The Jeers of Rotterdam, and the Conductor of Silence
Southern Rotterdam, the Netherlands — the Varkenoord training grounds.
Here, at the heart of Feyenoord's youth academy, an ugly current had been building for a full hour before kickoff.
The sky hung low and swollen, ready to spit rain at any moment, and the damp wind carried a sharp metallic tang — the rough, industrial smell unique to the port city of Rotterdam.
Amsterdam's Ajax. Rotterdam's Feyenoord.
The relationship between the two cities went far beyond rivalry. It was closer to hatred. Rotterdam, a city of laborers, spat on Amsterdam as an arrogant capital of art and commerce. Their football matches were always wars.
Youth fixtures were no exception.
"Booo!!"
"Ajax joden! Vuile Joden! (Ajax Jews! Filthy Jews!)"
"Get the hell back to Amsterdam!"
Beyond the chain-link fence, hundreds of Feyenoord fans had packed in, raining down abuse. Flares burst. Empty cans and garbage came sailing onto the training pitch.
The atmosphere was vicious. The faces of the Ajax boys — fifteen and sixteen at most — had gone white.
"Damn… it's worse than usual today."
"Hyung, look over there. The cops are here."
The younger players on the U-17 side muttered among themselves. De Jong, the captain and the team's backbone, clapped his hands and barked,
"Ignore it! Plug your ears! We came here to play football!"
Even De Jong's voice couldn't cut the tension. The pressure of an away derby was absolute.
Except for one person — Ma Gang-cheol, lacing his boots in the corner of the locker room.
Cute.
Gang-cheol let out a short snort of laughter.
Memories of his past life. Compared to the death threats, laser pointers, and buckets of filth he'd endured on South American away trips, this level of abuse was adorable — little more than a toddler's tantrum.
If anything, the noise made his heart race. Adrenaline tore through his veins like wildfire.
The locker room door slid open and Coach Van Basten walked in. His expression was grim.
"Starting lineup. Tactics are what we drilled yesterday. Don't freeze. You are the finest talent in the Netherlands — the Godenzonen. The Sons of the Gods."
The players nodded, faces set.
"Goalkeeper Van der Sar. Defenders…"
Names rolled on. Then the midfield line.
"…and attacking midfielder, Ma Gang-cheol."
Silence dropped over the locker room.
Everyone had known it was coming, but hearing the name called made it real.
One week since joining. Thirteen years old. East Asian.
And that kid was about to stand at the center of this war zone — in the commander's seat.
"Ma."
Van Basten called him over.
"Yes, Boss."
"You know why you're starting?"
"Yes. Because they don't know me."
"Exactly. They'll write you off as a tourist. A mascot. Use that complacency. Tear them apart."
Gang-cheol grinned and nodded.
Walking out onto the pitch.
The moment the players cleared the tunnel and stepped onto the grass, the jeers crashed down like a waterfall.
Ajax starting lineup announced.
… MF. No. 34 Ma Gang-cheol.
When the stadium announcer read the name, the stands went quiet for a beat — then exploded into howling laughter.
"Pwahahaha! Hey! Look at that! There's an actual little kid out there!"
"Ajax has finally lost it! They brought an elementary schooler!"
"Did you finish your mommy's milk? You wearing a diaper under those shorts?"
Even the Feyenoord players snickered and pointed at Gang-cheol.
Among giants averaging 182 centimeters, Gang-cheol's 168 made him look like a sapling in a forest.
Then Feyenoord's captain — a 190-centimeter colossus of a center-back named Van Dijk — stepped into Gang-cheol's path.
He looked down at him and spat the gum he'd been chewing onto the grass.
"Hey, little boy. You lost? Kindergarten field trip's that way."
The Feyenoord players around them cackled. A deliberate attempt to seize the psychological high ground.
Gang-cheol didn't so much as blink. He slowly lifted his head and met Van Dijk's eyes dead-on.
"I think I know the way better than you do."
Fluent Dutch rolled off Gang-cheol's tongue.
"You'll be staring at the back of my head for ninety minutes. Oh — memorize the number. Thirty-four. That's the one showing up in your nightmares tonight."
"…Wh—what did you just say?"
Van Dijk's face flushed crimson in an instant. This tiny brat dared—?
Preeeeep—!
The referee's whistle cut the air. War had begun.
"Kill him! Stomp him!"
From the opening whistle, Feyenoord unleashed combat football.
They threw their bodies at people, not the ball.
Crash!
Barely five minutes in, an Ajax winger went tumbling under a brutal tackle — a murderous challenge hard enough to crack a shin guard.
"Foul! That's a red card!"
