042. Teacher and elementary school student (5)
“Damn it!”
Marcelo showed a vain expression after losing the ball to Hoyoung and allowing him to break through to the side.
To make matters worse, Hoyoung’s side breakthrough soon led to a central breakthrough.
Woo Ho-young.
It was fast and heavy.
The speed that comes from a slim body is amazing, but the substance is even better.
I guess it feels like a rock filled to the brim.
Contrary to appearance, his body was strong.
Twitch.
A slight smile appeared on Hoyoung’s lips as he drove the ball forward.
‘Kaka told me.’
The advice is that players like Marcelo are usually weak in physical combat.
The idea of aiming for strong forward pressure was correct.
and.
‘Ahead!’
He took advantage of the bullet-fast tempo and delivered a quick ground ball pass.
left.
Toward Oscar, who was squeezing into the box like a stray cat.
Percussion!
Perhaps it was thanks to the midfield commander’s versatility that he managed to make an excellent pass.
It was a movement that made you feel a clear difference in how much wider your field of view was compared to before.
The ability to use a variety of plays rather than just insisting on unreasonable breakthroughs.
It was an exemplary play that was more stable and lessened the burden on physical strength.
and.
“female!”
Hoyoung, who gave up the pass, used his overwhelming instantaneous speed to penetrate into the empty space on the right.
It was right after that the return pass came back at my feet.
Percussion!
‘nice.’
The 2-on-1 pass that we made several times during training was as sharp as a knife.
All developments fell perfectly as if gears were gearing, and a space pass was delivered in front of the goal.
What remains is Hoyoung’s finish.
‘left!’
With the goalkeeper in front of him, Hoyoung took a short step and stretched out his feet in a straight line.
A half-beat quick shot.
It was Hoyoung’s long-time toe kick.
Tuk.
A sound as brief as a short shooting motion.
Hoyoung did not lose focus until the moment the ball left his toes.
As a result, a cheerful sound rang out.
Slosh!
It was Sao Paulo FC’s first goal and the result of a fantastic strategy.
Beep –
As the first half ended 1-0, there was an unpleasant atmosphere in the visiting team’s locker room.
“pup!”
Bang bang!
Marcelo couldn’t hold back his anger and just kicked the chair.
He is now 15 years old and was the current team captain.
That was why I was angry.
‘As long as we win here, it’ll be easy to get to the finals.’
Today’s match could easily be called a preview of the finals.
It was an important match because both teams were traditional Brazilian powerhouses with tremendous status.
Write it.
My appetite was bitter.
Simply giving up one goal is not a problem.
The problem is the content of the game.
It was the fact that he was brutally trampled by a young player named Woo Ho-young.
I may have let my guard down, but it wasn’t a mistake.
‘I can’t even stop that guy?’
Marcelo.
Just over the U15 age limit, he was currently the best fullback in the league.
There was some criticism that his defensive skills were lacking, but he wasn’t that poor at U15 level.
His defense was much lower than his offensive ability, but when looking at his individual ability alone, he was at a mid-to-high level.
‘I can’t lose like this.’
The cute face became even more serious.
Because his passion was second to none, he could not have been broken like this.
Beep!
In the second half, a fierce battle for the ball took place in the center after the away team took the lead.
There were a few tackles and Fluminense FC received two yellow cards in 20 minutes.
It was Sao Paulo FC’s strategy to take advantage of the home advantage.
Intentionally causing a war of nerves and inducing the other person into a rough physical fight.
It was similar to the swamp soccer that Gremio had shown before.
Because of this, Fluminense’s active play had no choice but to shrink.
Taking advantage of that opportunity, Coach Carlos ordered a player replacement.
About 15 minutes into the second half.
Douglas Costa came on as a substitute.
The intention was to score as many points as possible today in preparation for the next away game in the second game.
Appointed as an attacking midfielder, his job was to act like a sponge to absorb the pressure of the opponent on the first line.
And that was right then.
“We need to widen the gap further!”
Hoyoung shouted.
Then the players began to move busily.
‘Marcelo is moving too actively. Because of that, the distribution of balls is not smooth.’
It looks completely different from the first half.
If we were to be counterattacked like this, it would have been a big problem.
Even if we were to be defeated, we had to widen the gap before that happened.
Hoyoung pictured the field in his head and followed the flow of the game.
I focused on concentration.
‘I think the 2nd and 3rd lines are too far apart. The flow keeps getting interrupted there.’
Hoyoung shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Dougie! Come down further and catch the ball! It has to be short and quick!”
“okay!”
Afterwards, Douglas moved around the stadium energetically and dispersed Fluminense’s pressure as much as possible.
Then, exactly 10 minutes later, the flow started to pick up speed.
Percussion!
Through a short pass connection in the midfield, Douglas advanced to the first line.
As pressure came from the opposing defender, he folded once and dug inside.
And I looked ahead.
Hoyoung was captured deftly breaking through Fluminense FC’s back four.
An infiltration that no one expected.
A pass was made low and fast towards that place.
widely!
Immediately afterwards, it was Hoyoung who caught the ball inside the penalty box.
“her.”
Fluminense’s defense could not hide their sense of desperation.
