The Team's Changed Atmosphere
Do you know the most nerve-wracking moment in investing? It's the waiting.
Investing means putting your money into a company or an asset because you believe in its value. Then you have to ride out every swing and hold on until the result you want finally arrives.
If you're truly certain about that value, the outcome you want will come. No question.
Even from my position—knowing the future—I was still aware that the flow of this world was drifting in subtly different directions from the one I remembered. Plenty of times I found myself fretting, What if this starts heading somewhere weird?
Even so, I waited patiently all the way through. Waiting was the only thing I could do.
Right now, Feltner and Seongjin Hanul FC weren't all that different.
I knew the old days of Seongjin Maseong FC—when the main tactic was so-called "do-it-for-me soccer," the kind of hero-ball that forced individual brilliance from a few star players to solve every problem. That was exactly why I looked forward to the results Feltner would produce… and why I worried at the same time.
Would Feltner actually set this team on a proper track? The anxiety was hard to shake. From my seat, appointing Feltner and bringing in a whole crop of prospects was already a massive gamble.
Feltner was still a raw gem of a coach, far from fully formed. Coaching talent only matters once it blooms, and I had bet on that talent.
On top of that, a good number of the prospects who had joined us would, in the future, go on to play in Europe. Even the ones who didn't would become high earners and core pieces for K League clubs.
But right now they were still unfinished prospects. Compared to the current aces, their physiques and soccer sense were bound to fall short in more than a few ways.
In short, I had gathered an incomplete coach of talent and a pack of incomplete prospects of talent and dropped them all onto one team. This was an even bigger gamble than those past investments where, even knowing the answer, the variables still made me sweat.
"Hoooooo…."
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
Maybe it was the tension, but before I knew it I was drumming the desk with the pen in my hand.
"Chairman."
"Sorry, Yu-gyeong. Force of habit."
Yu-gyeong, who had been watching me carefully, asked the question.
"Are you anxious?"
"A little, yeah."
"It can't be company business, so this is about the club?"
She put it so politely that I simply nodded. It was the truth, and there was no point hiding it.
"That's right. I'm extremely anxious."
"Is there any need to be? These are the appointments you believe in."
"Anxious is anxious. You know how it is. If there's even a chance something could go wrong, you get the jitters."
It wasn't as if I had never shown Yu-gyeong this side of myself.
Especially early on, when I was staking the company's life on a completely new investment direction, the anxiety had been constant.
Grandfather, Father, the brothers—all of them treated it like an investment firm that could just fail and that would be that—but for me this firm was the company that would decide the freedom of my entire life.
The results I pulled here were the golden ticket that let me prove "I can live just fine on my own" while simultaneously claiming "I've achieved this much and I don't want anything more, so leave me alone."
Maybe that was why it had hurt so badly. There were days my stomach would seize up out of nowhere.
Fortunately the big-tech companies I remembered had delivered report cards that didn't stray too far from the future I knew, which was the only reason I was sitting here now.
"Why don't you go take a look yourself?"
"At the club?"
"Yes. Watching the players train might put your mind at ease."
It was a good suggestion. A good suggestion, except—
"Yu-gyeong. Be honest. If you were a regular employee or mid-level manager and the CEO suddenly dropped by without a word, how would you feel?"
"Mm. I understand what you mean."
Right? It would feel pretty terrible, wouldn't it? Beyond terrible—honestly a little gross.
Same for me. If I were that employee I'd be thinking, I should just quit this damn company.
"Though in your case, Chairman, you might be something of an exception."
"Me? Why me?"
"Why do you think. Chairman, you have the kind of looks that make men in their twenties lose their minds. If you showed up, morale would probably skyrocket."
"What am I, a cheerleader?"
"Something like that. You don't dance, but you do throw a lot of money around. A high-paying cheerleader."
That was actually kind of appealing—if you ignored the part where I was the cheerleader.
"Haaaah, Yu-gyeong. Stop joking."
"I was half serious."
"Which means the other half was a joke."
