[Manchester United are collapsing. They keep getting beaten by the same pattern.]
It made no sense.
Even the players running across the pitch could not understand it, not when things had looked so different just 20 minutes earlier.
"Are these even the same guys from before?"
"Hoo... I just can't keep up with them."
United could not keep up with Manchester City's attacking play.
The City players, who had looked out of sync before, were now moving with the flow at ease and producing brilliant football.
The moment Manchester City got on the ball, tension filled the air.
"Press them! Press! Stop them from building up! Hey, you! Ryan Giggs!"
It was only because Ferguson kept roaring at them and snapping them back to their senses that it was only this bad. If not for that, they might already have given away another couple of chances.
All they could do was cling to Ferguson and somehow grind their way through the first half.
[Ryan Giggs and Fletcher press the midfield from front and back!]
[Yaya Touré is trapped in the net, and he cannot find an outlet.]
They tried hard to find openings and target weaknesses, but it all came to nothing.
[Ronaldinho and Adebayor are dropping into midfield and opening up passing lanes. The burden on Yaya Touré is getting lighter and lighter.]
Then what about the front line?
Since Ronaldinho and Adebayor had dropped deeper, it would have been normal for United's defenders to drop with them.
When one player moves, space opens somewhere else for the opposition, and that naturally gives them room.
That is the law of football.
But the one overturning that law was Ho-young.
[Ho-young is moving between the second line and the front line. In doing so, he has completely tied down Nemanja Vidić, Rio Ferdinand, and Michael Carrick.]
[Yes. He's a monster, a monster. There's no other way to describe him.]
That was all Ho-young had to do.
When he did not have the ball, he moved calmly and claimed dangerous positions.
That alone was enough to pin United's defenders in place.
For ordinary players, that would have required constant frantic movement, but Ho-young's mentality and movement were on a completely different level.
He understood exactly how to burden and torment the opposition, and he was displaying every essential virtue required of a striker who understood the essence of football.
'This is insane.'
'Why?'
The Vidić-Ferdinand line, often called the strongest defensive wall in the world.
One of the greatest centre-back pairings in history, rated even above Ramos-Pepe and Puyol-Piqué.
Vidić and Ferdinand were full of questions.
How could this even be happening?
When they faced Ho-young just 3 months ago, he had not been this dangerous.
Now that they were seeing it firsthand, Ho-young as he was now was far more threatening than Ho-young as an attacking midfielder.
This phenomenon, where a single forward was tying down 2 defenders and 1 central midfielder, was utterly absurd.
'I can't understand it.'
That was true.
It was impossible to understand, and there was no need to waste energy trying.
This was not something that could be understood within the realm of human beings.
Still, because Adebayor and Ronaldinho were not especially strong in work rate or defensive contribution, Guardiola and Ho-young could not quite achieve the complete performance they had envisioned.
[Manchester City escape United's four-sided press, and Yaya Touré feeds the ball to Iniesta once again.]
[Iniesta plays it short to David Silva.]
[Back to Iniesta.]
[And now David Silva moves forward.]
Passes with purpose.
The triangle formed by Iniesta, Yaya Touré, and David Silva exchanged passes for progression and built the flow of the game.
Before kickoff, United had predicted City's tactics and even prepared their response, yet in the end they still could not stop them.
The cursed 20 minutes.
Once Ho-young had finished reading the flow of the match, control of the game had completely shifted.
[Ha ha. They've caught Ferguson off guard again. Whose idea was this, I wonder? Guardiola's? Ho-young's?]
[Who knows, but one thing is certain, Manchester City have nothing to worry about when it comes to building from the back. They did not look like much in defense, but once they hit their rhythm in attack, they are terrifying.]
The unnecessary middle phases were boldly cut out.
Only the most essential steps toward scoring were used, simplifying both the time and the process needed to get the ball to Ho-young.
At the back, buildup and playmaking happened in one motion, while at the front Ho-young created attacking playmaking through movement alone.
A flow that should have taken several phases was happening all at once.
And then Iniesta's pass flew straight toward the front line.
[Ho-young collects it once again!]
36 minutes into the first half.
All eyes turned to Ho-young once more.
But.
Tap, tap!
By the time the defenders picked up Ho-young's movement, he had already vanished from their sight.
He had exchanged quick triangular passes with the midfield line of Iniesta and David Silva and completely shattered United's second defensive line.
Then Ho-young burst toward the front like lightning.
"Hey!"
"Yeah!"
Tap!
The two of them showed extraordinary chemistry, like soulmates.
Iniesta slipped it forward once again, and Ho-young darted into the gap and received it with his back to goal.
[Ah, they have to be careful! There have already been three scoring chances from that exact area today!]
The so-called Ho-young Zone.
The area roughly 5 to 10 metres behind and to either side of the penalty area.
It was the link between Ho-young and the deeper players, a space the opposition had no choice but to concede even when they knew it was coming.
Ho-young drew defenders out from the centre, while Ronaldinho and Adebayor adjusted the width on either side to create that space.
Manchester City's detailed tactics were clicking into place all over the pitch.
And once again, it was the same pattern.
Yet even knowing it, United had no choice but to suffer through it.
'Even so, I'll stop it.'
Seeing that, Vidić charged in with fire in his eyes.
He had already been done in three times earlier, and his head was close to spinning off.
But he was the captain.
Even if he was going to go down, he could not go down weakly.
This time, he steeled himself and committed completely to stopping it.
He quickly closed the gap behind Ho-young.
But he did not stick a foot in, tug the shirt, or initiate any kind of contact or collision.
He had already experienced several times that no matter how many tackles he tried, they meant nothing against Ho-young.
There would be no more mistakes.
There was only one best way to face Ho-young.
'Just stand there.'
