Became The Premier League’S Youngest Manager [EN]: Chapter 106

106: Her and Her Story

“Oh, you son of a bitch. I knew I’d find you moping around here.”

Carolina, with a TV remote in one hand and the office light switch in the other, looked down at her friend sitting blankly on the sofa with a look of disdain.

“Hey, why are you even listening to those crazy bastards? Listening to them will kill you. They wouldn’t even be able to manage a Premier League first team in their entire lives, yet they’re all talk…”

Seeing her friend’s blank expression as he looked up at her, Carolina sighed and sat down on the sofa opposite him.

“And what’s this?”

Carolina picked up a transparent blue bottle with a strange frog on it from the low table and asked.

“Jinro [a popular Korean distilled spirit]? Since 1924? Well, it’s got some history, I guess?”

Looking at the bottle with suspicion, Carolina tilted the almost empty bottle and took a sip of the meager amount of alcohol left, then screamed.

“Ugh! What is this?! What is this bizarre, artificially flavored, paint thinner-like stuff?!”

“…It’s a traditional Korean liquor…”

Carolina contorted her face at Hyungmin’s still dazed reply.

“Where the hell did you get this stuff? Did that guy who sent you that weird red hat send it?”

Before Hyungmin could answer, the office door opened again.

“Hyungmin, don’t tell me you’re drinking that cheap whiskey by yourself again…”

Helena, who entered with a sophisticated whiskey bottle in one hand and a whiskey glass in the other, paused.

“…I see you’re not.”

It was an awkward atmosphere.

The owner of the room was out of it, whether due to the defeat, the alcohol, or the panelists’ criticism. Helena and Carolina, who had only exchanged greetings and formal introductions, faced each other alone for the first time, and silence fell between them.

“Oh… please, come in.”

At Carolina’s words, Helena paused again.

“Oh… if you were having a private conversation, I’ll leave you to it.”

“No, I just found this guy spacing out.”

Helena cautiously stepped into the room, hesitated for a moment, then nodded slightly to Carolina, who had moved to one end of the sofa, to express her thanks, and sat down at the opposite end.

Silence fell once more between the three, forming a triangle with Hyungmin at its center.

“…Did you bring that to drink?”

Finally opening her mouth, Carolina gestured to the whiskey bottle still in Helena’s hand, and Helena nodded.

“I used to raid Mike Garrick’s cabinet with Hyungmin. I checked it out today just in case, and sure enough, he seems to have received another bottle this year.”

“This guy raided someone else’s cabinet for alcohol?”

At Carolina’s incredulous question, Helena raised her chin.

“Well, I drank with him, so I’m an accomplice.”

“More like you were threatened…”

“Surely not, threatened?”

Helena flinched at Carolina’s surprisingly accurate observation but firmly denied it, as if determined to push through.

Carolina chuckled at Helena’s reaction.

“Well, I’ll be an active accomplice… a drink, call?”

“…A drink, call.”

A drink, and another drink, and another.

Alcohol alone cannot create true friendship. But alcohol is one of the fastest ways to become friendly with strangers.

As the Cartwright family’s saying goes, the two women, who had been awkward with each other, rapidly became close through the endless stream of drinks, using the alcohol as a medium.

Mike Garrick’s finest whiskey, brought by Helena, was finished long ago, and the remaining five bottles from the box of six mysterious paint thinners sent by Hyungmin’s acquaintance were also emptied.

Of course, both of them screamed in agony every time they tasted the mysterious, artificially flavored paint thinner.

Thanks to Carolina’s resourcefulness in discovering a secret drawer in Mike Garrick’s personal cabinet during another raid on his office, they opened another bottle of that bizarre yet luxurious whiskey, and Helena, who had become quite friendly with Carolina, asked.

“So, you wouldn’t consider dating a player?”

Through the forest of bottles on the table, the figure of Hyungmin, passed out on the sofa from intoxication, could be glimpsed.

After glancing at her friend, Carolina, with a still clear face, looked at the young club representative director, also with a clear face, sitting at the opposite end of the sofa and shook her head.

“First of all, I’m a coach, and they’re players, so there’s a clear dynamic where I instruct, and they follow, right? But if romantic feelings or other relationships get involved, it gets complicated.”

As Helena nodded in agreement, Carolina continued.

“And secondly, this is actually more important…”

At Carolina’s slightly lowered voice, Helena leaned forward, also lowering her posture to listen.

“…Being around smelly men all day makes the thought of dating an athletic man really disgusting. I like someone who smells nice, has soft skin, and waits for me at home with an apron on, cooking dinner when I get off work, a cute and chubby guy.”

As Helena blinked at the unexpected words, Carolina pointed to Hyungmin, who was unconscious on the opposite sofa, with the fingers of her hand holding her whiskey glass.

“So, a guy like him is out. Thinking about soccer at work, thinking about soccer at home, thinking about soccer while eating, probably even dreaming about soccer – that kind of guy is no help at all. And decisively, his appearance isn’t my style.”

“Ah, you said you like the cute or chubby style.”

Helena also glanced at Hyungmin, thinking that he was far from cute and not chubby at all.

He was 180 centimeters tall and skinny, and as the season progressed, the little weight he had gained in Korea evaporated, and you could see his bones sticking out.

Of course, if he were dressed in a proper tailored suit, his figure wouldn’t look too bad, so maybe you could argue that he was somewhat handsome, thought the person who had spent her own money to dress the manager in a very proper, expensive, top-quality tailored suit from a London tailor.

“This is none of my business, though.”

