Galeno on the right side went first. I quickly moved into the penalty box and found my position.
Just like in a real match, Lete came up beside me.
"Go!"
Coach Matos signaled the start with a rolled pass out wide.
At the same moment, I made my move to shake off Lete.
On top of that, I had to read the timing of Galeno's run and check the position of the panels acting as imaginary defenders.
Thwap!
Galeno pushed the ball forward and whipped it in with curl.
It was heading toward the near post. Without hesitating, I weaved past the panels and made my run.
Lete stuck tight. Even so, he couldn't catch me — I'd gone first. What mattered was the height of the cross.
Awkward.
The ball was flying in at about hip height. Easy enough alone, but Lete bearing down behind me was a concern.
Lifting my foot felt a touch high for it. And if I slowed down, the defender would be in to disrupt.
A split second of thought. I pushed off the ground and flew like Superman.
Got it.
I went for the ball with my head rather than my foot. The moment the ball made contact with the side of my head rather than the forehead, I instinctively flicked my neck to redirect it.
The header wasn't particularly powerful, but the sharply deflected trajectory found the inside of the net on the opposite side.
"Going that far… Good, good! Next — Varela!"
Not easily, but a goal is a goal.
The coach seemed satisfied and immediately fed the next ball in.
Varela, naturally left-footed, cushioned the ball once before sending the cross in.
This time the ball curled inward toward the goal rather than away.
Lete mirrored me from the start, moving like a reflection.
As I shifted my feet quickly trying to lose him, he grabbed my jersey and held on.
"Take it easy."
"This is nothing. You need to shake it off."
The ball went past the goal untouched, and Lete smiled as he answered my comment.
I looked over at the coach. He simply shrugged, as if taking Lete's side.
"So that's how it is, is it?"
"If you can shake me off, go ahead and try."
Another cross. Lete grabbed my jersey again and pressed his body against mine.
Same trick won't work twice. I drove my shoulder into his chest.
A small pocket of space opened up. I knocked his hand away and jumped lightly toward the ball.
Lete jumped late, but the timing of our takeoffs was already different.
"The jump… damn."
Lete muttered to himself. No time to respond — another ball was already coming in from wide.
This time he cranked up the intensity and wrapped both arms around my waist. What on earth was he going for.
I practically dragged him along with me through sheer force and connected with the incoming ball on the volley.
"Oh?"
Lete, who had conceded another shot, caught my eye. He smirked.
His expression said — come on then, give me more. I lifted one corner of my mouth back at him.
"As much as you want."
※
"Good work everyone today. Lete, lead the cool-down and then dismiss. That's all."
This was fun. I'd been so absorbed in training that I'd lost track of time. The fierce physical battle with Diogo Lete had given me a rush I hadn't felt in a while.
I would have gladly gone on a little longer, but Castro had called the players together.
It did catch me a bit off guard. The training volume was, if anything, shorter than the U-18 setup — certainly not longer.
I checked the time and it had barely been just over two hours since we started.
I asked Fábio, who was lying flat on his back twisting his body around.
"Is this it?"
"That's it. The higher you go, the less team training there actually is. Managing your fitness is essential during the season."
Come to think of it, I hadn't noticed while the session was going on.
Looking around, every player seemed completely wrung out.
As Fábio said, the reserve team was into the middle of the season.
The schedule was incomparable to the U-18 side.
Even so…
I couldn't help feeling a little short-changed.
Because unlike them, my body was still buzzing with energy.
Maybe that feeling was stronger because it was my first training session. I'd come in wound up and ready to go, and it felt like I'd barely done anything.
"Individual training is fine though, right?"
"You have to report to the fitness coach. And the training pitch probably won't be free until late in the afternoon."
"Even for the reserve team?"
"The team has changed, but we're still under the youth setup."
"Oh…"
There was nothing to do at home anyway. I decided to see how things played out.
After cool-down stretches led by captain Lete, we all headed together to the club canteen.
White players, Black players. But the only Asian was me.
Questions came one after another while we were eating. First day, naturally there was a lot of curiosity.
My age, where I lived, what Korea was like, had I seen BTS — and so on.
I talked non-stop with the players sitting around me.
Having Fábio around definitely helped with settling in. Unlike me, he'd come up through Porto's youth system from an early age and already knew most of the reserve players.
So being introduced through Fábio made it much easier to mix with them.
And what that meant for me was this —
Not curiosity about me as an Asian.
But curiosity about me as a person — as Seo Jino.
With many players holding Portuguese and Brazilian nationality, there was a lot of common ground.
The topic they brought up first was futsal. Apparently a few of them had played futsal before switching to soccer.
"There was this guy called Martinelli, same age as me — absolutely incredible. I heard he switched to soccer and debuted for a professional first team last year."
I'd wondered. I mentioned the most talented player I'd known from my futsal days.
"Know him. Youngest debut at Ituano, probably?"
"Really?"
"In São Paulo, you can't not know him. And I think I saw something about Arsenal being interested?"
"That good?"
"Oh, this you might not know — Martinelli failed the Manchester United trial four times."
"How do you know that?"
"I failed it with him. Ha ha."
Galeno and Ruizang, both Brazilian. After a good long chat with them, the Portuguese players took over.
It wasn't that different from when I used to live here.
Who would the Portuguese players' favorite player be, after all.
"Ronaldo is the best in the world."
"Obviously."
"New!"
