Eden Hazard was stunned out of his mind.
To be honest, it was true that he had let his guard down.
No matter what, this was training, not a real match.
And besides, who could possibly have imagined that the moment the game started, Ho-young would come charging in and take the ball away?
'I knew he was good at man-marking...'
But he had not known he would be this good.
No, this was beyond something that could even be described as simply good.
It was something he had never once experienced in the French league.
'Ha... is he a forward or a defender...'
The way Ho-young cut the ball away felt like a sharp gust of wind brushing past.
There was no wasted motion.
A perfect tackle, stripped of every unnecessary movement.
From head to toe, every movement looked as if it were all moving as one.
Strict physical control, in the truest sense.
'I couldn't even react properly.'
For Hazard, who was not world-class yet but still had high-level press resistance, it was bound to be shocking.
Even if he had been careless, this still went far beyond imagination.
There was a huge difference between watching it and experiencing it for yourself.
'He's incredible...'
The difference in level.
But Hazard did not crumble there.
He was a player with strong pride.
If something like this was enough to crush him, he would never have come to a huge stage like England at such a young age.
He stood in front of Ho-young again.
Even if he had made a mistake from the very start, he was not going to let it end like this.
He could not spend his first day doing nothing but embarrassing himself.
That was when Eden Hazard's voice rang out toward the back.
"The ball!"
"Huh...?"
"I said give me the ball!"
"Oh, oh!"
Only after Hazard shouted loudly did Fellaini scratch his head and pass him the ball.
The situation was that unsettled.
The 11 players, including Fellaini, were still unable to collect themselves, as if they had just been struck by lightning.
And that was only natural.
They had been broken through in an instant and conceded.
A kind of football completely different from what they had been used to had left them mentally reeling.
'At this rate, we have no chance.'
Hazard could feel it clearly.
If they did not give everything, they could not win.
Worse, they might even lose.
'Stay calm. It's a 7-against-11 game anyway. If we attack calmly, we can put in as many goals as we want.'
There were about 19 minutes left.
Hazard gathered the attackers.
Santa Cruz up front, Gareth Bale on the right, and Vladimír Weiss in the middle.
"Listen carefully."
Hazard spoke passionately to the players, mixing clumsy English with gestures and hand movements.
There was only one key point.
"The other side only has 7 men. If we move the ball around, they'll get tired."
And he was right.
In football, numbers are an absolutely important element.
It was true that a missing man could not be replaced by anything.
Roque Santa Cruz agreed.
"They can't beat us on numbers. We only got caught out just now because we were careless. In the end, we'll win. Everyone, have confidence."
"Good. I'll handle the playmaking from the flank. Gareth, Vladimír, you 2 drag Iniesta and David Silva out. We'll use the space."
Since the opposition had fewer players, there would naturally be more open space, and they should use that.
From a common-sense point of view, it was perfectly reasonable.
But no one answered positively.
Gareth Bale tilted his head.
"I don't know. Will that really work?"
"What do you mean? My English isn't good. Explain it simply."
"I'm doubtful that the attack will work just because we drag Iniesta and David Silva out. From my experience, I don't think it'll work at all."
Gareth Bale, who had already faced Ho-young in a real match, could not agree with Hazard.
Vladimír Weiss was the same.
"Hazard, you wouldn't know. Roque, same with you. You were out on loan, so you don't know either, but I've trained with Ho-young before, and I've even played with him for a short while in reserve games."
"So?"
"There's no free space around him."
"What does that mean? Or am I just not understanding the English?"
When Hazard questioned him, Gareth Bale stepped in this time.
And he explained it with one simple line.
"Ho-young isn't just one person."
"What?"
"Let's just try it. It'll be faster to feel it for yourself than to hear it explained."
"I've no idea what you're talking about."
Up until that point, Hazard did not understand what Bale meant.
But not long after training resumed, he began to understand.
Tap!
"Move it quickly! Faster!"
Tap!
"Not enough! Faster!"
Hazard's urgent voice filled the field.
The players on Team B, including Santa Cruz, Bale, Vladimír, Hazard, Fellaini, and Casemiro, were trying to move the ball forward, but they simply could not find a gap.
Instead, they were struggling to escape the opposition's pressure.
'This is ridiculous.'
Hazard cursed inwardly.
The scene unfolding in front of him felt so unreal that he wondered if he was dreaming.
They clearly had 4 more players, yet they were not dominating the occupation of space.
Of course, they were still definitely in the better position.
They had 4 extra players, after all.
But the flow of the game did not feel like a difference of 4 players at all.
Soon Bale and Santa Cruz scored 3 goals between them, but even that was not enough.
By now, they should have scored at least 2 more.
Team A was defending in an extreme way, but they were not specialist defenders.
Even so, more than 60 percent of Team B's chances were being wasted again and again.
The real reason was elsewhere.
'Ho-young...'
Because he kept moving constantly in all directions and controlling the spaces everywhere.
"Switch it to the left!"
Whenever they tried to open up the opposite side like that, Ho-young would run there before they could and take control of the space.
It was bizarre.
No matter how fast Ho-young was, he could not be faster than the ball.
But he was pressuring Team B's passing play through movement alone.
'Is he even human? Huh?'
Just as Hazard suspected, that was not something a human should be able to do.
Normally, when a person moves, space should open up.
But no matter how much Ho-young moved, gaps hardly ever appeared.
Even when they did appear, by the time someone tried to exploit them, they had already disappeared.
And of course, Ho-young never stopped running for even a moment.
On top of that, he was not simply moving into empty spaces at random.
Every one of his movements had meaning.
He was taking over one important point after another.
Iniesta, David Silva, and Yaya Touré, who was holding firm at the back, were all helping that in different ways.
