An Even More Special Championship (1)
"Hey, you son of a XXXX!!!"
"Do it right, damn it!!!"
Oh, so this really was United. Even with numbers that thin, they didn't concede an inch to City fans when it came to the quality of the abuse.
It was Matchweek 32. We'd been told that a win in this United fixture would all but seal the title. The gap to second-place United was already comfortable, and if we took this one as well, there was no real variable left — not unless we suddenly collapsed. Most of our remaining games were against mid-table and bottom-half sides. United, on the other hand, still had matches against the teams above them.
But what City were looking at now wasn't just a championship.
We still hadn't lost a single league match. We were chasing the one qualifier that would make the word champion shine even brighter: unbeaten.
The scoreboard glowed 1–0. Guerrero's opener had us in front, but United, true to form, refused to go away. If anything, the thought of failing to win the league themselves probably hurt less than the thought of handing their rivals an unbeaten title to hang on the wall. Watching the other guy lift the trophy always stings more than failing to lift it yourself. And if that trophy came with an unbeaten record?
Completely intolerable.
United's captain, Alex Turner, had gone to war with me in the press earlier in the season — but that didn't make him a bad man. If anything, he was the same breed of leader as our angel of a captain, Mathias. He'd only clashed with me because his sense of belonging to United ran too deep.
To be fair, I was the one who picked the fight first…
So I didn't dislike him. Besides, his game had things in it even I could stand to learn from.
A tap — it looked casual, but the pass was always inch-perfect. Then a sudden burst, a through ball stabbed into space that was always lethal.
Garzo was sitting second in the scoring charts behind Guerrero, but he was not a player you could ever afford to ignore. The mere fact that he occupied the starting striker's role at United — last season's champions, once called the strongest side in the Premier League — told you exactly how good he was. Of course, these days it was Manchester City who sat at the top of that mountain, not United.
The moment Garzo took the ball, he peeled Oden's pressing run off him with nothing but an upper-body feint.
"Not a chance!"
Castillo came flying in to close him down, and Garzo, without killing his speed at all, unspooled a Marseille turn. A turn that smooth, at that pace, was the kind of play that would have drawn a gasp even from someone who didn't support United.
The moment their ace produced that piece of magic, a hopeful roar exploded out of the United end.
"WAAAAAAAH!!!"
But the instant Garzo slipped the rest of the defense and wound up to shoot, my tackle stripped the ball clean off his feet.
Excellent read, Jung Tae-woo! The moment Garzo's eyes left the space in front of him while beating the defenders, Tae-woo came flying in and took only the ball with a perfectly timed tackle.
As expected of Manchester City's Iron Wall — the striker's nightmare, Jung Tae-woo. A lot of people have been focusing on his attacking ability lately, but never forget: his defending is the best in the world.
The sound in the stands curdled from a roar into a groan. Really, job satisfaction as a goalkeeper was second to none. Watching a crowd's faces fall from hope to hollow disbelief because your play had just killed their moment…
"Ha. You've got to be kidding me."
Garzo, who'd gone down after I took the ball off him, got back to his feet and spoke.
"Tae-woo, how about coming to United? If you join us, we'll be the best team in the world."
This guy — he couldn't kill me on the pitch, so he was trying to kill me like this instead? If I actually transferred to United… I'd drop some smart-aleck "I'm just a kid" line in an interview, and then—
Oh, shit.
I'd just been beaten to a pulp by City fans and died in my own imagination.
"No, how about you come to City? Then you might actually win something."
He must have run a similar simulation of his own, because his face went white.
"Hmm. That won't work. Shame… I'd really like to play on the same team."
"Well, we might end up on the same team someday."
"Huh?"
"For the national side."
He stared at me like I'd lost my mind.
"Tae-woo. I'm Spanish."
"If you want to play with me that badly, naturalize as a Korean. We'll welcome you."
Obviously. If he wanted to share a pitch with me, that was the least he should be ready for. Even I couldn't seriously demand he jump from United to City — but Spain to Korea? That didn't seem so unreasonable. Spain and Korea weren't rivals, after all.
Yeah. Looking at his face, maybe not.