Countless defenders and coaches around the world had agonized over and devised ways to stop Ho-young one-on-one, but every method had failed.
Which meant there was no real way to stop him.
Still, there was a best possible option.
Even the most useless person becomes an obstacle if they stand in someone's path.
So Nemanja Vidić decided to do nothing more than narrow the space and disrupt Ho-young's play, even if only a little.
And immediately afterward, he realized that was the wrong idea.
[Ho-young changes direction sharply!]
A sudden change of direction.
Not left, not right, but backward.
After receiving Iniesta's pass, Ho-young secured his view in all directions and dropped deeper.
Instant judgment.
He saw how Vidić was responding and twisted the pattern in a split second.
And then it happened.
Whirl!
Having dropped deeper and opened up the gap from Vidić, Ho-young spun his body through 360 degrees once more.
The entire chain of movement was as natural as flowing water and as swift as the wind.
Ho-young turned to face the goal.
By then, Vidić had long since become a useless prop.
Meanwhile, Michael Carrick and Darren Fletcher had both tracked back and were sealing off space around the penalty area.
On the left, Patrice Evra was occupying the space between Ronaldinho and Ho-young, while on the right, Rafael was covering the gap between Ho-young and Adebayor.
And Rio Ferdinand, together with De Gea inside the penalty box, was focusing on every move Ho-young made while trying to close down the long-range shooting angle as much as possible.
That was the moment Ho-young's eyes flashed.
'Top right corner.'
As if he were inputting missile coordinates into his head, Ho-young locked onto the target and swung his leg without a moment's hesitation.
[Ahhh, is he hitting it from there!]
"Uh, uhhhh?!"
In that instant, countless voices in the crowd were filled with confusion.
It was a completely incomprehensible choice.
Michael Carrick, Darren Fletcher, and Rio Ferdinand were all holding good positions and blocking the angle for the long-range shot, so no one could understand why he would try to shoot from there.
And De Gea was waiting behind them as well.
There were plenty of other options with a higher attacking probability, which made Ho-young's decision hard to understand.
But that was only their way of thinking.
Sssk.
That no longer applied to Ho-young, who had already gone beyond being merely human.
Ho-young did not shoot immediately as they expected.
A shot feint.
Pretending to strike it hard, he instead cushioned the ball gently onto the top of his foot, as softly as if he were handling a baby.
And after that, it was one spectacle after another.
Ssk, ssaak.
Just 1 second.
In that brief span, Ho-young trapped the ball twice with the top of his foot while his eyes moved rapidly at the same time.
In that moment, Ho-young's field of vision expanded and narrowed over and over.
As he did, he read the movement changes of Michael Carrick, Darren Fletcher, Rio Ferdinand, and De Gea all at once.
Startled by Ho-young's actions, the 3 of them shifted their bodies little by little without even realizing it, and the gap that appeared between them entered Ho-young's sight.
That was the moment.
Tok!
The ball on top of Ho-young's foot popped up above his knee.
And then.
[O, o, oooh, oooooooo!!]
[He, he hit th...?!]
The commentators were so stunned that even their words tangled up.
Ho-young had flicked the ball into the air by himself, launched off the ground, and hit a scissors kick.
It had all taken less than 2 seconds.
It happened at the exact moment United's players were just about to make their move.
Boooom!
Loaded with the full force of his body's rotation, the ball devoured the sound around it and rocketed forward at ferocious speed.
It was such an astonishing shot, beyond merely acrobatic, that it looked like computer graphics.
It flew straight through the gap Carrick and Fletcher had allowed and headed toward Rio Ferdinand.
Around there, the spin gradually began to weaken, and the direction of the shot shifted slightly.
The kicking power he had gained from David Beckham.
And the experience and touch of a dead-ball specialist.
That allowed Ho-young to produce a delicate and razor-sharp shot, almost as if Beckham himself had possessed him.
Because of that, it avoided the angle Ferdinand had been covering and finally reached De Gea.
Even by that point, the power on the ball was still tremendous.
David de Gea reacted with miraculous speed and managed to get his fingertips to it, but he still could not keep it out.
The enormous spin still packed into the ball right until the instant before it crossed the line.
It was too much for human fingertips to deflect.
Thud!
[Goooooooooooal!]
[A thunderous long-range strike, planted perfectly into the top right corner! Once again, it's Ho-young who creates it!]
4-2.
"Kuoooooooo!"
Ho-young, having scored 4 goals in the first half alone, roared.
And at that very moment, welcome news appeared before his eyes.
[Bad Boy on the Ground (T)]
[You are acquiring Bad Boy on the Ground (T). You partially absorb Wayne Rooney's experience and senses. It will take 9 days to fully assimilate the experience and senses.]
It was the result of fulfilling the condition, 'Score by recreating Wayne Rooney's trademark शानदार scissors kick in similar fashion.'
And in the second half, it looked like he might also be able to acquire the talents of Nemanja Vidić, Rio Ferdinand, and Patrice Evra.
Now that the shackles had come off, there were so many talents he could gain in a single match.
The clean sweep was only just beginning.
It was as good a moment as he could have asked for.
But then.
'What is this?'
Something felt strange.
It was one thing to feel as if he were flying from happiness, but now there was also a bizarre sensation as if his body and mind were separating.
Was his body simply heating up that much?
Thump.
No, that was not it.
This feeling, which went beyond pleasant and was almost unpleasant.
That sensation continued all the way until the end of the first half.
Still, thankfully, when the first half ended, his chest seemed to calm down a little.
'What on earth is going on?'
With his face flushed red, Ho-young returned to the dressing room.
This was not something he could simply brush off.
(To be continued.)
◇◇◇
◇ One bonus chapter will be released for every 200 Power Stones.
◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)