Acting
The instant his side conceded that own goal to Baek Yi-an, a single memory began to surface in Manager Park Tae-hyun's mind.
"Hey, Tae-hyun. You think I'm the kind of bastard who blames his players every damn day?"
"Whoa. The booze just hit and you're suddenly talking like this?"
"I'm asking because you're about to retire, you idiot. Do I look like a petty little shit who pins everything on the players to you, too?"
Not long after he'd hung up his boots at Incheon—the club where he'd once played—he'd ended up at a drinking table with his old manager. The man was thoroughly drunk, and that was exactly how he'd grumbled.
With the alcohol flowing, any half-competent adult who understood social etiquette would've played along, murmuring something like You're a master of the game, boss, and waited for the good mood to open the manager's wallet.
Of course… Park Tae-hyun was different.
"Then why the hell do you go hunting for a culprit in the post-match interviews every time you lose? Why do that and walk around wearing a weird stigma?"
Honest. Direct. Park Tae-hyun poured out every thought he had. Why bother reading the room? He was already retired. Time was the one thing he had in surplus.
People said that even after hanging up your boots, managing your connections in the industry still mattered—but he had zero interest in lingering around, flattering anyone.
Even faced with that bluntness, the manager only snorted and set his glass down.
"Hey. You think I do it on purpose? Be honest—every time you lose, don't you think the tactics I cooked up are complete garbage?"
"…A little?"
"Look at this bastard. Zero social skills… Fine, maybe you're right and I am the problem. But sometimes I really do put together a solid plan, and then a couple of players somehow blow the whole thing up."
"So what you're saying is… you prep your ass off, the players screw around and lose the match, and then you get the abuse and it pisses you off?"
"See, Tae-hyun, you get me. You're a smart little shit, you really are."
"Isn't that just blaming the players?"
Getting dragged through the mud was irritating, sure… but back then, Park Tae-hyun hadn't understood what the man was really saying.
Even if the players' mistakes set everything off, he'd always believed that if the team lost, the full responsibility still sat with the manager.
A story from a distant past. A memory that should've been tossed into some forgotten corner—just another drunken acquaintance's nonsense.
And yet Park Tae-hyun… right here, right now, was remembering it.
Why?
"You absolute bastards! What the hell are you doing! Why are you sticking your head in like that! Shit!"
"Manager! Please calm down!"
"How am I supposed to calm down! We clawed our way back and they're pulling that crap!"
Why else. Because he was standing square in a situation where blaming the players was the only option left.
Before the second half kicked off, Park Tae-hyun had made it crystal clear to his players.
Even if it meant surrendering possession to Jeonbuk, they had to cut off every route into the final third—and they were not to manufacture useless variables in dangerous areas and hand the other side chances.
And then Lee Jeong-woo, with that ferocious charge at Baek Yi-an, had gifted them a golden opportunity on a silver platter.
What manager on earth wouldn't lose it watching that?
That absolute…
Looking at Lee Jeong-woo, who couldn't even follow one simple instruction, the rage had surged—but Park Tae-hyun swallowed the bile and forced himself calm.
If they folded here, it was over. The hard-won scoreline still flickered behind his eyes, but if you looked at it generously, it was only a one-goal gap, wasn't it?
We just have to catch up again.
It might have been impossible. But hadn't they already clawed back from two goals down?
Jeonbuk had shifted their stance, but that was still within the range of what he'd accounted for. Tweak the tactics a little, adjust the detailed instructions he'd given the players, and it wasn't pure fantasy.
So when a brief window of time opened up, Park Tae-hyun headed straight for Lee Jeong-woo.
"Jeong-woo."
"…I'm sorry, Manager."
"Chin up, will you. You're running the midfield and dropping deep to defend—things like this happen."
Lee Jeong-woo. To Manager Park Tae-hyun, he was a player who truly meant something.
Back when Park had been bouncing around as a reserves coach, he'd joined Pohang on their call and had been working with this kid ever since.
If you turned the time they'd spent together at Pohang into a book, it'd run about two hundred pages…
No, maybe not that much. More like a short novella at six thousand characters per chapter.
Fifty chapters. Yeah—about that much material.
Because of all that shared history, even in a situation like this, the manager still had faith in him.
"You know how many cards you've got?"
"…I don't think I've received any cards."
"That's right. No cards. And the only thing you've contributed to this match is that own goal. Even that wasn't you messing around on purpose… just a little flaw in judgment that handed Baek Yi-an a chance. Nobody saw that coming, right?"
"Yes."
"Then we're good."
An own goal was a bone-deep wound for any manager or player—but the situation was still salvageable.
Including stoppage time, there were still roughly twenty-five minutes left in the second half.
So if he just kept his head straight, clawing back wasn't impossible. Having settled that conviction, Park Tae-hyun spent the entire window talking only to Lee Jeong-woo.
"I'm not subbing you out. You know how much this match means to our fans, right?"
There wasn't anyone on Pohang's bench who could replace Jeong-woo anyway, so substitution hadn't even been on the table—but he still laid it on thick to lift the mood.
"Just don't get sent off. No cards yet, so drop deep carefully, keep distributing from midfield, and focus on the deep-lying playmaking role I've given you. Got it?"
If trouble kicks off with the opponent, ignore it.
If you can't win the ball, leave the rest to the team.
Don't mess around and create a disaster—play as safely as you can.
"I'm counting on you."
"Yes, Manager. Leave it to me! I'm staying on this pitch till the end like I'm burying my bones here."
