Things More Important Than Money (6)

In the football world, there are a few absolute metrics used to evaluate a player.

Forwards and midfielders have attacking output like goals and assists, while goalkeepers and defenders are measured by things like clean sheets and goals conceded.

But honestly, there's an easier way to judge a player's worth than any of those.

Money.

The logic is simple. A good, exceptional player is expensive.

The transfer fee is high, the salary is high, and the contract comes bundled with all sorts of complicated options.

So if you want to know what a player is worth, just look at how much capital a club has poured into him.

How much the transfer cost, how much he earns a week — that kind of thing.

Of course, there's no guarantee that an expensive player will actually perform over the length of his contract, but at the moment the deal was signed, he was unquestionably worth that much.

And a club's bold investment translates directly into a player's standing.

Given two players of the same age putting up the same numbers, a club will always prefer to use the more expensive one.

It's only natural.

Considering the transfer fee and wages already sunk in, they need to at least break even — if not for anything else, then with an eye toward reselling the player to another club someday.

Which is why players want the highest salary possible. Besides, it's not exactly easy for a human being to hate money.

That's how it is.

Sports and money are inseparable no matter how hard you try to pry them apart, and the vast majority of players dream of a big paycheck. Antonio, a former player himself, knew this well.

"If contract talk is already on the table, you must have some figure in mind for wages, right?"

The boy sitting in front of him, beaming as he asked about the money the moment contracts came up, was — in a word — rational. Ruthlessly pragmatic.

"How much can Real Madrid offer?"

...It almost made you doubt he was fifteen.

"Sorry — since the club and I haven't worked out the details yet, I can't give you a specific number. But I'll do my best to bring you a draft contract as soon as I can."

Asked point-blank for an amount, Antonio could only give that answer and excuse himself from the table.

It was only natural. He was a mere scout, not someone with any real influence over the club.

He could recommend a player to Real Madrid, but he had no authority whatsoever to sign contracts himself — and he too, in the end, was a corporate workhorse living off the salary the club paid him.

So there was only one thing a man like him could do.

Wait.

Having relayed every one of the boy's demands to the club, Antonio simply waited on the club's response.

Along the way he made inquiries with the Korean Football Association to dig up Kang Doin's personal records, and he filmed the boy's practice matches and sent the footage to the football director as a wordless nudge — but none of it amounted to much.

Even if the sums were smaller than for senior players, signing a youth player still required serious money and effort. If anything, the regulations often made it more of a headache.

So he just waited.

Watching Kang Doin deliver dazzling performances in practice match after practice match, day after day, hopping from foot to foot in case someone else snapped him up first...

And then, just as the showcase schedule was winding down—

"It's here!"

Antonio's phone erupted noisily.

The sender was Santiago.

Real Madrid's football director.

It feels like self-flattery to say this, so I don't particularly enjoy saying it, but I doubted there was a single scout who'd come to Korea this time who didn't want me.

Yeah.

What was there to deny? I had been the best striker in Asia. I'd made my mark at a World Cup, and by the time I retired I was the highest-paid player in the Saudi league.

So you ought to respect me. I'd lifted the Asian Player of the Year award five times and a mountain of individual trophies, I'd carried South Korea to the World Cup quarterfinals, I was the all-time leading scorer in Korean A-match history, and I'd torn up every scoring record the Saudi league and the AFC Champions League had ever known, and...

"...Ahem!"

Anyway.

The world liked to diminish my career on account of the league I played in, but even those people admitted there was no one in Asia who played the ball better than I did.

Given all that, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me standing out the most among a crowd of teenagers was arguably the foregone conclusion.

The accumulated experience was simply on a different level to begin with.

Plenty of players only truly understand football as they age. It's why experts say a footballer's prime comes in his late twenties.

Just as physical peak starts to bend, the know-how catches up and the potential finally blooms — or so the saying goes.

But I had come into a fifteen-year-old's body already carrying a lifetime of that know-how.

My physical prime hadn't arrived yet, but I was undeniably far fresher than I'd been at forty, with knee cartilage worn to shreds.

So any scout with functioning eyes had no reason not to want me.

And mercifully, judging by the five days the showcase had run, the scouts' eyes appeared to be in excellent health.

On the third day of the showcase, the Valencia scout — who had already exchanged a brief greeting with me — smiled awkwardly at my blunt opener.

Waving the example of a Korean player who'd come up through Valencia's youth system and made it in Europe, he tried to persuade me.

Unfortunately for him, I knew exactly how the Valencia owner had treated that Korean player, so the pitch didn't carry much weight with me.

The club's owner, a Singaporean national, had once used the Korean player for political show while quietly freezing him out of the squad.

I couldn't say for certain I'd be discriminated against the same way, but why on earth should I volunteer to carry that particular baggage?

Above all, the lukewarm attitude toward a contract counted against them.

For all I knew, Valencia might come back with concrete preparations of their own after hearing what I said — but at this point in time, I wasn't feeling optimistic.

On that front, Mallorca's position was refreshingly straightforward.

The Mallorca scout who came on the fourth day of the showcase, once it ended, wasn't remotely rattled to hear that other clubs had already made moves for me.

On the contrary — he said he'd speak with the club and bring back contract papers of their own.

Broadly the same position as Real Madrid: yes, we want to sign you. But the FIFA regulations tie our hands, so even with papers in hand, an immediate deal may be difficult.

I said I understood. Either way, no club had yet handed me anything concrete, so there was no need to rush my choice.

Whatever else happened, all three clubs were now after me. From where I stood, that was a situation to welcome with open arms.

When supply is scarce and demand is high, the price of a commodity rises on its own. That's simply the law of things.

