World Cup Evaluation Match (3)
Korea refused to ease off the throttle, driving Iran back with relentless force.
Just before the first half ended, Yoo Hee-sung got on the ball once more.
Park Seo-joon's lofted pass dropped onto Hee-sung's instep, and with nothing but a first touch he changed the ball's path, sending the closing defender stumbling the wrong way.
"Oh! An unbelievable first touch! He's taken that defender out of the game with a single touch!"
While the defender was still sliding to the turf, Yoo Hee-sung was already tearing toward goal.
A second challenge came flying in — and he slipped it with a light Marseille turn.
Iran had failed to contain him for the entire first half, and Hee-sung was toying with them, cruelly, almost at his leisure. He would cut in from the flank and strike from range; the moment the back line tightened to snuff out the shot, he would bamboozle them with footwork that defied belief.
"Hee-sung keeps driving forward!"
Iran's defenders rushed him, wary of the cross — and Hee-sung shaped to shoot.
"Is he going to hit it?! No! A shot feint — he's sold two defenders completely!"
"Only the keeper left!"
The goalkeeper charged off his line, desperate to shrink the angle.
"Hee-sung shoots— he's done it again! How many more times is this kid going to sell them?!"
"There's no one in front of him now!"
The net bulged.
"WAAAAAAAAAH!!!!"
"Iran cannot stop Yoo Hee-sung! A goal born of a perfect one-man show! This player is absolutely on fire!"
Having beaten even the keeper clean, he had the Seoul World Cup Stadium at Sangam erupting in a frenzy. Hee-sung sprinted toward the Korean fans once more and leapt high into the air.
"Man! U!"
"Man! U!"
This time the entire stadium answered as one. Some forty thousand voices fused into a single roar, and the chant of Man U filled every corner of the ground.
Even after that, Iran were simply no match for Korea.
Of course, this was a newly assembled national side, and there were still moments when the tactical polish wasn't there. Passes went astray when the understanding between players hadn't quite clicked, and gaps opened during formation shifts. But no one who watched them could deny the individual quality or the sheer destructive power on display.
The attacking axis of Yoo Hee-sung and Lee Tae-yang, in particular, dismantled Iran's defense so thoroughly it barely existed. Everyone who saw the two of them play understood, in that instant, why Europe's elite clubs had been falling over themselves to sign them.
Peeep— peeep— peeeeeep!
When the referee's final whistle sounded, Cheon Mu-seok watched his players still roaming the pitch and allowed himself a satisfied smile.
The score was 4–0. Even more staggering was the possession: a crushing eighty percent.
This was not merely a win. It was a complete annihilation — the first signal flare of a new golden generation, echoing into the sky over Sangam.
There was, in fairness, some truth to that. However strong Iran might be in Asia, their standing dropped considerably once you measured them against the world — and that was simply a fact. Combined with stretches of the match where the players still looked unaccustomed to the system, a current of opinion had begun to form: we don't know yet.
And so everyone was waiting for the next evaluation match, four days away — against Brazil.
"Will you still refuse to confess your sin?"
"Hmph!"
"Hah..."
He was King Yeomra, grandfather to Lior, the God of Soccer — and these days every hour stretched out like a thousand years.
The truth was that Lior had already committed an act that must never be done in the mortal world. He had intervened in a human's fate: a grave crime that, by the laws of the Divine Realm, demanded immediate punishment. And yet Yeomra had used his own authority to forcibly postpone that sentence.
How could I ever punish you...
If only a single word of remorse would leave Lior's lips, even now, he was prepared to overstep his power however far it took to save him. But his stubborn grandson would not even look at his grandfather's heart. He kept his eyes on the cold wall and answered with silence.
"Lior. Will you not even speak with this grandfather of yours anymore?"
Lior seemed to notice the shift in his grandfather's tone, because he pulled his gaze from the wall and looked at him. And at last, the mouth Yeomra had been waiting for opened.