Carolina smiled as she saw Helena’s gaze shift from Hyungmin back to her.

“If things continue like this, you’ll never make any progress until you die, you know?”

“Like this? Progress? What progress?”

Carolina chuckled again at the young club representative director, who blinked as if she didn’t understand what she was saying.

“Well, if you deny it, I won’t say anything more. But back in Salzburg, there were a few women who tried to figure out what was so good about that kind of guy, you know? But…”

“…But?”

Helena asked, even though she was saying no with her mouth, she was curious.

“…They just ended up digging their own graves. And do you know what the decisive factor was?”

Even knowing it was a leading question, Helena couldn’t help but get caught up in it.

“…What was the decisive factor?”

“The guy himself had no idea what was going on from the beginning to the end!”

Carolina, who was chuckling and taking a sip of whiskey, was stared at by Helena with an absurd expression.

No, he’s not a middle or high school boy, how can he not know when a woman expresses that she likes him? What is this?

“Is there something functionally wrong…?”

“Pfft!”

Carolina, who almost sent the whiskey she was holding in her mouth down her windpipe as if she had never thought of that, coughed for a long time before finally catching her breath.

“Keheck… well, not bad for a joke. I’d give it more points if it was an assassination attempt.”

“An assassination attempt…”

Carolina chuckled at the beautiful representative director, who elegantly raised one of her well-groomed blonde eyebrows with an expression that said she would have taken care of it much more cleanly if she had wanted to get rid of him.

“Probably not? He just doesn’t have much dating experience.”

“…Experience?”

Carolina shrugged at the expression that she hadn’t even thought of that.

“Do you know how that guy ended up drifting all the way to Europe?”

“…Well, roughly.”

“Oh. You’ve heard that story… you’re getting a lot of trust, aren’t you?”

Carolina nodded, raising her eyebrows as if surprised.

“Then it’ll be easy to explain. Now, how much free time would a guy who went to school during the day, coached and managed amateur teams in the evenings and on weekends, and worked part-time in between have?”

“Ah… he wouldn’t have had any.”

“That’s right. From what I hear, the atmosphere in Korea isn’t very conducive to players dating in middle and high school either. Since that guy didn’t have any talent, he probably had even less time. He wouldn’t have had enough time to practice.”

From morning until late at night, Hyungmin’s life was filled with soccer from a very young age.

“Oh, this is a completely different story, but…”

Helena, who was listening to Carolina’s words, suddenly asked as if she had just remembered something.

“Hyungmin himself and the people around him all say that Hyungmin didn’t have any talent, but is he really that untalented? How do you know that?”

“Hmm… are you asking about the relationship between talent and effort?”

When Helena nodded, Carolina sighed deeply and leaned back on the sofa.

“It’s always a controversy. Is talent really necessary? Is effort not enough?”

“I know that sports and art require innate talent.”

Helena said, thinking of her mother and younger brother, who had excellent artistic sense, compared to herself and her older brother, who were hopeless in that regard.

“But I’m curious about how much can be overcome.”

“Hmm…”

Carolina paused for a moment.

“I can’t say I’m an expert, but I’ve had a decent career as a player, and I’ve been coaching for a while now, right? At least from what I’ve seen, effort alone is never enough.”

“Ah…”

Carolina put her whiskey glass on the table and spread her hands, as if to elaborate.

“Of course, I don’t know enough to say that this is true in all areas… so I’ll limit myself to sports, and soccer.”

First, one hand rose to eye level and formed a horizontal line.

“Let’s say that you need this much overall ‘skill’ to achieve minimal success as a professional player. Then, to fill this ‘skill,’ you need ‘effort’ and ‘talent.'”

The other hand went down below the first hand, which was forming a horizontal line.

“The more ‘talent’ you have, the less ‘effort’ you need to fill the minimum required ‘skill.’ Conversely, even if you lack ‘talent,’ you can fill the minimum ‘skill’ by putting in a lot of ‘effort.’ At least that’s what I’ve seen around me.”

Suddenly, the first hand shot up above her head.

“But unfortunately, the minimum ‘skill’ required to succeed as a professional soccer player is this high. In other words, for someone who lacks innate ‘talent,’ even if they put in 10 or 20 years of ‘effort,’ there isn’t enough time to fill the missing parts.”

Carolina sighed, looking a little regretful, as she herself had suffered quite a bit from injuries at the end of her brilliant playing career.

“Moreover, as humans get older, their physical abilities decline from a certain point. Even young players can suffer a major injury and never fully recover to their previous level after returning.”

Human recovery is not infinite, Carolina added.

“Well, it’s not like you don’t have to put in any ‘effort’ if you have ‘talent.’ Moreover, everyone else is working hard next to you… To become a professional player, you have to be in the top few percent, it’s not about absolute skill. Anyway, Hyungmin lacked talent in something.”

“Then how much talent did Hyungmin lack?”

Carolina shrugged at Helena’s question.

“I met Hyungmin after he was injured, so I don’t know about before that… but from what he says and what he does after being injured…”

“…?”

Carolina clicked her tongue.

“…He wouldn’t have been able to become a professional player even if he was reborn.”

Carolina shook her head at Helena, who was looking at Hyungmin with a pitiful expression.

“There’s no need to look at him like that.”

“But…”

“You know this well, right? Regretting what you’ve lost or haven’t gained is an insult to the present. Of course, Hyungmin has suffered a lot, but there are far more people who envy and respect the position Hyungmin has reached now. At least he’s not in a position to receive pitiful looks.”

I’m one of those people somewhere between envy and respect, Carolina muttered.