“Wow, look at this guy’s gut sticking out. Did you drink again over the break?”
“No. I didn’t drink…”
“What do you mean you didn’t drink? Your gut’s sticking out like this.”
“It’s always been like this…”
“Ugh. Must be nice, you bastard.”
Perhaps because I’d been away for the World Cup and a short vacation, the training ground where I’d sweated every day felt slightly unfamiliar.
For a moment.
“Wow, you still look ugly after all this time.”
“The greatest band in the world, U2.”
Thanks to the seniors bickering the moment we saw each other, the slight awkwardness melted away like snow.
Everyone must have been bored while we were apart for a bit.
Well, seeing how cheerful everyone looked, it seemed they’d all had a good rest.
And the one with the brightest expression among them…
“Hey, everyone! Hello! Hello!”
I had a feeling it would be that friend.
Far off, Romero appeared waving his hand cheerfully, wearing such a happy expression that even I felt like smiling.
The reason Romero’s face was so bright was, of course…
“Excuse me, could you move aside? I’m from the best footballing nation in the world, you see.”
“…Stop talking nonsense and get over here.”
“I do apologize again, but it’s not nonsense, you know? This time, the God of Football led our Argentina to the top of the world… Gaack!”
There’s a saying in Korea about asking for a beating, and this was exactly it.
You should know your audience when you brag.
If you act like that to the captain who didn’t even go to the World Cup, even I’d throw a punch.
Anyway, Romero’s home country, Argentina, had taken the top spot in this World Cup.
Romero seemed in such a good mood that he was giggling even while the captain had him in a headlock.
“Surrender and I’ll let go! Surrender!”
“H-ha… ha… happiness!”
“You little…!”
…Hmm.
Can someone really be that happy?
Shaking my head, I finished tying my shoelaces.
The World Cup was the World Cup, and now the league restart was right around the corner.
I’d rested well in many ways, so I had to prepare to run again.
To be honest, up until I finished the World Cup, I’d been filled with a strange confidence.
Maybe it was because I’d stood on the biggest stage in the world; I had this feeling that I wouldn’t be nervous for any match anymore.
A strange, unshakable confidence had welled up inside me, making me feel like I wouldn’t be afraid to face anyone.
But those thoughts vanished without a trace after I watched Man City play in person, so now all I could think about was training hard quickly to get my condition up.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure if we could win even if I started working hard from now on… but it’s not like there was any other way.
“Hey, kid.”
“Yeah.”
“So, how was it? Seeing them in person, did you get a sense of it?”
While I was tying my shoes and rolling my ankles, the captain—who seemed to have finished his stretching by disciplining Romero—asked, and I tilted my head.
“What sense?”
“I mean Man City. You went to watch them play, right? They’re definitely on another level, yeah?”
“Ah, um, well…”
To that question, um… what should I answer?
I couldn’t answer readily.
To be honest, it was true that they were on another level, but sometimes in life, honesty can be poison.
Because I had a feeling that now might be one of those times.
How could I tell my teammates, with a match approaching, that I couldn’t see any angle for us to win?
So as I was hedging, Bonaventura, who was next to me, spoke up.
“Of course they’re different. They’re Man City.”
“Yeah. Even watching on broadcast, I was speechless. Newcastle isn’t a weak team either, but they just steamrolled them.”
“I feel sorry for our coach. He’s a bald guy just like their coach, but they get to put De Bruyne and Haaland in the starting lineup. Our coach has to use Bonaventura and Saponara.”
“…Why bring me into this all of a sudden?”
“Then can you beat Haaland?”
“Of course I can’t.”
It wasn’t exactly a funny conversation, but everyone giggling as they spoke made me scratch my head instead.
When the seniors were going on like that, the normal thing would be to at least deny it.
The fact that I couldn’t readily open my mouth made me wonder if I was just a twisted person.
“Ha, why did it have to be Man City of all teams?”
“That’s why we should’ve finished first in the group. That’s where things went wrong.”
“I’m already scared. How badly are they going to try to destroy us?”
“Think we can hold out?”
But… watching the shoulders of my ever-optimistic seniors slump like that,
The moment I thought I hated seeing them like that, my mouth moved on its own.
Words I’d never even thought of spilled out.
“…I could see it.”
“Huh? See what?”
“A way for us to win…”
“You saw that? Really?”
Of course I hadn’t seen it.
But like the saying about a needle thief becoming a cow thief, my face, trained by countless lies, shamelessly nodded up and down.
“Seeing them in person, they weren’t that big of a deal. We can win.”
“Ooh, as expected, the kid sees things differently from us. I couldn’t see it at all.”
“Of course. He’s not the same as us. Our youngest sees angles even De Bruyne can’t.”
“If the youngest says so, it must be true!”
…Right.
This is why people tell lies.
At my baseless bluff, the seniors’ eyes sparkled as they clenched their fists, and seeing that, strength entered my shoulders before worry could.
What do I do?
“Then we’ll just trust the youngest?”
…What can I do?
Just like I always had, I had no choice but to leave everything to tomorrow’s me.
“…Try believing in me.”
Good luck with that.
Tomorrow’s me…
∙ ∙ ∙
Just as going back to school becomes several times more dreadful after a vacation ends,
Having finished a break that was short if you called it short and long if you called it long, it wouldn’t have been strange for me to have no motivation to train.
