What Can Be Sold, What Can Be Bought (6)
There was a rumor making the rounds lately among the staff of Real Madrid's youth teams. The club president had apparently taken an interest in a handful of the youth players. There was no way to verify whether it was true or not, but the fact that the football director — known as "the president's faithful dog" — was treating certain prospects with unusual attention lent the story considerable weight.
The prospects in question were, of course, Nicolás and Kang Doin.
Nicolás Becker, who had passed his trial at age ten and had been playing for the club ever since. And Kang Doin, who had flown in from Korea and earned a call-up to the reserve team in less than six months. Using the two of them as evidence, the youth staff arrived at a theory.
1. Both had been promoted from the Juvenil ranks as genuine talents. 2. No team turns away a gem from its own academy. 3. Therefore, both would be making their first-team debuts soon.
By this elegant syllogism, the pair would be developed into core players of the first team in the not-so-distant future — that was the reasoning they clung to. Whether any of it was actually true, nobody could say, but rumors have never really required a verdict on the facts. People just talk because they're bored.
Besides, it wasn't entirely baseless speculation. Hadn't Barcelona recently succeeded in manufacturing a second Messi through sheer stubbornness and gone on to win the Treble? When your rival was pumping out players who would cost hundreds of millions in transfer fees with a single flick of their academy system, it was hardly strange for a competing club to think, maybe I should try that too.
Which meant the rumor that Kang Doin's string of promotions owed itself to the president's favoritism was hard to dismiss as pure nonsense.
"……"
Realistically speaking, what sixteen-year-old on Earth gets called up to the reserve team less than six months after joining? However impressive his ability, the sheer speed of his promotion was unprecedented. So yes, the kid was good — but that ability had surely been somewhat exaggerated. At least, that was what the reserve team's head coach had been quietly telling himself.
"……You still think that?"
"……"
At Manuel's chuckling question, the head coach fell silent. He was the one who had opposed starting Kang Doin in the first pre-season match. It wasn't that he was a racist, or that he envied or resented young players. It was only logical, after all. The boy had looked good in training, but training and competitive matches were two entirely different beasts. The proper way to develop a youth player was to start him off with substitute appearances, gradually build up his minutes, and let him acclimate to third-division football at his own pace —
— or so the head coach had believed.
"I wouldn't say you were wrong. I still think that's the right way to bring along most young players."
"……"
"But there are always exceptions."
Manuel sat on the bench with one leg crossed over the other, calmly watching the scene unfold on the pitch.
Real Madrid Castilla CF : 2
Valencia CF Mestalla : 0
The first half was already pushing toward its fortieth minute. And the black-haired boy, unsatisfied even with two goals, was still tearing across the field, hungry for more.
The first goal had come from off-ball movement, slicing into the space behind the defense; the second was a header from a corner kick. Personally, I liked the second one better. It had taken going shoulder-to-shoulder with the opposing center-back and still getting my head on the ball. Call it the dividends of the steady weight training I'd put in over the off-season — I was starting to find that even a tussle with grown men barely troubled me anymore.
"Lucas! Slip it forward!"
Either way, one thing hadn't changed: off-ball movement was what I was most confident in. Creating goals with the fewest possible touches — that was my preferred style of attack. And I had spent the entire pre-season drilling it into my fellow midfielders.
"Joder!"
"Stop number thirty!"
Real Madrid Castilla on the attack. Our midfielder collected the ball just outside the final third and played a precise pass to me, tucked in between the opposing full-back and center-back.
I'd received it at the edge of the penalty box, shifted slightly toward the left. The moment I trapped the ball and pivoted to face the goal I'd been shielding, the entire defensive line lurched violently. My position was evidently threatening enough to terrify them.
Why else would the full-back behind me grab at my shirt, while the center-back rushing in from the side frantically accelerated to block my path? Not that any of it meant a thing.
Tuk—
The defenders' efforts to stop me shattered with a single touch. I decelerated in an instant and cut the ball inside the box; the center-back lost his footing on the abrupt change of direction, while the full-back — worried, perhaps, that if he crashed into me he'd concede a penalty — froze in an awkward half-crouch.
Given that I'd received the ball on the left side of the box with a fairly ugly shooting angle, the full-back's decision to avoid giving up a penalty wasn't a bad one.
Which meant their goal could only be blamed on one thing: the goalkeeper, whose weight had already committed toward the far post.
"----------!!"
An instep shot aimed at the near post. The powerful, driven shot skimmed the keeper's fingertips and ripped into the net, and the modest stands erupted in a rolling white wave.
Forty-first minute. Three to nil.
