National High School Football Championship Final (2)
Pressing is not simply a matter of charging hard. It is about seizing space.
Those were the words of Arrigo Sacchi, the legendary Italian manager who led Milan to back-to-back European Cups.
Just as he said, pressing is not about sprinting at an opponent, sticking to him, and snatching the ball. It is about shrinking the space a player has to operate in — tighter and tighter — until the ball is yours. That is pressing.
And the two Seohyeon High players glued to me? All they did was swarm me and thrash about, trying to win the ball.
Think about it simply: if two men mark me, that means one of their own is left unmarked.
My scoring chance had died on the Seohyeon keeper's save. I went straight to take the corner. The two Seohyeon players under orders to mark me charged mindlessly toward the goalmouth.
Thump—!
I took my run-up and whipped the corner in with my right foot. It met Seo Junhyeok's leaping header dead center, and the ball bulged the net.
Seo Junhyeok celebrated with a midair somersault.
"See that? Just call me Miroslav Junhyeok, yeah?"
"Shut up~ Your team's corner taker just put it on a plate for you~"
Seo Junhyeok bantered with the opposing defender, who snorted a laugh and shot back.
"Hyung. You know him?"
"Yeah. Middle school classmate."
Come to think of it, Baekhwa High was in Seoul, and so was Seohyeon High. Besides Seo Junhyeok, there had to be others on our side who knew the opposition.
"Hyung. So he's the only one you know?"
"Nah. I know their right fullback too. He's a year younger than me."
"…Then you know their playing styles pretty well, right?"
"Well… yeah?"
As we crossed the halfway line to set up for Seohyeon High's kickoff, I kept talking with Seo Junhyeok.
"Then tell me. Their traits, their playing styles — whatever you've got."
"What… Coach already covered all that."
"What Coach said is from a spectator's seat in the stands. You're the one who actually played with them."
"That's… fair…"
"Tell me the stuff only you know."
"…Alright. The right fullback — he's soft on feints. One dummy and he bites every time, so keep that in mind. I'll fill you in on the rest later."
I nodded and returned to my position.
I knew the right fullback's weakness now. The match was about to get a whole lot easier.
Tweet—!
The referee's whistle, and the game was back on. I sprinted hard upfield.
Two opponents closed on me again. One was a defensive midfielder; the other, the right winger.
Normally, in an attacking phase, a winger pushes forward to support the attack. But by pinning their right winger on me entirely, their attacking midfielder — Choi Seungwon — had drifted out to the right touchline.
"Seungwon!"
Choi Seungwon collected a pass from a teammate and tore forward. Jeong Inho tried to step across and cut him off, but the instant Inho stuck out a leg, Seungwon knocked the ball long and hopped clean over it.
"Damn it…!"
"Watch the cross!"
Baekhwa's back line scrambled to mark Seohyeon's attackers, who had flooded forward. But Choi Seungwon's choice was neither a cutback nor a cross.
Swish—.
He shot it himself.
The angle was next to nothing, but Ju Ingyu had come a step too far off his line, leaving a sliver of space between keeper and post. Choi Seungwon threaded it straight through.
A perfect, beautiful goal — yet Choi Seungwon didn't celebrate. He simply handed the ball to Ju Ingyu and walked silently back across the halfway line.
"Aah, for real…"
"What are you doing coming out that far?!"
"Sorry…"
Seo Taeseong tore into Ju Ingyu, who offered an apologetic gesture and rolled the ball over to him.
Score: 1–1. Back to square one.
Baekhwa High's kickoff restarted the first half. The scoreboard already showed thirty minutes gone.
"Ian!"
Jeong Inho, ball at his feet on the flank, laid it off to me and surged up the line. Opponents closed hard at the same time.
I turned my body toward the touchline. Then, spotting the runner coming from behind, I tried a backheel straight through the Seohyeon defender's legs.
"Nice!"
Yu Gwanhui collected it. The midfield opened wide. He lofted a long ball toward Jeong Jimin, racing down the side; Jimin took a couple of soft touches and drove into the box. A cutback followed. Seo Junhyeok struck it with his right foot — but the keeper saved, and the chance died.
Jeong Jimin peeled out beyond the penalty area. A scramble ensued. Seohyeon High barely managed to clear the ball outside the box —
"Thanks~"
— and I was waiting right there.
I slipped a pass to Jeong Jimin on the right, and he hit it first time.
