The Politics of Valencia
***
At the very moment Joo Jae-rim was marveling at the unknown entity known as Ronaldo, the festival atmosphere in Korea was spilling over from Sunday into Monday.
So many football fans had stayed up all night watching the match, convinced that it might turn out to be the debut of Korea's greatest talent, Joo Jae-rim.
"Manager, did you catch the game early Sunday morning?"
"Sure did. We're living in Son Heung-bin's era now, aren't we? Kee-hee! I never thought we'd see another player like him after Son Heung-bin."
"That's why I'm thinking of putting my newborn son into football when he grows up."
"Is that so? Raise him well. Who knows, he might be the second coming of Joo Jae-rim."
The office workers chatted over cigarettes before getting down to the day's work.
And it was much the same at an all-boys high school in Seoul.
"Hey, did you guys watch Jae-rim's debut?"
"Yeah, dude was seriously insane. For real."
"Yo, how old is hyung Jae-rim again? Could he make the World Cup next year?"
"He's only a year younger than us. His age'll probably be a problem."
"Whoa, damn. All this time I've been calling him hyung and he's younger than us."
"If he's good at football and rich, he's hyung. That's the rule."
"Speaking of football — we playing at lunch today?"
"Hah, you know what, I have to. Time to show off some Dongcheon High Joo Jae-rim class today."
"This guy called himself Messi last time, and now he's Joo Jae-rim?"
"Since when is Messi the enemy? The trend is Jae-rim, obviously."
"By the way, where's Hyun-sung?"
Joo Jae-rim's popularity ran hot here, and it wasn't without reason — he had a personal connection to the place.
Kim Hyun-sung, who had once appeared on Fly World Class 11 alongside Joo Jae-rim, attended this very school.
"Oh, there's Hyun-sung now. Hey! Kim Hyun-sung, did you watch Jae-rim's debut?"
Kim Hyun-sung walked into the classroom, and the boys swarmed over to him.
"Yeah, I watched it."
"Ooh, ooh! Did hyung Jae-rim send you any messages?"
"He did."
"And? What did he say back?"
"A thumbs-up."
"That's it? Don't tell me you sent something weird again."
At that point, one of the boys spoke up with a surly edge in his voice.
"Hey, at this point isn't it kind of a lie that you're actually close with Joo Jae-rim?"
"That's just how Jae-rim is. He's indifferent to everyone."
"Indifferent to everyone, my ass. He's just indifferent to *you*."
As the atmosphere turned frosty, another boy rushed in to smooth things over.
"Wh-what's his name, Yoo Min-jung? The former child actress? I heard she leaves him on read too, every single message."
"...Yeah, true enough."
Thanks to the other boy's efforts, the stiffness melted out of Kim Hyun-sung's face.
"So what exactly did you write in your message?"
"Just greetings, that I'd enjoyed watching him play, that he's the greatest player in my eyes, and that I hope we can meet on the national team someday. Something like that?"
"...And roughly how long was it?"
"No idea exactly. I stopped reading after 2,000 characters..."
"Insane. A guy sent another guy a 2,000-character personal message?"
"If he stopped reading at 2,000, that means there was more."
"Wow, I would never have read all of that."
"Forget reading it. I'd be so creeped out I'd block him."
***
Hmm. A message with genuine sincerity behind it.
I read the letter Kim Hyun-sung had sent me and fired back a thumbs-up in encouragement. It was only natural to feel satisfied by a letter filled with the earnest devotion of a youth player who looked up to me.
In the past, I looked up to Messi and Ronaldo too.
In Kim Hyun-sung's letter, I caught a glimpse of my old self.
It was an unimaginably long time ago, but there was once a version of me who genuinely admired Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
It didn't take long, however, for me to realize the truth.
As long as I admired the two of them, I would never be able to surpass them.
What was it they said? Admiration is the emotion furthest from understanding.
And in fact, I no longer admire Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. They are targets to be surpassed, not figures to be idolized.
Which is precisely why I became the one person alive who understood those two better than anyone else. And that, in turn, is why the two world-class legends cling to me so obsessively.
