Chapter 97 : That Time We Entered the World Cup in South America (3)

TL: Skye

A broadcasting studio in Ilsan.

After the taping of a variety show wrapped, Kim Hang-seo sat alone in the green room and let out a sigh.

"Haaa..."

Today's episode was a special on prominent Koreans who'd made their mark abroad.

At the writer's request to spin his time in Vietnam into something entertaining, he'd smiled on cue and rattled off the stories.

The 2018 Suzuki Cup title, the Asian Games semifinals, back when they'd called him the hero of Vietnamese football.

The audience cheered, and the host marveled.

But once the taping ended and the green room lights went dark, the smile drained from Kim Hang-seo's face.

'A hero, huh...'

Just a few years ago, he'd been the hero who rewrote the history of Vietnamese football.

The people had poured into the streets chanting his name, and even the president had summoned him for a talk.

But that was all in the past.

After his contract expired, everything changed in a hurry.

Political infighting inside the Vietnam Football Federation, the new chairman's policy of hiring homegrown managers, a handful of hit pieces in the local press, and finally a contract offer with a salary that had nothing to do with his record.

In the end, Kim Hang-seo had been all but shoved out of Vietnam.

He'd come home to Korea, but things there were even more suffocating.

He'd wanted a top-flight managerial job, but a figurehead vice-chairman post at the football association was as far as it went.

Everywhere he tried to get a foot in the door, the association's cliques had it locked down tight, and it was simply impossible.

'So this is where my career ends, huh.'

Looking after his elderly mother, doing variety shows to pass the time, showing his face on YouTube, that was Kim Hang-seo's daily life these days.

He wanted to coach.

He wanted to sweat alongside his players.

He wanted to draw up tactics, plot out strategies, scream himself hoarse on the touchline.

But now it felt like that chance would never come again.

"Coach, your car's ready."

At his manager's voice, Kim Hang-seo rose from his seat.

He climbed into the car and stared blankly out the window the whole way home, not saying a word, until they reached the alley in front of his house.

"...Hm?"

A black sedan was parked in front of his house.

The plates were... diplomatic?

As he stepped out of the car, a man standing beside the sedan came toward him.

A sharp-featured man who looked past his thirties but not quite forty.

A man giving off an air that was anything but ordinary walked up to him.

'The hell is this guy.'

While Kim Hang-seo kept his guard up, the man spoke first.

It was Korean, a little clumsy in pronunciation, but perfectly easy to follow.

"Are you Coach Kim Hang-seo?"

"...I am, but who are you?"

"I'm Lucio Carvalho, of the Republic of San Marcos."

San Marcos?

A name that rang a faint bell and also didn't.

"Might I have a moment of your time?"

"...Come inside, for now."

Without dropping his guard, Kim Hang-seo led the man into the house, and soon the two were seated across from each other at the living room table.

After a sip of the barley tea Kim Hang-seo's wife brought out, Lucio got down to business.

"I'll come straight to the point."

Lucio drew a file from his briefcase and set it on the table.

"We'd like you to take charge of the San Marcos national football team."

"...Sorry?"

"We intend to enter qualifying for the upcoming Spain World Cup. We're looking for someone to lead that national team."

Kim Hang-seo blinked.

'San Marcos...'

He'd seen it on the news.

A Caribbean island nation that had been booming lately.

A country led by a president of Korean descent.

"So you're... asking me to manage the national team?"

"Yes."

"Does San Marcos have a professional league?"

"No."

"A football association?"

"Currently being established."

"Then there's no official record of any international matches either, I take it?"

"That's correct."

"...There is a stadium, at least?"

"It's under construction."

"......"

Kim Hang-seo took a sip of barley tea.

Vietnam had been rough, but this was another dimension entirely.

At the very least, Vietnam had a pro football league, the V.League.

It had a national team with a history, and experience in international tournaments.

But San Marcos?

Literally zero.

Nothing at all.

'This is... starting from bare dirt.'

Kim Hang-seo spoke carefully.

"What exactly is the goal here? Reaching a World Cup finals within ten years, say... or spreading the game across San Marcos, there's got to be some purpose behind it, right?"

"Reaching the finals of the upcoming World Cup."

"......"

Kim Hang-seo sighed.

"Let me be honest with you."

"I'm all ears."

"Building a national team in a country without so much as a pro league and getting it to the World Cup finals, that's impossible."

"I'm aware it won't be easy."

"And you came to me anyway?"

"Coach."

Lucio fixed Kim Hang-seo with an earnest look.

"His Excellency started this country back when it had nothing. The highways, the banks, the power plants, the police force, he built every last one of them from bare ground. I see no reason football should be any different."

Kim Hang-seo felt a faint stir in one corner of his chest.

Starting from bare ground.

It was madness, plain and simple.

But at the same time, it was the kind of thing that set Kim Hang-seo's blood boiling.

In Vietnam, too, people had called him crazy.

Southeast Asian football would never amount to anything, they said, what could a Korean manager possibly do.

And yet he'd pulled it off.

'...But.'

Reality is cold.

However much passion a man has, he still has to put food on the table.

With an elderly mother to look after, he couldn't just chase his passion off to some island at the far end of the Caribbean.

'No matter how I turn it over, no means no.'

