Derbies' Roar: Old Trafford's Fire Meets the Sweeper-Keeper's Smile
The most famous football stadium on earth, and the home of Manchester United:
Old Trafford.
All 74,310 seats of that colossal ground were packed to the last inch. A crimson tide—the color of the Red Devils—swallowed the stands, and the roar of the crowd punched straight through the sky.
It was the kind of chant meant to snap an opponent's spirit before a ball had even been kicked.
"If we mess this up, we might actually die out here."
Sanchez tipped his head back toward the stands and swallowed hard.
"Imagine scoring and then sprinting straight into the United end. That'd feel insane, right?"
Guerrero's eyes lit with a dangerous glitter. He'd been keeping a low profile lately—but a madman, in the end, was still a madman.
Not that I haven't pictured it once or twice myself...
I kept my mouth shut. Lately the lads had started ranking me as the same breed of lunatic as Guerrero, so I'd been deliberately sanding down my personality.
"If we score, seventy thousand people go dead silent all at once. We get to watch that happen and then celebrate. Sounds fun, doesn't it?"
Castillo clapped Guerrero on the shoulder and grinned.
"Exactly. That's the real joy of football, isn't it?"
Guerrero snickered right back.
"That whole red sea just... freezing over in a second. Heh heh heh."
Castillo, who clearly did not care about any of that, was happily playing along.
Hang on. Castillo's a centre-back. Why is he talking about scoring?
Is that even allowed? Then again, a defender finding the net is a lot more plausible than a goalkeeper doing it...
That was when it hit.
A wall of jeers erupted so violently the stadium itself seemed to shudder. Nearly eighty thousand voices howling as one made it feel, for a heartbeat, like an earthquake.
I think the ground actually is shaking...
Every head on the pitch snapped toward the giant screen at once, hunting for the cause. What filled that screen was a man whose face, regardless of race or nation, drew an involuntary sound of awe.
"Huh? That's me."
Yes. It was me.
The man who, after yesterday's interview, had rocketed to number one on Manchester United supporters' most-hated list.
The moment I glanced up at the jumbotron, the boos swelled even louder. The whole ground heaved like a storm had rolled through it.
"Tae-woo, you really need to be careful. Walk down the wrong street and someone's going to stick a knife in you."
Even with Sanchez worrying in my ear, I let a lazy smile settle on my face. I turned toward the crowd raining abuse on me and answered them with a smile bright enough to make anyone fall for it.
Aigoo, damn it. From now on I'm wearing a hat and a mask whenever I go outside.
Alex Turner—United's captain, and the current player their fans loved more than anyone—stared at the screen, unable to hide his disbelief.
"He's smiling in that?"
Nearly eighty thousand United fans pouring jeers down on him, curses too filthy to repeat, a stadium that felt like a battlefield—and the kid was grinning. Unless something was seriously wrong with his head...
"I had a feeling from the moment he talked to the captain like that. Is his heart made of iron or what?"
Turner glanced sideways. Garzo, United's starting striker, was standing there with a grin of his own.
"Tell me about it."
I don't like this.
Alex Turner's eyes went cold.
Manchester United was the last stop, the club every player dreamed of reaching. The greatest footballers in the world burned for the right to wear that red shirt. The name carried that much weight.
There had been a fall, once. But the current manager and this squad had clawed their way back to the summit with blood and sweat. They had lived on the training ground day and night, and on the days they thought they might collapse, they had held each other up and kept going.
And now a young prospect who still had everything to prove was standing there cutting United down to size. Something in Turner's chest twisted. It felt like a mockery of every hour they had put in, every drop of sweat, and everything that shirt was supposed to mean.
Worse—he was doing it in a Manchester City kit.
"Hah... Garzo. Let's wipe that cocky smile off his face."
"Obviously."
And yet... he had to admit it, at least a little.