He was staring at me as if I'd turned into Guerrero.
Was it that ridiculous…
"The way you're looking at me is pissing me off. I'm not conceding a single goal today."
"…Could you not? Naturalizing is a bit much, honestly."
"Yeah, no. Go back to your half."
"Wait — I'll score in a second!"
A goal down, Manchester United kept coming in waves, threatening Manchester City's net with one quick break after another. Of course, I kept my word.
Alex Turner hammered a long-range strike toward the bottom left corner — and I dove full stretch to beat it away. A moment later Garzo took a pass and, with a mere change of direction, whipped a shot on target. I stuck out a leg and blocked that one too.
"WOOOOOAH!!!"
"Tae-woo! Tae-woo! Tae-woo!"
A possessed, godlike exhibition of saves on home soil sent the Manchester City crowd into complete delirium. Everyone locked arms and belted out my chant; the ones who'd fully lost it ripped their shirts off and swung them overhead, or sprayed beer into the sky, turning the stands into a cauldron of celebration.
"…Tae-woo."
"What?"
Garzo, who'd frozen in place after winding up a celebration for what he'd been sure was a goal, only to watch me stop it, asked with a bitter little smile.
"If I go to Korea, will you let one in?"
"No. Too late. Go back."
"Damn it…"
You should've answered that when I asked earlier. If you had… well. I probably still would've saved it.
The longer I played keeper, the meaner I felt I was getting. Messing with strikers was just too much fun.
"AAAAAGH JUNG! TAE! WOO! AAAAAGH!"
While the rest of South Korea cheered and lost their minds over Jung Tae-woo's saves, exactly one man was screaming in agony.
Gamst. He was on the call again, and the moment the second half ended, every ounce of rage he'd been swallowing came roaring out.
"No, for real — we were supposed to WIN this!"
"Haah… back-to-back titles are out the window…"
"Still, we've got the Champions League, at least."
City had finished mid-table last season, so they hadn't had a Champions League ticket and weren't in this year's competition. United, as defending champions, had been in it from the start — and currently had a final still to play.
"Well… since it's come to this, might as well sit back and enjoy our little bro Tae-woo's highlights."
"God, though. Tae-woo really is that good."
On his monitor, the replay was rolling: Garzo's second-half shot, nothing but a change of direction, and Tae-woo — body already committed the wrong way — refusing to give it up, stretching a foot out and keeping it out.
"How do you even save that… He'd already turned his body to the right to stop the ball, and then Garzo, with this insane touch, just changed the direction. And he still sticks a leg out and stops it…"
"Ah, that's too much… I mean, I do have Tae-woo's number, but…"
"Ahem… I mean, Tae-woo and I really are close, but…"
They called each other hyung and little bro from meeting on stream, sure — but even the viewers wouldn't believe he was close enough to Tae-woo to actually phone him live. He wouldn't have believed it himself, once. Most people who made it that far were arrogant, and Gamst had watched plenty of them come and go.
But Tae-woo was different. Sometimes he was the one who reached out first. That alone said plenty.
"Hyung, I've been really enjoying your streams lately."
"Hyung, what'd you think of today's match?"
Genuine interest, every time. Before Gamst knew it, it felt like he really had gained a little brother he was close to.
Of course, the calls weren't always so wholesome. Sometimes they came loaded with mischief.
"Hyung, if you hype me up on stream for about ten minutes, I'll go a little easy on United."
"Hyung, the way I see it, the current meta is Manchester City over Manchester United. Wanna switch teams?"
There was a nineteen-year-old's unguarded sincerity in that playful tone that Gamst genuinely liked. And the fact that he really had spent ten minutes the next day singing Tae-woo's praises was a secret.
If I called now… would he even pick up…
He shook his head. No matter how close you were, there were lines you didn't cross. Calling a player who'd just spent ninety minutes emptying the tank — and for a reason like this — was a nuisance no matter how you dressed it up.
He was just about to tell chat it wasn't happening when his phone rang.
My Little Bro
"H-huh?"
"Tae-woo's calling?"
"Hello, my little br—"
"UNITED'S CUT!!!"
"…"
It was the moment the chat window got plastered with nothing but laughter.