vs Bayern Munich (2)
"Waaaaaah!!! Baek Yujin!!! A reverse elastico that calls the Bergkamp Turn straight to mind — and he finishes it with a shot for the goal!!"
"Baek Yujin!! Baek Yujin scores the opener against Bayern Munich, the side currently dominating the Bundesliga!!!"
"Bayern Munich were on the verge of seizing the initiative — that goal means everything! It might as well have been a goal prevented!"
"Exactly! Arsenal's rising star, Baek Yujin! Now that is what a star looks like!"
From the corner flag, Baek Yujin looked out over the crowd. Every home fan was on their feet, roaring his name.
"The Emirates Stadium, so bleak only moments ago, has turned into a festival — and Bayern Munich kick off the attack!"
"Bayern Munich press on! From Jamal to Valiet!"
Jamal's through ball split the pitch clean open and found Valiet, carving space in a single stroke. A physical duel with Hong Seoin — then Wright, covering in a flash, cleared the ball out of play.
"Wright! Outstanding defending!"
"A tackle that snaps Bayern's momentum right in half! Clean, sharp — beautiful work!"
The Arsenal players caught their breath. Even Baek Yujin, a striker, had been covering every inch of the pitch fighting for the ball, and though only thirty minutes had passed, his lungs were already burning.
...So this is the majesty of a Treble side.
Unlike Barcelona, their round-of-sixteen opponents, Bayern Munich's level of play was beyond anything he had imagined. In his previous life, Bayern had completed the Treble in the 35/36 season — a glittering squad that yielded to no one, backed by brilliant tactics. That same majesty was written all over the pitch tonight.
Possession: 59 to 41.
The gap didn't look enormous on paper, but there was a delicacy to Bayern's attack. Passes struck with the certainty of absolute trust. Attacks that never courted needless danger, yet cut with lethal precision. Under the shine of that passing play — even while trailing — Arsenal looked liable to concede at any moment. They were winning, and yet the momentum was not theirs.
"Bayern attack again. Arsenal have managed the odd long-range effort, but how often have they actually gotten into the box?"
Having seized the flow, Bayern began by climbing the possession numbers and slowly tightening the noose around Arsenal's throat.
"Jamal with a sudden shot! Adrian saves! Wright clears the second ball!"
"Wright! As captain, he's hauling his teammates back to their feet! He keeps showing up in every critical moment!"
From captain Wright on down — Davis, Padraig, Hong Seoin — the midfielders all dropped deep into defensive work, delaying the assault with raw, desperate effort.
"Jamal! On the ball, driving forward! A dribble— no, a fake — and a killer pass! The flank is completely open!"
"Valiet surging through! Wait—! Someone's tracking him! Baek Yujin! Baek Yujin has closed him down!"
Watching the wing, Baek Yujin had read Jamal's movement from midfield and immediately locked onto Valiet. Having taken that first step earlier, he accelerated, got to the ball first, and forced it out of play.
"If Valiet had collected that, it was essentially a one-on-one! They scrape out of danger by a hair!"
"At some point Baek Yujin has started putting up midfielder-level work rates. You have to wonder if the load isn't becoming too much."
In a match where every single sequence felt like a crisis, Baek Yujin dropped deep again and again to shore up the defense before Arsenal's back line could collapse. But a striker couldn't defend forever — and the moment he tried to push back upfield, Valiet cut the passing lane and broke through into a one-on-one with the keeper.
Adrian narrowed the angle. Valiet struck before he could fully set. The ball clipped Adrian's arm, deflected, and rolled toward the open net — a certain goal with no one home.
Whoosh—!
Hong Seoin, who had been watching nothing but the goalmouth, appeared out of nowhere in a sudden sliding tackle and stopped the ball from crossing the line. It spun out of play. The god of football was with the Emirates Stadium tonight.
Peeeeeep—!
The referee blew for halftime.
In the Arsenal locker room, amid ragged breathing and thick, simmering heat, Alexandro did not launch into complicated tactical lectures.
"You're doing more than enough. You're winning against Bayern. Don't give up. You can take this. Possession isn't that far off — keep fighting them head-on. Yujin, how are you feeling?"
"At my best."
"Wright?"
"I can play."
Condition and emotional control — that was all he tended to. And so the second half began.
Bayern Munich, having made several substitutions, came out playing an entirely different game.
Bayern Munich attacked once more. Every Arsenal jersey had long since lost its original color — the price of effort, the result of desperate defending.
When one man closed from the front and another from behind on Valiet, he immediately laid the ball off to Jamal and slipped free of the pocket. Baek Yujin was caught on the wrong foot, but he refused to quit and threw himself back into the defensive work.
"Baek Yujin! He won't give up — still helping on defense! A physical battle with Valiet — and he's shoved to the ground!"
"It's so desperate it hurts just to watch."
"Valiet at the top of the box! Options everywhere! One touch to cut inside! Wright buys it! And the shot— SHOOOOT!!"
Pressure closed in from every direction, but Valiet slipped the ball naturally between a defender's legs and carried it straight into the finish.
"GOOOOOAL!!! Valiet buries the equalizer and silences the Emirates Stadium!!"
The broadcast cameras cut, on the whistle of the goal, to players on their knees, players with their heads bowed, players standing hollow and empty.
"The Arsenal players look rather stunned. That's how desperate — how thorough — the defending had been."
"Captain Wright is pumping belief back into the men around him."
