Lightly, Just Warming Up
The kids had barely finished catching their breath before filming kicked off in earnest.
The man who emerged when the door opened was none other than Lee Jae-jin, a key member of the squad that had reached the Round of 16 at the 2022 Qatar World Cup.
As the legends of 2002 grew older, it seemed the broadcast station had carried out a generational changing of the guard of its own.
But wait, who's that? Isn't the person next to him an actress?
And for some reason, the coaching duties had gone to Hong Ji-min, a former idol-turned-actress.
She was known to love football, sure, but a celebrity suddenly joining the cast was bound to raise eyebrows.
Is the main PD a fan of hers?
Glancing at the main PD grinning ear to ear in the corner of the set, it did seem like a reasonable deduction.
Anyway.
"I'm Joo Jae-rim, third grade, Dobong Elementary."
After everyone had exchanged introductions.
"Alright, kids, let's gather around, shall we?"
The training began.
Well... nothing special.
The first session didn't involve anything out of the ordinary.
While the other kids struggled to keep up with the drills, I simply started my own individual training, the one I'd missed out on today.
Lee Jae-jin, newly appointed as the head coach of Fly World Class 11, stared at the children with a soul-drained expression.
Ugh. Total chaos.
When the casting offer first came in, he'd actually been fairly confident.
He liked kids in general, and he was the kind of uncle who had a blast playing with his nephews and nieces.
But playing with children and teaching them football were two entirely different matters.
The moment he took his eyes off them, they'd scatter into mischief.
And the number of children he had to manage was eleven.
Wow. Seriously, if it weren't for Ms. Ji-min, I'd have typed GG and bolted ages ago.
Even in the middle of all this, the idol-turned-actress hadn't frowned a single time.
Watching the smile never once leave her lips, he found himself genuinely impressed.
So that's what being a celebrity is?
Clearly, the celebrities who go the distance are different in every possible way.
"Everyone, gather over here, please!"
By the time Lee Jae-jin had finished marveling, thirty minutes of training had slipped by, and the main PD called the cast together.
"Did everyone enjoy their training?"
"Yes~!"
"Do you think you can beat another team in a match?"
"Yes~!"
"Then let me introduce the team you'll be playing against today!"
At the main PD's announcement of an evaluation match, Lee Jae-jin couldn't help but wear a look of sheer disbelief.
...What are they playing at?
Asking them to play an actual match after barely thirty minutes of instruction simply defied logic.
I quietly nodded along at the main PD's announcement.
I could more or less picture the exact outcome he was hoping for.
Let me guess. He wants the classic 'get absolutely crushed, then grow from the experience' storyline.
Had he binge-watched a youth sports manga before planning this show? The whole setup was straight out of the genre's most well-worn playbook.
The kind of story jaded readers curse for being yet another tired cliché, yet the ones who love it go absolutely feral for.
Reality isn't a coming-of-age manga. What is this nonsense.
Unfortunately for him, though, it wasn't a genre I had any taste for.
My preferred genre was the otherworldly high schooler running rampant kind of story.
Perhaps because my endlessly regressing reality was a gutter, nothing satisfied quite like watching someone wreck house in another world.
Anyway.
The match between World Class 11 and some football center or other kicked off.
I started at the striker position.
Well, I mean, one look at the training was enough to know I'd be starting.
Even among the kids who'd passed the preliminary screening, the skill gap was considerable.
And within that group, the girl who'd been a child actress was... nothing short of a shock to me.
Seriously, how do you fail to receive a basic inside pass?
It made me wonder how she'd passed the auditions at all.
Is there some kind of preferential track for girls? Or for child actresses specifically?
As far as I was concerned, the team had one freeloader baked into the roster.
Everyone would be better off accepting that our team simply did not have a right-back.
Well... not my problem, I guess?
The coach had rattled off a long list of tactical instructions to me before the match.
"Jae-rim! Drop back and help out with defense!"
In one ear, out the other.
The striker position is one that proves itself through goals, always.
Impact on the field—pressing from the front, linking play, all of that?
Of course, that stuff matters. Between two strikers with comparable finishing, a manager will naturally favor the diligent one who influences the game more.