The second half remained, but it was no exaggeration to say the match had been decided right here.
"Doni---!!"
"That's a hat trick?!"
"Dios mío!"
Dodging the lunatics shrieking strange war cries as they tried to crash my celebration, I jogged lightly toward the corner flag. And so came my third goal celebration of the day.
Tap the crest on the left side of my chest a few times with my right hand. Point only the index finger of my right hand down and touch it to the ground once. Then raise the finger skyward and look up at the heavens.
My own signature celebration, refined over more than twenty years. Simple and uncomplicated — but goal celebrations are better when they're simple. They're easy to copy, and later on they sell well in video games.
I know this for a fact. There was a time when every Korean fan copied this celebration the moment anyone scored. I became a World Cup hero and filmed a few commercials doing it, too.
That's right.
Even goal celebrations, ultimately, are money.
The first half ended three-nothing, with no further scoring. Perhaps because the deficit had grown so lopsided, the Valencia reserve players trudged toward the locker room wearing anything but bright expressions — and this was supposed to be a friendly, no less. I felt a flicker of guilt, but what could I do?
Climbing upward has always meant trampling someone beneath you. Someone has to lay the groundwork for the people on top to shine brighter. And everyone wants to shine from above. Which is to say, the human species is wired to want to trample one another. Even the caste systems that divided people into ranks were surely born from this same ugly desire.
"Doni."
I was dredging up memories of high school world history class as I stepped into the locker room when a dull thud landed against my back. No need to check who'd delivered the light slap. Manuel, grinning with his usual mischief, praised my first-half performance.
"Good work out there. You really did score three, huh?"
"You told me to score three."
"I didn't think you'd actually pull it off!"
A man who spends more than half of every day smiling, Manuel was honest to a fault with his emotions. Play well, and the praise flowed without restraint. Play badly, and he'd threaten to nail you to the bench for the next match if you were going to perform that pitifully. Naturally, I'd never once been on the receiving end of the latter — though back in Saudi Arabia, I'd watched plenty of other players get that treatment.
For all that I look like this, I was rather good at football.
"How are your legs holding up?"
Seen in that light, this roundabout question about my stamina didn't suit the blunt, straightforward Manuel I remembered. Maybe he was genuinely curious how much I had left in the tank — but there was nobody on Earth better equipped than me to recognize a setup laid down before subbing a player off. Ask if he's tired, then suggest a substitution the second he says yes. That sort of thing.
He hadn't fully aged into the role yet, I supposed. Still a shade different from the Manuel I knew. I clicked my tongue — tch — and cut straight to the point.
"I've still got plenty in the tank…… but if you want to sub me, go ahead."
"Hmm, was it that obvious? The other forwards need match sharpness too, so I was planning to swap you out right at the start of the second half."
"Fine by me. I just sit on the bench from the second half, right?"
"Yeah. You're really okay with it, though?"
"It's a pre-season friendly, what's the big deal. The others need minutes too."
"Glad to hear you see it that way. You look in great form today — getting hauled off at halftime could put a bad taste in your mouth."
Maybe that would bother other young players. Not me. It's pre-season, after all — the season hasn't even started. There was no reason to get territorial over playing time when I'd already confirmed that the current me could feast at this level of third-division football.
"I'm not that petty."
"Haha! Right, I underestimated you. Rest on the bench from the second half on. Good work today."
He ruffled my hair roughly and turned toward the other players. I'd been noticing it lately — being treated like a kid didn't feel entirely bad. I mean, I was, undeniably, sixteen years old. There were perks to being young, so I'd need to get used to this treatment too.
Though I drew the line at speaking formally to him.
Anyway.
What followed was profoundly boring. Subbed off the moment the second half kicked off, I sat beside Nico and humored his nonsense to pass the time. Nico came on in the seventieth minute and played about twenty. No goal contributions, but his overall play was good. The match finished four to one, each team adding a goal in the second half — a thoroughly satisfying rout.
The friendly was the last item on today's schedule, so the moment it ended I showered and got ready to head back to the dorms. The reserve team's stadium sits inside the Ciudad Real Madrid complex, so it wasn't far.
"Doni! Hold on a second!"
"Sí?"
The team's head coach hurriedly caught me on my way out of the stadium. Something in how he'd been treating me had shifted oddly since the end of the first half, and now he relayed a message passed along by a club employee.
Someone wanted to interview me.
"A reporter wants to sit down with you about today's match. It wasn't a pre-arranged interview, so you're under no obligation."
"Do they pay me?"
"Huh?"
"Nothing, nothing. Bad joke."
