A Fake That Looks Real -1
“Hey, you might not make the World Cup at this rate, you know?”
“C’mon, no way.”
“What do you mean, no way? If you don’t get through the playoffs, you can’t go.”
“C’mon, still. We’ll get through, no way we don’t.”
“Huh? You think you can beat Portugal? Honestly, I don’t think you guys are making it this time either.”
Today is the second day since first-team training resumed.
I came to the training ground and was getting ready for practice, but today for some reason, Saponara was taking heavy flak from the other seniors.
It was World Cup qualifier talk.
Yesterday, Italy drew in a match they absolutely had to win. Because of that, they couldn’t confirm their spot in the main tournament, and now they had to play in the playoffs of death, where only one team advances.
Saponara is Italian, so he was getting attacked over that.
I didn’t know, but apparently Italy hadn’t even made it to the last World Cup either.
Was Italy a country that bad at soccer?
“Argentina, Spain, and Serbia went up. Did Torreira make it too?”
“Uruguay? He went up.”
“What about Sofiane?”
“Morocco went up too.”
“Damn…”
Our team has quite a diverse range of nationalities.
Italy of course, and Spain, Serbia, Argentina, Uruguay, Morocco, Ghana, and so on.
With so many diverse countries represented, as luck would have it, only Italy hadn’t sealed the deal.
Saponara looked even more crestfallen.
“Hey, kid. What about you guys?”
Saponara, desperately seeking an ally, asked me as if placing his last hope on me… “As far as I know, we made it…”
“…Damn it.”
Apologies, but Korea had made it too.
The seniors cackled at my words, and Saponara’s face turned even more miserable.
Hmm. Once the captain and Bonaventura return from international duty, the team atmosphere will probably get even more entertaining.
“Maybe I should just naturalize to the kid’s country while I’m at it. Kid, what do you think? If I go there, could I make the World Cup?”
“Say something that makes sense, friend. It’s a country where Jian doesn’t even get picked. You wouldn’t even make the squad.”
“I’m a winger. Who’s Korea’s starting winger?”
I answered Saponara’s question.
“Son.”
“Ah… damn it.”
Everyone burst into laughter at the senior’s sulky reaction to my answer.
While stretching time flowed on, enjoyable for everyone except the Italians—
“Shut up, you lot.”
At the sudden bark, everyone held in their laughter and pretended to focus on stretching.
It was Coach Vincenzo.
The coach, whose very name is Italian, also looked to be in a foul mood.
“Line up now.”
At the coach’s words, we finished stretching and stood up.
Once all the players gathered, the coach rubbed his head roughly, washed his face without water, then looked across our faces before speaking.
“World Cup or whatever, I don’t care. We only worry about our schedule. From now on, if you talk about the World Cup at the training ground, it’s a fine.”
“Yes sir—”
“Our next opponent is Hellas Verona. Coppa Italia Round of 32. It’s a tournament match, and given the opponent, it’s a match we absolutely must win. But it won’t be easy.”
Before anyone knew it, everyone had grown serious and listened intently to the coach.
The coach continued.
“Our core players will be out. The Serbian mafia, the captain who doesn’t act like a captain, even the guys who have to take charge of the midfield. I don’t plan on sending any of them out for the next match. So what I’m saying is, we’ll play with whoever’s here and a few pulled from the youth team.”
At the coach’s words that the starters would be out, everyone nodded heavily.
Honestly, our team doesn’t have a very deep squad. You can tell just from the fact that I was able to join the first team. Just like on the U17 team, the gap between starters and non-starters is said to be quite large.
In my eyes, the seniors who are non-starters are all good too, so I don’t really see it.
Anyway, that’s what the seniors say.
Thanks to that, our team’s starting lineup is usually the same. No, it’s practically fixed.
But among those starters, the core seniors had headed off to the national team this time.
The faces of the seniors I’d parted with in Milan came to mind. They looked so tired. They already play every week, and having to go abroad to play matches before coming back, rest is naturally necessary.
For starters, in defense alone, the captain and the center-back duo will both be out, and in midfield, the core duo of Torreira and Bonaventura will be missing.
