Sunderland: Not Thunderland, But the Split Land

This was the City of Sunderland, in Tyne and Wear, along England's North Sea coast.

If you had to pin it to a Korean equivalent, it was something like Incheon — a coastal hub of the northeast. Thunderland? No. Sunderland. The name meant "split land," after the old monastery that once stood famous along the River Wear cutting through the city: a place set apart from the world.

A workers' city, built on shipbuilding and coal. In that sense it was closer to Taebaek in Gangwon Province. The coal trade had withered and taken much of the city's vitality with it, but the passion for football still burned like an active volcano.

"Hoo… so this is it. The neighborhood I'm going to live in."

Han Shin stepped off the train at Sunderland station in a cap and plain black tracksuit, dragging a white suitcase behind him. The Manager War filming and tournament schedule had been brutal, and this was the preseason — the league was over, the players were on holiday. The club had told their Korean champion he was free to take a week as a kind of vacation.

Even so, wanting to see the city of the team he was about to manage was only natural. He had left London's King's Cross at dawn on a Grand Central train and spent roughly four hours getting here.

"Yawn… you can already smell the sea from the station."

The sharp salt tang tickled his nose. Traditional red-brick buildings with matching roofs greeted him the moment he stepped outside. I'm sleepy. Coffee first.

In front of the station, small shops and cafés lined the street, Sunderland AFC flags hanging everywhere, people hurrying past. Among them were supporters already wearing the club's white kit with its bold red stripe.

They're in kit even though it's not a match day.

You almost never saw that in Korea. People in football shirts were usually early-morning amateur players or folks heading to exercise — no one living in Seoul casually walked around in an FC Seoul jersey. If they wore a kit at all, it was some famous overseas club: Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal.

That was the difference between the English leagues and the K League. The K League was, surprisingly, one of the better-drawing football leagues in the world. It lived under the shadow of baseball and got dismissed in endless comparisons with Japan's J League, but with average paid attendances over ten thousand it still ranked inside the global top twenty. England's third tier — EFL League One — sat at twenty-first. That alone told you something about how much the English loved the game.

But the biggest difference was the supporters. European fans overwhelmingly backed the team of the place they were born and raised. 1888 — the year the world's first football league was born in the sport's mother country. It was also the year Jack the Ripper terrorized Britain. On the Korean peninsula, the Gapsin Coup had failed only four years earlier, and the Donghak Peasant Revolution was still six years away. For the English, football carried a history that deep. They had every right to be proud of being the birthplace of the game.

To them, football was not just a sport. It was local history, a source of life, a community. Through regional events, charity work, and youth academies, clubs forged deep bonds with their cities, and that ferocious loyalty to the home ground had been passed down for generations. That glue was what kept England's football pyramid — all twenty-one tiers of it — ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠alive.

Korean professional football, by contrast, had a shorter history and frequent franchise relocations for operational reasons, so loyalty tended to run thinner. Fans often followed a player or a personal preference more than a club. Attachment to a particular star or manager usually outweighed loyalty to a badge.

Still, compared to London this definitely feels like the countryside. Barely a single carriageway.

He walked into the Costa Coffee right in front of the station — Britain's answer to Starbucks, the world's second-largest coffee chain, found on every corner of the country.

"Costa's got to be Diego Costa. No — Rui Costa?"

He muttered the nonsense to himself with a quiet snort. Diego Costa, the Spanish striker; Rui Costa, the Portuguese midfielder. Costa was a common surname across Spain, Portugal, and Italy — Latin roots, meaning "coast."

He ordered from the woman at the counter.

"One iced americano, please."

"Of course. Primo, Medio, or Massimo?"

Starbucks's Tall, Grande, Venti — small, medium, large.

"Massimo, please."

Massimo meant "the greatest" in Italian. Which meant the founder of Costa Coffee was probably Italian — the country famous for coffee. One tiny detail, and you could already glimpse the founder's origins.

I'm going to have to read my players' details just as carefully.

"Sugar or syrup?"

"No. Just black."

He hated sweet things.

"Cake or anything else?"

"I'm fine."

"Alright. That'll be three pounds seventy-five."