A truly unexpected penetration.
It was a move that completely destroyed Fluminense FC’s tight defensive formation created by the four-back defense and double volanche.
Cough!
Just like that, we gave up the second goal to Hoyoung.
“downpour!”
All Marcelo could do was look at the back of Hoyoung during the ceremony.
So the game went one-sided.
Fluminense FC’s defensive formation allowed Hoyoung to break through several times as if there were holes.
Marcelo, devastated, kept swearing.
That’s why the game didn’t go well.
Since even basic defense wasn’t working properly, there was no time to even try overlapping, which is his specialty.
In the end, Fluminense was down to five-backs and significantly strengthened its defense.
After that, Sao Paulo FC’s half-court match began.
However, there was one dangerous moment as Marcelo attempted a counterattack with excellent individual skills, but it did not result in a goal.
The result was a clean 2-0 win for Sao Paulo FC.
When Hoyoung, who played the full 40 minutes of the first half and scored two goals, came out of the pitch, Carlos continued to praise him.
“Good job.”
“thank you.”
Hoyoung’s eyes softly curved.
I couldn’t be more proud as the results of my training were reflected.
No matter how difficult the process of preparing for each game was, I was able to keep working hard because I had this sense of accomplishment.
‘We just need to score one more goal in away games from now on.’
Scored 3 goals against Fluminense FC.
In addition, if they advance to the quarterfinals, they will have the conditions to exploit Kaka’s talent.
I felt like I could do it.
But right now, there was one more urgent concern.
[Choose the talent you want to pursue.]
-Soccer genius (A)
-Active overlapping (A-)
-Outstanding individual skill (B+2)
-Flexible dribbling (B)
-Sharp crossing (B)
-(More)
Overlapping is out of the question.
Because I wasn’t supposed to play the fullback or wingback position.
‘Then it’s soccer genius, individual skills, or dribbling.’
I thought about it for a moment, but the answer came quickly.
As expected, he was a soccer genius.
Since he is scheduled to meet Marcelo at least three more times this season, he has decided to slowly pursue other talents.
[Soccer Genius (A+)↑]
[It takes 30 days → 15 days to fully acquire the talent. You cannot pursue other talents for 15 days.]
‘Good.’
Eat pheasant and eat its eggs!
Talent is talent, but I was even more happy that I won the game.
If you make it to the quarterfinals of the bracket, you will pass all the way to the finals.
There was still the second leg of the round of 16 left, but I was confident.
‘Well begun is half the battle.’
Exciting!
My heart suddenly swells.
This is exactly what Hoyoung wanted.
Even though there were not tens of thousands of spectators, it was impossible to express in any way how I felt that there were people cheering me on.
Especially the current reality that Brazilians who have no relation to them are cheering for an Asian boy.
Just thinking about that made my heart pound.
Hoyoung celebrated the victory with the players and gave a ceremony to the home fans who visited the stadium.
And Marcelo, who had been looking at this in vain, took a breath in the corner and strengthened his resolve.
I won’t look at you next time.
It was that kind of expression.
That afternoon.
A cafe in downtown Sao Paulo.
There was a man who was working hard on his laptop while soothing his fatigue with a cup of strong coffee.
He had been writing a report with his butt in the corner for two hours now.
It wasn’t just a report.
It was a report that condensed 90 days’ worth of extensive soccer data, including various photos and documents.
“When are you going to do all this? “There are a lot of prospects this year, so the amount is enormous.”
Youth scouting report.
It was his job to write it.
Other than that, my job is to find young people and negotiate transfers.
In the world of scouting, you’d normally be considered active if you reported 6-7 games a week, but he reported 10 games this week alone.
There was nothing we could do because it was during the Super Championship match period.
“We have to do the important things first.”
The first report I wrote was about Neymar.
He transferred to Santos FC, a first division team, this season and was recording good results as expected.
The next thing I wrote was a report about an Asian boy.
‘Huh. ‘I never thought I’d be writing a report on an Asian person here.’
Woo Hoyoung.
He was showing off his skills to the fullest in the world of Brazilians.
Just watching today’s game, it was like that.
Today’s game showed not only great physical play but also intelligent play.
‘It’s been a while since Marcelo had such a hard time in a game.’
He knew Marcelo well because he had been observing him for two years.
How difficult is it to make a big performance against Marcelo?
‘If you look at it simply, it’s similar to Kaka.’
Moreover, he also had the qualities of a goal getter.
Especially space penetration ability.
If penetrating into visible space is a third-rate skill, Hoyoung has a high level of penetrating into invisible space.
The scout thought so.
I wouldn’t say that he has good off-the-ball movement like Filippo Inzaghi, but it means that he is devilishly good at finding spaces to penetrate.
It was definitely not a performance worthy of being seen at that age.
‘At least A-grade….’
Even if the score was deducted for being Asian, it was still possible to give a high evaluation of A-grade.
He dared to be sure.
That boy named Woo Ho-young has the potential to grow into a world class player.
His insight was almost as accurate as that of a renowned scout in Europe.
His name is Antonio Soriano.
He was writing a second quarter report to be sent to Madrid, Spain.