More than anything, Vlahovic not being there weighs heavily on me.
Honestly… the fact that I was able to do my part all this time owed a great deal to his presence.
Vlahovic isn’t just a core player for our team; he’s the striker drawing the most attention in the league. No, they say all of Europe is watching him.
As such, Vlahovic’s presence on the pitch is enormous. Even if he just stands still, the defense has to account for him. I was able to move a bit more freely thanks to that.
But can I really do well without him?
“Alright, let’s go.”
Well, I’m not confident.
But has there ever been anything I challenged because I was confident? No.
So I was just going to try.*
“…Alright. So, do you understand?”
“Hmm… Yes. I think I get it.”
“Right? Good. Let’s try it right away.”
I nodded and answered after the coach’s long explanation, and the coach nodded as well.
I think this every time, but the coach is really cool.
He never asks twice.
Even now, he’d explained quite a complicated concept, so he could have asked if I really understood.
But when I said I think I got it, he moved right on.
What if I’m just good at answering?
Well, this time I really did understand, so it’s fine.
“Okay, go!”
Anyway, training starts with a whistle.
“Hey!”
“Here!”
The players in bibs take the defensive role, and those without bibs take the attacking role.
It’s the same tactical training we always do, but today is a bit different.
My role, that is.
The coach explained that in the next match, I would be playing as the frontline striker.
Meaning, I would be taking Vlahovic’s place.
But he said my actual role would be different.
Of course, I can’t play like Vlahovic. I don’t have his aerial presence or his physicality.
I can’t fulfill the role of a real number 9.
So what the coach came up with was the false 9. Formation-wise, I’d be the 9, that is, playing the Prima Punta position, but my actual play would be like a number 10.
Ultimately, it’s like a 9.5.
Actually, you might think I could just do what I usually do, but it’s inevitably a bit different.
For one, the fact that there’s no other attacker ahead of me makes a huge difference. If Vlahovic were in front of me, the opposing center-backs would have no choice but to stick to his side, but without him, the center-backs become free.
But becoming free isn’t necessarily a good thing. Being free means there’s no one assigned to them, which also means they become redundant.
My role is exactly that.
The role of making the opponent’s defenders redundant.
To do that, I have to keep finding space and moving, play like a midfielder when necessary, like a wing forward when necessary, and of course even fulfill the original number 9’s role sometimes.
There’s a lot to do.
“Hey!”
To think he’d dive straight into training without checking if I really understood something this complicated.
Our coach is really cool.
Anyway… *Swooooosh—!*
*Smack—!!*
“Nice! Good! That’s exactly it!”
A fake acting as the real thing.
I felt like there couldn’t be a role more fitting for me.*
There are various types of players that coaches like.
Well, there are players with a strong professional mentality, players with superior pure ability, and players who positively influence their teammates—coaches would naturally be fond of them.
But if there’s one type of player that all coaches prefer without a hint of personal bias… it would be a player with outstanding tactical understanding. ‘I thought he’d do well, of course…’
Coach Vincenzo clicks his tongue as he watches Lee Jian moving across the training ground.
Even though it’s just training, it’s so perfect it’s breathtaking. Every movement, every single play is clean and without excess.
In fact, being surprised is almost old news.
Who doesn’t know Lee Jian is a genius? It’s almost funny to be amazed now at a kid who started playing the ace of the first team the moment he was called up.
But right now, it wasn’t just his skill that had him in awe.
Before training began, he’d given the kid a brief explanation of the role he’d take in the next match, and it was astonishing that he was executing it exactly as described.
The kid was showing them what a false 9 is.
Actually, the false 9 isn’t an easy concept.
It’s not simple enough to pull off after hearing it just once. Unless you have considerable football intelligence, it’s rare to pull it off properly. That’s exactly why the representative names associated with the ‘false 9’ are all such exceptional players.
Francesco Totti, Cesc Fabregas, Antoine Griezmann, Thomas Müller—versatile players like these took on this role.
Of course, Lionel Messi can’t be left out.
