Chapter 98: That Time We Entered the World Cup in South America (4)

TL: Skye

San Marcos, Libertad.

Kim Hang-seo, who had followed Lucio all the way to San Marcos, was in for a shock from the airport onward.

'This is a developing country?'

The spotlessly maintained airport terminal, the freshly laid asphalt roads, and even the bright expressions on the faces of the people passing along the streets.

He'd been surprised watching it on the news, but seeing it in person drove the point home.

It was hard to believe this had been the poorest country in South America just a few years ago.

"Surprised?"

Lucio, seated beside him in the back seat, asked.

"...Seeing it on the news and seeing it in person are two different things. I'd heard the country was developing fast, but I never imagined it was like this."

"It's all His Excellency's achievement."

Lucio said it evenly, but there was pride buried in his voice.

Through the car window, he could see a policeman in a sky-blue shirt beaming as he gave a tourist directions.

'Cops that friendly?'

It was a sight he'd never once seen, not even in Vietnam, a country famous as a tourist destination.

"Are we heading straight to the office?"

"First, you'll be going to meet His Excellency."

"What? The president?"

"Yes. His Excellency says he's a fan of yours, Coach."

For a moment, the idea of meeting the president the instant he arrived just wouldn't register with Kim Hang-seo.

"Uh..."

"You can get the details once we're there."

He had plenty he wanted to ask, but something subtly sharp in Lucio's voice left him no choice but to hold his tongue.

And so, cutting across downtown Libertad, Kim Hang-seo arrived at the Presidential Palace.

Soon the doors opened, and as he stepped inside, Yu-jin rose from his desk with a warm expression to greet him.

"Welcome. That's a long way to travel; thank you for making the trip."

He'd expected a president to carry a solemn, weighty air, but the Yu-jin in front of him gave off, for all the world, the easygoing impression of some office worker from around the neighborhood.

"Not at all. It's an honor to meet you like this."

"Please, come sit over here and make yourself comfortable."

As the two of them settled onto the sofa, Anna brought out coffee.

"I've wanted to meet you like this for a long time now."

"A nobody like me?"

"A Korean coach worked a miracle in a faraway land. How could I not want to meet him?"

Yu-jin's manner was so relaxed that Kim Hang-seo felt his nerves ease.

Come to think of it, the Yu-jin sitting across from him was cut from similar cloth.

The field and the scale were different, sure, but they were both Koreans out making their mark in a foreign country.

"You flatter me. It was the players who came through, not me."

"It's no flattery. You delivered results as solid as anyone's, out of the flimsiest infrastructure imaginable."

Yu-jin said it while taking a sip of coffee.

"That's exactly why I brought you on, Coach. We've got nothing here, nothing that even bears comparison to Vietnam."

"Yes, I... heard about that. Honestly, when I first got the pitch, it felt pretty hopeless."

"Honestly, I'm right there with you on the hopeless part. Hahaha."

Yu-jin let out the easy laugh of a neighbor you might run into around the block.

But his next words were presidential.

No, they went beyond presidential.

"Coach."

"Yes?"

"I intend to hand you full authority. I'll back you with everything I've got, so build me something magnificent, from the coaching staff right down to the squad."

He'd already been promised as much, so this part didn't faze him in the slightest, but what Yu-jin said next left Kim Hang-seo utterly staggered.

"And I'd like you to take on the presidency of the football association as well."

"...Sorry?"

"Exactly what it sounds like. I'd like you to serve concurrently as president of the San Marcos Football Association, which we'll be standing up before long. And one more thing."

Yu-jin added it as though it were nothing at all.

"Take the inaugural presidency of the San Marcos Sports Association too, the one launching next year. Naturally, you'll be compensated separately for each post."

Kim Hang-seo's eyes went wide.

National team manager.

Football association president.

Sports association president.

Three seats, all at once?

"Are these really positions you can just hand out this easily?"

"Why? Can't I? If it were up to me, I'd have you take a cabinet post too."

"A, a cabinet minister, on top of it all?"

Yu-jin tilted his head.

His expression said he genuinely couldn't see why not.

"Say what you like, I'm the president. I've got at least this much authority."

"No... even for a president, these aren't the sort of posts you can normally just give away like..."

"Coach."