After a bit of back-and-forth, I decided to punish the version of Yu-gyeong who had let Human Jeong Yu-gyeong out during work hours instead of Professional Jeong Yu-gyeong.
"I just had a great idea."
"What is it, Chairman."
I grinned at her, and only then did Yu-gyeong seem to realize she had made a mistake. Too late, of course.
"Yu-gyeong, go film the training."
"I must have misheard you, Chairman."
"You heard me perfectly. Get over to the clubhouse right now and film the training."
For the record, it was currently eleven o'clock. Lunchtime was right around the corner.
In other words, I was telling her to use her lunch break for a quick business trip.
"I have to assist with the Chairman's meal, so I can't."
"Nah, I'll go to the cafeteria by myself. Nice to eat alone for once."
"How could I possibly leave the Chairman to dine alone?"
"Leave me. Let's eat a little more comfortably today, okay?"
I walked over and patted her on the shoulder.
"What are you waiting for? Get going."
"Understood, Chairman."
Watching Yu-gyeong tremble as she bowed her head and agreed was almost too cute.
She was older than me, and ice-cold when she was working, but the moment you teased her she turned ridiculously adorable.
"Bring snacks on the way back~"
"Please just eat whatever's already in the office."
Irritation must have started to kick in; Yu-gyeong let a little of the formality drop.
It was the sort of thing I could have scolded her for, but since I had been the one tormenting her as her boss, I quietly accepted the little sulk. If you thought of it as a tantrum, there was no reason not to indulge it.
At any rate, Yu-gyeong really did head straight to Seongjin Hanul FC and came back at four with footage of both the players' meals and their training.
And I had no choice but to praise her for it.
"Yu-gyeong, let's leave early today."
"Really?"
"I didn't expect you to do this well."
If you want to take the temperature of any group, do you know the best time to check?
Mealtime. Watch how people eat and you can read the atmosphere pretty accurately. Yu-gyeong had filmed the players' lunch on her phone, and thanks to that I could see their faces.
Two things lived in those expressions.
One was exhaustion from an absolutely brutal training load. The other was…
Joy at the fact that they were actually getting better.
The proof was right there in this conversation.
The three prospects I had been watching most carefully—No Geon-woo, Baek Hyeon, and Kang Si-woo—plus Cha Jeong-woo from the existing Seongjin Hanul FC roster. The four of them were eating together.
Three of them even shared the same last syllable in their given names. Was that on purpose?
"Whoa… this is fucking brutal…"
"I just want to sleep right now…"
"Same…"
"I think I've got a bruise somewhere…"
"Geon-woo, if you've got a bruise anywhere, make sure you tell them. Coach Feltner really pays attention to that stuff."
"Yeah, I should. Still feels a little disappointing, though."
"How so?"
"If I say something, today's training intensity will drop a bit. And I feel like I'm improving so much right now."
"Oooooh. Still, if you get hurt it's all for nothing, so report it."
"Yes, I will."
They were talking without any awkwardness, and the content of that talk was concern for each other's health mixed with satisfaction about the training itself.
Apparently Feltner had locked down the training atmosphere even more thoroughly than I had imagined. The quality of the sessions seemed outstanding, too.
Another conversation worth watching was the one between the old hands—the captaincy duo of Min Jun-seok and Nam Gi-cheol.
"Jun-seok hyung, the atmosphere's been pretty solid lately, don't you think?"
"Yeah. No one's yapping about weird girls anymore. Everyone just talks soccer."
"That's thanks to the coach and the owner."
"True. Still… aren't you a little scared?"
"Of the kids growing?"
"Yeah. At this rate we might lose our spots next season."
"Then we just have to give it everything we've got so that doesn't happen. If we lose them, that's on us."
The fact that the player saying "we might lose our spots" was Min Jun-seok—already written off as surplus to requirements in K League 1—made my chest ache a little. It felt like he was looking straight at his own future.
Still, there was nothing to be done. For this team, the hard-growing No Geon-woo was more necessary than Min Jun-seok right now.
Listening to those conversations, I checked the calendar once. The restart date for K League 2 was marked on it.
I'd have to clear that day. I was going to watch the match in person.