Though I think this is the first time Ronaldo's ever been this fixated on me...
Chris has always been an impossible human being to read, so I'll just let it slide.
Anyone who invents a Celebration Bonus Clause is absolutely not operating with a full deck, after all.
For the record, I turned down Ronaldo's offer that day.
It's not a World Cup final or a Champions League final — you want me to do a cheesy ceremony for a mere league match?
I did find it odd that the ceremony allowance exceeded my goal bonus, but it was far too cheap a price to buy the 'pride' of a great footballer such as myself.
After I rejected his proposal, Ronaldo's calls and messages came down on me like carpet bombing. And when I blocked his number, he simply kept trying from a new one.
In the end, I blocked everything — all numbers in the country — except for my family's and my agent's.
All it took was setting 'block calls starting with entered digits' to '6' and '7'. A simple matter, really.
Granted, it meant I could no longer receive calls from anyone else... but that was a trivial price to pay.
Then, the following morning.
"Jaerimi, I texted you asking to come to training together yesterday and today. Why didn't you answer?"
Marcos Alvarez approached me at the training ground.
"Ah, I blocked the numbers."
"My number?"
"No — Spain's."
I explained the whole saga to a thoroughly bewildered Marcos Alvarez, and he let out a groan of pure disbelief.
"...You absolute lunatic."
Well, outsiders were bound to find it incomprehensible. This was a pride contest between Cristiano Ronaldo and myself, at the very highest level the world had to offer.
Which is exactly why ordinary pros can never be more than ordinary.
Anyone looking in from the outside might ask whether pride pays the bills. But for me, ensnared by the 'Curse of Regression', pride was everything.
After the Getafe match, my playing time had begun to grow. It was a signal that the manager had come to place his full trust in me, despite my being such a young prospect. In truth, it was the scheduled flow of events — destiny, if you like. Any manager with functioning eyes had no choice but to use a player like me.
In Round 31 of La Liga, I came on as a substitute in the 62nd minute and recorded two assists.
"Hah... Does that kid have triangular feet or something?"
If it hadn't been for that nameless forward who launched my gorgeous killer passes into empty air time and time again, I could have added two more assists. But hey — that's football, I suppose.
Then in Round 32 against Villarreal, I made the matchday squad but never set foot on the pitch. The match had boiled over far too much.
"Jaerimi, stop warming up and sit on the bench."
The manager decided against fielding me that day, and I obeyed without complaint.
"Kill the sons of bitches born of that pig's loins!!"
Villarreal's matches were notorious, and that day's fixture alone produced eight yellow cards and a staggering two reds. If I had gone on, my still-fragile, still-growing body would almost certainly have ended up injured.
The manager can see the future. Not bad.
The fact that he refused to risk me chasing three points in that match alone showed that Valencia's current manager knew how to protect a young player. He wasn't a bad coach at all.
Julián, was it? I should remember that name.
My apologies to the manager, but memorizing full names was a waste of memory capacity.
It's not as if the man is a tactical genius.
In any case, once I began cementing my place in the first team, the veterans started their checks. Valencia's battle for starting spots had officially begun.
And true to Spanish form, that battle manifested as 'politics'.
***
In Spanish clubs, dressing-room politics and factions were something of a passive trait.
Honestly, teams free of factional strife were rare. Bring together more than twenty human beings and factions are simply inevitable — players are people too, and everyone gravitates toward whoever they happen to click with.
Of course, if everyone kept the professional and the personal strictly separate, it wouldn't have been a problem.
We're not children. "I hate his guts, so don't get along with him"? Seriously?
Unfortunately, quite a few of the players turned out to be more childish than expected. There were grown men whose mental age appeared permanently stuck in elementary school.
"What the hell is this idiot doing?"
When a teammate in a practice match openly refused to pass to me and made a show of freezing me out, I couldn't help wearing an expression of sheer incredulity.
"Endrick!!!"
Then again, Valencia was on the better end of the spectrum — at least the manager and coaching staff were sane.
They do draw the line between work and personal grudges. Somewhat.
