An Even More Special Victory (4)
The attack was as sharp as ever. At the back, though, the problems were starting to show.
Every one of our defenders had a personality too strong for his own good, and when they locked in too hard they had a habit of drifting out of the line. On any ordinary day I would have been the one snapping them back into position. The man in goal now was Lucan, the reserve-team keeper, and he was moving as if he were afraid to step on anyone's toes — hanging back, taking his cues from the defenders instead of giving them.
Lucan was twenty-eight, a veteran in his own right, but he had never played a single first-team match. Of course he was reading the first-team center-backs for permission. His head was probably overflowing with the same two thoughts: if he didn't prove himself this time, he might never get another look at the first team — and if he started barking orders and an argument broke out, he would be the one who looked bad.
So he kept his mouth shut. And that, more than anything, was poison.
That was the nature of the position. If you wanted to be good, you had to be louder. Even if a defender couldn't shut an attacker down completely, it was a goalkeeper's fate to at least shepherd the ball toward a place he could deal with.
At this rate, something's going to blow...
My instinct was not wrong.
Chelsea's attack began, and it took less than five minutes for our back line to commit a textbook mistake. The left-back chased his man and tore a hole in the defensive line; the center-back tried to cover the gap and only threw the whole shape into greater chaos. On any other day I would have shouted that sequence out of existence before it developed. Lucan still couldn't get a single word out. He just stood there and watched it happen.
The defenders trusted each other and both stepped to the ball, and that trust only opened a bigger gap. Chelsea did not miss it. Park Seo-joon's pass sliced through the defense, and Mount met it first time with his left foot. Lucan threw himself at it a beat too late. The ball had already slipped past his fingertips and rippled the net.
0–1.
Our unbeaten run was suddenly in danger.
The camera cut to Jung Tae-woo on the bench, and the commentators' voices grew heavier.
Sitting on the bench watching a ball hit the back of City's net was even more frustrating.
I could have stopped that.
If it had been me, Seo-joon never would have been given that passing lane in the first place — and I would have had more than enough for the shot itself.
"Lucan could have stopped that too, though. If he'd been the one organizing the line..."
Lucan had better reflexes than an ordinary person, the way any keeper did, but among goalkeepers his weren't anything special. The reason a man like that could play for Manchester City — even if it was for the reserves — was his ability to organize a defense. He had a veteran's football intelligence, and I knew, honestly, that he marshaled a back line better than I did.
I wanted to tell him so. From where I was sitting, there was nothing I could do.
Please, just let the first half end without another disaster...
If I wanted to pull the real Lucan out of him, I was going to have to step in and help.
We had gone into the break behind before. We had never shipped goals in bunches like this. Maybe that was why every one of us walked into the dressing room with our heads down.
Kits stained and soaked through with sweat. Breathing that still hadn't settled. All of it testified to how fiercely they had fought — but football was not some glittering kingdom where trying your hardest guaranteed success. It was a place where ruthlessness that laughed even at desperate effort coexisted with glory.
The manager stepped into the dressing room wearing a look we hadn't seen from him in a very long time.
"That was a complete mess, Castillo."
"Yes..."
Castillo's head was down, and the guilt on his face ran deep.
"I have enormous respect for your passion. You run more than anyone, you go to ground more than anyone, always for the team. I respect that. But what you just did out there... that was an amateur charging around without a thought in his head. Nothing more, nothing less."
"You're right."
"That isn't your game. Get your head right and show me the football you can actually play."
"I will, sir."
The manager finished with Castillo and turned his gaze on Lucan, who was staring quietly down at a photograph.
"Lucan."
At the manager's voice, Lucan slipped the photograph into his pocket and lifted his head.
"Yes, sir."
"That was a performance where not a single one of the strengths I saw in you came out."
Lucan said nothing.
"When this match is over, people will say it, you know. Bring Tae-woo on. They'll say we lost because of my arrogance — because I didn't start him."
In that moment I felt a flicker of confusion.
What's he doing...?
It didn't sound like the manager I knew, the one who was always calm, always precise. Ordinarily he would have put a finger on exactly what had gone wrong and laid out how to fix it.
"Still nothing to say. What I wanted from you was to get up and shout when I said something like that. 'No. I've still got plenty to show. I'll show you what I can really do.' Wasn't that what you told me when we first met?"
