiving such cheers, but for some reason, right now I felt like my face would turn especially red.
Maybe because, unlike in Italy, the cheers here were in a high-pitched tone.
It sounded like thousands of Kim Jiwoos were all shouting together.
Come to think of it, it’s a bit fascinating.
If my memory serves me right, soccer wasn’t a sport that was particularly popular with women. In Korea.
But today, I just couldn’t understand why there were so many female fans.
Had a lot changed while I was in Italy?
Well, anyway, I suppose I should think of it as a good thing.
There was something that made me a bit more self-conscious than the older male fans, though.
Hmm…
I guess I just kept tensing my shoulders.
I started minding my expression, too.
“Jiwoo!”
While lost in useless thoughts, hearing a voice call my name, I get a bad feeling and turn my head.
And the moment I think surely not… I realize it’s the coach who called me.
The coach is gesturing at me, so I return to the bench for now.
Harboring the hope that since we were winning 1–0 anyway and there wasn’t much time left, perhaps he was going to let me rest.
But, as is the case with most of life.
If you think “surely not…”? It’s not.
If you think “it couldn’t be…”? That’s exactly it.
“Get ready to go in. Now, as for where you’ll be going……”
Even now, seeing that, I wondered if it wasn’t something you could call a universal law.
*
It truly feels awkward.
The fact that I’m wearing a red jersey.
After being called by the coach and hearing a brief tactical explanation and my role.
I change my top into the match jersey and line up at the substitution line.
“…”
… The cheers, well, they’ve been filling the stadium enough to make my ears sting since earlier.
I don’t know what I did to deserve them making such noise when I haven’t even gone in yet.
Of course, this could be an illusion stemming from my excessive self-consciousness, but given the circumstances, it seemed highly unlikely that this was merely my own delusion.
My heart pounds.
Suddenly, I remembered the first match I’d played after coming to Italy, and my top-team debut.
Perhaps because every situation is similar to then.
Standing near the touchline waiting to be substituted in, shouldering the expectations of one person, or tens of thousands.
… In many ways, I think it would be better to start the match if I was going to play anyway.
How nerve-wracking this moment is—someone who hasn’t experienced it wouldn’t know.
I’m so nervous that I’d rather go in quickly, yet at the same time, contradictory emotions storm through me, wishing the game would stop later.
Whether that is the case or not.
The moment the ball hits the opposing player’s foot and goes out of the touchline.
The referee, efficient in his duties, puts the whistle to his lips and points in my direction.
Waaaaaaah—
The cheers, which I wondered could get any louder, grow even louder, and a senior wearing the number 10 jersey claps and jogs leisurely toward the touchline.
“Phew, show me.”
That sound again.
After high-fiving the senior who says the tiresome line while offering his hand, I sprint onto the pitch to hide the tension filling my entire body.
Having come this far, the thought that I had to show them something, anything… felt like I was being brainwashed.
*
The time we’d had to train together and build chemistry hadn’t been all that abundant, but even if the tactics changed and the teammates changed, the essence of my role didn’t change.
A striker’s role is to create goals, so I just needed to be faithful to that.
It was uncomfortable that I couldn’t hear a teammate’s voice just a few meters away over the deafening cheers, but I decided to think of it as a good thing instead and looked around.
Our basic formation is 4-2-3-1.
Recalling the coach’s words that we would maintain the formation and tactics despite the player substitution, I start drawing a picture in my head.
My position is the center of the 3 in 4-2-3-1.
As the coach said, I would follow the playstyle of the senior who originally owned this spot, while sorting out what I could add or subtract in my own way.
The opponent, Iceland, has a typical 4-3-3 formation, but since almost everyone is participating in defense, the formation doesn’t seem to mean much.
The space is tight and the defense is dense.
The left side is especially so; they seem to be mindful of the Premier League top scorer.
The top scorer had joked that a fellow top-scoring junior had arrived, saying I was welcome to eat at the same table, but just looking at how the opponent distributed their defense, it was clear that the English top scorer and the Italian top scorer were not regarded as equals.
Rather than hurting my pride, I was thankful for it.
Tat-tat-tat—!
Since I’d been watching the match from outside earlier, I didn’t need long to grasp the structure, so I roughly finished surveying and started moving.
The opponent was using even their frontmost attacker not as an attacker but as a frontmost defender, so if I stood still, I’d suffocate without receiving the ball.
Until just now, forward passes had rarely come out, and the ball had only been spinning around the back.
But no matter how little space there was, the official pitch was too large to be filled by eleven people.
If you kept moving, space would eventually open up.
Tat—!
