The Anvil and the Hammer
The early flow of the match unfolded exactly as the team had envisioned in the locker room.
From the opening whistle, host nation France pushed its lines high and came hammering down on South Korea with relentless force.
But this, too, was a scenario Coach Baek Seungnam and his players had anticipated down to the last detail.
South Korea's defense absorbed wave after wave of French attacks with the silent, unshakable patience of an anvil.
The back four, anchored by Cha Kangmin, held its shape without yielding an inch, while even the midfielders dropped deep to shore up the line.
The goal was singular: endure by any means necessary — and, in surviving, carve out one single chance for the national team's mightiest hammer, Kim Hanbin. The Anvil and Hammer Tactic.
And so, for nearly thirty minutes, France's cascading assault crashed again and again against South Korea's desperate, brutal defense.
France knocked on the South Korean goal with rapid short passing and surging wingers on both flanks, but each time, the defensive resistance centered on Cha Kangmin smothered the threat before a truly decisive opening could materialize.
As the minutes ticked away without a result, frustration began to etch itself across the faces of the French players.
Then it happened.
Into Cha Kangmin's view came a French midfielder who, after knocking the ball around in the center of the park one too many times, wore the stiff expression of a man suffocating — idly rolling the ball under his sole.
Guys like that are the ones who suddenly burst into a dribble.
Cha Kangmin felt it in his gut.
When you keep pounding at a door that won't open, the itch to be the hero grows stronger than the discipline of passing — the urge to solve it yourself takes over.
It was especially true of young players on an Olympic squad.
And on top of that was today's stage — a match with the entire world watching. One moment of brilliance, and you become a star.
Cha Kangmin's read was dead on. The French midfielder he'd been studying so intently launched into a solo dribble.
Not a chance.
Having read the first flicker of impulsiveness in the man's movement, Cha Kangmin was already a step ahead — springing forward to cut off his path before he could even take his second touch.
Then, with a clean tackle stripped of all ornamentation, he took the ball.
He didn't even lift his head.
Without checking where Kim Hanbin stood upfield, he drove a sharp, firm pass into the open space just ahead of him.
Go!
The partnership he and Kim Hanbin had forged over years at Suwon meant Kangmin already knew, without needing to look, exactly where Hanbin would be running.
Only after striking the ball did Cha Kangmin finally raise his head.
And there, just as expected, was Kim Hanbin — sprinting at full throttle into a contest with the defenders, fighting to collect the pass.
Thoom—!
Loïc Badé, the French center-back, watched the ball sail toward him from deep in the opponent's half and began jogging calmly toward its predicted landing spot.
Hm... I can deal with this comfortably enough.
Badé thought to himself. In the defensive third right now, two center-backs — himself and his partner Kiliann Sildillia — were facing off against a single opposing striker.
They held the numerical advantage.
He pictured the striker's enormous frame.
Similar in height to his own 191 centimeters, but the body looked heavier, more massive than even his own 82-plus-kilogram build.
Of course, even at a glance it was obvious that bulk was pure muscle, not fat — but in Badé's experience, players built like that were inevitably slow.
Sildillia will stop him at the first line anyway.
With that thought, Badé continued his unhurried jog toward the falling ball.
Then, right at that moment, a short grunt — "Kuh!" — and the sickening sound of a collision came from behind him.
He turned to look — and there was Sildillia, the man assigned to the first line of defense, rolling across the turf after tangling with the opposing striker.
What — Sildillia?!
Badé's eyes went wide. Sildillia was a Bundesliga player — a man who lost physical duels to no one.
And yet he'd been shoved aside that easily.
So the striker was strong in the air and in the body — Badé had assumed as much — but apparently far stronger.
Still... he's nothing against me!
Badé was a starting center-back for Sevilla FC and a wildcard of the French Olympic squad.
A veteran of the European leagues, being beaten by some striker from an Asian league — a team whose name he'd never even heard of? It made no sense.
Badé charged back toward the ball.
And the striker was closing on him — fast.
No — too fast. That body, producing that kind of explosive acceleration? The striker's speed defied belief.
This... I'm going to be late—!!
Alarm bells shrieking, Badé ran himself to the edge of collapse, but the striker had already glided effortlessly past him and was racing onto the slowly rolling ball.
Fuck!!
The curse tore out of Badé involuntarily. His legs churned like mad, but it was nowhere near enough to catch a striker already at full speed.
If he let him go now, it was a perfect one-on-one with the goalkeeper.
Desperate, he flung out a hand to grab at the striker's jersey — but his straining fingers touched nothing but empty air.
And so the one-on-one was made.
Guillaume, the French keeper, abandoned his net and rushed out in a panic.
Come on! Guillaume! Stop him!!!
Badé screamed inside. But the opposing striker was utterly, impossibly calm.
He watched the keeper's onrushing movement to the very last instant — then dinked a clean, delicate chip up and over him, and into the net.