"Hold on — if I'm not mistaken, Baek Yujin appears to be... smiling?"
We can still do this.
Strangely, the more he played against Bayern, the less he could stop smiling. Valiet — a future Ballon d'Or-winning striker — and the rest of Bayern's overwhelming attacking force and crushing organization. He had hated being pinned on the back foot so much that he had tracked back to the bitter end, and still they had scored.
Slowly. We take it back.
Even when the flow of a match slipped away, flow was something you could reclaim the moment the situation allowed it. Arsenal gradually climbed the possession numbers, weathered Bayern's press, and threaded a killer pass — only for Kim Minjun to cut it out with a tackle.
Arsenal attacked again. Simon nearly found himself in a one-on-one, but a closing defender and a goalkeeper narrowing the angle forced the chance into nothing more than a shot on target.
Bayern's attack restarted, and Davis — who had been pushing himself to the absolute limit — bought Jamal's body feint and went down. Wright ahead of him, Simon behind. Before Jamal could play it wide, Simon tested the edge of his own endurance, sprinted in, stripped the ball, and laid it off to me as naturally as breathing.
"North London forever."
Moved by the sight of every Arsenal player defending as one and attacking past the brink of exhaustion, the home fans began to sing.
"And my blood will forever run through these stones."
He only half-heard the anthem. Before the ball arrived, he dragged his spent body upright and swept the pitch ahead of him. No one to play it to — he knew that in an instant — so he drifted into open space. And there it was: a passing lane. He found Hong Seoin right in front of him, released the ball, and peeled out toward the wing.
Jamal closed on him as the pass came forward. They sprinted together, but his legs had nothing left; he lost the physical duel and went tumbling across the grass. The hollow frustration of losing a fair shoulder-to-shoulder battle drained out of him, and for a moment he simply looked up at the sky.
"..."
The night sky was genuinely beautiful. In that brief span of appreciation he heard the manager shouting from the touchline not to force it — and some strange voice telling him it was all right to give up. It took him less than three seconds to get back on his feet, and in that time a stranger hallucination reached his ears as well.
"Yujin!!"
A woman's voice. Deeply familiar. Jia noona.
"Fighting!!"
His quiet, composed noona would never do that — and yet he heard something that sounded exactly like her cheering for him.
Am I hearing things?
He must have imagined it from pure exhaustion. Even so, he could not give up. She had told him to keep fighting. He had heard it clearly.
"Time is running out. Baek Yujin drops in to help defend."
"Even Valiet has grown a little more cautious. You can't beat that many defenders alone, can you?"
No matter how gifted Valiet was, with the second half nearly spent he simply did not have the legs left to take on the entire back line by himself. Coordinated defending let Hong Seoin strip the ball clean, and Arsenal turned straight into the attack.
"Arsenal's final push! From Davis — who spent the second half as a defender — all the way up to Padraig, everyone is flooding forward!"
"They're going in with a must-score mindset!"
With the entire side committed to the attack, Hong Seoin carefully played it into the center. Baek Yujin, just as he had at the start of the match, one-touched it out to the wing.
"Baek Yujin! Looks just like the opening minutes! Giving everything right to the end!"
Davis collected it and drove forward with every last drop of strength he had left. As if the god of sprinting had possessed him, he burst past before anyone could get a tackle in and tore open the flank.
"Davis breaks through! Last chance! Stay composed — but go quick!"
Composed, but quick. Davis cut the ball back to Simon, who was surging into the box — only for the ensuing shot to cannon off Kim Minjun's tackle. The deflected ball dropped at the top of the area, and this time Padraig hammered a long-range effort. Lee Juwon saved it again, and in the scramble that followed Kim Minjun won the aerial duel and headed it clear.
Chaos at the mouth of the goal. The ball dropped where Baek Yujin was standing, but his fitness had been driven so far past the limit that even moving was a struggle. With no physical contest to win, he had to strike it first-time somehow. A pass in this situation would have been suicide.
The thought arrived in an instant.
Sorry, Noona.
In a tenth of a second he apologized — then, on a final leap, crossed his legs through the ball.
Thwack—!
An overhead kick. The power wasn't fully there, but the contact was clean. He had pushed himself so far past the edge that standing up was nearly impossible; his whole body screamed. He had been running on pure will for a long time now — of course it did.
It didn't go i—
He was just beginning to compose a solemn expression at the sudden hush around him when—
"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!"
A thunderous roar tickled his ears. Bayern's players wore hollow looks. Arsenal's wore the smiles of men who had just sensed victory itself.
"Yujin!! Yujin!!"
The goal — the overhead kick — had gone in. No strength left for a celebration, and no time either; the match rolled straight on.
Peeeeeep—!
Less than two minutes later, it was over.
The moment the final whistle sounded, Baek Yujin simply lay down on the grass. One by one, people began to rise in the stands. A scattering of applause swelled and swelled until it filled the entire stadium.
"The Arsenal fans are giving Baek Yujin a standing ovation."
"As a striker he scored, and he put up an extraordinary work rate. He has every right to that applause."
Even the traveling Bayern Munich supporters — impressed by the defensive work of a striker who had cut out Valiet's attacks again and again — rose to their feet and joined the ovation.
"The away fans are standing as well, applauding Baek Yujin."
"Baek Yujin leaves the pitch on Hong Seoin's arm. He's still smiling, right to the end. It's a wonderful sight."
Arsenal had taken the first leg against Bayern Munich.