The Weight of the Final
The atmosphere at Jeongun High was electric.
"We did it! We finally did it!"
"Hahahaha! We pulled it off!"
"The final! We're actually in the final!"
For the first time in Jeongun High's history, they had reached the championship match. And they had done it by toppling Boeon High, one of the tournament favorites. Those two facts alone had the Jeongun players buzzing with excitement. Even their normally taciturn coach watched them with a look of quiet satisfaction. A coach's job demanded a certain amount of composure, but a national tournament final was a first in his own career as well. Hiding his joy was no easy task.
Still, it was time to settle the mood.
"Ahem! Quiet, all of you!"
The smile vanished from the coach's face. The players wiped the grins from theirs and locked their attention on him.
"Everyone expected us to lose. No one believed in Jeongun High. But we did it. We blew past every prediction and punched our ticket to the final. I'm proud of you. I'm proud to be the coach of this team."
Praise from the coach was a rare thing. The players clenched their fists tight.
"Today's match proved it. We have no ceiling. As you all know, when we reached the semifinals, people called us a dark horse. And today, when we made the final, they started calling it a miracle."
The coach's voice rose with every word.
"We've already kicked up a storm and pulled off a miracle—so what's left that we can't do? Of course I know you're exhausted from this brutal schedule. But! We're almost there. Do you remember what I told you before? That we were aiming for heights we'd never reached. That goal is right in front of us now. I believe you can do it. I believe Jeongun High can do it. So… just give me a little more."
The players nodded. They could feel it too. That if things kept going like this, a real miracle might be within reach. That winning the national tournament was no longer an impossible dream.
And watching it all with a look of deep satisfaction was one particular young man.
Perfect atmosphere.
Jung Hyuk barely managed to keep a smile from breaking across his face. The coach was saying and doing everything he might have had to handle himself. How could he not be pleased? The look in his eyes as he regarded the coach softened a shade further.
He might be a much better man than I gave him credit for.
Everything was unfolding according to the best possible scenario.
There's a saying that if you want to become the greatest soccer player, you have to step onto the greatest stage.
In 2013, that stage was Europe. The Premier League, La Liga, the Bundesliga, Serie A, the Eredivisie—these were the competitions regarded as the absolute pinnacle. Leagues operating on an entirely different level of technique, physicality, tactics, teamwork, and training.
And on the day of the Presidential Gold Cup National High School Soccer Championship final, scouts who had flown in from Europe were scattered throughout the stands. Naturally, the players preparing for the final and the spectators who had come to watch all stared at those European scouts with faces flushed with excitement.
"What? Which clubs are they from? There are a ton of foreign scouts here."
"They came from all over. I heard England, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal…"
"What? England and Germany too? No way."
"Yeah. Teams from the Premier League and the Bundesliga are here."
"Holy crap… Which ones?"
European scouts. Scouts from the best leagues in the world. The mere fact of their presence sent the players and the crowd into an even greater frenzy. Even the coaches of Unnam High and Jeongun High—both finalists—failed to keep their expressions in check as they looked toward the European contingent.
Only one person was warming up with a completely unbothered face.
Why did so many of them show up? Just noise, honestly.
Jung Hyuk clicked his tongue as he glanced around. Even he had never experienced a situation quite like this. In his previous life, Jeongun High hadn't even made the quarterfinals. But one thing he could read clearly.
This atmosphere is bad for Jeongun High. This… might turn out harder than I thought.
The final was going to be a difficult match.
We've come this far without a hitch. Are we really going to crack here?
Up through the final, everything had gone according to plan. At this rate, the championship itself hadn't seemed out of reach. The coach's unexpected speech had even lifted the team's spirits. And then a variable appeared.
The guys are way too worked up.
In soccer, the gap between a player who has stood on a big stage and one who hasn't is enormous. The former can still put their full ability on display even under the brightest lights. The latter often fails to show even half of what they have. Overexcitement. And pressure.
A national tournament final. On top of that, European scouts in the stands. Those facts filled young players with anticipation and adrenaline—and at the same time, crushed them under a massive weight of expectation.
Unnam High's guys look like they're handling it better than I expected.
Unlike Jeongun High, which was visibly rattled, Unnam High—a team with plenty of experience at this altitude—had already found their rhythm. Compared to Jeongun's players, they looked far more composed.
And that wasn't the only problem.
The guys are more gassed than I thought.
His teammates' stamina had dropped further than expected. They would have to face Unnam High on depleted legs. That fact sat uncomfortably in Jung Hyuk's chest. What's more—
Those guys look completely fresh.
The opposing players from Unnam High looked to be in excellent condition. This tournament ran for a total of twelve days, and the higher a team climbed, the more matches they had to play. Athletes grinding through game after game inevitably hit a wall of fatigue. Under a schedule like that, teams with deep benches held a clear advantage—they could rotate players and manage their starters' energy. Unnam High had done exactly that. They had swapped players consistently on the road to the final, using and recovering stamina with ruthless efficiency. As a result, their starting eleven looked sharp at a glance. It was the polar opposite of Jeongun High, which had been forced into a death march for lack of substitutes.
Stamina really is everything…
In soccer, fitness is critical. Even the greatest teams in the world can look utterly ordinary when a congested calendar drains their legs. Clean touches turn clumsy. Passes lose their accuracy. Pressing that should happen simply doesn't. Reactions to the opponent's movement fall a half-step late. That was true of professionals—of the best clubs on the planet. At the high school level, being outmatched on stamina was an even more serious problem.
