Atletico Madrid Match (3)
Mateo Gomez, the starting striker for Atletico Madrid’s U-19 side, was smiling.
Even while the rest of his teammates wore expressions like they had just bitten into something rotten.
Atletico Madrid despised Cristiano Ronaldo. Not just the players and the board—the fans, too.
Who was Ronaldo, after all? The name that always surfaced whenever anyone argued over the GOAT—the Greatest Of All Time—in football history. Cristiano Ronaldo. Being hated came with the territory.
Back in the 1974–75 European Cup final, Atleti had surrendered the title to Bayern Munich. Nearly forty years later, in the 2013–14 season, they finally stood on the Champions League final stage once more. Their opponents were their eternal rivals, Real Madrid, yet Atleti still believed. When Diego Godín scored in the thirty-sixth minute, they looked closer to the trophy than Real ever had.
Then, in the ninety-third minute, Real Madrid centre-back Sergio Ramos produced a theatrical equaliser. Extra time followed, and Gareth Bale’s goal, Marcelo’s goal, and Ronaldo’s penalty completely tore them apart. Ronaldo had assisted Marcelo’s strike and converted the penalty himself—one goal, one assist. That night the long, bitter feud between Atletico Madrid and Ronaldo truly began.
Two years later Atleti reached the Champions League final again, met Real Madrid again, and lost again—this time on penalties—as Real lifted the Big Ears once more. The curse seemed finished when Ronaldo left for Juventus in Serie A, yet the poison never fully drained. In the 2018–19 season Atletico beat Juventus 2–0 at home and looked certain to advance. Ronaldo only said, “Wait and see what happens.” Then, at the Allianz Stadium, he hammered in a hat-trick and sank them. Under Diego Simeone, Atleti had conceded only four hat-tricks in total—every single one of them to Ronaldo.
When a rival club’s superstar keeps dismantling your team, Atleti fans have no choice but to hate him. Ten years after his retirement, that hatred still burns.
Mateo Gomez, however, was an Atleti player who did not hate Ronaldo. He liked him. Lionel Messi might have edged him out, but Ronaldo was still one of the greatest players the game would ever see.
The rest of the squad felt differently. Some of them hated Ronaldo more than they hated Antoine Griezmann.
“Should I just snap his ankle?”
“Hold it. Korean cameras everywhere… do that here and none of us might ever make a pro debut.”
The captain, armband tight on his sleeve, barely managed to calm the others and send them back to their positions.
“You too. Don’t try anything stupid.”
“Si? I didn’t say a word.”
“It’s written all over your face. Get up front—now!”
When the captain, a year older, slapped him across the back, Mateo clutched the spot and jogged toward the halfway line.
Atletico Madrid’s kick-off once more.
The longer the match went on, the clearer it became: the Atleti players’ eyes had changed. They marked me with almost obsessive intensity, and the moment I received the ball they came in with rough tackles to take it away.
Probably because of the Ronaldo celebration.
I clicked my tongue and switched to off-the-ball movement, using my runs to open space for the others. Whenever the ball came my way I released it with a single touch before a tackle could land. I dragged the defenders and midfielders marking me into the centre, deliberately freeing the flanks. Still, every attacking sequence died. Even when we somehow broke the last line, the finish never arrived. Worse, we lost the ball often enough to gift them dangerous counters. Without Han Seung-woo’s saves we would already have been trailing 3–1.
After all that back-and-forth, the fortieth minute of the second half finally arrived.
“Hurry!”
I dragged an opposing midfielder with me into the middle, opening the left channel. Left-back Seo Jin-yeong surged into the space. Midfielder Lee Won-jun floated a lofted pass; it was a touch long, but still chaseable.
Thud.
Seo stretched his leg and got a touch—too heavy. In that instant Atleti’s right-back intercepted and the counter exploded. The full-back found an advancing midfielder, who immediately drove down the flank. Our players tried to stop him; they couldn’t. He slipped the ball inside to the right winger and continued his run. The winger took a long diagonal touch that shrugged off centre-back Ju Won-woo’s pressure in one motion.
Then came the cutback. Ju Won-woo tracking the winger and goalkeeper Han Seung-woo failed to read each other; the ball rolled free behind them.
