Counter Attack. Zenit (4)
Emily, without realizing it, had stomped hard on the interpreter’s foot in her flustered apology, leaving the poor man not knowing what to do with himself.
“I’m so sorry, Interpreter. That must hurt terribly.”
The young, greenhorn interpreter was already breaking out in a cold sweat.
“Aigoo… no, it’s fine. Honestly, I was wondering if I even needed to translate that bit—skipping it probably saved my life.”
Sergei snickered.
“The interpreter stopped translating halfway, big-chested lady. I have no idea what you just said.”
The interpreter relayed it to Emily exactly as spoken.
“‘Big-chested lady. I don’t understand a single word you’re saying,’ he says.”
“What did you just say? From now on, Interpreter, translate everything without holding back.”
At her icy tone, Wendel pointed straight at Emily.
“I said your chest is big. Sexy.”
They’re escalating to sexual harassment now? This is really… ha. Fine. But first, the manager before me.
“Not me—what did you just say about Manager Han Shin?”
Coach Vladimir and his entourage looked momentarily flustered, then laughed it off with forced casualness.
“Ah, just a friendly Russian-style joke. Don’t take it so seriously.”
“If you keep frowning like that, you’ll get wrinkles on that pretty face!”
“Want to come out and have a little fun with us, lady?”
The Russian interpreter trailing after Emily had been through hell since morning—translating one moment, getting his foot crushed the next.
“Flirting? Tell them no thanks.”
“Come on, we’re fun! Let’s go dancing together!”
Wendel reached toward her hip; Emily slapped his hand away with a sharp smack.
“Get lost. Who do you think you are, putting your hands wherever you please?”
“Ah! This woman—!”
Wendel’s hand shot up at her bold rejection.
Emily narrowed her eyes and glared at them all.
“What era do you think this is? Behavior like that isn’t acceptable even as a joke.”
She dusted both hands off as if something filthy had stuck to them.
“And Han Shin is the manager who pours day and night into our club. Don’t think for a second that sneering and trash-talking him will diminish him. He’s on a completely different level from garbage like you.”
“Ohhh~~ she just called us garbage~~ This woman’s got fire!”
“Every rose has its thorns~”
Emily’s frame was hardly threatening to grown men—especially ones who made their living in sports.
Sensing a fight about to break out, Smith and the front-office staff tried to restrain her, but she shook them off.
“Let go. I can’t just stand by and watch. This isn’t some playful banter. Let’s cancel this friendly match right here on our end.”
Vladimir shrugged and sneered.
“Emily, was it? Do you really need to get so serious? It was just a light joke. Why are you so worked up, pretty one?”
Emily didn’t back down an inch.
“You will go to our club staff and Manager Han Shin and apologize directly for your rudeness. Racial remarks in particular will never be tolerated.”
Then she turned the screws on Zenit’s situation.
“Or shall we blow this up into a major article based on our testimony? This is your England tour, isn’t it? I’ll call every single English club front office, cancel every last one of lowlife, filthy Zenit’s remaining fixtures, and have you shipped straight back home the moment you land. How does that sound?”
FC Zenit had pushed through a tour of Brexit Britain precisely to dodge EU sanctions. Sunderland was merely the appetizer on their banquet menu.
Vladimir realized that letting this escalate any further would spiral out of control, so he bowed his head to Emily.
“If our Russian-style jokes didn’t sit well with you, then I’m sorry~”
“Is that what an apology looks like? Shall we ban you from every facility and the pitch until kickoff? Or should I dump every racist remark straight to the press right now? How about it—want to watch the whole place explode?!”
Emily’s tirade was enough to cow them.
Vladimir gave a curt nod toward the players; they all bowed in unison.
“We’re sorry!!!”
“If anything like this happens again, this friendly will be canceled, and we’ll work with the embassy to make the incident an international issue.”
“It won’t happen again. We’re truly sorry!”
“Hmph. We’ll see. There won’t be a next time. We’re leaving.”
At Emily’s signal the Sunderland staff moved as one.
Even while bowing, some of the players still snuck glances and whispered appreciatively about Emily’s figure.
“That ass is killer.”
“At least celebrity-level.”
“The chest too. Wow~”
“More than that—I’d love to throw a fiery bitch like that on a bed and just—”
“Aigoo… Wendel, for once in your life, shut up!”
Chief Coach Tymoshchuk, returning from the restroom, found the players’ appraisal so pathetic that he smacked each of them on the head in turn with a water bottle.
“What kind of talk is that out of your mouths? And these training facilities were specially provided for us by Sunderland. Treat them cleanly and with care. After personal prep we train as a team—understood?”
“Alright, alright, let’s all go train like the chief coach says~”
“Let’s go~”
Are they gone?
“They left?”
Once out of Tymoshchuk’s line of sight, the immature men stripped off their tops, twirled their shirts, and rampaged every which way.
“Who needs training~ Let’s play~~!”
“Wooooaaaaah~”
Afternoon tactical training session.
As the Sunderland players drilled the “Diamond Counter” tactic, Han Shin barked instructions.
“Organic transitions from the midfielders are the key! Now—Tiger!”
“Tiger!”
Abdullah, Chris, Jobe, and Clarke—shifting positions without regard for their usual roles—felt their faces burn with embarrassment.
Why? Because beyond the fence, black-haired foreigners rarely seen in England’s North East were screaming like banshees.
“Kyaaaaaaaaaah!”
“Manager Han Shin!! Look over here just once!!”
“You’re so handsome!”