Yu-jin cut in with a smile.

"Let me be straight with you, this country doesn't have a single sports expert. Not one."

"......"

"We have to build a football association, but there's no one to head it. Same story with the sports association. And yet, sitting right here, I've got an internationally proven football expert who also happens to be a sports expert."

Yu-jin pointed at Kim Hang-seo.

"The right man for the job is sitting right in front of me. Why on earth wouldn't I hand it to him?"

Logically, it made sense.

But by any measure of common sense, it was insane.

Handing a nation's football association presidency and sports association presidency to a foreigner, and doing it five minutes after meeting him? And so unilaterally, at that?

'Is this guy for real?'

Kim Hang-seo looked into Yu-jin's eyes.

Those clear eyes, without a trace of hesitation, told him the man meant every word.

"Even so, this is a bit much..."

Just as Kim Hang-seo let his words trail off, meaning to signal that he'd rather decline.

He felt the gaze of Lucio, standing behind Yu-jin.

He was smiling.

Lucio was definitely smiling.

But his eyes weren't in on it.

It was the kind of smile that suggested his life might get rather complicated if he said no here.

A cold sweat ran down Kim Hang-seo's spine.

"......"

He was as grizzled a veteran as the football world had to offer, but this was a first even for him.

In the end, Kim Hang-seo had only one choice left to him.

"I, I'll give it a shot."

"Thank you."

Yu-jin broke into a bright smile and extended his hand.

Kim Hang-seo took it.

As they shook, Yu-jin's hand was warm, and the gaze he felt from Lucio behind him was cold.

'This country... something's off about it.'

But Kim Hang-seo didn't know yet.

The true face of San Marcos.

***

Day five of Coach Kim Hang-seo's tenure.

A temporary training ground on the outskirts of Libertad.

Roughly 2,000 first-round qualifiers stood lined up across the field.

Kim Hang-seo looked down on them from the stands, sunglasses on.

Beside him stood the three coaching staff he'd brought over from Korea, clipboards in hand.

Head coach Park Jong-ho spoke up.

"Coach, two thousand men, don't we need to set aside at least a week for this?"

"Three days will do."

"Three days?"

"Day one, we cut half of them on fitness. The second test cuts them again. Day three, we finalize the selection with small-sided games."

Kim Hang-seo said it while adjusting his sunglasses.

"None of them are going to know the first thing about tactics or formations anyway. At this stage there are exactly three things I'm looking for."

"And those are?"

"How fast they are, how long they can run, and how badly they want it."

"The first two I follow well enough... but how do you measure how badly someone wants it?"

"You just know it when you see it."

Park Jong-ho asked no further.

Because he already knew that when Kim Hang-seo talked like that, it meant he'd already got his answer.

And so the fitness tests began.

The 100-meter dash, shuttle runs, a 10km endurance test, strength measurements.

After a solid half-day of testing, Kim Hang-seo checked the result sheets and was privately taken aback.

'...Not bad at all?'

No, "not bad" didn't begin to cover it.

It was far better than he'd expected.

Compared to when he'd first taken over the Vietnamese national team, this was, if anything, a cut above.

'Why, though?'

A moment's thought gave him the answer.

San Marcos had no professional sports.

No baseball, no basketball, no track and field.

With no other disciplines to siphon off the talent, it had all gone all-in on football.

In other words, every last hotshot athlete in San Marcos had funneled into this one place.

'Maybe...'

The thought that this might be a strength rather than a weakness took hold, and Kim Hang-seo began to let himself hope.

'This might actually be doable?'

The hopelessness he'd felt when the offer first landed on him was lifting, little by little.

And so the second day passed, and the third day, the day of the small-sided games, arrived.

By this point, the patterns by background were becoming clear to Kim Hang-seo's eye.

The military men, predictably, had overwhelming stamina and a fighting spirit a cut above the rest.

Their passes were grenade throws and their dribbling was a bayonet charge.

They weren't playing football, they were waging war.

'Stick them at the back and they'd be perfect?'

The civilians, on the other hand, had a real feel for the ball alive in them.

A wild touch, learned barefoot on unpaved patches of dirt.

Some of them could beat three or four men on their own.

Only, teamwork simply did not exist.

