Around the 65th minute of the second half.
Coach Castro gave me the actual order to get on the pitch. I immediately tucked my jersey into my shorts and got myself sorted. I didn't want to miss this chance. As I jumped off both feet for one last check of my body—
"""Waaaahhh!"""
A goal back for us. Just as Coach Castro had said, pushing the line up and going all out had created numerical advantages in pockets all over the pitch, and it had paid off.
With the goal that lit the fuse of a comeback, Porto completed a full reset. The way momentum can shift in an instant in soccer was something else. Lete's defensive organization had invited some hairy moments, but at the same time it was pressing the opposition hard.
"Hey, pass it!"
Benfica were making mistakes more frequently, and the left flank — with Dalot, Moreira, and Varela strong in one-on-ones — was buzzing with energy. The attacking connections clicked into gear properly, and Porto's 4-3-3 finally began to show its teeth.
With the match going well, the weight of making my debut only grew heavier. Ahead of my first appearance for the reserve team, a needless nervousness wrapped itself around me. To shake it off I kept my feet moving in quick, short steps.
"Jino! Seo Jino!"
A familiar voice reached me. Someone holding a scarf with the Porto crest on it, roaring my name at the top of his lungs.
"Dad?"
I'd told him I'd be on the bench, but he'd come just in case. And when I hadn't been getting on, he'd probably been sitting quietly. That was the father I knew. Always putting me first.
Right then.
I gave him a thumbs up and shook the nerves off. As the substitution sign went up and I stood waiting on the touchline, Coach Castro put his arm around my shoulder.
"Get into Ferreira's spot. Central striker. Got it?"
"Yes."
Right against my ear, the coach drilled my role into me one more time.
"What are you going to do?"
"Press high up front, and when I receive the ball, quickly to the wide—"
"No!"
Ruizang's free kick went wide and the roar from the crowd swelled even louder. Noise everywhere. Coach Castro practically hammered my instructions directly into my ear.
"Today, only what you can do!"
"Sorry?"
"Only what you can do! Which means you shoot whenever you get the chance, right?"
"But—"
"Did you see your father's here?"
I said nothing and just nodded.
"Yes."
"Show him a side of you he hasn't seen before. He'll be proud."
The coach gave me a shove in the back as the referee's substitution signal went up, then turned away. Ferreira, who had scored the equalizing goal, came walking off and extended both hands. We slapped them naturally.
"Go do well."
"Yes."
Estádio Dr. Jorge Sampaio, a place I'd run around on plenty of times — I'd never seen it look this big before. Four months — long if you think about it, short if you don't. No more stepping aside from here. A place where I'd be judged purely on what I had. This was the moment I stepped onto the first stage of my life in pursuit of being the main character.
"Hoo—!"
The moment I entered the pitch, I ran straight to Ferreira's position. A murmur rippled through the stands. Curiosity about the new face, tinged with concern.
Benfica restart with a corner kick. The ball glanced off center back Lete's head and fell to central midfielder Ruizang's feet. Before Benfica's press could get going, Ruizang cleared it toward the halfway line.
The ball sailed to the left of the center line and Moreira gave chase. A good counter-attacking opportunity, but his first touch let him down. He ran hard, but the ball had already gone out of play.
He's spent.
Castro had apparently noticed too — substitutes were already being readied on the bench. Moreira on the left for Iralha, Bruno on the right for Pires.
With fresh energy injected, we competed with Benfica on much more even terms. Miguel Pires in particular, coming off the bench, breathed life into the right side that had been blocked up. Unlike the starter Bruno, he kept making threatening runs past Benfica's midfielder Florentino. The finishing, unfortunately, wasn't following through. The quality of the crosses coming in from wide was simply too low.
"Shit!"
With such simple attacking patterns, scoring didn't look easy. I had to reconsider what I should be doing, what I was actually capable of. On top of that, even though this was my first time playing for the reserve team, I didn't feel much of a difference from the U-18 side. Not in terms of quality — it was that I couldn't count on good passes arriving.
Can't be helped.
Too many defenders crowded around the box. I dropped back to the second line to receive the ball. Seeing my movement, left midfielder Santiago Iralha pushed inside to add numbers to the center. Left back Dalot, too, overlapped deep into the opposition half to cover Iralha's vacated space.
"Other side! Track Galeno!"
Benfica's center back had his attention pulled to Iralha charging into the penalty box and right wing forward Galeno.
And I received a pass from Ruizang with an opposing midfielder on my back. First touch with the inside of my left foot. I created separation from the defender and immediately drove forward toward the center of the goal.
No different from before. Just do what I've been doing. The situation I'd trained for over these months played out exactly. An opposing midfielder bore down on me. I rolled the ball with the sole of my right foot and slipped past the recklessly outstretched leg. I kept my speed without dropping as I shifted the ball to my left foot.
As I broke through their midfield line, Benfica's defenders retreated. Marking our players pressing forward while also trying to protect the goal — that seemed to be the idea.
They don't know me.
Honestly, what I'd learned these past months was fairly limited. Coach Dudu hadn't drilled passing and all that too heavily. Most of what I'd done over the months was shooting. Not a stationary ball like in American football. The kind where I'd struck a ball moving dynamically — probably tens of thousands of times. What that meant was that giving me shooting space was Benfica's mistake.
Boom!!
As my fully loaded left foot connected with the ball, I felt exactly the same sensation as always.
"Yeahhh!" "Unbelievable!" "Frio! (That was cold!)"