Yet during the period until the league restarted, I think I trained harder than ever before.
As if someone were chasing me from behind.
The reason, well… of course, it was because each time I went to sleep and woke up, the day of the match against Man City was rapidly approaching in huge strides.
I’d decided to leave everything to tomorrow’s me, so why was tomorrow coming so fast?
Anyway, thanks to that, on January 5th.
When I entered our home, the Artemio Franchi, after a long time, my physical condition was quite good.
The Champions League was important too, of course, but if I had to choose, the league was clearly more important.
After all, what matters more than tomorrow is always today.
For the moments I was on the pitch, I only repeated to myself to forget everything else and focus on the match.
The opponent was Udinese, who were 13th in the league.
Since Serie A is comprised of 20 teams, 12th place also corresponds to a ranking below the midpoint.
There was a gap of ten places between them and us in 2nd, so it looked like we could relax, but that wasn’t the case.
Because their ranking had been 17th as recently as October.
Meaning their recent momentum was so good that they’d climbed five places in just a month or two.
Coach Vincenzo says it occasionally too, but Coach Tony used to say it very often when I was with the U17s.
They say football is a battle of momentum.
And that momentum doesn’t apply to just one match, but can carry over for a long time.
Udinese could be seen as an opponent riding that kind of wave.
But the important thing was that we were riding plenty of momentum ourselves.
“Nice! Nice one!”
“We’re a team that advanced to the Champions League Round of 16! We’re on a different level!”
“We’re even the team that’s going to beat Man City!”
Strange shouts could be heard now and then during the match, but anyway, we handled Udinese relatively easily and led the game.
It was definitely a fleeting thought, but to be honest, I found myself wondering if league matches had always been this easy.
It wasn’t even that strange, looking back.
My most recent match had been the World Cup Round of 16 against Brazil.
Before that were the World Cup group stage matches, and before that was the Champions League match against Paris Saint-Germain.
If I say that I suddenly understood why they say you need to swim in deep waters, it might be terribly rude to Udinese, but
The matches I’d played before were so heavy that it was an undeniable fact that this match felt light.
As a result, on the day the league resumed, we took three points, maintained our gap with league leaders Napoli, and continued the good momentum we’d had before the break.
And that momentum continued unbroken, even until the bitter cold began to subside.
∙ ∙ ∙
There’s a saying that you should tap even a stone bridge before crossing it.
If even a stone bridge requires that, the path we’d crossed was closer to a bridge made of planks than a stone one.
A difficult today made us forget an even more difficult tomorrow.
Focusing only on the match that week and pouring all my concentration into that weekend made time fly by.
And so, before I knew it, it was February.
If time flowed backward from March to February, we couldn’t have endured the cold, but having endured January and stepped into February, we could feel warmth despite the still-persistent chill.
With that warmth, I could finally take my hands out of my pockets, and looking back at the cold January,
We’d spent the month playing four league matches and the Coppa Italia Round of 16, five matches in total.
And we hadn’t lost a single one.
Three wins and one draw in the four league matches, and in the Coppa Italia, we beat Bologna to advance to the quarterfinals.
If someone asked what the biggest achievement among them was, they might say it was the victory over Inter in Milan.
But I think a bigger achievement than that was probably that we reached February without anyone getting injured.
On that point, everyone said the World Cup break played a big role, and seeing that made me think that perhaps everything in the world has two sides.
Just the other day we’d been complaining about having the World Cup on top of everything else we already had to do, but now we could see that we’d been able to recharge thanks to that World Cup.
Anyway, thanks to that,
On the flight to Manchester that we were taking after a month, every single one of us had been able to board without exception.
“Hey, any news?”
“What news?”
“Like someone getting injured, or a burglar breaking into their home so they can’t play.”
“…Are you even human? Be satisfied that Cancelo transferred away, you bastard.”
About an hour before the plane would land in Manchester.
I reflected on how I’d secretly pricked up my ears at the conversation coming from the back row.
Just as everything has two sides, the World Cup period may have been a rest for us,
But for a team like Man City, that might not have been the case, so it would be a lie to say I didn’t have a “what if” feeling in my heart.
But ominous premonitions always come true, and vain expectations betray you as regularly as you eat.
Man City, just like us… seemed like they would field a full-strength squad.
I read in an article that their manager had said as much.
That they don’t think of Fiorentina as a team beneath them, and that they’ll approach the match with their best squad.
Normally hearing that would make me feel proud, but this time it didn’t.
I wish they’d just look down on us a little.
“…”
Licking my lips, I glanced out the window to see the carpet of clouds now rushing close.
At the same time, I felt my body float—the plane seemed to be dipping its nose downward.
That seemed to mean we were slowly nearing our destination, and my shoulders tensed.
It wasn’t that landing scared me. I’d flown enough not to envy anyone else.
Rather, I could feel the time approaching when I would have to take responsibility for the words I’d spat out.
By tomorrow, the “tomorrow’s me” that yesterday’s me had laughed at would become today’s me.
I had no idea what I was thinking when I’d boasted so boldly, but
As always, I figured it would all work out somehow.
—Our aircraft will enter UK airspace shortly…
…But no matter how much I thought about it, I was pretty sure I was in big trouble.
The Champions League Round of 16 match against Man City was just one day away.