Ugh — a gag I used to fire at my agent back in my Saudi playing days had slipped out on pure reflex. Fortunately, the head coach didn't seem to have caught it clearly. He papered over the moment with a cough and moved on.
"So…… who is this reporter? What outlet?"
"He said he came from Korea? No real affiliation…… ah, he runs a YouTube channel."
"Korean?"
"Yep. A while back he asked to interview the Korean exchange students at our academy, so his identity's already been verified by the club. Still, if you really don't want to do it, I'll let him down gently."
As the head coach's posture seemed to ask what'll it be?, my brain started spinning through the numbers.
First, calculate the upside. I couldn't say exactly who he was, but anyone who'd traveled this far clearly had the financial means and a name for himself in the business. A freelancer, apparently — but that was no problem. A flight from Korea to Spain cost hundreds of thousands of won on its own. He'd only have made the trip if he was confident of getting his money's worth.
Besides, the club had vetted him and already approved his interviews with the exchange students. That meant he was no fly-by-night hack nobody had ever heard of. Put it all together, and the conclusion was simple: this was a man with real influence in Korean sports media. Nothing to lose by being nice to him.
"……"
Now for the cost side: doing an unscripted interview right after a match was exhausting business. My body would be tired from playing, and I'd have to mind every word I chose. But I'd only played forty-five minutes today, so I wasn't all that tired — and with three goals to my name, I had plenty of material to talk about.
Okay. Decision made.
"I'll do the interview. Where do I go?"
Kang Jae-hyung, thirty-four, was a freelance sports interviewer from South Korea. He was a freelancer because he'd tendered his resignation at the country's top newspaper. It hadn't been forced on him. It was his own choice.
These days he filmed interviews with Korean footballers and posted them on YouTube, occasionally writing columns as well. But quitting the company hadn't cost him his sense of journalistic duty. His goal was to restore the public's opinion of reporters to what it used to be.
"Whew……"
What is a reporter? A profession that informs the world of what happens across society. In English, reporter. Yes, that kind of reporter.
It was also a profession with weak financial compensation relative to its punishing workload. These days they call it a 3D job.
Difficult.
Dirty.
Dangerous.
Hence, 3D. And Kang Jae-hyung believed the profession of reporter deserved one more letter on top of that: a J — as in JOAT.
Such was the life of a journalist: paid little, worked to the bone. It was why he hadn't hesitated for a second the day he signed his resignation letter.
And yet lately, the world looked on this grueling profession with contempt. The slur "churnalists" was proof enough. Naturally, Kang Jae-hyung — a reporter himself — could never accept that label.
No, really — what exactly had reporters done that was so terrible?
Failed to proofread their own writing? Baited readers with clickbait headlines for the view counts? Threw tantrums when someone refused an interview? Rotten with self-importance? Taken backhand money from the powerful? Written fabricated hit pieces over petty grudges?
……In truth, all of the above.
And the number of reporters who had done such things was by no means small.
Kang Jae-hyung knew it too. He knew that repairing the reputation of his profession would take an immense stretch of time and enormous effort.
That was why he had resolved to be, at the very least, an honest journalist himself. Chase the views, certainly — but chase them by honest means. It was for this reason that, the moment the match ended, he hadn't ambushed the player directly but had instead politely asked a club employee whether an interview with Kang Doin might be possible.
"Doni's accepted the interview. He'll be here shortly."
"Really? Gracias! Gracias!"
Thankfully, his sincerity was rewarded. Kang Jae-hyung, firing off thank-yous at the employee who'd brought the good news, waited four more minutes before coming face to face with Kang Doin.
"Hello there, sir."
The boy had an adult's height but a child's skin, an athlete's rugged frame but a face as fine-featured as an idol's. And he wielded flawless business manners.
"Oh my, thank you so much for coming all the way out to Spain like this. I should have come to you first, and instead I made you walk over. Have you eaten yet?"
"Uh…… sorry, what? No, I mean, that's not really—"
"Come on, it's on me, let's go. You came all this way; the least I can do is buy you a meal. There's a decent restaurant just outside the training complex — we'll get something in you and take our time talking. Right then, let's move."
With a sly, easygoing grin, Kang Doin steered Kang Jae-hyung by the back toward a Korean restaurant in Madrid, and over dinner he sat through roughly an hour's worth of interview.
Kang Jae-hyung, whose channel boasted three hundred thousand subscribers, filmed the interview with the player's consent and uploaded it to his personal social media the moment he landed back in Korea.
The thirty-minute edited video, titled "An Exclusive Interview with Real Madrid's Rising Supernova," yanked the attention of every Korean football fan.
Within a week, it had blown past half a million views.