About sixty-five hundred won. He handed over his card. The cashier kept glancing at him, then carefully asked:

"Excuse me… but are you Mr. Han? From the telly?"

Even the counter staff recognized him. The passion for football in this country…

No need to draw attention. Better to deflect.

"Me? No. I just look a bit like him."

"Ah, right. We don't get many Asians around here lately, so sorry about that."

"It's fine."

"Payment's gone through… but you're really not Manager Han Shin?"

She looked him up and down, as if determined to prove her eyes weren't lying. She held onto the receipt along with his card and wouldn't let go.

"I'm really, really sorry, but could you take the cap off just once?"

"If you insist, I don't mind."

He had no choice. He lifted a hand toward the brim — and the woman smiled.

"I'm joking. I'll get your americano ready."

"Thanks."

She already knew. Should I have just given her an autograph?

He pulled the cap lower and sat down. Han Shin — the guy who had made a name for himself as "K-Hannibal" from a corner of his room as a famous Football Manager player. Against his parents' and everyone else's objections, he had come to London to study and had been living poor for a full year already.

A poor student? In London, with its murderous cost of living, you ended up looking like a beggar unless you had serious money. He had always made coffee from a capsule machine in a one-room flat. Being able to sit in a café at leisure and order an americano felt like a small luxury — all because winning the Manager War had brought him a prize of £600,000. A billion won.

"Except it isn't a billion."

What he had underestimated about Britain was the tax. Premier League players endured it, but it was the reason golfers, tennis stars, and athletes of every kind avoided British events. Fifty percent. He would walk away with £348,000 — a little over five hundred million won.

At the start of a career, five hundred million was still real money. The prize was supposed to hit his account soon. He wouldn't be short for a while — but he still had to be careful. This was Britain, after all.

"One iced americano."

He took the coffee, sat at a round table toward the back, and skimmed the contract Sunderland had offered him.

Han Shin was nothing more than a one-year head coach. From the club's perspective he was only one piece of a vast Sunderland revival project; they could not risk the unknown, so they had offered a short deal.

"Head coach, though…"

A manager's role split into two broad types depending on the power granted. Manager and head coach. A manager received full authority over the club — Sir Alex Ferguson, who had led Manchester United for decades, was the classic example. A head coach sat under a director of football, with limited say over transfers, expected to focus on coaching and match-day management. When Mourinho took over at Tottenham, his title had been head coach; recruitment was driven by the famously thrifty chairman Daniel Levy and the sporting director.

As modern football ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠grew more sophisticated, handing one person control over everything from transfers to overall club operations was becoming rarer. Han Shin's title was head coach. Meaning he could not simply pick whatever players he wanted. For a man with no professional football experience, a one-year deal and restricted recruitment rights were, in a way, reasonable.

"But my contract can become one-plus-one — or stretch as long as four years."

It was a short-term deal, yet the clauses hanging off it caught his eye.

Han Shin's salary was £350,000 — roughly five hundred million won a year. Combined with the tournament prize money, the club was effectively putting a billion won in his hands. From their side it was a bargain: they had offered a wage about sixty percent below the average manager's and locked in a deal that cost them little. His weekly pay worked out to around ten million won. Far less than the average manager, but as a rookie he had no real choice. At least there were incentives.

The first incentive threshold was sixth place because in the Championship the top two went up automatically, while the teams finishing third through sixth contested the promotion playoffs. The playoff final at Wembley was famous as the single match with the biggest stakes on the planet — enough to make even the Champions League, where Europe's kings were decided, look modest. Win that one game and you became the third team promoted to the Premier League. Promotion alone dropped roughly two hundred billion won in broadcast revenue into a club's lap. Survive the first season without relegation and it climbed to four hundred billion. There was no jackpot quite like it.

That was why finishing sixth or better guaranteed Han Shin an incentive. And if he took Sunderland up to the Premier League, he would pocket a full million pounds — seventeen hundred million won. But seventeen hundred million out of two hundred billion was less than one percent: cheap for a job that hard.

Of course, not every clause was generous.

"Like the termination conditions, for example… this coffee's a bit bitter."

4. Termination Conditions.