Thump—!
A cleanly struck long-range shot split the net.
Swish—.
"Nice assist~"
"Are we actually winning this thing?!"
I could hear my teammates laughing and shouting. I grinned.
One more assist. That was all I needed for an assist hat-trick.
Seohyeon High kicked off again. They pressed relentlessly and pinned us back, but saves from the keeper and solid defending from the back line kept us from conceding.
Before long, the regulation forty-five minutes were up, and three minutes of stoppage time were added.
"Ian!"
Jimin called my name and sent the ball to me on the left touchline. I took it cleanly and sprinted forward, then stopped dead in front of Seohyeon High's right fullback.
Soft on dummies, he said…
I sold him a dummy and left him for dead. Caught on the wrong foot, he was already too late to recover.
Two centerbacks came at me in sequence as I cut inside, but I stripped both of them with a La Croqueta. I checked the keeper's position and rolled it into the near post on the right.
Swish—.
The net rippled.
45+3' First Half — Goal: No. 10 Seong Ian
I finished my celebration and jogged back. The moment Seohyeon High took the restart, the referee blew the whistle. Halftime.
Seohyeon High's locker room at halftime.
Nothing but labored breathing. Not even the usual chatter.
"…There was something I overlooked."
Seohyeon High's coach stood in front of his seated players.
"Putting two men on Seong Ian. That was the mistake."
Lee Gwanghyeon — Baekhwa High's primary goal threat — was out injured. And this kid named Seong Ian had been putting up monstrous numbers.
A crack, pure and simple. A game-changer who could flip a match no matter how stacked the odds were against him.
That stoppage-time goal in particular had looked uncannily like the one Hazard scored for Chelsea against West Ham.
To mark Seong Ian, they'd pushed a defensive midfielder up and dropped the right winger deep, shifting attacking midfielder Choi Seungwon out to the right wing. The midfield had become Baekhwa's property entirely, and in that vacuum Yu Gwanhui had found acres of space.
Worse still, Seong Ian had toyed with the two men on him as if they weren't even there.
And on set pieces — corners, free kicks — instead of Jeong Inho or Jeong Jimin taking them as expected, Seong Ian had started stepping up himself. The players ordered to press him suddenly had no one to mark the moment a set piece came around, leaving Seohyeon's right winger and defensive midfielder wandering with nowhere to go.
There was one more thing they hadn't anticipated.
Baekhwa High's defense.
Parking Choi Seungwon — currently the best form on Seohyeon's roster — on the right wing hadn't been about filling a number. It was because Baekhwa's left fullback, Jeong Inho, loved to overlap. When Inho pushed up, space opened on the touchline. Catch them on the counter then, and Choi Seungwon could whip in a cross, shoot himself, or cut it back.
But they'd lost the midfield battle so thoroughly that possession sat at a crushing 3–7. Even when they managed to build an attack, Baekhwa's back line held a three-man shape until Jeong Inho recovered defensively.
Crosses from the open flank toward Seohyeon's striker got swallowed by Seo Taeseong, Baekhwa's sweeper, or claimed by Ju Ingyu coming off his line for the aerial ball.
Squeeze into the space and cut it back? With the midfield lost, Seohyeon's attack was reduced to their striker, left winger, and Choi Seungwon. If Seungwon drove central and tried a cutback, Seohyeon's left winger needed time to arrive from the far side — and Baekhwa's defensive midfielder tracked with him. That left Baekhwa free to simply mark the striker and kill the cutback angle entirely.
Which left direct shooting. It had worked once. After that, it stopped working — because Ju Ingyu had started guarding against the shot with almost excessive caution.
And so Seohyeon High's entire performance had been reduced to this mess, all thanks to one kid named Seong Ian.
"…Seungwon."
"Yes, Coach."
"Come back into the middle."
The Seohyeon coach reassigned roles for the second half. Of the players who'd been marking Seong Ian, he ordered the right winger to stop tracking him.
It's a risk… but it's the right call.
With Choi Seungwon back in the center and the right winger restored to the attack, they could at least compete in the midfield battle they'd been demolished in during the first half.
Even if leaving only one man on Seong Ian still sat uneasily with him.
"It's not over. A match can flip at any moment!"
Seohyeon High's captain — the centerback with the armband — rallied his teammates as they headed back out onto the pitch.
The second half was about to begin.