Asian Champions Elite (2)
In the 2029 AFC Champions League Elite, our opponent in the final was J.League side Yokohama Marinos.
Every match up to this point had been split between home and away legs, so even if you lost once there was still a chance to put things right. A final, though, was like any other tournament final — both teams would play on neutral ground, in a third-party country that belonged to neither of them. One game would decide everything.
And that opponent was Yokohama, of all teams…
Truth be told, I didn’t know much about them. The J.League had always sat well outside the range of my interests. Still, I’d heard the name often enough, and anyone who’d clawed their way to the final wasn’t a side you could just write off.
Then again, the J.League itself isn’t exactly a collection of teams you can dismiss, so maybe that goes without saying.
From 2020 onward, the massive influx of Middle Eastern oil money had sent the Qatari and Saudi leagues rocketing up the ranks. Qatar’s back-to-back Asian Cup titles only fueled the talk that Asia’s football crown — the one Korea and Japan had spent years arguing over — had finally shifted to the Middle East.
I couldn’t agree with that. Not even a little.
Just look at last season alone. Weren’t there players who’d been starring in Europe’s biggest leagues?
Sure. Ronaldo, Kanté, Neymar — names that had once lit up the world game — all took the Saudi paycheck. And while they were rarer, you still got the occasional Ruben Neves type: a guy who looked like he was actually making something of himself in Europe, only to get yanked to the Middle East by the sheer weight of the money.
Nothing pumps up a league’s profile like an influx of stars, and these weren’t ordinary stars — they were fixtures in the history of the sport. If the leagues hadn’t gotten stronger after that, that would have been the real surprise.
But did that mean the title of Asia’s strongest had actually transferred to them…?
Absolute nonsense.
Star players? Great. Who’s going to pretend their careers don’t matter?
Objectively, though, most of them were already on the aging curve — guys who knew next season they’d start to get found out, so they decided to cash out hard at the end of the road. And the promising ones, the still-excellent ones like Neves?
So what? There were only a handful of them, and the bulk of every roster was still packed with local players.
Nothing’s more frustrating than playing alongside people who aren’t at your level. In my past life I wanted to wring the necks of half the national-team strikers I shared a pitch with.
Someone once said that short of Messi, no player is greater than the team. I’ll borrow that line. Can a big-league import really hoist a whole league’s status on his back while dragging along local players and a bunch of washed-up veterans who only came for one last payday and a Saudi vacation?
If that worked, the ACL final would have been a Saudi internal affair every single year. Reality check: the sides that kept making the final four were always Saudi, Japan, and Korea.
Look at right now. Saudi packed it in at the semis. Some things just don’t work no matter how hard you force them.
Recruiting stars to “make the league healthy”? Handing expensive supplements to a guy who’s already on his last legs isn’t going to change a damn thing.
“Saudi’s tearful sacrifice is tragic and all, but… what can you do? Time to show them the results of our deconstruction analysis again in the final.”
“Deconstruction analysis, my ass. Yi-an. Do you have any idea what I just said?”
“Sir?”
I had my eyes half-closed, offering a quiet moment of silence for the Saudi players who were probably on a plane by now, when Manager Sun Ki-baek fixed me with a look and asked that question.
“I went out of my way to spell it out for you, so don’t you dare tell me you nodded off like Yoon Seung-hwan. Now — how do we stop Seomun Jun-yeong? Say it again.”
Ah… I’d been zoning out and missed it.
I was a footballer, so I had the tactical breakdown on Yokohama locked down. Individual players, though? Not so much.
At this point, maybe I just asked the guy next to me.
“Hey, Han Gang-rok. How are we supposed to mark Mun Jun-yeong?”
“What the hell are you talking about, you lunatic? It’s not Mun Jun-yeong — it’s Jun-yeong. Seomun is the surname.”
“Seomun is the surname? What, is he from the legendary Seomun clan or something?”
Even our dog, Ibrahim Poppy, had a two-character surname — Shinbaek — but I never expected an actual Seomun to be walking around in Korea.
Surprise must have been written all over my face, because Han Gang-rok looked at me like I was an insect.
“No? His mom’s a Seo and his dad’s a Mun, so he’s Seomun Jun-yeong.”
“Ah…”
“He’s our high-school senior, you idiot. What kind of garbage have you been spouting this whole time?”
So it wasn’t that Seomun. It was just his parents’ two surnames smashed together.
You could name a dog like that — but an actual household? And why did the mother’s surname go first?
The cascade of incomprehensible information left me visibly reeling.
“…First Seung-hwan, and now you too, Baek Yi-an? You were asleep as well? The youngest ones really are living the high life.”
“Ah…”
Manager Sun shoved his face into mine. I squeezed my eyes shut.
Yoon Seung-hwan
Park Yeon-woo Andres Schaffery
Kim Choon-jae Baek Yi-an
Han Gyeong-rok Han Yong-ho Sohn Sang-hyun Han Gang-rok
Joo Tae-young
Nakamura
Marco Luis Seomun Jun-yeong
Inoue Lucas
Takeda Fujimoto Saito Yamaguchi
Ishikawa
Yokohama took the kickoff in the AFC Champions League final.
Whether they were being careful because it was the final, or whether they simply weren’t a side that liked to play at a high tempo, I couldn’t say. Either way, Yokohama started with a patient back build-up, keeping the ball in their own half instead of pushing up recklessly.
4-2-3-1. Same starting shape as us, but the movement is a completely different animal.
We pressed hard and, even if we lost the ball, slammed right back into a counter-press. Yokohama, by contrast, looked settled and secure. Was that why the manager had told us to watch their movement and manage the tempo?
