There are all kinds of people in the world.
Footballers are no exception.
Roughly 280 million.
About 4% of the world's population are officially registered active football players.
It was only natural that all sorts of players existed.
But among them, players who also possessed real skill were rare.
Pepe, who was normally quiet but turned into a thug the moment he stepped onto the pitch.
Adebayor, who stayed true to his instincts anytime, anywhere.
Luis Suárez, who bit people when he lost control.
Mario Balotelli, who had a unique mental world of his own.
Like them, there were quite a few players who had ability yet constantly displayed strange behavior.
Ronaldinho was the same.
Not only did he perform bizarre individual skills that were hard for a human to pull off, but he also had the unusual trait of overflowing with joy and enjoying football consistently, both on and off the pitch.
But in truth, unlike his outward appearance, he had a very sensitive and delicate personality, so he did not easily get close to just anyone.
In other words, this was one process of accepting Ho-young as a teammate.
Blind Football.
They had known each other for less than an hour, but through this, they could probably grow closer faster than with the other players.
Ronaldinho also had something he wanted to find out through it.
'I should be able to roughly picture what kind of chemistry we'd have on the pitch.'
He wanted to see whether Ho-young would suit him well.
Footballers communicate through the ball.
Especially players with outstanding touch, they exchanged the ball to gauge each other's level and sometimes fought battles of pride through it.
Their own league.
It was a unique way of building trust and becoming teammates.
The game worked like this.
If the player in possession could avoid losing the ball for two minutes, it counted as a successful defense.
And each side got one turn.
"Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Are you fully warmed up?"
"Let's start right away."
"You'd better warm up properly. When you close your eyes, your senses become sharper, but your body becomes stiffer."
Ronaldinho twitched one cheek.
A provocation.
But Ho-young silently covered his face with the headband.
Heh.
"Good."
Ronaldinho smiled faintly, let down his noodle-like hair, then covered his eyes with his headband.
And then it happened.
Tap.
"Here."
He brought the ball under his foot, wiped the smile off his face, and spoke.
Then he fired a precise and quick pass toward Ho-young.
A crisp sound followed.
Tap!
It was Ho-young's first touch, receiving the pass as steadily as if he could actually see.
'As I thought, he's got the feel for it.'
For the first time in a while, Ronaldinho felt his body heating up.
A cold wind was blowing.
It was then that he spoke again.
"Do you want to defend first?"
"Sure."
It was also then that Ho-young took his first step.
"Who do you think will win?"
"Young will win."
"Come on, it's still Ronaldinho."
"He's not the Ronaldinho of his prime, idiot."
Among the thirty players gathered around the mini futsal pitch, eight out of ten thought Ho-young would win comfortably.
No one could rival Ronaldinho in terms of short-term impact, but that had been six or seven years ago.
And in the current football world, no one could match Ho-young when it came to handling the ball.
Even Adebayor, who had always admired Ronaldinho, was taking Ho-young's side.
"Young wins for sure!"
"I agree. He dribbles past people on the pitch like they're scarecrows, so if he puts his mind to it, he should just win."
"I don't know. I think Ronaldinho has the edge because of the rules."
That was true.
If there was one variable, it was that.
Kolo Touré, the defensive leader of Manchester City, continued.
"Playing with your hands behind your back and your eyes covered is basically the same as taking away a footballer's arms and legs. Controlling the ball with your hands behind your back? I bet your ability drops by ninety percent. If you don't have the right feel, it's hard to keep your balance. In that sense, Ronaldinho has the advantage. No matter how much his body has declined, when it comes to feel, he's second to none."
"That's true. Besides, Ronaldinho used to enjoy this game back when he was at Barcelona. I know because I saw it."
Yaya Touré, Kolo Touré's younger brother, agreed.
"I heard a story about this from when he was at Barcelona. When Messi had just come up to the first team, Ronaldinho made a bet like this with the young Messi."
"So what happened?"
"I heard Messi ended up doing all the small errands in the dressing room for a month."
"That sounds like Ronaldinho. No way he loses."
With Robinho joining in as well, the opinion seemed to tilt in Ronaldinho's favor.
But.
"Tsk tsk. You're all still drunk on past glory."
A heavily built man clicked his tongue and sneered.
It was Patrick Vieira, the oldest player in the squad at age thirty-four.
"You idiots. You don't know anything."
He was one of the few who had faced not only Ho-young, but also Ronaldinho in his prime.
In particular, he could never forget facing Brazil in the quarter-finals of the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
"We won the match, but I lost. Back then Brazil was a team that moved through Ronaldinho. I thought he could be stopped, but in the end he couldn't be stopped. That's Ronaldinho."
"Which is why I'm saying Ronaldinho will win."
"Robinho, I'm not finished yet. You don't know anything because you've never experienced it."
Vieira, who remembered being torn apart by Ho-young, spoke with a chilling expression.
"Ho-young is different. When you face him, all you can think is that he can't be stopped. And he really couldn't be stopped."
"But from what I can see, Ronaldinho still looks like he has the advantage."
"Robinho, you're still a long way off. Watch closely. Time is always on his side."
Their duel was, quite literally, impossible to watch with open eyes.
'This is much harder than I thought.'
Ho-young was already struggling from the start.
He had the ball, but he could not move carelessly.
Once he closed his eyes, the world went dark.
That was only natural.
But what mattered was that it was not just his vision, his mind also became dark.
He needed to map out a route in his head, but since he could see nothing, he could do nothing easily.
It felt as though the world had closed off.
"Shall I start coming in?"
It was then.
"!"
The sound of someone running from afar.
'He's coming.'
It was clearly Ronaldinho running toward him.
In that instant, Ho-young relied on his hearing and instinct, pulling the ball back.
But contact with Ronaldinho's body came in the blink of an eye.