It’s unavoidable: when you deploy a false 9, you have to depend on that player for most of the attack. Without a traditional striker, it’s hard to attempt simple attacks.
In other words, the false 9 has to take responsibility for the attack from start to finish, so of course only good players take on this role.
But even those players must have gone through trial and error at first.
It’s easy to become neither this nor that if you’re not careful. ‘But…’
Lee Jian was fulfilling his role as if he’d been playing there for ten years.
It made him wonder if he’d explained it that perfectly.
How can someone pull it off like that after hearing it just once?
Beautiful.
So beautiful you could put him in your eye and he wouldn’t hurt.
Coach Vincenzo looks at Lee Jian with a loving gaze.
These days, he fully understands why Coach Tony had been so desperate. ‘At this level…’
The truth is, he’d been very worried.
Not just the next match, but about how to fill the void Vlahovic would leave in the future.
Not long ago, Vlahovic rejected the club’s contract renewal offer. It was already the nth rejection, and this time he’d rejected even the best terms in club history.
In other words, they practically had to prepare to let him go.
Filling that void wouldn’t be easy.
How could it be easy to fill the void left by a talent coveted by nearly every big club in Europe?
But he thought he could see a way.
A way to replace that immense talent with an even more immense talent.
“…”
Coach Vincenzo’s face, which had been brimming with happiness, soon darkened a little.
Because he’d suddenly imagined the future.
Fiorentina wasn’t that big of a club, inevitably. Of course, it depended on perspective, but it couldn’t be called a top-level European club.
That was exactly why they couldn’t hold onto Vlahovic.
Then that meant Lee Jian was also highly likely to leave the team in the future.
If such a moment came, what should he do?
Honestly, he had no confidence.
That he could find a way to replace such a player. ‘Still…’
He didn’t wish for that day to come, but there were many inevitable things in the world.
He even had such a thought on the one hand.
A curiosity about what kind of player that child—who could execute a coach’s intentions at 200 percent—would become under a far superior coach.
If he played under a truly excellent coach rather than a nameless coach like himself… it would be much better for the kid. ‘I loved him…’
As if the not-yet-arrived future was already unfolding before his eyes, Coach Vincenzo gazed at Lee Jian with distant eyes.
It was exactly the same gaze Coach Tony had when he looked at Lee Jian in the past.
∙∙∙
December 4, 2021.
Stadio Artemio Franchi.
The day the Coppa Italia Round of 32 match between Fiorentina and Hellas Verona unfolds.
“Think he’ll be alright?”
“What are you worried about?”
“So many are out. We could be playing.”
In a corner of the stands, Biraghi and Bonaventura in casual clothes wait for the match to begin.
Biraghi shrugs at the worried Bonaventura.
“Jian is there. What are you worried about?”
“That’s true, but hmm. It’s his first time playing without Dusan.”
Everyone who returned from international duty is resting today.
More than half of the starters were out like that, and especially with Vlahovic missing, the match’s attention had actually increased. Among the fans.
Because Vlahovic’s departure had become more or less an established fact.
The share he’d occupied in the team could be seen as more than half the squad’s strength.
It was practically so. Even just by market value, his worth was more than five or six other players combined.
So with him leaving, the mood among fans had been quite grim these days.
So what to do from now on.
Who to place at the top in the second half.
Did they have an alternative that justified letting him go?
Resentment abounded, and deservedly so.
That’s why the fans are paying even more attention to today’s match.
How Fiorentina would solve their attack in a match without Vlahovic.
Coach Vincenzo chose deploying Lee Jian at the front as the answer.
“Show them, kid.”
“Now you have to carry us.”
Can a 16-year-old kid fill Vlahovic’s shoes?
Knowing that many fans were anticipating this, Biraghi and Bonaventura planned to cheer for Lee Jian even more than usual as they watched the match.
“Jian! Jian!!”
…Hmm.
Honestly, their cheers might not even be necessary.
Biraghi and Bonaventura cracked a smile as they saw a Korean girl in the next seat practically screaming Jian’s name.
The kid was already receiving everyone’s support.