Revived by his own pep talk, Lee Jeong-woo nodded with a faint smile. Park Tae-hyun turned and headed for the technical area, then lightly answered the fans clapping for him and his player.
My beloved Pohang! Clap clap clap clap clap clap
My beloved Pohang! Clap clap clap clap clap clap!
Park Tae-hyun started clapping along like he'd just become a world-class star, whipping up the atmosphere with them. With a far more unburdened expression than before, he looked out over the pitch as the match kicked off again.
Five minutes after the restart, Park Tae-hyun's eyes locked onto a scene he could not believe.
Crash!
"Urgh! Aaaagh! Ugh!"
Tweeeet!
"What? No, ref? I didn't even touch him! Okay, fine, we clipped a little, but not like this, seriously!"
"…Listen, Lee Jeong-woo. Are you telling me Baek Yi-an went flying just now because of a light clip?"
"No… it was really just a graze."
"A player with that body rolled nearly two meters from a collision and you're calling it Hollywood acting. Unbelievable. Your foot was way too high. And you lifted the studs straight into his calf. You already know what I'm about to say, don't you?"
Ah, shit, wait.
As Lee Jeong-woo started talking with the referee, Park Tae-hyun watched him with the heart of a parent standing at the school gate on CSAT day.
"…"
"Jeong-woo."
"I'm sorry. I'll head in first after getting sent off."
"…Oh for fuck's sake!"
Seventy-third minute of the second half. Watching Lee Jeong-woo walk into the tunnel after a straight red, Park Tae-hyun writhed on the ground.
If you asked football fans which players they most hated to look at, they'd probably name two types.
First: the guy you spent a fortune signing, only for his form to crater the second he joins your club.
Second: the guy who's usually absolute garbage—until he faces your team, suddenly gets possessed by football-god mode, and single-handedly carries the match.
Of course both are infuriating from the opposition's perspective. But if you're the one actually out on the pitch… the types that really get under your skin are a little different.
First: the bastard who ducks the ref's eyes and twists every situation to his own advantage. Second: the bastard who makes you wonder whether he's a footballer at all, or just a world-class actor whose face got wrecked so he ended up playing football. Those two are the absolute worst.
Even one of those traits was enough to make your blood boil. But the world was cruel—those two traits had such ridiculous synergy that if you only had one, the other unlocked with enough years of experience.
Embarrassing as it was to admit, I was no different.
When was that? After I conquered those honest Serie A bastards and transferred to Newcastle, some caster—or was it a journalist?—called me the second coming of Klinsmann or whatever.
Back when I played as Kang Yun-ho, I was a player who used clever fouls all the time.
I was good at tormenting opponents outside the referee's line of sight, but if anyone asked what I was best at, I'd say without hesitation that my diving was absolutely elite.
Sure, diving is a dirty play, and if you fail you look like a complete idiot. But if you brain-rot it at a high enough level, it transcends into art.
The perfect example was the legendary striker Jürgen Klinsmann.
The moment anyone mocked him as a diving merchant, he'd score and hit them with a diving celebration—elite among elites.
If you had to name the guy in football history who simply did not listen to mockery, he'd take the GOAT seat without contest.
I don't want to admit it, but in our industry Klinsmann really is the GOAT.
Of course once he became a manager it was like someone hit him with a brain-cell-reduction beam—or maybe he just binged Japanese football anime where passion solves everything—because the bastard stopped writing tactics and just screamed Passion! Passion! Passion! until he became a disaster coach.
Different position or not, rating Klinsmann highly as a player was only natural for a junior following in a senior's footsteps.
But if you asked whether I missed him…
Oh, not even a little. History's disaster-manager GOAT. You're old enough now—shut your mouth and stay in your room.
Stifling the laughter leaking out of me, I kept rolling on the ground. In the distance, the team doctor came sprinting over with a medical bag in one hand.
At the same time, I began acting with everything I had, aiming for Best New Actor at the year-end awards.
"Uuuugh… uuuugh. My leg… my leg… A senior using his studs to stomp a beloved junior's ankle… aigoo…"
I explained the situation concisely, letting a faint tremor into my voice so the severity of my condition seeped through on its own.
Through that, the team doctors—now convinced of the seriousness—began diligently dragging out the treatment of a guy who hadn't been hurt at all. Meanwhile our team used every scrap of that free time to recover their stamina.
In the middle of congratulating myself on my genius decision—not only getting an opponent sent off with a single dive, but also looking after my own side's fitness—
"Huh?"
"This looks serious. Nothing wrong on the surface, but we need a proper examination. Hey! Get him up and out, now! Careful with the head end!"
A sudden sensation of being lifted, and the team doctors hurried me off the pitch.
I tilted my head at the strange turn of events and scanned the atmosphere.
"Good work, Yi-an. They got a man sent off, so I was going to sub you anyway. Head in first and rest."
At the manager's unexpected early-clock-out declaration, I left the pitch at once.
Wait—I'd been acting to screw over Pohang, and he was just going to pull me like this?
One way or another, the manager had already finished prepping to take me off and put someone else on.
Might as well rest easy. Having decided that, I shut everything out, released the tension, and drifted off to sleep.
When I woke up, two things were waiting for me.
1' Yoon Seung-hwan 49' Choi Seong-min
14' Han Gang-rok 56' Choi Seong-min
61' Lee Jeong-woo (O.G.)
First: the match against Pohang had finished with no further changes after I left.
And second…
What? Father-in-law got hurt after Mother-in-law hit him? What the hell is this supposed to mean?
Faced with an unbroken string of incomprehensible messages, I could only tilt my head from where I lay comfortably on the hospital bed.