Chapter Text
Football is a game of 11 against 11, one ball, two nets, and only one thing decides who wins and who loses: goals. Who scores them and who stops them.
There are books and more books talking about tactics and strategies, you can ask every football coach in the world and each one will give you a different answer on what is the best way to play football, but at the end of every match, just like every day the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the team that wins is the one that scores the most goals while preventing the opponent's from going in.
A tough defence, a creative and playful midfield, quick wingers or energetic full-backs are all important, but again, at the end of the day the sun always sets in the west, and it is the strikers and goalkeepers who make the difference in this sport. They are the ones who arouse the greatest passions in the fans, philias and phobias, debates about which is better. Everyone has an opinion about the feet that score goals and the hands that save them. Football is 11 against 11, and without the others, goals would be meaningless, but football is also a dance, a duel that does not end between the one who shoots and the one who clears with his gloves.
For decades, football has been one of the most popular sports on the planet, earning it the name of the king of sports. Not least in this country. Every school and high school has its own football team, there are regional and national leagues and championships from as young as eight years old, all the way up to the Thai Professional Football League, the dream of any child growing up loving the game.
Everyone knows the names and faces of the players who play in the professional teams, and since the Thai League has been gaining strength in recent years, the possibility of signing foreign players to help raise the level even higher has appeared, making the public appreciate even more the national stars, who emerge from any school in the country and reach the top. So much so, that the Thai National Team has been gaining strength in its international matches for years, rising as a regular in the Asian and world championships.
In this context where every parent dreams of their child being the next star of the most loved sport, to have two such smashing talents emerge at the same time in a town of no more than 3,000 inhabitants is, to say it lightly, quite an event.
That both boys play in antagonistic positions, goalkeeper and striker, and that their families despise each other, is nothing more than a little joke of fate.