Episode 219: I'm Lee Ji-an -2
When is the European football scene at its most vibrant?
I suppose it must be right before the pre-season begins.
Just as spring is the most vibrant of the four seasons, and just as the beginning of a semester is the most thrilling time for students, the most hopeful and exciting time for European football fans can be none other than the pre-season.
Even fans of teams that had produced somewhat sluggish results last season, resentful though they were, pinned their hopes on the team once more and waited for a new start. Fans of teams that had enjoyed good results likewise expected even better ones.
As the famous saying goes, everyone has a plausible plan before they get punched. During the pre-season, every single team is invariably filled with energy and confidence.
The same was true for Manchester City fans.
Last season was a year that would go down in Manchester City club history.
Truthfully, it had been quite some time since Manchester City had joined the ranks of the elite, not merely in their own estimation but in the eyes of others as well. Yet during that same period, they had surprisingly failed to achieve results that matched expectations.
Of course, in the beginning, even winning the league alone had been cause for celebration, but gradually money and players began to flow in.
With the crowning touch of Pep Guardiola taking over as manager and reorganizing the team, Manchester City had before long become a team that could no longer be satisfied with mere league titles, and their goal had become the conquest of Europe.
But that ambition met with failure time and again.
Clearly, in terms of class alone, they were big enough to be counted among the strongest title contenders every year, yet strangely, whenever the Champions League came around, they invariably became the protagonists of an upset.
In the 17/18 season, didn't they suffer a crushing defeat to Liverpool in the quarterfinals? The following season, they were eliminated by Tottenham in the quarterfinals once again. Even in the season immediately after that, they were caught by Olympique Lyonnais and failed to cross the threshold of the quarterfinals.
After that too, they fell just short.
In the 20/21 season—the one where people said, "This time it's for real"—Manchester City smoothly advanced to the final. With Chelsea, whose atmosphere had been so chaotic that the manager was sacked mid-season, confirmed as the final opponent, it looked like the perfect opportunity to win, to the point that people were saying if they couldn't win this time, they truly had no fate with the Champions League.
But Manchester City lost in that final as well, as if by some lie.
They had clearly built an image of overwhelming dominance by achieving a winning streak of over twenty matches in the league, yet in the final they could not show that form and were forced to drink the bitter cup.
The 21/22 season was not much different either.
Because the cry of "This time for sure!" had already been repeated for several years running, expectations had dimmed, but by smoothly advancing to the semifinals, they produced a fresh batch of suckers willing to be fooled once more.
But the result was: fooled again.
The team that frustrated Manchester City and took the ticket to the final was Real Madrid, and Real defeated Liverpool in the final to claim the title, demonstrating that pedigree truly exists.
Thus, it was last season that Manchester City could finally sever their meager history relative to the team's class.
Winning the league, the FA Cup, and the Champions League all at once.
By achieving the Treble—the greatest accomplishment a club can attain in a single season—they had finally attained enlightenment.
Manchester City fans, their long-cherished wish fulfilled, could not help but burst into tears, and experiencing the view from the summit for the first time, they engraved a memory they would never forget upon their hearts.
It was for this reason that expectations for the new season were higher than ever.
Human greed knows no bounds, after all.
Having tasted victory once, Manchester City fans' gazes were now shifting toward a second title.
Their history had been such a long chain of regrets that these were fans who could not possibly be satisfied with just one.
Consequently, there was no shortage of public sentiment that harbored a sense of crisis rather than blindly bright optimism.
They say that in dieting, maintaining is harder than losing weight.
Likewise, the champion's throne is harder to defend than to claim.
Voices continued to insist that to defend the summit, they must not rest on their laurels but raise their class even further.
And the one who shouldered all that expectation and pressure was an eighteen-year-old boy who had set a club-record transfer fee of 200 billion won and joined the team as the key to back-to-back Champions League titles.
The fans' enormous expectations were concentrated on Manchester City's pre-season.
Everyone hoped that Lee Ji-an would prove his transfer fee's worth starting from the pre-season.
But as if to torment them, Manager Guardiola did not easily show his cards.
—Pre-season opener D-5. Will we see Lee in the first match? "Monitoring his condition."
—Manchester City departs for Japan tour, arrives in Japan. Pre-season begins with match against Yokohama F. Marinos
—'B-team' Manchester City defeats Yokohama 5-3. Highly anticipated Lee Ji-an and De Bruyne do not feature
—A conditioning issue? Lee Ji-an excluded from squad for second pre-season match.
—Manager Guardiola reveals reason for Lee Ji-an's exclusion: "Lee is adapting to the team."
—Manchester City squad returns home. Begins preparations for August 7th Community Shield match against Arsenal.
—'Nothing to Lose' — Will 200 billion won man Lee Ji-an play in the Community Shield? Guardiola's thinking is 'cautious'
...
"Let's take another look after training."
"Yes."
"Pay more attention to your stretching."
"Understood."
At the training ground medical room.
After finishing having tape applied here and there on my legs, I bowed my head to the team doctor and exited the medical room.
It had already been nearly a month since I joined the team.
Still, the training ground was so vast that I hadn't grown familiar with all of it yet, but the path going back and forth between the training ground and the medical room had become so familiar that I could walk it with my eyes closed.