“Please read my DM just once!!”
If you bought a ticket, were you Korean?
If non-English “Earthlings” made up 20 percent of the crowd, Korean fans—especially women—accounted for nearly 80 percent of that. Every last one of them had come to see Han Shin’s face.
Most of them had zero interest in the actual training, or even football itself.
“Look over here too!!!”
They trained massive idol-concert-grade telephoto lenses solely on Han Shin.
A Korean press crew had also been granted a fifteen-minute filming window.
“Some of the instructions are in Korean, PD?”
“If we edit this and upload it, it’s a scoop—a total scoop!”
The players were used to interacting with fans, but this unprecedented celebrity-level attention was a first. It was hardly an environment where they could focus purely on football.
On top of that, the Korean word “Tiger” sounded so round and cute compared to English that moving to it only deepened their mortification.
Han Shin roared.
“Move faster, damn it! On Tuesday even more Korean fans might show up—are you going to lumber around like sloths then too?”
“No, sir!”
“Alright~ Cat! Get up the pitch, Chris!”
“C…at!!”
“Too quiet!”
“Cat!!”
The fans giggled at the Korean chorus and joined Han Shin in shouting.
“Ca——t!!!!! So cute!!!”
“The fans are giving the instructions for you!”
At the cry of “Cat,” Håkon dropped deep while Chris and Bellingham pushed up as a dual strike force.
FUCK
Jesus… I want to crawl into a hole.
Han Shin called out to the fans.
“Recommend just one animal name!”
“Waaaaaaaah—!”
“Kya——ah!”
“Black cat!!”
“Kung Fu Panda!!!”
Han Shin spun his index finger like a revolving door, issuing the command.
“Alright! The fans have decided. Kung Fu Panda! Clarke takes the number 10 spot! Execute!”
Clarke, pouring sweat, voiced a small complaint.
“Manager, honestly this is mortifying!!! Can’t we wait until your fans leave before we continue?!”
“No. This embarrassing memory will make the positions crystal-clear even during the match the day after tomorrow. So we use this moment to the fullest.”
“Yes, sir!!!”
Clarke, resigned, stripped off his jersey under the blazing sun and sprinted—his own little performance for the fans.
Amazingly, not a single person paid him any attention.
Clarke, this is how you do fan service.
Han Shin clapped and singled one person out for praise.
“The one who suggested Kung Fu Panda? Perfect! Thank you!”
A beautiful female fan collapsed in a mock heatstroke faint.
Instantly every animal name under the sun poured out.
“Rabbit!!!”
“Shark! Baby shark!!”
“Wolf!!”
“Kyaaaaah—! Manager, I’ll drink your sweat—no, even your spit!! Please, holy water!”
Watching it all, Emily puffed her cheeks and spun her foot in circles.
Tch… Manager, you’re way too popular.
She wanted to discuss the morning’s clash with Zenit.
It’s only a friendly… their fault, and canceling wouldn’t even cost a penalty fee.
But he looked far too busy right now, so she decided to tell him before the six-o’clock evening event for the fans.
On the other side, the Korean KKR broadcast crew had gathered in a huddle for an emergency meeting.
They had no idea this was part of tactical training and were thoroughly confused.
The KKR writer asked the PD,
“Manager Han Shin is shouting animal names with the players—what on earth is this? Could it be some message to the world?”
“Hold on. Tiger. Shark. Panda. Is this a campaign to raise awareness about animals endangered by climate change?”
“Just like you said, PD—maybe it’s a message to protect the Earth.”
At that moment a female staffer from rival broadcaster SBB joined them.
“Does anyone at KKR actually know what Manager Han Shin is doing?”
The KKR writer in the ball cap started to share their theory.
“No, we think it’s about endangered—”
The KKR PD clamped a hand over the writer’s mouth in a flash.
“That’s classified!”
The SBB staffer heard the words “endangered” and wrongly assumed she had her scoop.
“Ah~ if you don’t know, we’ll be on our way.”
Scoop. Headline: Han Shin shouts global warming from England.
Once the surprise visit ended, the KKR PD scolded the writer.
“Writer-nim, what do you think you’re doing?!”
“I just blurted it out… I’m sorry, PD.”
The cameraman, who had been filming the whole time, could only stare in disbelief.
You idiots… those are the names of the tactics.
But the PD lived in his own world. Knowing his own suggestion would never land, he decided not to bother explaining.
“Isn’t this the twelve zodiac animals?”
“PD, since when is there a panda in the zodiac?!”
Whether it was the fierce sunlight or the conversation itself, the cameraman felt dizzy and his chest grew unbearably tight.
That evening at six, elegant tables and chairs had been set out on the grass of the Stadium of Light.
The scorching sun had slipped past the horizon, and the soft light of dusk wrapped everything in gold.
The club had invited roughly five hundred VIP fans and, for visitors from Korea and the rest of Asia, recruited an additional five hundred.
A special dinner had been prepared.
Once the elegant proceedings were well underway, it was Han Shin’s turn with the microphone.
After a perfectly ordinary greeting, he dropped a bombshell without warning.
“Compared to our Sunderland, FC Zenit—no, Russian football itself—is pathetic!!!”
Han Shin flung his palm wide open.
Every camera swung onto him, projecting his image onto the giant screen.
Five stars?
No.
“Five points!!”
Five points?
The fans murmured.
“In two days, right here on this grass where you’re sitting, we will beat Zenit 5–0!!!”
“Waaaaaaaaah—!”
“Please give us all your support!!”