Buried Treasure, Treasure to Polish
Three days after the match against Anyang Purples, I started going through the report Feltner had submitted.
According to him, the Anyang Purples game had laid bare two clear weaknesses in our Seongjin Hanul FC.
The first was the absence of a dedicated playmaker.
Feltner had been deploying Cha Jeong-woo as an inverted wingback and loading him with both wide breakthroughs and playmaking duties—a multi-tool role that was simply asking too much of one player.
That burden had shown itself in full against Anyang Purples. The moment two or more markers locked onto Cha Jeong-woo, the team’s ball circulation slowed to a crawl and the attacking build-up turned sluggish. On top of that, Jeong-woo’s stamina drained far faster than expected.
In that match we had scraped by thanks to Baek Hyeon, our center-back with excellent feet, who shuttled between playmaker and center-back duties and acted as a kind of lubricant for the whole side. But the higher the caliber of opponent, the more catastrophic this problem would become.
What the team needed, therefore, was a proper playmaker—someone who could take the weight off Cha Jeong-woo’s shoulders and give the attack a cleaner, sharper edge. Feltner’s request was simple: allocate a budget so he could buy one.
The second weakness he flagged was the wing line, which had become painfully thin once Cha Jeong-woo dropped back to wingback.
Seongjin Hanul FC’s wings had never been a soft spot before; we had possessed an outstanding winger in Cha Jeong-woo himself. Shifting him to wingback for cover had left the flanks weaker than they had any right to be.
It was a flaw I had never noticed while watching the matches—probably because I still saw the game with nothing more than an ordinary fan’s eye. Or maybe Feltner had been papering over it with tactics all along, or Jeong-woo had been filling the void better than anyone could have imagined.
Either way, what our Feltner was actually asking for in the report was straightforward. He did not want another player signing.
I’m going to rebirth Jo Tae-ung as a winger. Find me a dedicated striking coach.
Not a player— a coach. And not just any coach, but one whose job was to resurrect an existing player. Feltner never failed to exceed expectations.
And “rebirth” for Jo Tae-ung… the word fit perfectly.
Back in the Seongjin Maseong FC days, Jo Tae-ung had been the team’s ace. Never mind that Cha Jeong-woo had been the real engine; on the surface it was Tae-ung who occupied the striker’s role Kang Si-woo now held and carried the scoring burden as the club’s face.
The reason Feltner refused to use him was obvious: at striker he simply could not match Kang Si-woo. Si-woo was currently putting up dominant numbers in the second division, and alongside Cha Jeong-woo he was the Seongjin Hanul player with the clearest path to Europe. Being benched by a talent of that caliber was only natural—the gulf in raw ability was that wide.
And now Feltner wanted to take the man who had been shoved aside by that generational gift and reinvent him as a winger. How could I not be excited?
All right. Two jobs for me, then.
One: give Feltner every scrap of support he needed to hunt down a playmaker.
Two: find him the new striking coach who would turn Jo Tae-ung into a winger.
With the tasks settled, it was time for me to put some muscle behind them—setting the budget for the playmaker search and gathering the materials he needed, then using the coaching network I had built while recruiting the previous staff to scout for a dedicated attacking coach.
Those two things were my plate right now. If Feltner needed anything else he would ask; no point fretting beyond that.
I sorted out the budget I could free up for him and dug up the youth-team footage he had requested from Seongjin Hanul FC’s academy, then handed everything over. For the coaching side I simply pulled every striker specialist currently looking for work and forwarded the whole list. I may not know players, but I have zero eye for coaches—your problem now.
And now…
…time to do some actual Hanul Invest work. Ugh. I really don’t want to. When am I supposed to get this done?
“Hey, Yoo-kyung.”
“Yes, Chairman.”
“Could you maybe take over what I’m doing right now? I’d really like to spend a little more time on the soccer stuff…”
Naturally the sentence never finished. One more word and I could already see the look on Yoo-kyung’s face that promised she would settle accounts after work.
Okay, sorry, my bad. I’ll sit quietly and work.
