The Back of His Head
***
I was loosening up slowly in a corner of the pitch when Lionel Messi walked into the La Masia training ground.
He was, admittedly, the chief culprit behind my failure to clear the mission—the reason I keep regressing over and over.
Still, I felt nothing in particular about it.
If I were playing in the same era as him, I'd have rotated my ankle and called it a sacrifice for the greater good—but twisting a retired Messi's ankle would be nothing more than petty revenge.
'Now that I think about it, when was it again...?'
The frustration of endless regressions once got the better of me, and I did slap the back of Messi's head at a party.
Honestly, it wasn't Messi's fault at all—it was the mistake of a younger me who couldn't rein in a momentary flash of emotion. If I were to make excuses, let's say I was half out of my mind from the endless loop of regressing. My resentment toward the repeating cycle of my life had ended up aimed at Messi.
Thanks to that, my relationship with Lionel Messi and Barcelona in that run hit rock bottom—and my outburst on the away trip to Camp Nou, where I called them "a foundationless club that chased out Messi," was not said for nothing.
Anyway. In that run, I was a man Barcelona wanted dead, and I in turn despised their Messi-worshipping fans to the point of murder. Every time El Clásico rolled around, all of Barcelona's hatred funneled straight toward me—hanging my effigy on the walls of Camp Nou and burning my jersey was the least of it.
Barcelona's fans made monkey noises at me.
And I answered them with a hat trick, then mocked them with Messi's jersey celebration.
The truly hilarious part, though, was that in Spain the backlash poured down on Barcelona for the racism—while in Korea, the overwhelming consensus pointed the finger at me and called it karma.
'Come to think of it... Korea was always like that, wasn't it?'
Even in the "greatest player of all time" survey I ran across the globe with my own money—conducted before a regression to figure out why I was rated below Messi—Korea ranked lower than Japan.
The number one reason they didn't name me the greatest came down to a single thing.
Apparently, to be the world's best, you need a World Cup trophy.
Well, that wasn't just Korea—the whole world gave the same answer.
So the next run, I naturalized to win the World Cup, and they lambasted me for naturalizing.
'So effectively you want me to lift the World Cup trophy for Korea. How exactly am I supposed to do that?'
It's better than China, granted, where I'd score four only to concede six—but leading Korea to a World Cup title is no small feat.
At my current youth level, I could bang in twenty goals a game if I felt like it. But at the highest level, scoring once per match is a genuinely remarkable achievement.
Especially since youth coaches restrain kids from making dangerous tackles, but once you turn pro, defenders will happily slide in from behind as if to say, 'Let's see you dodge this one!'
There were even managers who flat-out ordered their defenders to take me out.
That's how vast the gulf between youth football and professional football was. Youth football exists for development; professional football exists for trophies and victory.
In fact, I've had several runs end early with my career cut short by injury, and overcoming the trauma each time devoured enormous stretches of time.
Well, the player who injured me did face a global firestorm and retire—but that timeline is long gone. Right now, he's undoubtedly training somewhere.
'If we meet on the pitch and he tries that dirty tackle again, I'll "accidentally" kick his head off.'
Anyway.
The saving grace is that toward the end of that run, I regretted what I'd done and offered Lionel Messi an apology.
I ran into him by chance at some event, and Messi accepted it.
We talked at length that day. If I'd had a little more time, we probably would have become good friends... which was a bit of a shame.
In any case, setting aside how graciously the consummate professional Lionel Messi accepted my apology—
I still can't forget the feel of his head under my palm.
And maybe because of that memory, I spent a good while today staring at the back of Lionel Messi's head.
***
Lionel Messi looked back at the Korean boy watching him.
'Interesting.'
The dry, blank stare fixed on him was remarkably striking. Nearly every youth player Messi had ever met gazed at him with blind, worshipful awe, which made it difficult for him to offer even the smallest piece of advice—a single offhand remark of his could send a kid down the wrong path.
In fact, back when Messi played for Inter Miami, there was a famous episode: after he told the youth players to "walk more!", the coaches who actually trained them suffered dearly, because the kids trusted Messi's word over their coaches' without question.
What Messi had meant was that the more you walked during a match, the more of the game's flow you could read. In those days, he believed that the "paths" he saw were something other players could see too, if only they worked hard enough.
Unfortunately, Inter Miami's youth players grew up without ever seeing what he saw.
And that was precisely why Lionel Messi had come to the pitch today to watch Joo Jae-rim.
Messi hadn't come at Barcelona's request. In truth, when Barcelona's offer first arrived, he had no intention of accepting.
'Fascinating.'
It was watching Joo Jae-rim's match footage that changed his mind—because the boy's play reminded him of his own childhood.
'Does that boy see the same paths I do?'
That day, curiosity about the boy took root in him.
'I should meet him and talk in person.'