Win the ball and it was every man for himself, no exceptions.

And then, the applicants who said they'd come from a place called Tortilla Farm left Kim Hang-seo astonished.

'These guys could hold their own in an amateur league.'

Their stamina and physicality, forged by grueling manual labor, were impressive in their own right, but their technical ability was considerable too.

At the very least, they looked like men who'd been playing football seriously for a year or more.

Above all, what astonished him was their mental toughness.

The insane willpower to keep running even while throwing up.

The grit to spring right back up like a roly-poly toy after being knocked flat by a tackle.

He had never seen anything like it, not anywhere in the world.

And there were two players who caught Kim Hang-seo's eye.

The third match of the morning.

In one of the military-background groups, the instant an attacker brought the ball under control, a defender on the opposing side burst forward with explosive acceleration and hurled himself into a physical challenge.

The attacker tried everything to hold his ground, but sheer force shoved him off and the ball was stripped clean away.

And then the ball, cleared away with his left foot.

His strength was such that the ball sailed clean over the small-sided pitch and off into the distance.

"Who's that player?"

Kim Hang-seo asked at once.

"Rio Pereira. Ranked first overall in fitness in the military trials."

"The number-one fitness guy's got ball sense like that on top of it?"

Kim Hang-seo drew a circle on his clipboard.

And then, the first match of the afternoon.

Just ten seconds after a player from Tortilla Farm got on the ball, everything around him went quiet.

He was unbelievably fast.

He drove the ball at a flat-out sprint, and the entire opposing side was left in his dust.

His technique was rough.

His first touch was clumsy and his dribbling was anything but polished.

But none of that mattered.

Because he was too fast to even be touched.

Thwack!

When the shot, one the keeper couldn't so much as react to, rippled the net a moment later, Kim Hang-seo took off his sunglasses.

"...What the hell was that."

"Rafael Costa. Out of Tortilla Farm."

Park Jong-ho answered, flipping through the record sheet.

"100-meter best time in the high ten-second range, completed the endurance test, 18 kilometers, nonstop. Says here he's 175 centimeters, 71 kilos."

"Huh."

Kim Hang-seo looked back out at the pitch.

As Rafael came back from scoring, his teammates rushed at him, cheering.

Rafael waved a hand with an awkward smile.

It was the face of someone unused to being congratulated.

'That kid...'

Kim Hang-seo drew a circle on his clipboard, big, very big.

And so, once all the tests were done.

"Rio Pereira and Rafael Costa. Bring me those two separately."

Kim Hang-seo quietly called the two of them aside.

Rio and Rafael arrived soon after and stood before him with tense expressions.

"I'll ask you just one thing."

"Yes, sir!"

The two of them answered in unison.

"Why do you want to play football?"

It was a simple question.

The question Kim Hang-seo always saved for last when evaluating a player.

Because skill and fitness could be built up through training, but motivation was another matter entirely.

Rio was the first to speak.

"Because I want to devote my complete loyalty to His Excellency, sir!"

"......"

Kim Hang-seo froze.

"Loy... alty?"

"Yes, sir! His Excellency created the national football team! I want to become a member of that team and proclaim His Excellency's glory to the entire world, sir!"

Rio's eyes were blazing.

Kim Hang-seo was rattled inside, but he kept his expression in check and moved on.

"And Rafael?"

Rafael hesitated a moment, then spoke.

"To prove that I'm worth something and escape from the farm, sir!"

"......"

Kim Hang-seo turned his head to look at his coaching staff.

Head coach Park Jong-ho wore the exact same expression.

On the off chance, Kim Hang-seo pressed a little further.

"Is there... maybe some other reason? Something like, you enjoy the game, or..."

Rio answered instantly.

"I enjoy football too, sir, but it doesn't compare to my loyalty to His Excellency."

"As long as I can escape the farm, I'll do absolutely anything, sir!"

Kim Hang-seo fell silent for a moment.

In over thirty years in football, it was the first time he'd ever heard answers like these to the question of why a man plays the game.

Not in Vietnam, and certainly never in Korea.

"......"

Kim Hang-seo took off his sunglasses and looked up at the sky.

The blue Caribbean sky stretched on without end.

Something...

Something told him he'd come to a country where things had gone very, very wrong.

*****

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