Tap!
A sudden duel for the ball.
With his hands behind his back, Ho-young rolled the ball around and slipped it out to the side.
He escaped the pressure calmly and kept possession.
Up to that point, there was no problem.
He could not see where the ball was, but the ball under his feet could be controlled as precisely as his own body.
However.
"Huff."
His breathing suddenly grew rough.
It was not much of a movement, but with his hands behind his back, it felt several times harder than usual.
Still, there was no time to relax.
'He's coming.'
Ho-young sensed Ronaldinho step in once again.
He calmly settled his mind, focused on the outside situation, and listened carefully.
When you close your eyes, sound is transmitted to the brain more easily, so you can hear far better than usual.
And he made a quick decision.
'Left.'
He could hear it.
It was a very small sound, but the faint noise that reached him became visualized in his head.
The futsal pitch was very narrow anyway.
Even if he could not see, it was enough to roughly understand through hearing and instinct.
Ho-young made his decision.
And it was right then.
Whoosh!
Just before Ronaldinho's tackle came in, Ho-young pulled the ball back, flicked it up with his back foot, and laid it onto his knee.
A move with two feints built into it.
With his eyes blocked by the headband, there was no way Ronaldinho could notice.
And it did not stop there.
He carefully lifted the ball from his knee and gently balanced it on top of his head.
It was the moment the players outside burst into cheers.
"Young's won this."
"There's no way he could take it from there."
"That's Young for you."
Ho-young thought the same.
At that point, he believed he could safely protect the ball.
But less than a second later.
Tap.
Something suddenly slid in front of his face, and the ball that had been resting on his head dropped to the ground.
By the time he pulled off the headband, Ronaldinho already had the ball.
"Haha. Then I guess it's my turn now."
Defense failed.
Silence followed.
It was enough to make one wonder whether there were eye holes in Ronaldinho's headband.
'How did he know where I moved the ball?'
It was something bizarre that could not be explained scientifically.
Even switching roles changed nothing.
Now Ronaldinho was defending, and Ho-young could not even get a proper touch on the ball.
'I need to be able to sense where the ball is.'
He could not see it at all, so even his ability to position himself defensively was of no use.
Closing his eyes alone made it difficult, but with his hands behind his back as well, all he could do was swing at empty air.
Before long, he even lost his sense of direction and could not regain control.
'Damn. There's not much time left.'
But then, out of nowhere, Ronaldinho's voice rang out from the other side.
"Listen carefully. This is training to get closer to yourself."
"What do you mean?"
"When this is over, go to the video analysis room and watch it. Look at what kind of trail you left behind, and how it differs from the space you pictured in your head. By reconstructing the sensory experience, you build up your perceptive ability. And once the training sinks in, something remarkable will happen. But first, you need to feel where you are standing and where the ball is."
"I still don't fully understand just from hearing that."
"Alright, I'll explain it simply. You're not trying to see what can't be seen, you're trying to feel what you want to see."
"Feel…"
It was the kind of statement that seemed understandable, yet was still hard to grasp.
Silence fell again.
Then, after a moment, Ho-young suddenly gained an insight.
'I need to feel the ball and my own position.'
It was a good hint.
If he could unconsciously recognize where the ball was and where he himself was standing, he would be able to play with much greater calm and freedom in real matches.
Just like Ronaldinho.
But Ho-young still did not have the kind of supersense needed to grasp the ball's position through feeling.
Instead.
Whoosh!
He could at least tell where he himself was standing.
After focusing all his concentration, space began to take shape in his mind.
He started to sense something in front of him.
A strange experience, unfamiliar yet somehow familiar.
It was none other than the talent of spatial perception.
And then.
Tap!
"Hm?!"
It happened before Ronaldinho could even pull the ball away.
With a single tackle, Ho-young cut the ball out cleanly.
It was the kind of interception that even caught Ronaldinho off guard.
'He's feeling the distance with his whole body.'
It was a sense Ronaldinho had only ever felt before from Cambiasso at Inter when he was at AC Milan.
'He knows how to handle space.'
It was truly an extraordinary talent.
This too was a supersense.
'He's far more impressive than I thought.'
In truth, this duel had been absurd from the start.
Ronaldinho was extremely skilled at and accustomed to this kind of contest.
He had played it countless times with countless players.
But among them, not a single person had ever beaten Ronaldinho.
No, had anyone ever taken even one set off him?
'No one.'
Of course, Ronaldinho's condition was not great, since he had joined afternoon training right after finishing his unveiling, but Ho-young had his own handicap as well.
'It's his first time doing this.'
He was impressive.
His ability to perceive the ball was not outstanding, but it was remarkable how he used his other talents to cover for that absence.
"Haha."
It was one surprise after another.
But the contest was not over yet.
"Then shall we do one more round? This time you defend again…"
But today, that was as far as it went.
The contest ended there.
Tweet!
Manager Mancini, who had just arrived for work, had called everyone together.
"Can't be helped. Let's postpone the match for now. That was fun."
"I feel the same."
For Ho-young, it had been a very valuable experience.
It felt as though he had opened his eyes to an entirely new domain.
And one man watching from afar felt exactly the same way.
'This place is the real thing.'
It was David Silva, the other new signing.
Watching Ronaldinho and Ho-young's duel in silence, he became certain.
'I came to the right place.'
Called Valencia's model student, he was already copying their movements with his own body as he watched.
For him as well, it was a very special experience.
It felt as though he were watching a duel between aliens.
And it looked as though there was a great deal he could learn from them.
He simply could not shake off the excitement.
And above all, what manager Mancini said when he called them together was extremely stimulating.
"Our next opponent is Arsenal, currently third in the league. If we win, we go above them."
A perfect opportunity to jump up to third place.
It was set to come just two days later.
(To be continued.)