But nothing, absolutely nothing, outweighs scoring.
Let's be honest here—what kind of manager demands a high press from a striker who's guaranteed to bury at least one goal every single match?
At that point, you'd have to certify him with a very serious mental illness known as Genius Coach Syndrome.
For the record, managers afflicted with this disease have a distinctive habit of springing bizarre tactical experiments on players in trophy-deciding finals, then hurling the championship trophy straight into the trash.
And if a manager on my team ever dared to persecute me for not pressing from the front?
I'd pull a spite free transfer to their bitterest rival. Immediately.
This was ages ago, mind you, but after pulling that exact move once, I did teach the Genius Coach Syndrome sufferer a proper lesson.
Even though it ended with the enraged fans giving me a lead-bullet finale, I regretted nothing.
Anyway. Given the nature of this program, a spite free transfer wasn't exactly on the table—but that didn't mean I lacked countermeasures.
If the current coach demanded a high press from me, I was more than willing to oblige with a few own goals.
Score three or so, and wouldn't the manager just throw his hands up and tell me to do whatever I wanted?
In a professional league, I'd have been hauled off on match-fixing charges, of course.
But I'm not a professional yet, so no harm done. Probably?
About five minutes into the match, Joo Jae-rim was still strolling leisurely across the pitch, the coach's instructions thoroughly chewed and spat out.
Quite apart from the main PD's devious plan, he simply had no appetite for the game.
So even as an opposing player ran right past him, he didn't so much as react.
For Joo Jae-rim, putting on a good show for the cameras and actually playing the match were two entirely separate problems.
Playing a match for pocket change was something a world-class striker's pride could never stomach.
But then.
"Jae-rim! Mom's over here! That's my boy, let's go!"
Joo Jae-rim could not betray the expectations of the parents watching him...
and so he began to move. Slowly.
...Might as well loosen up a little.
"Why is that boy not doing anything at striker?"
"Exactly. These days they say pressing from the front matters from the youngest ages."
"My son is the ace of his football class, you know? And they put him at right-back, of all things. The main PD clearly has no eye for talent."
At the sound of the mothers tearing her son apart, Han Hyo-min found herself on the verge of tears without quite knowing why.
Her first instinct was to throw hands, but she couldn't ignore the risk that a brawl would disrupt the filming.
This place was where her son was being filmed—and also where her husband worked.
My son...
Han Hyo-min watched her boy wandering the grass with that blank, unreadable expression.
He was a child no one could ever guess the thoughts of, but as his mother, Han Hyo-min knew better than anyone that he had the warmest heart in the world.
Even right now, he'd clearly hesitated for fear of hurting an opponent and missed his tackle window because of it!
Our Jae-rim's problem is that he's just too sweet.
In that moment, Han Hyo-min realized what she had to do: give her son courage. Give him strength.
"Jae-rim! Mom's over here! That's my boy, let's go!"
She raised her voice in a full-throated cheer.
The surrounding mothers flinched at the sudden outburst and turned to stare at her.
Only then did they register that they'd been badmouthing her son right in front of his mother.
"Goodness, like mother, like son. The nerve on this woman is something else."
Even amid all that, one mother kept right on trash-talking without a shred of tact—the one brimming with resentment over her own child being assigned to right-back.
The fiery stare-down between Han Hyo-min and the right-back's mother lasted only a moment.
BOOM—
Joo Jae-rim tore the defensive line apart and scored.
"WOOOH! THAT'S MY BOY!!"
In the silence that had settled over the pitch, Han Hyo-min's voice rang out alone.
Watching the women who'd been badmouthing her son stand frozen, mouths agape and utterly speechless, she felt wonderful.
"Oh my, what was it called—football class? We've never once sent him to anything like that, so I suppose that's just raw talent, isn't it?"
A flawless humblebrag—bragging about her child disguised as gracious modesty.
Aside from his mother Han Hyo-min, the very first person to react to Joo Jae-rim's sudden goal was Lee Jae-jin, head coach of Fly World Class 11.
What... was that?
His reaction was that of a man who had just discovered an incomprehensible, alien being.