The lecture he’d delivered while hauling me up by the collar kept looping through my head.
The core of Yokohama’s tactics is dual-volante distribution from the back, plus duo play between the second line and the center forward.
It sounded fancy enough to make your eyes glaze over, but broken down piece by piece it wasn’t complicated at all.
The volante back-play was simple: push the fullbacks high, then use the two holding mids to plug the gaps and run the build-up. The second-line-and-striker duo play just meant neither of them trusted their individual quality to beat a press alone, so they were going to create numerical overloads the cheap way and smash through that way instead.
Watching it, the difference in temperament between Manager Sun — who loved a 3-2 build-up and used his volantes aggressively — and the opposing coach was laid bare.
You couldn’t call either approach wrong. If I had to pick, though, I preferred Manager Sun’s brand of football: sharp, aggressive, no half-measures. That rock-solid, organization-first style had never been my thing.
Maybe that was why watching Yokohama recycle the ball endlessly at the back made me want to correct that bad habit for them.
“Alright, I think we can start moving now… Choon-jae hyung! You see Jun-yeong over there?”
“Huh? Yeah, I see him. Wait — wasn’t it Mun Jun-yeong? His surname’s Seomun? He’s not from the Seomun clan or anything, is he?”
“It’s his dad’s surname plus his mom’s, so Seomun. Anyway, I’ll take care of Marco and Seomun Jun-yeong. You just focus on shielding the back four.”
If this was the volante build-up I knew, the holding mid who’d drifted wide and the fullback would start stringing passes together, dragging our players out of position and opening pockets of space. Sure enough, Yokohama kept the ball near the touchline, watching how we moved.
“Yi-an! Seomun Jun-yeong’s making a run!”
“Got it! I’ve got the space behind!”
I took off the second Inoue hit the long switch. The ball wasn’t aimed perfectly at Seomun — more of a drop into the zone between him and Luis. It wasn’t that they lacked the quality to play a proper pass; if we pressed, the two of them would just manufacture a two-on-one and play out of it.
I refused to play along with Yokohama’s setup.
Manager Sun had assigned Seomun Jun-yeong to me personally. In the sacred art of screen play, interference from any other player was absolutely not allowed.
“Man-geun weight… wait, do we use metric now? Six-hundred-kilo plate!”
“Wha— ugh!”
Just before the ball reached Seomun’s foot, I accelerated, cut between him and the ball, set a hard screen, and then dropped flat to the ground. At 191 centimeters I had a massive physical edge on a winger’s frame; Seomun crumpled without resistance.
Thud!
“Got it! Schaffery! Straight through!”
“Nice one… Yi-an!”
I stripped the ball myself and slipped a deep pass forward. Schaffery flashed a thumbs-up and took off. Whether Seomun was furious about losing possession or under orders from Quell to track back, he tried to chase — and I had no intention of letting him.
“Stay right there!”
“Get off me, you bastard! Move! Get out of the way!”
Unable to break free of a screen that felt like an indestructible diamond, Seomun was left dancing along the touchline, getting hauled around wherever I wanted him.
“Ah, shit! These puta bastards are everywhere. Yi-an! I’m giving it back!”
“Fine by me. Gang-rok, you push up! Seung-hwan, what the hell are you doing up there? Drop!”
“What? You’re giving me the ball? See, this is why friends are grea—”
“No — get out of Yeon-woo hyung’s space instead of camping there! Choon-jae hyung, drift into the open pocket!”
“Let go of me already, you son of a bitch! How long are you going to keep shoving me?!”
Even as our team started turning Yokohama’s half into a war zone, Seomun Jun-yeong still couldn’t escape. A winger locked completely out of the game — with our attack already overloaded, it had to be pure poison for Yokohama. I loved that kind of situation.
“Think I can push a little higher?”
“Ah, damn it!”
“Hm? Want a taste of the Heavenly Demon Dominion Step?”
“Aaaargh!”
While his attention slipped for a second, Seomun tried to sneak free and stick a foot at the ball. I simply rolled it from my right foot to my left and drove past him.
Crack!
A weird little sound, a strangled whimper, and Seomun crumpled in a heap. Professional to the core, I wasn’t about to waste the opening.
“Choon-jae hyung! Straight to Yeon-woo sunbae!”
“Got it. Yeon-woo hyung, drop a step… Gyeong-rok! I’m sending it — put it in!”
Thump!
Yeon-woo hyung had been threatening the flank; when he dropped a half-step, their fullback got dragged with him. Han Gyeong-rok read the vacated space perfectly and whipped in a low cross. The timing was predictable enough — the problem was how absurdly low and sharp the angle of that ball was. The keeper, fixated on Gyeong-rok on the right, completely lost track of the man parked on the left.
Tap!
“YEEAAAH! It’s in!”
A casual rabona touch and the ball was sucked into the net. Scoring in a final sent Han Gang-rok sprinting toward the corner flag with the brother who’d assisted him, and I was about to follow when I heard Seomun Jun-yeong arguing with the referee behind me.
“Referee, please just listen! I swear I heard this crack against my head and then my legs just stopped working — Baek Yi-an hit me! I’m telling you he hit me!”
“WHAT?”
“Baek Yi-an used the Heavenly Demon Dominion Step on me!”
“Hey, Seomun? We’ve already run VAR three times. You and Baek Yi-an never even made contact.”
“I’m serious! I heard a crack right against my head!”
I didn’t even touch him… why is he like this…
Claiming he’d been hit when he hadn’t been hit at all… the guy was turning out to be a world-class drama queen.