That was how often I had come and gone.
Passing through the winding corridor, I stopped by the locker room to grab my boots before heading to the training ground.
It had been like this since right after I joined the team, but it had grown worse over the past few weeks.
I was talking about the manager's nagging—though he wouldn't call it that—about taking good care of my body.
Well, nothing hurt or anything.
That was how I felt, and the doctor hadn't given any particular diagnosis either.
There was nothing wrong with my body, but the manager seemed to want me to maintain peak physical condition until the very end of the season.
Thanks to that, before training started and after it ended.
I had to stop by the medical room twice a day without fail to receive treatment.
The layers of tape currently stuck all over my legs weren't because anything hurt; they were for injury prevention.
I did think it was a bit excessive, but being careful couldn't hurt, so I was following the manager's instructions without complaint.
Truthfully, I hadn't even realized... it seemed my physical condition hadn't been all that great right after joining.
The medical tests had definitely said I was fine.
They said I needed more meticulous management or something.
I heard it was because I'd played too many matches.
For some reason, it sounded to my ears like they were blaming Fiorentina, so I didn't particularly like hearing it, but since that was the doctor's opinion, I couldn't exactly object.
They said I had played too many matches for my age, and while I wasn't injured at the moment, the risk level was quite high.
They also said my calf, which had been painful once before, required special care.
So during the pre-season, I only trained.
I had already heard beforehand that I wouldn't be sent into matches.
Last season, I had learned a lot even from pre-season matches, so it was a shame, but if the manager said so, then so be it.
I simply trained lightly, and during matches, I watched my teammates' games in admiration.
Because of that, honestly, it was inevitable that I felt a bit anxious.
One might think the pre-season isn't very important, but I thought there was a reason it existed, after all.
Teammates building chemistry with one another, restoring match sharpness lost during the off-season, raising their condition.
Wasn't that the very reason pre-season existed—to prepare so you could show a perfect form when the real season began?
But since I had essentially skipped that pre-season, how should I put it.
I began to wonder if I would be able to go straight into matches even once the season started.
It suddenly crossed my mind.
Could it be that "conditioning management" was just something said to keep my confidence from dropping, and in truth, the manager wasn't satisfied with what I'd shown in training and that's why he wasn't playing me?
Of course, I didn't think that was actually the case.
If it were the old me, I would have had all sorts of strange thoughts and tormented myself, but I had learned to believe in myself somewhat now.
Since I had received plenty of praise from the manager, the coaches, and my teammates during training, I believed that it really was about conditioning.
However, my desire to play in matches was growing by the day.
No matter how positively I tried to think, I couldn't help but feel anxious when I wasn't getting into games.
Right now, it was fine because it was the pre-season, but if I couldn't play after the season started, I didn't know what would become of me either.
To sum it up, it was about time.
It was about time I got to play too.
There was a match in a week.
The opponent was a team called Arsenal, and the competition was called the Community Shield.
It was the final match held before the league opener, where last season's league winners and FA Cup winners faced off.
I wanted to play in that match.
Rest is good for conditioning, but sometimes playing matches is a form of management too.
Football players are... people who feel alive when they play, after all.
Well, no matter how much I thought about this and that on my own, the decision was ultimately the manager's.
For me, it was merely a wish.
It was around the time I was passing through the corridor and heading to the training ground with such thoughts.
"..."
Suddenly, a thought flashed through my mind.
...I want to play in a match.
Come to think of it, I had been so focused on wanting to play that I hadn't thought about anything else.
For example, worries like what if I couldn't produce a performance befitting my transfer fee when I played.
Given my personality, I should have been worrying about that first, but instead, because I couldn't get into matches, perhaps I had become filled only with the thought of wanting to run out there.
I suddenly recalled what the examiner had said when I took the temperament test.
That the manager had the same temperament as me, so he would understand me well and handle me properly.
Could that be it?
Had I been getting conditioned by the manager without even realizing it?
Hmm.
I didn't really know.
I might just be getting ahead of myself.
But in the end, what mattered was this.
I wanted to play in a match.
Certainly, among those reasons, there were anxieties as well.
Watching my teammates play at the training ground, I often wondered if it was right that I had come to this team for a higher price than those players.
I also felt despair about whether I could become a starter competing with players like them.
And there was the pressure of whether I could meet the expectations that had built up around me, as massive as my transfer fee.
But there was pure greed as well.
Perhaps this was even bigger.
Rather than being scared to play in a match, I wanted to get into a match quickly.
...
—Coming August 7th (tomorrow), the Community Shield kicks off at Wembley Stadium... A preview of the title race between Manchester City and Arsenal
—Manchester City's trophy collection is not yet over... If they seize the Community Shield too, they become 'Sextuple winners'
—Community Shield: Both teams announce starting lineups
—Arsenal: Martin Ødegaard, Kai Havertz, and Declan Rice named in starting lineup
—Manchester City: De Bruyne on the bench. Lee Ji-an included in starting lineup. Haaland at striker, Lee Ji-an to feature as attacking midfielder.
—Lee Ji-an's first appearance since transfer, what kind of performance will he show... Fans' expectations gather for the 200 billion won debut match
—[Photo] Manchester City squad arrives at Wembley, Lee Ji-an fully prepared for starting debut.