The net rippled. The ball buried in the upper left was something to behold. Players I'd never met came running over and smacked me on the head in celebration. These guys might have been satisfied with a draw — but I wasn't.
The ball.
I looked at Benfica's goal where the ball needed to be. Dalot, who seemed to share my thinking, had already gone to retrieve it. But the goalkeeper held on and wouldn't give it up easily. From Benfica's perspective, a draw was fine. The away side had been targeting a single point from the start. Ending it exactly as it stood would mean mission accomplished.
"""Boooooooooo!"""
Jeers rang out around the stadium. I sprinted toward the goal. The goalkeeper was clutching the ball to his chest, squabbling with Dalot. What was there to say. I grabbed the opposing keeper's arms that were wrapped around the ball and applied pressure. The ball slipped out of the goalkeeper's wide-open chest.
"What are you doing? This is all it takes." "But that's—"
Dalot looked slightly taken aback. The goalkeeper next to him was the same.
"Quick, let's go."
I picked up the ball and ran toward the halfway line. We still needed one more to win.
Roughly five minutes of normal time remaining.
Benfica restarted from the center circle. A true clash of spear and shield. Us going all-out, Benfica parking the bus in front of goal. I ran like my life depended on it, and the increasingly rough match felt like warfare.
After the equalizer, the players threw themselves into the fight body and soul. Even in the reserves, a rival is a rival. Yellow cards began piling up as things boiled over. A foul in the opposition's half. In the gap that created, Castro relayed instructions to the midfield engine Ruizang.
"No time! Long balls — win the aerial duels in the box!"
The match resumed. Normal time ran out completely, and the fourth official displayed the additional time. With all those fouls, still only four minutes. Four minutes to break down a defense that had dropped into two rigid banks — it was no easy task.
Tha-thwap—!
Balls hoofed into the final third in desperation came to nothing time after time. Benfica players raised their concentration and held firm. When it can't be done, make it happen. Twice, three times. We threw everything forward and Benfica scrambled to clear.
"Time is…"
At some point the referee's eyes kept drifting to the watch on his wrist. It felt like the whistle could go in his mouth any second. Even so, there was no giving up.
Dalot, unable to break through, played it to Ruizang in the center, who switched it to Galeno on the right. Following the manager's instructions, even center back Lete had pushed into the opposition penalty box.
"Stick with Lete!"
"Watch Dalot's run!"
One last chance. The plan was to use Lete's height to contest the aerial ball. But Benfica's defense wasn't going to let that happen quietly. Getting the cross in wasn't going to be easy. Then my eyes met Galeno's, as I'd dropped back to just outside the arc. He seemed to decide I was a better option than Lete, who was being closely marked.
A low, firm ground pass to fit into a tight space. Defenders collapsing instantly. What I could do here was limited, but I had to make a decision. I spotted a gap between the defenders and aimed for it.
Boom!!
The right-footed shot I forced through eventually got caught on a defender's outstretched leg. The ball floated up and came back to me. If anything, it was a stroke of luck. More space than a moment ago. This time I planted my right foot into the turf and twisted my body hard. My left foot sweeping across horizontally caught the dropping ball on impact.
Boom—!!
The opposing goalkeeper simply turned his head to look back, and for a moment it felt as though time had stopped. The first thing that came to mind as the ball went in was my father. My father, sitting in the stands cheering for me. I weaved past the surrounding players and ran straight toward where he was calling my name in perfect pronunciation. Knowing it was against the rules, I pulled my jersey over my head and threw it off.
"Come on!!"
Bare-chested — a torso unlike any soccer player's — I roared toward my father. And that was how my first match on the adult stage came to an end. The only chant echoing through Estádio Dr. Jorge Sampaio.
It was my name. Jino.
And in the local Porto paper after the match, a short article appeared. A single phrase introducing me caught my eye.
[Jino! Assassino do leste!]
Assassino. Not a bad way to put it.
The Assassin from the East.
※
For a good while after the Benfica B match, the afterglow of those goals refused to fade. The fans, the club, and my father. It felt like a dream. Honestly, I can barely remember how the shots came together. My body had simply moved on its own — that's the only way I can describe it. It was also the result of training that had felt, for me, like quite a long road.
"Break, cross, shoot! Move on the call! Clear?"
Training with the reserve team was carried out in a considerably tighter environment than the U-18 setup. Today too, after a full-squad 5v5 and 8v8 game, the session split into positional work.
The total number of forwards, including all the wide attackers, was six. Paired up in groups of three, we were going through an explanation from assistant coach Matos.
"Got it?"
"Yes!"
Attacking play built from wide. Two wing forwards taking turns to deliver crosses from balls played in by the coach.
Combination play leading to a cross. Space-creating cross after combination. Early cross cut in front of the defender. Cross aimed into the space behind the defender. High cross or low driven cross.
The striker in front of goal adjusts position in anticipation of each cross and waits. Of course, panels stood in various positions inside the box to simulate defenders. The job was to get past them and turn whatever ball came in into a goal by whatever means necessary.
"Jino. You can't keep drifting out every time there's no space like you did last time. A striker has to know how to score through contact. Understand?"
"Yes."
"That's why I've arranged a special treat. Hey, Lete!"
"Hm?"
190 centimeters tall. A bruising, fighter-type center back. Diogo Lete, the biggest player on the reserve squad, came walking toward me.
"Go up with Jino."
"Sim. (Yes.)"
Well, having defenders in soccer is only natural. No need to overthink it. All I had to do was bulldoze past this guy and put the ball in.
Easy.