I was one of a kind, and three clubs wanted me. Naturally, the salary I could command would climb with it.

Granted, it would still be a drop in the ocean next to the astronomical wage I'd earned in Saudi Arabia... but it beat the hell out of my previous life, where instead of earning money I was bleeding myself dry for a high school football club's dues.

My study move to Spain was secured, which meant my modest personal goal — never again to work a job and play football at the same time — had been achieved.

So now all I had to do was stretch out my legs and wait for the contracts to roll in.

And so, having finished the entire five-day showcase schedule, I was just about to head back to the orphanage when it happened.

"Doni!"

Someone was calling my name in front of the association building, half-frantic.

Doni. Now that stirred a familiar nostalgia.

Doni was the nickname I'd used playing in Saudi Arabia. So many foreign players struggled to pronounce my name properly that I'd just told them to call me Doni.

In other words, in this era — before I'd ever played abroad — almost nobody would call me by that nickname.

If someone did, it could only be—

"Long time no see... actually, no, I've seen your face plenty this week. Haven't I?"

"Hi, Toni. Did things go well with the club?"

"They did. I pulled some strings."

Toni — in other words, the Real Madrid scout — was grinning ear to ear.

Judging by that confident tone, his preparations on the contract front were apparently complete.

"Shall we have a talk, just the two of us?"

"So, uh — first of all, I hope you didn't take anything the wrong way, or let it get under your skin."

We were seated in a secluded corner of a café near the association building. Returning to the table with two drinks, Toni set an iced tea down in front of me and spoke up carefully.

Naturally, he was the one who'd paid. Had he actually suggested splitting the bill with a kid whose entire allowance was the 30,000 won the orphanage handed out each month, I'd have walked out on the spot.

By all means — squeeze the flea for its liver, why don't you.

"You understand I had to get a sense of who you are, right? Me and the club both."

"Mm-hm."

"So I looked into your basic records through the association."

"And that's how you found out I'm living in an orphanage?"

"...Yeah."

Toni's expression, tiptoeing around me as if afraid of wounding me, was genuinely funny.

I smirked and sipped my iced tea. The sugar water I religiously avoided during a season somehow tasted sweeter than ever today.

Had my palate gotten more sensitive along with the rest of me?

"It's fine. I'd have to spill all of it eventually when we write up the contract anyway. I'm a minor, so a legal guardian has to sign in my place, right?"

Being called a parentless orphan was hardly a first for me. Whenever the trash talk started flying, orphan brat practically came bundled in as a passive trait — you could say I'd gone numb to it.

Saying that out loud would obviously make the foreign uncle in front of me squirm, though, so I spared him.

And besides, none of living at the orphanage was my fault, was it? The mood was threatening to turn maudlin for no good reason, so I decided to lighten it with a joke instead.

"Honestly — if I can play this well in a rough situation, imagine how much better I'll be in a stable one?"

"As a scout, that is an extremely tantalizing thought."

"So — the contract? It's ready, right?"

"It is. Right here."

He quietly pulled a paper envelope from the bag he'd been carrying and handed it over.

Helpfully, the contract had been translated into Korean. Inside was a dense stack of documents, and I dismantled them page by page, reading through each one with care.

Checking whether the club was trying to knife me in the back, whether any strange clauses had been slipped into the contract.

Reading the whole thing through without conceding a single one of those suspicions, I reached one conclusion.

Not bad at all.

The term was three years — reasonable — and the weekly wage was high for a youth player. There was even an option attached allowing a fresh contract to be negotiated upon promotion to the first team within the term.

Not Saudi-level, obviously, but for a youth player in Europe, these terms cleared the passing bar with plenty of room to spare.

In today's parlance: an absolute steal.

I doubted even Valencia or Mallorca could have beaten these terms if they'd offered me a contract. Good enough to sign on the spot.

"Pretty solid."

"Told you I pulled some strings. I'd appreciate it if you understood that as proof of just how badly our club wants you."

He wasn't wrong. This much told me he'd really worked at it. Enough, at least, that unless Valencia or Mallorca abruptly came through with a professional contract out of nowhere, I could comfortably choose Real Madrid.

"Reading it, I can believe it."

"Glad you like the terms. But you do understand you can't sign it right now?"

"That's the FIFA regulations, isn't it?"

Toni nodded.

"Exactly that. As you know, youth players under eighteen can't sign with foreign clubs — with a few special exceptions."

"I know."

"So for now, just keep that contract stored away. Once our club finds a way around it, it won't be too late to sign then. Do you follow what I'm saying?"

Ah. No wonder the terms had seemed suspiciously generous. There was a catch buried under all of it.

Since FIFA rules made an immediate deal impossible anyway, the scheme was to dangle the best possible contract to lure me to Madrid, then decide whether to actually sign based on how I performed.

If I flourished, flourishing would make the paper worth its ink. If I flopped, they'd simply sweep the contract under the rug and ship me back to Korea once my one year of study was up.

From my side of the table, it was an audaciously shameless move — but from the club's side, you had to call it clever.

After all, it would be far stranger for a storied Spanish club to hand a fully-loaded contract, no strings ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠attached, to a fifteen-year-old Asian boy hemmed in on every side by regulation.

And so, watching Toni sip his americano as he finished, I smiled serenely.

"That's all right, Toni. I appreciate the thought, but there's no need to wait that long."

"Hm?"

"My father is working in Spain. I don't know the details, but it's been a few years by now, I think."

Toni sprayed his americano.

"You do know that when a player's parents reside abroad for reasons other than football, he's allowed to sign with a professional club in that country, right?"