I had little interest in club politics or factions. Only players who lacked the skill — or lacked enough of it — bothered drowning themselves in that game. Someone like me, with abundant talent and plenty to show for it, never needed to stoop to anything so sordid.
Plenty of clubs would take me besides this one, anyway.
If things turned to garbage, I could simply transfer elsewhere. And surely any club with an ounce of sense wouldn't release me.
***
Manager Julián Cortés Navarro had been tearing his hair out over the recent problems brewing inside Valencia.
What a headache...
A handful of veterans had taken issue with Jae-rim's attitude, calling the rookie insolent. And the rotation players who'd lost their spots in the competition against Jae-rim were nursing their own resentments.
He studied Jae-rim carefully.
The cause is obvious.
And yet he couldn't possibly discipline the boy.
Jaerimi hasn't done anything wrong.
To be sure, Jae-rim's attitude wasn't exactly normal — the manager himself largely agreed with the criticisms of his arrogance.
But then, you'd have to actually be better than Jaerimi at football first.
For a professional footballer, 'ability' trumped seniority, always. Moreover, the influence of the players who viewed Jae-rim positively — with Rafael Silva at their center — was not something he could afford to ignore.
The one mercy is that this hasn't been reported to the owner.
If news of this mess had reached Cristiano Ronaldo, all hell might well have broken loose. Jae-rim was, after all, the player the owner cherished above all others.
And if the owner applied direct pressure on the current dressing-room situation? Jae-rim's influence in the locker room could end up eclipsing his own. In the end, it was the owner who paid the manager and the players alike.
I don't even want to imagine it.
Julián Cortés Navarro sighed. Sooner or later, Valencia would have to be rebuilt around 'Joo Jae-rim'. That was what the owner wanted, what he himself wanted, what the board and the fans all wanted.
Jaerimi has already proven he's a talent who would shine even in the top flight.
He was no fool who failed to recognize treasure sitting right in front of him. But this incident had accelerated the timeline of the rebuild. The plan had been to proceed slowly, taking time — yet the conflict surrounding Jae-rim had already surfaced into the open.
About a month left until the end of the season.
He prayed, quietly.
Please, just let nothing explode until the squad is set in order.
***
I came on as a substitute in the 63rd minute of our Round 33 league match against Real Sociedad.
The state of the game was far from good — we were being dragged along 1–0 down to Real Sociedad. And in that moment, the manager's choice was to send me on. It was an expression of his belief that I alone could turn this situation around.
If you trust me this much, I suppose I'll deliver one.
The moment I stepped onto the pitch, I began moving in earnest. As it happened, possession had just turned over, and Valencia was surging forward in attack.
The ball reached me through Rafael Silva. The instant I took my touch, a nameless winger made his run into the penalty box, and I slipped a pass into his path.
He was one of the players who'd refused to pass to me in training — but that particular issue hardly mattered right now. For a footballer, the team's victory comes first.
Startled, apparently unsure whether anyone would actually pass to him, he still managed — barely worthy of the word 'professional' — to take a stable first touch.
Still, something about this kid makes me nervous.
Before the 'nameless winger' could even shape to shoot — regardless of whether he did — I was already driving into the penalty box myself.
Play football for the Korean national team for a hundred years or more, and the lesson seeps in naturally: trusting your teammates is a fool's game.
If you want to win, you have to carry it yourself.
That wasn't arrogance or conceit. It was a plain, unvarnished fact.
And sure enough, the nameless winger's shot was smothered dead by the goalkeeper. The ball, rebounding off the keeper's hands, dropped loose inside the penalty box.
I was already sprinting toward the rebound —
thud─
A delicate poke toward the far side, away from the goalkeeper's reach — and the equalizer rippled into the net.
***
Meanwhile, at that very moment — the instant Joo Jae-rim scored — Cristiano Ronaldo was rapidly scanning the stadium for the nearest camera.
If Jae-rim wasn't going to do his ceremony—
"SIUUUUUUUUUU─!"
Then he would simply do it himself!
Starting with the supporters nearest to him, every single Valencia fan in the stadium followed Ronaldo's celebration. And at the sound of his own signature roar echoing through the ground, he beamed like a child.