'Huh...'
A single organism.
Could this really be a team that had only been playing together for 2 months?
It felt as though a giant tower with no visible top was standing right in front of them.
"Damn it."
This would not do.
They were winning 3-1, but even that was not enough.
As the playmaker, he had to make a decision.
"Hey!"
At Hazard's shout, Santa Cruz immediately made a run from the center toward the right channel as if he had been waiting for it.
Vladimír, who had been sitting in the second line, went up front, and Gareth Bale tore into the left flank like a madman, shaking up the defense.
In that moment, Hazard's eyes sharpened.
There were at least 3 possible passing options.
'They can't stop this.'
With full confidence, Hazard played the pass to the right and instantly burst forward.
The return pass from Santa Cruz came back right after.
Tap!
"Nice!"
"Go through!"
Using their numerical advantage, they exploited the wide spaces and cut through with a razor-sharp one-two.
Hazard got past Iniesta and Ronaldinho and broke into open space.
Only Yaya Touré remained.
'Good.'
He had seen Ho-young hovering between Bale and Vladimír, so there was nothing to worry about.
From there, Hazard's dazzling trademark began.
"...!"
Yaya Touré's eyes moved busily.
Tap, tap!
Hazard was using his trademark quick feet to produce concise and rapid dribbling.
The quickest feet in the world.
That did not mean pure pace.
It did not mean he was fast at knocking the ball ahead and sprinting like Arjen Robben. It meant that his dribbling and ball control were extremely concise and extremely fast.
That was why Hazard was called a defender's nightmare.
In the end, Yaya Touré was forced to let him through.
'Got it!'
A new space had opened up.
From here on, Hazard believed without question that it was his territory.
Without even noticing that Ho-young had already come close.
Tap!
"...!"
A sudden tackle from Ho-young coming in from the side.
For him to get here in an instant from all the way over there was beyond reason.
'What is this...'
It was, in the most literal sense, a supernatural phenomenon.
Prediction and judgment at the limit of human ability, instant reactions, football sense, and understanding of space, all of that made Ho-young's absurd plays possible.
And the shock did not stop there.
'His body is like...'
Steel.
Hazard could not move him at all.
At only 173 centimeters, Hazard was already someone who could easily be pushed aside in physical battles.
But.
"I'm not losing it!!"
Hazard gritted his teeth and held on to the end.
Fighting spirit.
He tried to keep the ball with his quick feet, his greatest strength.
But all of it was still within the palm of Buddha's hand.
Tap!
Ho-young lightly took the ball away and casually turned his back.
In that instant, Hazard realized it.
'What he said earlier...'
What Gareth Bale had said.
-Ho-young isn't just one person.
He finally understood what it meant.
That impossible truth, that within Ho-young coexisted all kinds of roles, poacher, shadow striker, box-to-box midfielder, anchorman, regista, false 9, trequartista, and more.
"Ah..."
A chill spread through Hazard's entire body.
Ho-young glanced at him briefly.
[Eden Hazard]
[Possessed Talents: Nightmare-Inducing Quick Feet (SU), Fantastic Dribbling (S+2), Astonishing Ball Control (S-), (More...)]
[You may acquire 1 talent if the conditions are met.]
[For talents above S-grade, a hidden condition must be fulfilled before acquisition is possible.]
[Condition 1: Score more goals than Eden Hazard in the training match]
[Condition 2: Succeed with 2 tackles]
[Condition 3: Succeed with 2 pass interceptions]
[Hidden Condition: Unlocks when at least 1 talent is acquired]
Unfortunately, he did not have a title yet, but even at only 20 years old, he already had 2 S-grade talents.
As expected, he had the kind of talent that could make him one of the top 3 dribblers in the world, and it was exciting to imagine how much more he would grow in the future.
And above all.
'He's got fighting spirit.'
The sharp hostility still lingering in Hazard's eyes was clearly visible.
At that moment, Ho-young stopped the ball slightly.
And as expected, Hazard got up again and launched himself into a sliding tackle at Ho-young.
With all the heat and sincerity he had.
"Uaaaah!"
But then.
"?!!"
The ball that had been right in front of his eyes disappeared.
If Hazard's specialty was moving the ball quickly, Ho-young possessed a superhuman ability to shift the ball in an instant.
Transcendent ball sense.
And Ho-young's show did not end there.
Tap, tap!
Two concise and sharp touches.
Ho-young slipped away with agile movement and quietly advanced forward.
It was a scene of total humiliation.
'Ah...'
Only then did Hazard finally understand.
Ho-young was not someone from the same world.
He was not someone who could exist on the same level.
And it did not end there.
"Stop him!!"
"Ah, he's through...!"
"Cover!"
"No way!"
"Damn it."
Team B was thrown into full emergency mode.
Ho-young was beating them one by one, as if he were smashing through seals in sequence.
Whip!
"Huh!"
Tap!
"Keh!"
Whirl!
90-degree cuts and 360-degree spins linked together as smoothly as a single movement.
As it repeated, it created a sight like a snake twisting its body around and around.
It was only a matter of time before Fellaini, Casemiro, and Shay Logan were all torn apart.
On top of that, Iniesta, David Silva, Ronaldinho, and Adebayor were roaming around in dangerous areas, so Clichy and Walker could not even leave to cover.
The result was the same again.
Thud!
The net shook from a shot fired from around 30 meters.
With that, the first set of training ended in a 3-2 win for Team B.
Even though Team A had no defenders, Team B had only managed to win by 1 goal.
It was a result that was hard to believe.
Of course, Team B was weaker than Team A, and the players had not yet adapted to the environment, but that alone could not explain it.
All of the new signings, including Hazard, had no choice but to be brought under Ho-young's control.
(To be continued.)