Moving down toward that empty space like that, my eyes meet with Napoli’s monster.
Fwoosh—!
Soon, a pass is laid precisely to me.
He’d been so scary when facing him as an enemy, but having him on the same team was incredibly reassuring.
I don’t know what my Fiorentina teammates would say if they found out, but since we’re a temporary alliance for now, I don’t return the pass from Napoli’s monster and take it cleanly.
Tat—!
And I immediately turn.
Then, opponent players maintaining close distance and building a wall come into sight, suffocating just to look at.
Their blatant posture, as if begging me to come in rather than challenging me to try, nearly triggers a contrarian urge to spite them by not doing what they wanted.
I push that feeling aside for a moment and start dribbling forward.
Tat-tat-tat—!
It looked worth trying, and besides, having come this far, I figured I had to show them something.
*
“Goal… when are we getting a goal…”
“Feels a little stifling, doesn’t it?”
Before the boy who looked far too young to be a national team player stepped onto the ground as a substitute—around the 20th minute of the second half.
A few fans wearing headbands that looked like they belonged at an amusement park were complaining about the frustration.
They had thought a goal party would happen today when a goal went in early in the first half.
But after that, goals had rarely come, and far from scoring, they couldn’t even mount proper attacks.
Thanks to that, feeling as frustrated as if they’d eaten ten sweet potatoes, their concentration was waning.
Perhaps the camera judged there was nothing worth capturing.
When the camera went to the player warming up outside the ground, near the touchline, rather than inside.
The cheer that erupted at that moment was as if a goal had gone in.
“Kyaaaaaa!”
“Wow, gorgeous…”
“Ah, so cute!”
The reason the soprano ratio was higher than baritone in that mixed cheer was probably not solely because the one caught on the screen was a simple 17-year-old boy.
At reactions as if watching an idol rather than a soccer player, one would expect the male spectators seated here and there to frown, but that wasn’t the case either.
“Woooooah!”
“Our hyung! Our hyung!”
“Ah, we came to see our hyung play! Sub him in!”
They didn’t pierce the air in high tones, but in terms of passion, they were no less enthusiastic.
Though it was quite bizarre to see grown men who probably had considerable seniority at work shouting “our hyung” at a 17-year-old boy, the culture of calling anyone a hyung if they’re good at something—a culture that had thrown Confucian ideals to the dogs—had taken root in Korea long ago, so it wasn’t that strange.
Anyway, from then on, the spectators began chanting the boy’s name with one heart and one mind.
As if responding to that call.
The boy soon began changing into his jersey, and stood near the touchline shaking out his legs.
It was only natural that the expectations of the millions gathered in the stadium—or rather, watching via broadcast—reached their peak at this moment.
With expectations so great that satisfying them would be difficult no matter what he did focused solely on one person, the boy soon dashed out onto the ground as if he’d been waiting for this.
And it was roughly one minute later.
“Oh, oh! He got the ball!”
“Wow, that touch! That movement!”
“He’s different! That’s not kimchi!”
The boy caught the ball and turned.
Then, after glancing ahead briefly, he begins dribbling forward without fear.
With several defenders in front of him.
Did the other players not think to break through there because they were fools?
There were reasons for everything, but the boy making his national team debut right now seemed unaware of such things and simply dribbled up.
Then, without even turning his head, he sprays a pass.
Fwoosh—!
As if having finally received a pass to his liking, the Premier League top scorer receives the ball…
Fwoosh—!
The ball soon returns to the boy.
In the brief moment the ball wasn’t at his feet, the boy appeared in front of the penalty box and receives the ball, not hesitating even there.
Tat-tat-tat—!
“Waaah!”
“Uwah!”
As something like exclamations burst from the mouths of spectators rising from their seats, the boy with the ball at his feet flickers.
As if he vanished into thin air, just when you thought he was swinging his legs, he appeared behind the defender.
And even what came next happened in the blink of an eye.
Bbaaaang—!
Shoooooong—
Thwack—!!
A right-footed strike from near the inside right side of the box cuts diagonally across the box, planting itself straight into the upper left corner of the goal.
At the same time, an earthquake and volcano seem to erupt simultaneously in the stands, and every player rushes toward the boy.
Followed by a somewhat rough celebration, the boy is soon pulled in front of the camera with the captain’s arm thrown around his shoulders.
The camera filming them is soon shown on the screen, and when the captain first makes a heart shape with his hands toward the camera.
The boy clumsily follows suit and makes a heart as well.
“Kyaaaaaa!”
“Uwaaaah, our hyung!”
At that sight, female fans collapsed backward, and male fans responded by drawing hearts above their heads.