“Mine!”
Thankfully the other centre-back, Lee Seung-min, reached it and tried to clear. More accurately, he tried to boot it over the sideline. His foot swung through empty air and he slipped inside the box.
Shhhk—
At the same moment the net bulged. Mateo Gomez had struck. Before Lee Seung-min’s foot could meet the ball, Mateo simply poked it with his right foot. The keeper, still sprawled from defending the cutback, could only watch the ball suck into the far corner.
The numbers on the board changed.
And just like that, the match was over.
We tasted our first defeat.
Only two matches played, yet a loss was still a loss. That first defeat silenced the entire locker room and dragged the atmosphere lower than it had ever been.
“…Against Atletico Madrid, a performance like this is a solid result. Don’t be too discouraged.”
On any other day the coach would have driven us hard and torn into the mistakes. Today he chose not to.
We were packing our bags, ready to leave, when one of the staff members came sprinting in, out of breath.
“Ian!”
“…Yes?”
“Can you come with me for a second…?”
He was gasping and sweating so hard he must have run the whole way. I followed him out of the locker room.
“Ah—there he is. Go on, hurry.”
We arrived at the lobby of the Metropolitano. Rows of chairs filled the space; the head of staff sat in one of them. Across from him stood a man in a suit.
“Uh… okay! He’s here!”
The head of staff pointed at me with clumsy English. I walked over and bowed first.
“Uh… introduce yourself. This is—”
“…I know.”
When I lifted my head and saw the man’s face, I froze for a second.
“Fernando Torres… es un honor conocerte.”
“Oh, come on… You speak Spanish?”
“Yes. My mother’s Spanish, so I learned a little.”
I took the hand he offered with both of mine and shook it. It was an honour. I had never properly watched him in his prime, yet every club he played for still had the footage of his goals. That legendary one-time strike for Chelsea still floated through the algorithm now and then.
“Mm… I’ll go look after the other kids. Come straight back to the dorm once you’re finished, all right?”
“Yes.”
The head of staff left. I sat in the chair he had vacated.
“I’ll cut straight to it. Why did you do Ronaldo’s celebration here?”
Fernando Torres—El Niño—had faced Ronaldo countless times while wearing the Atletico shirt. He loved the club and had been on the receiving end of that rivalry; he could not possibly like the man. Yet he only asked why I had done the celebration. No anger, just pure curiosity.
“…Because my grandfather likes Ronaldo.”
“Now that you mention it, he was wearing a Real Madrid kit. So you did it for him?”
“Yes.”
Torres broke into a grin. For a man already two years into his fifties, the face was still strikingly handsome.
“Ahem… Now I’ll tell you why I called you. The staff said you hold Spanish nationality… is that true?”
“Yes.”
“Then this is simple. The youth World Cup next year—are you planning to go with the Korean national team?”
Looking at the serious expression on Torres’s face, I froze for a moment.
“…Even if I want to go, if they don’t select me there’s nothing I can do.”
“With that level of ability? I may not know the Korean FA well, but they can’t be that blind.”
“Still, well… haha…”
I laughed awkwardly. Torres reached into the bag beside him and pulled out a sheaf of pure white documents.
“What is this?”
“The Spain U-21 national team roster and the information we’ve gathered so far.”
“What?! Am I even allowed to look at this?”
“Of course. The list isn’t finalised yet, so it doesn’t matter.”
The stack was thick, yet only four players’ names appeared on the actual roster.
“I want to put you on this list. That’s why I called you here.”
“…What?”
I stared at him, dazed. Torres continued in the same serious tone.
“You have talent. In a year you’ll be more than ready for the overseas stage. Scoring against Ajax and scoring again today is the proof.”
“But…”
“I know. Asking you to decide right now would only put pressure on you. This is my card. Take it. Once you’ve made up your mind, contact me anytime.”
I accepted Fernando Torres’s business card. He gave me a couple of firm pats on the back, slipped the documents back into his bag, and walked out of the Metropolitano.
…Did I just get scouted…?
People don’t usually call this scouting, yet the shock felt exactly the same. I headed back to the dorm late, ignoring the flood of questions from staff and teammates, and collapsed straight onto the bed.
Hoping that everything that had happened today had not been a dream.