Something shifted in Lucan's face — not anger, exactly, and not pleasure either. A look that sat somewhere in between.
"Curious why I'm saying all this?"
"...Yes. I thought you were going to take me off at half-time and bring Tae-woo on."
"And you'd go back to the reserves."
"Yes..."
The manager put a hand to his head and shook it slowly.
"With this little belief in yourself... Do you know what I felt, watching you properly out there?"
"I don't, sir."
"Regret."
"What?"
"Regret that I was so caught up in Tae-woo I couldn't see a player we genuinely needed standing right next to me. Regret at my own stupidity."
It must have been the last thing he expected. Lucan's eyes widened, just a little.
"I felt it from the first time I saw you. Your match analysis, your reading of the play — it's genuinely special. But today... everything you showed was just you scrambling to chase Tae-woo's shadow."
Lucan was silent.
"I know you're not Tae-woo. You know that too. You don't need to become Tae-woo. You need to become Lucan. You can contribute to City as Lucan — next season, and the season after that. Show the fans who you are."
Lucan clenched the photograph in his pocket. The look in his eyes began, little by little, to change.
"Ah, and I hear you've got a son. He'll be arriving at the stadium around the start of the second half, so make it count."
"Oliver, sir?"
"That's right. Show him how brilliant his dad is. I hear the boy wants to be a footballer too... Imagine how proud he'll be, watching his father play at City's home ground."
With that, the manager left the dressing room.
After a brief silence, the sound of someone crying came from somewhere in the room. Every one of us pretended not to hear it. The people in here were all footballers. There was no one on earth who understood more clearly how he felt.
That's the manager for you. He had a plan all along.
Bringing the kid in, even. A great manager really was on another level... Wait. But what about the second-half tactics?
The door creaked.
"Ahem... Come to think of it, I never actually went over the second-half plan."
Silence.
Right. A man ought to have at least that much humanity in him.
From the time he was small, Lucan had been a footballer who heard only one verdict: he had no talent.
What he had wanted at the start was to play up front. Like any other child, he had kicked a ball for the first time dreaming of being a striker.
The words never changed.
"You don't have any talent."
Even so, his love for the game refused to break. In the end he put his height to use and changed position to goalkeeper, studying matches, learning tactics, steadily building his game. That was how he had made it to Manchester City. Only the reserves — but he had made it.
Had all that talentless effort of mine finally moved the heavens?
Heaven gave me a special gift.
A boy who was half my blood and half my wife's — Oliver, more precious than anyone in the world.
Oliver had grown up beside me with football in his eyes. A child who watched his father's back every morning as I left for the training ground, who kicked a ball of his own, who sat with me through match after match on the screen. So when Oliver decided he wanted to be a footballer, it was the most natural thing in the world.
But when the boy said, "I want to be a goalkeeper like you, Dad," my heart was a complicated place. I was proud. And at the same time the words sat heavy on me. Because I couldn't help wondering whether being Manchester City's reserve goalkeeper was anything to be proud of at all.
To the fans, Manchester City had only one goalkeeper: Jung Tae-woo. Even if my son said, "My dad is Lucan," most people wouldn't even know who that was.
Then, one day, the chance arrived. Word of Jung Tae-woo's injury, and with it the news that Peter Guardian was coming to watch a reserve match. I threw everything I had built at that afternoon, and at last I earned the manager's trust.
But the first team was a different world.
In the first half, the tempo of the match swallowed me whole. All the match-reading I had honed, all the tactical understanding — none of it showed. I became a goalkeeper who did nothing but stand in front of the net.
Of course I thought I would be taken off. I thought my place in the first team ended here. I had even started to wonder if it was time to give up on being a footballer altogether. That was when his words found me.
The manager's words rang in my ears.
It was ironic. In the moment I couldn't believe in myself, other people were the ones believing in me. For the first time in my life, instead of the sentence I had always heard — You have no talent — I had been told that I had a talent of my own.
I will not lose.
For the manager who had believed in me. For Oliver, watching from somewhere in this stadium. For my teammates, who were cheering me on with nothing but a warm look and not a single word.
With this talent that, in someone else's eyes, might look like nothing at all — to be of even a little use to Manchester City.
I decided to stand up one more time.