And those differences showed up, unmistakably, in the quality of play.
Thwack—
Unnam High's net bulged hard. Jung Hyuk's shot had found the back of it. He had beaten the opposing defenders with pure individual skill, then fired a mid-range strike that caught the keeper completely off guard.
A roar exploded from the stands.
But Jung Hyuk wasn't celebrating. He couldn't.
I need another goal as fast as possible.
Jeongun High had just scored one. Unnam High already had three. The team was down 3–1.
As expected, the weight of the final was crushing—especially for young players who had never stood on a stage like this. Every Jeongun High player except Jung Hyuk was rattled. Even after a full warm-up, their bodies locked up the moment the whistle blew. Stiff, creaking limbs don't produce good movement. Proper soccer was nearly impossible. And their opponent was Unnam High, widely regarded as one of the strongest teams in the field. Worse still, Unnam High knew exactly how to sink their teeth into a team that had started to wobble—and not let go.
"No!"
"Get your heads in it!"
"Stay with them till the end!"
The Jeongun players kept shouting at one another, trying to drag their focus back up. Even in a desperate situation, they threw their bodies in the way of every attack. But Unnam High's offense was simply too sharp. They had no single superstar, but every player was solidly competent—and their organization was outstanding. Against Jeongun High, Unnam High displayed a level of collective play that was hard to believe came from a high school side. Their intricate attacking patterns left Jeongun's defenders scrambling, constantly off-balance. And as the first half wound down, their stamina finally hit rock bottom.
The result: Jeongun High was conceding Unnam High's attacks like an open door.
Slash!
"Hah…"
Jung Hyuk cut out a breakthrough with a clean sliding tackle and exhaled hard. Whenever he could, he dropped all the way back into the defensive line to cover—but there were limits. When he covered the right side, he couldn't stop the left from getting torn open. His defensive ability was solid, but plugging a defense full of gaping holes was another matter entirely. On top of that, he was starting as an attacking midfielder today. Difficulties stacked on difficulties. Trapped in a one-sided beating of a match, even launching a counterattack had become nearly impossible. The goal he'd just scored had been scraped together on pure individual brilliance.
Was it the size of the deficit? Or had Jeongun High's spirit already been broken too thoroughly? Even after scoring, they couldn't generate the slightest shift in momentum.
…This is genuinely dangerous.
Cold sweat beaded on Jung Hyuk's forehead. This was a real crisis.
When the first half ended, the laughter of K League scouts rolled across the stadium.
"Hahahaha! Man, that felt like ten years of indigestion just cleared out! Serves those Jeongun High bastards right!"
"Heh heh heh! Come on, why take it out on poor Jeongun High? The ones who had it coming are those two little punks over there."
"Fair enough. What was it—‘We'll contact you later'? Pfft! Guys who live off their own hype always go down in one shot."
"I'm an Unnam High fan starting today. Hahaha! Look at those pretty boys! I'm writing recommendation letters to the club the second I get back."
"See Oh Jung-hoon's face? I knew he'd end up like that the moment he started getting full of himself. Kid wasn't even on the radar last year, and now he doesn't know his place."
"And Jung Hyuk's any different? That one barely even existed. Some nobody with no pedigree flashes once in a tournament and suddenly he's talking big?"
The K League scouts mocked Jeongun High's two boys without restraint. Jung Hyuk and Oh Jung-hoon had become the punchline—all because they had declined the scouts' recruitment offers and bruised a few egos in the process.
"Second half hasn't even started and it's already 3–1. How many more is Unnam High going to put away?"
"Hard to say. Looking at how completely cooked Jeongun's kids are, we might be looking at baseball scores."
"Eight–one, maybe?"
"Hahaha! That's a bit much. It'll finish around five–one."
They were certain. Unnam High would pile on more goals. They would dismantle Jeongun High completely. Given the gulf in performance they'd watched all through the first half, it was an entirely reasonable expectation.
And then the second half began.
The score stood at 3–1. Unnam High's players, riding high after three goals, still had plenty left in the tank compared to the first half. The moment the second half kicked off, they brought on substitutes whose quality barely dropped off from the starters, pressing their physical advantage even further. Jeongun High, with no worthwhile replacements available, walked back out with the same eleven.
Calling the situation hopeless would not have been an exaggeration.
And in the middle of that hopelessness, laughter rang out.
Surprisingly, it came from Jeongun High's side.
"Haha!"
Jung Hyuk was laughing. For the second half, he had shifted to defensive midfielder—the coach's choice, meant to stabilize a defense that was coming apart. And Jung Hyuk was ready. Ready to shut Unnam High's attack down cold.
Watch enough soccer and you'll notice matches where the first half and second half look like entirely different games. There are many reasons. Sometimes players finally loosen up and start showing their real quality after the break. Sometimes a tactical adjustment clicks perfectly against the opponent. And sometimes a side simply figures out the other team's style and starts answering it.
Veteran players are especially quick at reading an opponent's strengths. Years of experience let them step into a second half and immediately lock onto the other side's movement far better than younger players ever could.
And Jeongun High had a veteran like that.
"Boys. I've got you all figured out."
A man who had poured long years into the game—a man who had finished third for the Ballon d'Or—smiled brightly as he looked across at the opposing players. He had cracked Unnam High's tactics completely. The system was complex enough that it had taken longer than expected, but the work was done now.
"The second half is going to be a whole different story."
Fully prepared to win, Jung Hyuk stepped into the second half.