The moment Kim Hang-seo opened his mouth to voice his refusal.

"If you accept the position."

Lucio produced one more sheet of paper.

"We'll pay you two million dollars a year."

"...!"

"We'll provide a top-tier residence where you can live with your family, and the San Marcos government will cover your living expenses and all medical costs in full. Every one of these terms has been personally approved by His Excellency, the great sun of San Marcos."

Kim Hang-seo's eyes went wide.

Two million dollars.

Roughly 2.8 billion won.

Even his salary back in his Vietnam days had fallen well short of that.

And on top of it, a residence provided, full medical coverage, family included.

'...This.'

Kim Hang-seo clenched the fist resting on his knee.

It was too large a sum to turn down.

"And the coaching staff...?"

"That, if anything, is something we'd like to ask of you. Assemble them however you see fit. We'll offer them thirty percent above their previous salaries, plus housing."

And so, after a brief silence.

"...I'll do it."

Kim Hang-seo nodded.

Lucio smiled and held out his hand.

"Welcome aboard, Coach."

***

Tryouts for the national football team are open!

That single announcement sent the entire San Marcos military into an uproar.

Field Marshal Pedro had ordered each unit to pick out its top physical performers and send them along, and the number of applicants topped ten thousand.

Given that San Marcos's total force numbered fifty thousand, that worked out to one in every five soldiers signing up.

The reason was simple.

'A national team for His Excellency.'

That phrase was what moved the soldiers' hearts.

Because in the San Marcos military, once the words "for His Excellency" were attached to something, not applying was itself an act of disloyalty.

As it was, within the ranks the intensity of one's loyalty served as the yardstick for promotion, and no fool would pass up a chance to prove his zeal for His Excellency.

"They say if you make the team, you get to meet His Excellency in person!"

"There's even a rumor His Excellency's coming to cheer us on himself!"

"We're playing for His Excellency!"

The tryouts were turning into less a football contest than a competition in loyalty.

And at the very heart of that fervor stood Sergeant Rio Pereira.

Twenty-four years old. 3rd Infantry Regiment.

A product of the northern slums of Libertad who'd grown up kicking a ball around the neighborhood since childhood, he'd handed in his application first thing the moment he heard the news.

Part of it was his love of the game, but the real reason was his loyalty to His Excellency.

And no wonder, before Yu-jin took office, his family had lived meal to meal.

His father was a tenant farmer who worked all day and could barely keep the family fed, and Rio had never once set foot in a school.

Then, after Yu-jin became president, everything changed.

Food rations put an end to the hunger, and free education got his younger siblings enrolled in school.

His father landed a job on a highway construction site, and Rio himself had enlisted, drawing a steady paycheck and sending money home.

'If it weren't for His Excellency, my family would still be starving.'

That debt was carved into his bones.

And so came the day of the tryouts.

Rio threw himself into every event like his life depended on it.

The 100-meter dash.

At the crack of the starting gun, Rio burst forward.

11.02 seconds.

First across the entire army.

The 10-kilometer endurance test.

34 minutes, 12 seconds.

First across the entire army again.

Even when his legs gave out and he staggered partway through, he gritted his teeth and held on.

'For His Excellency, this is nothing.'

In every event that followed, Rio posted the finest marks of all ten thousand, hands down.

His technical skill, of course, went unmeasured.

The reason was simple.

There wasn't a single football expert to be found.

They had no choice but to judge on stamina and speed alone, but even accounting for that, Rio's results were overwhelming.

The instructors running the evaluations passed Rio's scorecard around, jaws dropping.

"Are these numbers for real?"

"We timed him three times. Same result all three."

"...The kid's an absolute monster."

Having gone over the results, one of the instructors called him over.

"Sergeant Rio Pereira."

"Sir!"

"Ranked first overall in the army-wide fitness test, you've passed the first round. See that you turn in the same kind of performance in round two."

Rio snapped off a booming salute and shouted.

"I'll give my all for the glory of His Excellency, sir!"

*

Meanwhile, in the central mountains of San Marcos.

Tortilla Farm held tryouts of its own.

And the level was higher than one might have expected.

The reason was simple.

Ever since the sports day Yu-jin had put on for them, the workers had caught the football bug and kept kicking a ball around after hours.

The overseers didn't stop them, either; if anything, they split the workers into an east side and a west side and ran a little league of their own.

The goals were made from wooden posts driven into the ground and the ball was a wad of rags, but the heat of the matches rivaled that of any pro league.

Men who, even after a full day of backbreaking labor on the farm, came alive the instant a ball landed at their feet.

After months of that, the farm workers' football had come up all on its own.

They still didn't know a thing about tactics or formations, but their basic touch and their instinct for the run of play had grown to a genuinely useful level.

On top of that, muscle forged for real by daily shoveling and hauling, and monstrous stamina to match.

The test scores of the applicants from the farm held up just fine against those from the military or the civilian pool.

In the stamina categories, some of them even came out ahead.

The reason was simple.

'Make the national team and you can escape the farm!'

'This is my shot. A shot to get off this farm.'

'One way or another, I'm getting back to the outside world!'

It all came down to the longing to escape the farm.

Bang!

"Whoaaaaaa!"

At the crack of a rifle fired into the sky, the applicants surged forward all at once.

*****

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