The Best Debut Match (3)
After that dazzling debut, winter break ended and the new semester began.
Back in the day, anyone who'd already set their sights on the arts or sports barely cared whether school reopened or not—even in high school, studying simply wasn't part of the plan. These days, though, things were different.
"Alright, you all rested well over break? I know coming back is rough, but second year of high school is the most important stretch of all, you hear me? How you do right now decides which university you'll end up at two years from now."
"..."
"You arts-and-sports kids need to listen too. Running off to art academies and music lessons and slacking on your studies—that's how you get burned when university applications roll around. So study hard. Got it?"
"Yeees..."
If university was the goal, good grades were non-negotiable. Sure, a few schools still admitted on practicals alone—but any university whose name actually meant something still checked your scores. The old excuse of I'm going into sports so I'll just focus on practice, thank you very much no longer got anyone anywhere.
"Which means you need to work hard at math too, right? We'll keep it light today, so don't fall asleep—pay attention. Hmm? Hey. Who are those guys in the very back row sprawled out like a collapsed accordion, dead asleep?"
"Soccer club, sir."
"Soccer club? These little— Did you not hear a word I just said? What, the soccer club isn't going to university? Hey, what are those kids' names? Call them out one by one."
"Teacher? They're semi-pros, though. Still want me to call them?"
"Oh, they are? Then let them sleep. They must be exhausted from matches."
Of course, there were still exceptions. Semi-pro contracts. Players already listed on a first-team pro roster who still had to show up to class because they were technically students. They already belonged to an adult professional side, so university was never going to be their path.
Which meant...
Keep yelling "study, study" all you want. It's not landing at all.
Even teachers who lived and died by getting kids into good universities had no choice but to throw their hands up. These players were going to graduate and walk straight into full professional careers—schoolwork was the last thing they needed.
So what I did once I got to school was completely predictable.
Sprawl out and sleep through class to restore stamina, then head to the clubhouse in the afternoon.
If A-yoon and I went to the same school, we could at least stick together and talk—but Yeongjaeng High School, home of Jeonbuk's youth system, was an all-boys school. Nothing to be done about that.
Still... phone use is free, so it's not that big a deal.
I pretended to be lying down and fiddled with my smartphone under the desk. A-yoon must have been just as busy with other things during class, because my phone kept vibrating nonstop.
This is fun. If I think about the original novel, this kind of development was unimaginable.
The image of Shin A-yoon bolting out of the chat room flashed through my head, and the corner of my mouth lifted on its own. Looking back, the only reason a happy situation like this could even exist was because of that successful debut against Suwon in the ACL.
If I'd merely gotten my name onto a first-team roster, it would have ended with something like, Train hard from here on and become a good player, okay? But because I'd actually put in an outstanding performance on the pitch, people could start happily imagining my future.
Of course, some people might say: getting a little hot in the domestic league is one thing—picking Liverpool or Man City as the next destination is a stretch, isn't it?
But that wasn't quite right. Take Kim Jae-soo, who went from Seongnam to Brentford. Or Yang Min-jun, who put in a standout 2024 season with K League side Gangwon FC, moved to Tottenham Hotspur, and was now a core piece of the national team. You couldn't call any of that empty hype.
I'd even done it myself once—blown up at Jeonbuk and gone straight to Juventus. Maybe not in the old days, but these days, if you showed elite quality in the K League, jumping straight to a big club wasn't pure fantasy anymore.
"At this rate, I can say I've course-corrected pretty well."
Everything I'd been doing didn't seem to have been a waste of time after all.
In the brief moment I'd been lost in thought, another storm had swept through the chat room. Both sisters leaving and re-entering in pairs... what even was that.
While I was thinking it, the Shin sisters dove right back into the conversation without a care in the world.
This kid was out of her mind. Trying to ship a person off to a See More League club. I shuddered at the nightmare future, tossed my phone under the desk, and buried my face on top of it.
It wasn't just my personal life getting back on track as time went on. Our team was too.
"Hey. Yoon Seung-hwan, what the hell is that on your head?"
"Hmm? Oh, this is headgear."
"Ah! I've seen that in FIFA. Cech used to wear that a lot, right? But you're a striker—what do you need that for?"
"...If I don't wear this, I'm pretty sure I'll have a concussion by twenty."
"What is he even saying? Gyeong-rok, you getting any of this?"
"I have no idea either, hyung."
According to the original novel's plot, those three were practically mortal enemies. Never thought I'd see them chatting like this.
Originally, Jeonbuk Future Motors had been a complete mess of faction warfare—a senior clique of over-the-hill veterans versus a junior clique of green young players. On the surface it was just a senior-junior conflict, but as the saying went: tragedy from afar, catastrophe up close. With chaos agents like Baek Yi-an, Han Gyeong-rok, and Han Gang-rok in the mix, the junior side had been shredded into pieces. Look closely and it was less a two-sided war than a Spring and Autumn Warring States situation—tiny junior factions scattered around the edges of one massive senior bloc.
There was a reason Manager Sun Ki-baek had "discipline" permanently glued to his tongue. Without hammering it that hard, the team really would have split apart.
Even so, once something was already fractured, stitching it back into one piece was nearly impossible. That was how Jeonbuk earned the nickname "the orphanage led by Yoon Seung-hwan."
And I fixed it. I really did handle everything.
From the moment I possessed this body, every fight ended. The legendary chaos agent Baek Yi-an vanished, and in his place a kind, gentle, team-first Baek Yi-an was putting an end to the Warring States era.
Uniting the fractured juniors was done. All that remained was either civilizing the useless veteran seniors—or driving them out entirely.
And that part's almost finished too.
The reason those seniors could swagger around and devour the team was partly because Jeonbuk's front office was incompetent to a degree that ranked among the worst in the K League—nothing like the owner—but the decisive problem was their name value. Whether they played or not didn't just make the team walk a tightrope; it was a full bungee jump of form swings. That was why nothing ever improved.
If the club bit the bullet, pulled the rebuild knife, and then the performances hit rock bottom and they got relegated, the supporters' all-out bus blockades and "get out" chants would leave everyone seeing stars. So how exactly were you supposed to solve this?
There was only one answer.
"The newly blooded players—and the young ones overall—have to start fully showing what they can do."
Once their own spots were under threat, those seniors wouldn't be able to strut around anymore. Of course, whether the manager could hold his ground in the power struggle with the senior faction until then was the real question...
Among the managers I know, nobody's as stubborn as Sun Ki-baek. He absolutely refuses to use anyone who won't listen to him. He once benched a center back who talked back and stuck a holding midfielder at CB instead.
At least the Sun Ki-baek I knew was someone who could hold the line. If we put in a strong performance in the upcoming K League Round 1 match against Ulsan MR, he'd probably lock in his convictions for good.
Lending him a little more firepower wouldn't hurt.
More people needed their potential to explode—not just me and the other newly promoted players, but guys who were ordinary right now yet could take a real step up with a little polishing...
And as it happened, one such player was standing right in front of me.
"Choon-jae hyung."
"Huh? Why the sudden call? You got something to say to me?"
Kim Choon-jae looked over with round eyes, chewing on an energy bar. I let the corner of my mouth curl up.