The budget Shepin sent over was, frankly, more than satisfying.
With that kind of money I could have plucked almost any player I wanted—not only from K League 1 but from places like the Brazilian league as well. She clearly understood how vital a playmaker was.
Armed with that full-throated support, I pulled two all-nighters watching matches from every league I could get my hands on, K League 1 included. By the end I had reached a firm conclusion.
“…No. None of them work.”
K League 1 simply did not have a player who met my standard. The few who came close belonged to clubs that would slap an NFS tag on them the moment anyone inquired. As for Brazil, the league’s playmakers tended to be expensive veterans already in the twilight of their careers; prying one loose was impossible. The names I checked on a whim turned out to be more crack-type attackers than true creators anyway.
I briefly considered snatching a Spanish prospect, but almost no one of that quality would drop into K League 2—least of all the caliber I wanted.
Money was not the issue. We had more than enough. The problem was the level of the league itself.
Among the players who might actually come to K League 2, none possessed the talent I was after. Among the players who possessed that talent, none would come to K League 2—no matter how much cash I waved.
“Huuuuuh… this is hard.”
A playmaker… specifically the kind who could flourish under the cover of our captain Gi-cheol and box-to-box midfielder Dong-hyeon and simply let his gift run wild. And the playmaker position, in the end, demanded pure, God-given talent. Talent like that never came cheap.
Which left me with only one realistic path: find a gifted prospect.
“Guess I should watch the footage Shepin sent.”
Buried inside the mountain of clips she had attached was footage from the soccer team at Seongjin High School, one of Seongjin Hanul FC’s feeder schools.
I had not asked for match tapes. I had asked for training sessions—far more efficient if you wanted to see as many players as possible.
I started rolling through them one by one on the computer in my office.
Dozens of young talents were out there kicking a ball with everything they had. How many of them, I wondered, would actually protect that talent all the way through a professional career? Far more would hit the same wall I once had and choose another road. Knowing that only made me root for them harder.
Maybe I was seeing my old self in them. Foolish of me, really.
Before long I was no longer watching with the cool eye of a scout hunting prospects; I was watching the way you cheer someone on.
Don’t break the way I did. Don’t run short of talent the way I did.
Carrying that quiet wish, I kept going—until one player snagged my attention and refused to let go.
Small frame, almost painfully thin for a soccer player. If I had to describe him, he looked like a stiff breeze might lift him clean off the ground.
Height maybe a shade over 170 cm, or right on it. Weight? Honestly, low sixties at best. You had to squint to believe he was a soccer player at all.
Perhaps that was why he trained with his shoulders slightly hunched, as if even kids who looked younger than him were quietly dismissing him. Yet the moment the ball touched his feet I knew.
That first touch. That vision. The weight and angle of every pass, the silky way he slipped out of pressure. I had just spent two entire days wasting my time. Yes—pure, unadulterated waste.
The real uncut gem had been sitting right next door the whole time, and I had been hunting for stones on the far horizon.
I called Shepin at once. The only person who would understand this rush of exhilaration was her.
—Rrring…
—Rrring…
—Click.
“Nnngh… hello…?”
Her voice was thick with sleep. She had clearly been out cold.
“Sorry to wake you, Shepin. Something urgent.”
“It’s fine… Feltner. I was only dozing…. So… what is it…?”
“I found him. The final puzzle piece for Seongjin Hanul FC.”
“……You found a playmaker?”
The drowsiness vanished from her voice in an instant. Moments like this reminded me how deeply she loved the game. Serving a chairman like her was pure luck.
“Yes. I finally found him.”
“Which club, which player? If the budget’s short I can send more.”
“No need. Just roll the leftover into our promotion bonus.”
“What?”
The pure bafflement in her tone was almost funny. I hadn’t known she could sound like that.
“Seongjin High School, number 20—Yun Seo-jin. He’s the last piece of the puzzle.”
Yes. He was the final piece that would complete Seongjin Hanul FC.
And as for Jo Tae-ung…
He was the piece that would be changed in order to finish the picture.