To stand like that in the middle of Old Trafford, with eighty thousand people jeering, mocking, and cursing him, and still look that unshaken—veterans would have ducked their heads in a situation like this. Instead the kid was beaming, as if he were enjoying the pressure. There wasn't a trace of fear in that smile. He looked like a man who didn't just endure a hostile atmosphere, but claimed it as his own stage.
"We'll see about that."
"Is United winning today or losing? Please just tell me?"
The streamer read the chat and his face went stiff with discomfort.
Ah, this is awkward.
His name was Gamst. A die-hard United fan and one of the biggest BJs in the Korean streaming scene, he ran United match broadcasts as his main content. What made today special was simple: Manchester City—home of Jung Tae-woo, the player being called Korea's Best Prospect—were walking into a Manchester Derby against United.
Yeah. I always knew a day like this would come.
"United are winning, obviously."
"Hoo~"
He'd seen this coming. He was a professional with more than ten years on the job, and a situation like this was well within his range.
"Look, everyone. This is a United support stream. I'm sorry to Jung Tae-woo, but I'm going to have to ask for your understanding."
"Aigoo~ I'm Korean too, all right? I am cheering for Jung Tae-woo. If he makes a save, I'll be genuinely happy."
"...Everyone, I'm going to need a little understanding here. I'll be glad he made the save, but the entertainment of the stream... I mean, for the sake of the content, my hands are tied."
Ah, for crying out loud.
He'd expected it, but the aggro was still getting dragged in way too hard.
Hah. I can hold it together, though. Right?
He wasn't even a hundred percent sure of that. He wasn't putting on a United act for the stream—he was a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool fan. Losing to City was something he simply could not accept. Even if one of his own country's brightest prospects was the one standing in the way.
Ah, that toxic one again. What is he even—
When the donation alert finished, the clip that rolled was one Gamst knew all too well: Jung Tae-woo's interview, the one where he'd gone straight at Manchester United.
"Yes. Even against United, I'll keep a clean sheet and deliver a City win. I'll prove it to the fans—that City is on the way up. And as for Alex Turner's comments, I don't particularly have anything to say, but..."
"If you insist I answer, I'd put it like this. Among all the fallen, broken players I've seen so far... has there ever been one as good as me?"
Just as the chat said, Gamst's face had gone as red as a ripening tomato. The idea of United failing to put a single goal past City was, to him, indistinguishable from being told to quit streaming and get a real job.
Ah... seriously... there are a million things I want to say...
His fists were trembling. But he couldn't actually lose it. In this day and age, one wrong word about a player at national-team level and a decade of broadcasting work could vanish overnight.
Calm down... calm down... no, but that little shit...
What made it worse was the chat. They knew exactly what kind of corner he was in, and they were poking him for sport.
And so the stream teetered along on that knife-edge of banter—until, at last, the Manchester Derby kicked off to the booming voices of the commentary team.
From the first whistle, the match tilted United's way.
"Yes."
"Good, good—keep that up and I don't even have a reason to curse. Look at United's football right now. Ohhh, ohhh, that's filthy, that's filthy—"
Excitement was leaking into Gamst's voice.
He really is saving them, though...
Garzo's last shot had been driven into the angle keepers hate most—and Jung Tae-woo had patted it away like he was knocking aside a toy ball. That was what experts did. Watch them work and everything looked easy. Tae-woo's saves were the same. They were so natural you almost couldn't feel how hard they were supposed to be.
Still... he'll get beaten eventually, right?
The flicker of dread crossed Gamst's mind and he shoved it out at once. This was not the time. United were playing this well against City; he was not about to kill the mood with pointless worry.
"THIS is Manchester United!"
"Look at the United-hater bastards shaking~"
But the longer the match went on, the stranger the shape of it became. Shots on target climbed from one to two, from two to five. And City's net never so much as trembled.
"Aaaagh! Why—why will it not go in?!"
On any other day, a reaction like that from Gamst would have filled the chat with mockery. Not today.
The screen was nothing but question marks, hanging there like nobody could make sense of what they were seeing.
That last line said everything they were feeling.