De Jong sprinted at the referee in protest, but the official shook his head and waved play on.
Home advantage. And the notoriously lenient officiating that always seemed to accompany this rivalry.
Even the referee was cowed by Rotterdam's madness, hoarding his whistle.
The momentum swung entirely to Feyenoord. Ajax players started flinching from the ball — because the moment they touched it, a body check came flying in.
"Ma! Take it!"
A clearance from the back line rolled toward Gang-cheol.
The instant he moved to collect it, the roar from the stands swelled.
"Crush that little brat!"
Two Feyenoord midfielders came charging from either side as if they'd been waiting for this exact moment.
Like hyenas closing on prey, they didn't slow down — a full-speed sandwich mark.
They meant to bury him.
I can see it.
Time slowed for Gang-cheol.
The system's Spatial Perception (B+) activated, and the entire pitch unfolded before his eyes as a three-dimensional grid.
The speed of the two onrushing players. Their angles. The flex of their muscles. And the vast open space behind them.
Projected Collision Time: 0.5 seconds
Evasion Probability: 98%
Gang-cheol feinted a touch toward the ball.
Both opponents' eyes locked onto his ankle instead of the ball.
Now.
He never touched it.
Instead, he shifted his upper-body weight a fraction to the left, then let the ball roll cleanly between his legs.
A no-touch turn.
"Huh?"
"Wha—?"
The two players, sprinting at full tilt, couldn't stop.
In the space where Gang-cheol had ghosted between them, the two giants slammed into each other head-on.
CRASH!
"Gaaah!"
A dull impact, and both men went sprawling — clutching their heads and groaning in a spectacle so ridiculous it was almost funny.
Gang-cheol calmly reclaimed the ball and drove into the empty midfield.
"Wh… what the hell was that?!"
The Feyenoord coach on the bench shot to his feet.
What had just happened? The kid had slipped the physical challenge and made two men destroy each other?
"Stop him! What are the defenders doing?!"
Van Dijk spat a curse and exploded out of the back line.
Murder was in his eyes. Football be damned — he was going to pulverize that insolent little brat.
Gang-cheol tracked Van Dijk's charge with a sidelong glance.
Dribble past him? No.
His eyes were already fixed on the far side of the pitch.
The massive hole Van Dijk had left by abandoning his position. De Jong was already making the run into it.
Tap.
Gang-cheol struck the ball with the outside of his boot.
It arced in an elegant parabola, sailing clean over Van Dijk's head.
Like a guided missile, a lofted pass that dropped perfectly onto De Jong's foot.
"Nice!"
De Jong took it on his chest and fired. The shot cannoned off the post and out — but it was the kind of sequence that flipped the entire flow of a match in a single breath.
That kid… he's the real deal.
On the Ajax bench, arms folded, Van Basten chewed his gum and muttered under his breath.
That hadn't been a simple pass. It was surgery — reading the opponent's psychology, then driving the blade into the softest point.
That was not a thirteen-year-old's vision. Those were a veteran's eyes.
Thirty-fifth minute of the first half.
The Feyenoord players were poisoned with rage.
At home, being toyed with by a single child — the humiliation scraped their pride raw.
"The second that bastard gets the ball, take him out! I don't care if you get sent off!"
Van Dijk bellowed across the pitch.
The ball found Gang-cheol.
This time there were three of them. Van Dijk and two other defenders closed the net around him.
No escape route.
"You're done, kid."
Van Dijk launched a vicious sliding tackle.
At the same instant, another defender drove a shoulder into him.
In that split second of absolute crisis—
A faint smile touched Gang-cheol's lips.
Johan Cruyff's Turn (S−)
Reproducing the legend of Ajax.
Effect: Makes the opponent's prediction miss by 100% and shatters their balance.
Gang-cheol lifted his right foot high.
A perfect shooting motion.
Van Dijk's instincts took over — he threw his body to block the shooting angle.
Got you.
An instant before his foot struck the ball, Gang-cheol stopped.
His ankle twisted at an unnatural angle and flicked the ball behind his plant foot.
Tap. Whirl.
The ball vanished under Van Dijk's sliding tackle, and Gang-cheol's body spun like a top, peeling away in the opposite direction.
The Cruyff Turn.
The soul of Dutch football's god, Johan Cruyff, descending into the body of a thirteen-year-old Korean boy.
"……!!"
Van Dijk flailed at empty air and face-planted into the turf.
The other defenders, caught completely flat-footed, sat down hard on their backsides.
He had cut through them perfectly.
One-on-one with the goalkeeper.
The jeers in the stands twisted into screams.
The keeper rushed out to close the angle.