"H-you!"
If I brought up Lionel Messi in this atmosphere… probably not a good idea.
Anyway, our conversation carried on well after the meal had finished.
This time they talked about the current state of Porto B.
The most useful information for me. What the staff were like, which teammates had difficult personalities — that kind of thing.
Most of the players had been together since they were young, so there was almost nothing they didn't know about each other.
"Oh right — did you see Lete getting riled up during training earlier?"
"He says he was going easy on you, but anyone could see he was completely serious."
"Exactly. We've never seen that side of him here before. Ha ha. I was nearly dying watching him practically hanging off Jino earlier."
It was Oliveira Fernandes, who shared the center back duties with Lete, who said it.
At his words, one player grinned so wide his gums were showing.
Varela, from Argentina, who had been in my group during training, pointed at me.
"This guy is something else, I'm telling you. Lete's physicality is known even in the first team. But every time they went up for an aerial duel, he was getting bounced off. Says it all."
"Come on, surely he was taking it easy because it was just training?"
I waved my hand and replied.
"Do we not know that guy? One hundred percent, full effort."
"Was it really?"
"At the last World Cup when we played your team, he was acting so tough afterward. His expression when he played with you was completely different."
In the middle of listening to Varela, I caught the word World Cup.
World Cup? Had I heard that right?
"You lot play for national teams too? World Cup?"
"U-20 World Cup. Most of the players here have been through it, probably? Fábio, didn't you go this time too?"
"Yeah."
This guy is a Portuguese youth international too?
The sight of Fábio answering so casually suddenly looked different.
Under-20 national team. The best players at the level just below the senior side. That's what it meant.
I knew he was good, but not that good.
"Fábio. Malek, who came up with us — is he a Mexico international then?"
"Probably? Why?"
"Oh, nothing."
I glanced over at Malek, who was in a different group across the room. He'd had a strong competitive edge toward me from the very start.
From the moment I joined the team, he'd been wary of me.
Whether it was some kind of instinct — the sense that his spot might be taken — I couldn't say.
I feel a bit bad, actually.
It had escalated to the point where we'd thrown punches and had a proper fight.
Thinking about it now, what bothered me more than the punches was what I'd said while he was down.
That he was useless and had no business picking a fight.
That Mexico were good at soccer, so why was he such a disappointment.
That he should stop embarrassing his country and focus on his football.
But he was a national team player.
Hearing that from someone like me, who had nothing to show — that must have been a bit of a shock.
Either way, the word World Cup had shifted the whole conversation to youth national teams before I knew it.
Portugal, Argentina, Brazil, Nigeria — all of them.
Among players trading stories I had no part in, I had nothing to say.
"Ugh, I'm tired. Let's head out. I need to get some weights in."
"You're tired and you're still going to train?"
"No, that's not what I meant. Anyway, see you tomorrow."
"Yeah, alright."
I cleared up after the meal and got to my feet. Was there anyone here who wasn't a national team player?
※
The other players finished eating and headed home.
I grabbed a banana and spent some time in the weights room.
Slowly cycling to aid digestion, my mind wandered back to what the others had been saying about their national teams.
This is Porto, after all.
The best players in Portugal all end up at Porto, Benfica, or Sporting.
Beyond that, there were a fair number of talented players from Brazil too — sharing the same language.
I just hadn't felt it directly, but thinking about it now, players going to their age-group national teams wasn't strange at all.
If anything, from their perspective, I was probably the anomaly.
Now isn't the time for this.
There might be people who don't recognize me. Actually, there definitely will be. That kind of person had been everywhere I'd ever been.
I glanced at the clock and left the weights room in a hurry. This was no time to be sitting around.
I needed to run one more lap than them, do one more thing than them.
But every training pitch attached to Jorge Sampaio was occupied.
Kids whose ages I couldn't even guess, the U-18 team I'd come from, and even the general recreational academy groups.
Still need to report first anyway.
I couldn't speak for other clubs, but that was how Porto worked.
Youth players couldn't increase their training load without the coach's permission.
That aside, finding somewhere to practice was the more pressing issue — and it wasn't looking promising.
All I needed was one goal and the ball already at my feet.
"Tooth!"
Just then, Coach Dudu from the U-18 team spotted me from far off and came walking over, calling my name.
It was only the other day that I'd been there, so it still felt like familiar territory.
Coach Dudu could read a situation at a glance — he must have taken pity on me wandering around aimlessly.
"Go and help with the goalkeeper training. There's nobody here who can actually strike the ball properly."
"Sorry?"
"Are your ears working? I'll let your coach know, so go and help out."
"… Yes!"
"And if you want to book the training pitch you have to fill in all sorts of paperwork. Don't waste your time on that nonsense. You know our training schedule, don't you? Just use this."
"Understood."
Coach Dudu, reserve team's Coach Castro, and youth director Marcus — there were plenty of people at Porto looking out for me. Naturally, I wanted to live up to their expectations.
Talent.
The word they all said to me without fail. But there can't be many players here who haven't heard that word.
Porto was the kind of place that required talent just to get through the door.
I would have to keep competing against those players — and my competition was already at a level to be called up to their national youth teams.
I had to accept it. That there wasn't a single thing about me that was better than them yet.
I would have to pour out sweat on a completely different scale from anything I'd done in sport before.
"Hey! Block the shot!"
But I was confident.
Because the me right now had staked my entire life on this.