"Yeomra... no. Grandfather."
It had been a long time. A long time since the word Grandfather had come from his grandson's lips.
"Yes..."
"If it were you, Grandfather... if I admitted my wrongdoing here and stopped concerning myself with Tae-woo... you'd forgive me, wouldn't you?"
So the brat does understand.
"Of course. How could I ever punish you?"
"But if I did that, I'd regret it for the rest of my life. And... you know this, Grandfather. I'm my father's son. I don't know the meaning of giving up..."
King Yeomra let out a long, heavy breath.
Gods, like humans, bore children, and those children bore children of their own. Along that chain they had come to know joys and sorrows not so different from those of mortals.
Lior's father — Yeomra's own son — had been the previous God of Soccer. He no longer existed. He had been stripped of his divinity and erased for eternity.
His crime had been only one: he had helped humans defy the fates already written for them. That was all.
Yeomra had only just ascended the throne then. Newly crowned, with no power to stay his son's sentence, he had carried out the punishment himself, his hands trembling as he did it.
He's inherited every last one of the worst parts...
The love of a human's pure passion for a dream. The warm compassion that wanted to help them. And the stubborn spine that would risk anything for the sake of a conviction.
He still remembered it with terrible clarity — the last thing his son had said, looking back at him on the road to his punishment.
"Father, the way I see it, a dream ought to be a destination that never runs away from them. Of course they might fall while they're running, and they might give up. But for someone who endures every hardship and runs all the way to the end — to say their fate was never to reach that destination... isn't that too cruel?"
There had been no regret in those eyes, and no fear. They had been calm, as if he had been preparing for this moment for a very long time.
"And of course I don't resent you, Father. I suppose this, too, is what you and the other gods call predetermined fate..."
His son had paused, and looked toward a distant sky. Even at the last, those eyes had been clear.
"Take care of Lior, Father. I hope my son... is granted a better fate than mine."
Those had been his last words.
The irony of it cut deep. A son who had spent his whole life loathing the word fate had, at the end, accepted his own death as fate. All he had wished for in that final moment was that his child, at least, might live a better one. That wish still ached in King Yeomra's chest.
If human destinies were already written, then perhaps the destinies of the gods were written too. Perhaps everything they believed they chose of their own free will was only another dimension of a fate already set. The one who carried out the sentence, the son who received it, and Lior now — were they all nothing more than cogs in some vast wheel of destiny?
That thought had troubled Yeomra ever since that day. The punishment he had delivered in the name of fate — had it been justice in any true sense at all?
And now, standing before his eyes, was his grandson Lior: the same gaze as his son's, the same conviction, about to make the same choice. Faced with this repeating scene, so like a fate already decided, King Yeomra finally understood.
If I stop Lior the way I stopped my son... that, too, would only become another cruel cycle of fate.
He looked at his grandson. In a face that seemed to hold every part of his son, something in his chest ached.
This time... it has to be different.
"Your father used to say that a dream ought to be a destination that never runs away."
Lior's eyes went wide.
"You may fall while you run toward it. You may give up. But if the one who ran all the way to the end still cannot reach it... that is too cruel."
King Yeomra's voice trembled, just slightly. Reciting his son's words brought that day back as if it had never left.
"The reason you tried to protect Jung Tae-woo's dream... was that, wasn't it. Because he was exactly the kind of human your father spoke of — a man who would not run away, who meant to run all the way to the end."
Lior nodded. Every word of his grandfather's sank deep into his chest.
"I punished your father. That it was the law was an excuse. The truth is... I believed the path my son — your father — had chosen was wrong."
King Yeomra paused, then went on in a heavier voice.
"But I know now. Perhaps your father... and you... were the ones who were right."
"Then...!"
Looking at the hope that lit his grandson's face, King Yeomra smiled a lonely smile.
By the name of King Yeomra, Lior's sin is forgiven.
The God of Soccer is free — to run toward his dream.