Gang-cheol didn't get greedy. He had already spotted the striker surging in from the side.
A soft, casual tap. A square pass.
"Put it in."
An empty net.
All the Ajax forward had to do was roll it home.
Ripple.
The scorer was an Ajax forward, but every spotlight in the stadium poured onto Gang-cheol.
He had made four defenders look like fools and set the table perfectly.
Time for the celebration.
Teammates came roaring toward him, but Gang-cheol raised a hand and stopped them.
Then he walked — slowly, very slowly — toward the stands.
Toward the fans who had been screaming abuse and hurling garbage.
He pressed an index finger to his lips.
Shh.
A gesture for silence.
Then he pointed at the number on his back. Thirty-four.
In that instant, thousands of voices in the stands fell quiet as if a switch had been flipped.
Mouths that had been jeering hung open, unable to close. Before overwhelming skill — and an even more overwhelming nerve — Rotterdam's madness went silent.
"Insane… that kid is thirteen?"
"A Cruyff Turn…? That was a Cruyff Turn just now, right?"
The halftime whistle.
On the way into the locker room, De Jong threw his arms around Gang-cheol.
"Ma! You're actually insane! Did you see that turn? Did you see Van Dijk's face? He looked like his country had just fallen!"
"Told you. Use your head."
Gang-cheol wiped the sweat off and answered flatly.
But his heart was hammering like mad. This was Europe. This was real football.
His skin was scraped raw and already bruising, but even the pain tasted sweet.
Second half.
Feyenoord self-destructed.
Mentally shattered, Van Dijk went in with a revenge tackle on Gang-cheol and earned a straight red card.
With a numerical advantage, Ajax poured on wave after wave of attacks, and the match turned into a one-sided massacre.
Twentieth minute of the second half.
Van Basten subbed Gang-cheol off.
The result was already decided, and he wanted to protect his treasure from the frenzied opposition.
As Gang-cheol walked toward the bench, the Ajax away fans rose to their feet and applauded.
And, astonishingly, even some of the Feyenoord supporters were clapping. An enemy's performance — but one they had no choice but to acknowledge.
Final Score: 3 : 0
Ajax Victory
After the match, in the mixed zone.
Dutch local reporters swarmed Gang-cheol.
"Ma Gang-cheol! That was your debut today. Playing a U-17 match at thirteen — were you nervous?"
"Was the Cruyff Turn something you practiced?"
"What do you think about the fans' jeering?"
Questions poured in.
Gang-cheol waved off the interpreter standing beside him and took the microphone himself.
Then he answered in fluent Dutch.
"The jeering? Honestly, it sounded like cheering to me."
The reporters stirred.
"If they're booing me that hard, it means they're that afraid of me. I'll take it as the highest compliment."
Pens flew across notebooks.
That evening.
In agent Jang Ho-seok's car, heading back to Amsterdam.
Ho-seok was grinning ear to ear, tapping the steering wheel.
"Jackpot. Absolute jackpot. Hey, you check the internet? You're number one on the Dutch real-time search rankings. They're already talking about a first-team call-up."
"First team is still too early. I need more physical development. I felt it today when I got hit. If U-17 is this physical, the senior game will snap my bones."
Gang-cheol refused to get carried away.
Today's victory had been a win of technique and psychological warfare — not of physique.
There was still so much left to fill in.
"Always so cold. Fine, no rush. Oh — and one more piece of good news."
Ho-seok winked at him in the rearview mirror.
"The club owner wants to meet you in person. This weekend you've been invited to the VIP box at the Amsterdam Arena — the first-team home ground."
"The owner?"
"Yeah. And… there's going to be one more guest."
"Who?"
"The marketing director from Nike Global HQ. They want to sign a sponsorship deal with you. Highest youth contract in history."
Gang-cheol's eyes lit up.
Nike. In his previous life, the world's greatest sports brand had been something he never even dared to dream of.
And now they were reaching out first — to a thirteen-year-old.
"The money's one thing, but the terms are incredible. They want to make a 'Ma Gang-cheol Signature Line' of football boots. Like Jordan."
At Ho-seok's words, Gang-cheol looked down at his worn-out boots. The wide-fitting pair Se-hui had bought for him.
The day he would wear those boots and conquer the world was no longer far off.
Gang-cheol gazed out at the Amsterdam canals sliding past the window.
City lights shimmered and broke across the water.
This is only the beginning.
He clenched his fist tight.
The conquest of Europe. The first piece of that vast puzzle had locked perfectly into place.
And in his ears, he could still hear them — the electric jeers and the roaring that had poured down on him.
Until the day that sound transformed into the Champions League anthem, Gang-cheol would not stop.