The moment the opening goal went in, the roar of the French fans that had filled the stadium died in their throats, and a groan rolled through the stands in its place.
"Haah..."
Hanbin, on the other hand, confirmed the ball in the net and immediately tore across the pitch, sprinting like a madman toward the South Korean supporters' section.
He launched his entire body into a sliding celebration for the fans who had traveled all this way to cheer for him, and roared to the sky.
As if answering his celebration, the Red Devils' section erupted, engulfing their hero in a frenzy of passion.
"WAAAAAH! KIM HANBIN!!"
"THE BEST!! KIM HANBIN!!"
Against the host nation France — after being pounded one-sidedly for the full thirty minutes since kickoff — a single attacking chance had finally come. And they had seized it without hesitation.
South Korea now led the match.
While Hanbin was still basking toward the supporters, his teammates came flying in from behind like lunatics.
"WOOO, FUCK!! KIM HANBIN!!!"
"You insane bastard! You actually put that in!"
Cha Kangmin arrived first, and then every last player piled onto Hanbin.
Most of what Hanbin could hear was swearing and incomprehensible howls — but one thing was crystal clear: his teammates were absolutely beside themselves.
The wild celebration raged on for a long while until the linesman jogged over, waving the players to calm down and return to the halfway line for the restart.
Reluctantly, the players broke off the celebration and trudged back to their positions — every face still wearing the same dazed expression.
Against France. In the opening match of the Paris Olympics. The opening goal — on French soil. It still didn't feel real.
But by the time Hanbin rejoined play at the halfway line, the atmosphere in the stadium had shifted entirely.
The eyes of every French player were now locked onto one man: Kim Hanbin.
The dismissive glance they'd given him before kickoff — just another big-bodied Asian player — was nowhere to be found.
Now it was France doing the chasing.
France simply could not accept it — conceding the first goal, on their own home ground, in the opening match of the Olympics. Losing here was unthinkable.
All composure drained from their faces, and the French came out swinging even harder than before.
But that aggressive approach — lines pushed recklessly high time and again — finally opened a fatal crack somewhere else entirely.
This time it was South Korea's right flank — the space where Lim Kyuhyun roamed.
The French left back attempted a reckless dribble down the wing and hacked the ball loose, and in that instant Lim Kyuhyun pounced, snatching it away.
Without a second's hesitation, Lim Kyuhyun unleashed his greatest weapon — his speed — driving the ball forward and sprinting into the French half.
The French full back desperately chased him down, but catching Lim Kyuhyun — whose pace was among the very best even on the national team — was a lost cause.
Kyuhyun played a long ball into open space and ran onto it, pulling off a clean charging run, then stretched out a foot just before the ball crossed the touchline to keep the play alive.
And with no time even to raise his head and check the middle, he whipped a cross toward the goal.
Come on!!
The ball, carrying every ounce of Lim Kyuhyun's desperate hope, flew unerringly toward Kim Hanbin as he charged into the penalty box.
And Hanbin did not waste the chance that had come to him again.
A clean header — nothing but a snap of the neck to redirect the incoming ball.
BAANG—!
Bullet into the net.
Before the French keeper could so much as flinch, the ball tore into the corner of the goal for the second time.
Two–nil.
The Paris stadium, packed with tens of thousands of French supporters, sank into silence once more.
It was an unthinkable first half — underdogs South Korea leading the mighty France by two goals, something no one anywhere had predicted.
And then, at last, the referee's whistle announced the end of the first half.
The mood in the South Korean locker room, having scored first and led 2–0, was brighter than words could capture — nothing like the quiet tension before kickoff.
Leading a gold-medal favorite 2–0 at halftime; the room's excitement was burning hotter by the minute.
"If we just play like this in the second half, this thing is absolutely winnable."
Some players were already celebrating as though the match were won.
And to top it off, the wildcard Choi Sangwon was set to come on for the second half.
With the veteran Choi Sangwon joining the fray, they could finally shed the passive game plan of dropping deep and absorbing for the entire first half, and shift to a more aggressive, attack-minded flow.
They could turn France's growing impatience — now two goals down — against them. There was even hope, faint and wild, that they might actually beat France outright.
Just as the players were buzzing with hope and chatter—
"WAAAAAAAAAAAH—!!!"
A deafening roar, loud enough to shake the stadium off its foundations, pierced clean through the walls of the away locker room, despite its considerable distance from the pitch.
"What? What's going on?"
The players were staring at each other in confusion when a member of the coaching staff burst through the locker room door and shouted:
"It looks like Mbappé's coming on for the second half! He's in uniform right now warming up on the pitch!"
Kilian Mbappé — the biggest star in world football — was entering the game.
In an instant, the giddy air in the locker room froze solid.
Coach Baek bit his lip.
He had prayed the man wouldn't play. And in the end, he was coming on after all.
So that's how it is... The host nation simply cannot lose its opening match at home.