He contacted the club and made it unmistakably clear that he wanted the meeting. Barcelona assumed Messi would help convince Joo Jae-rim to sign, but Messi genuinely, simply wanted to talk with the kid—far beyond the club's agenda.
'Oh...! That's impressive.'
And a moment later, Lionel Messi found himself marveling at Joo Jae-rim's play in earnest.
The sight of him rounding the goalkeeper and rolling the ball into an empty net looked exactly like something out of his own boyhood.
***
The match between FC Barcelona Alevín and Fly World Class 11 kicked off.
To children in the middle of their growth years, a single year of age creates a gulf beyond imagining. Most of the Fly World Class players were a year or two younger, and they were bound to be outmatched physically from the start.
Barcelona scored first, naturally. Once I stayed out of the defense, they broke through unimpeded, and we conceded.
I took the kickoff, then received the ball again. The pass came in with far too much pace, but it was no trouble whatsoever. The moment the ball reached my feet, I carved straight through their defensive line and scored.
I turned toward the bench and saw the Apollo-haired coach glaring daggers at me.
'What's his problem?'
Honestly, the Apollo-haired coach wasn't entirely wrong. In modern football, surviving on a single ability alone is difficult.
It's just that that "other ability" doesn't have to be pressing.
Building link-up play through constant passing practice is perfectly fine. If a player has genuine confidence in his finishing, learning off-the-ball movement is hardly a bad thing either.
So why do coaches push high pressing so relentlessly?
Because developing pressing capacity through stamina is overwhelmingly easier than developing any other ability. Youth coaching is a profession too—which means they need to show results for the money the club pays them, and the easiest, fastest way to produce results is to boost a player's fitness and strengthen his pressing.
Other forms of training barely show visible improvement without talent, whereas fitness, aside from minor talent-based differences, rises fairly evenly compared to everything else.
'And fitness is something you can actually verify with data.'
Which, thanks to modern football trends, made it the ability managers prize above all. Abilities like high pressing shift with tactical tides, but the ability to score goals never loses its importance so long as the rules of football stand.
Since the position I intend to play is striker, honing my touch matters all the more. That's purely my personal opinion.
In reality, several players in football history were entirely exempt from pressing duties—and the most famous example is Lionel Messi himself.
No one ever told Messi to press, because Messi could flip the flow of a match in a single moment.
And so can I.
While I was strolling around up front, Barcelona's shot sailed wide and play restarted with a goal kick. The goal kick went through a defender and found its way to me.
I could see the Barcelona players closing in around me, faces set like stone.
The moment I was about to beat the defenders off the dribble—
"Jae-rim!"
I spotted Kim Hyun-sung slicing into the space behind Barcelona's line.
Thwip—
Ordinarily, I wouldn't have chosen the pass. But this time I did, out of simple whimsy—because the sight of him running his lungs out even knowing I'd never pass to him was, frankly, rather impressive.
"What the—where's he even kicking that... b-block it!"
The Barcelona youngsters could only stare blankly as the ball sailed past them. They simply couldn't comprehend the passing lane I'd seen, and only reacted after Kim Hyun-sung had already broken into the space behind them.
The ball flew toward Kim Hyun-sung—a golden chance in the making.
"Oh..."
But Kim Hyun-sung, apparently never expecting the ball to come to him, let it slip right through.
"Jae-rim! Nice pass!"
And then he raised a thumbs up, looking mortified.
I let out a small sigh at the sight. It dredged up PTSD from my days playing for the South Korean national team.
'This is the kind of thing I'll be experiencing endlessly this run... best get used to it.'
Anyway. The pass to Kim Hyun-sung didn't lead to a goal.
Still, it seemed to have firmly stamped my existence into Messi's mind.
I turned toward the stands.
There stood Lionel Messi, risen from his seat, eyes round as saucers.
Given Messi's explosive reaction, it went without saying that the Main PD's grin was splitting his face toward the heavens.
***
Watching the match, Lionel Messi burst out laughing before he could stop himself.
Never before had he seen a player who saw the same paths he did. The way the boy wandered the pitch, reading the flow of the game—in so many ways, he was cut from the same cloth as Messi himself.
The hardest part to believe was that he was only eight.
Messi was beginning to invest real hope in the "player" called Joo Jae-rim.
'How much further can he grow from here...!'
Perhaps the boy could reach a height even Messi himself never touched.
It seemed he would have far more to discuss with the boy after the match than he'd planned.
And that day, the match between the two teams ended in victory for Fly World Class 11—Joo Jae-rim had hard-carried the team in a one-man show.
The instant the final whistle blew, Lionel Messi walked away from Barcelona's weeping youngsters and headed straight for Joo Jae-rim. His body was so fired up that he couldn't spare a glance for the eyes around him.
After exchanging greetings with Joo Jae-rim, Messi invited him to dinner.
"No thanks."
And at that reply, Messi quietly let out a sigh.
It was the first time in his entire life that a dinner invitation of his had been refused so flatly.