It wasn't as if Joo Jae-rim had pulled off some flashy individual highlight. He had simply unsettled the defender's balance with nothing but an upper-body feint and ambidextrous dribbling, then strolled into the penalty box.
And with a simple shot feint, he'd wrong-footed even the goalkeeper before dinking the ball casually into an empty net.
Is he... Messi?
Compared to the level of players on that pitch, he shouldn't have had any business reminding anyone of the man.
And yet Joo Jae-rim's play was more than enough to summon the image of Lionel Messi in a heartbeat.
Even his aimless ambling around the pitch was eerily reminiscent of him.
Coincidence?
At first he'd wondered if it was one, but apparently not.
Joo Jae-rim had just detonated a wonder goal and was now trudging back toward the halfway line with a face of utter indifference.
As if this were simply the way things were supposed to go.
...Huh?
Hwang Hyun-woo, the main PD, was caught completely off guard by the unexpected turn of events.
Wait, what? Was that just an ordinary goal?
Joo Jae-rim's expression was so absurdly deadpan that for a moment, he'd genuinely mistaken it for a routine one.
"...Hey, you said you're into football, right? That play just now—wasn't that insanely good?"
So he turned to his assistant director, the resident football fanatic.
"...Yes. Yes? Sorry, what did you say?"
"Never mind. Forget it. Judging by your face and Coach Lee Jae-jin's, I'm guessing that was pretty damn good."
A smile spread deep across Hwang Hyun-woo's lips. His original plan had collapsed in ruins, but somehow his mood was anything but bad.
This isn't half bad either.
While the main PD wore his satisfied grin.
"Hey. Out of my way, don't interfere."
Joo Jae-rim robbed the ball from a teammate, dribbled through, and scored again.
"Whoa... wow. So THIS is what they mean by making football look easy."
Despite himself, PD Hwang Hyun-woo burst into genuine admiration.
He was filming a football variety show, sure, but Hwang Hyun-woo had never much cared for the sport. At most, he'd skim the occasional article about Korean legends making it big overseas.
And yet Joo Jae-rim's play was enough to raise goosebumps even on a main PD like him.
How is a kid that age playing football like a Taoist immortal?
What's more, Joo Jae-rim wasn't just a good dribbler.
His defense and passing were top-tier as well.
After a clean interception, he fired off a long-range shot and found the net once more.
From the moment Joo Jae-rim started moving to the completion of his hat trick, less than three minutes had passed.
By this point, it genuinely felt like the genre had been swapped mid-episode.
From a youth sports manga to a post-apocalyptic survival story.
A demon king had abruptly descended upon a team everyone had written off as cannon fodder.
And this demon king seemed to be utterly without blood or tears.
Whether the opposing players burst into crying or not, he kept pressing the attack without mercy.
"Hey, you. Go up front and play striker."
"Huh? Are you talking to me? I'm eleven, so I'm actually older than you—"
"So are you better at football than me or not?"
"...No."
"Then do what I say."
The one silver lining was that after completing his hat trick, running had apparently become too much of a hassle, so he'd dropped into midfield and started spraying key passes instead.
PD Hwang Hyun-woo nodded along as he watched Joo Jae-rim bossing the team around.
He's got a filthy mouth, that one.
And yet he wasn't unlikable at all. Jae-rim's unflappable demeanor in any situation and his overwhelming talent created a strangely potent synergy.
For a long while, Hwang Hyun-woo stood there, jaw hanging open, staring blankly at nothing but Joo Jae-rim.
That kid is the main character.
The switch flipped in his head—the switch reserved for a main PD.
He turned to look at the camera director.
Cam, you getting all this?
Obviously. My boy's putting on a show—I'm shooting every second of it.
The two men, veterans of countless variety shoots together, exchanged a rapid-fire series of glances.
A smile crept unbidden across Hwang Hyun-woo's lips. He'd caught the scent of a jackpot from a place he never expected.
In his head, he was already rapid-cutting the trailer.
The first goal is the money shot, obviously. And the thumbnail title? 'Messi's Jae-rim.' His name literally means Second Coming—it's perfect.
But the scene that would end up crowning the highlight reel was something else entirely.
...Was that an Eul-yong-ta?