Chapter Text
The world goes crazy, Twitter explodes upon seeing the official announcement: the last member of the New Generation World XI has finally been announced, but not as many expected. The world is on edge to see who has received the official title of one of the best in the world. Isagi feels overwhelmed with emotion; he has done many things to get here. This is not the end, but just the next step toward greatness, to being the best forward who devours everything within his reach, a player who acts as a devourer of the rivals' happiness, who rejoices at seeing the tears and sorrow in the opponent, but who has a great sense of sportsmanship. Off the field, he will be as always, but on the field, he is a king of kings; that is why he has been recognized.
And here he is now, at the gates of Blue Lock, hoping that his sick coach can use his skills well to create more monsters. There must be some very interesting people if Ego personally chose them. After all, this is a relaxed break after years in Germany playing alongside Kaiser and the Bastard. Isagi feels the excitement bubbling in his stomach; he will enter Blue Lock at Ego's request, and when the third phase begins, he will immortalize his name, and the real World Cup will be just a few small steps away.
He thinks about the U-20 World Cup and feels happy; he hopes that after this, Japan will have a minimally decent team so that he can face his NG11 teammates and rivals on equal terms.
Football is the sport that has conquered the world, the great spheres of power, the hearts of children, and the passions of countries. The happiness of reveling at the end of a World Cup tournament with the World Cup as the crown of the best country in football is what everyone covets; even those who have no interest in football at all feel pride in their country when they pass the qualifiers and dream of holding that shiny cup in their arms. Countries release commercials, push their athletes to the limit, creating a facade of terrifying support and camaraderie (which will be forgotten once the team is out of the World Cup). The only ones lucky enough not to chew on that shame are the best; Argentina, Spain, France, Brazil are some of them. While small countries create small leagues to avoid dying in pity.
Japan is a mediocre team—everyone knows that—and faces an insurmountable obstacle in the round of 16. So, in the end, it advances to the next round just like many other countries and ends up getting crushed by the champions—selfish, ruthless beings who will wipe out anyone who stands in their way in order to boast about their glorious title as “the best in the world.”
For Isagi Yoichi, that truth was so obvious that the idea that, in that state, the Japanese team could achieve anything more than mediocrity was a joke that could make him die laughing. In those fleeting moments, from afar in Germany, he felt a sense of shame hidden behind his eyes for the mediocre Japanese players. How is it possible that Itoshi Sae and Isagi Yoichi are such shining stars in the soccer of a country that isn’t even worth a second glance when it comes to World Cups or leagues? Isagi would be lying if he said he didn’t know why Japan is so bad; it’s the mindset—one he himself had as a child. But it was around that time, at age 9, while training at a small club in Saitama Prefecture, that the goddess of soccer turned her gaze toward him for the first time in the form of a tall, lanky man with eyes as black as wells and hair the same shade.
“Are you Isagi Yoichi?” The question that would change his fate.
A week after that encounter, Isagi found himself training in a brutal, harsh, and almost murderous manner under the command of a madman who has almost no online presence; but he is so good that Isagi’s heart can’t help but race when the man speaks to him about his philosophy—the path to becoming the best striker in the world: a “Egoist” one. Isagi believes everything the man says; the man has truly taken him to the next level. He believes that selfishness is the key, but selfishness has its own very fragile structure that can break down if the situation is mishandled.
That’s how Yoichi begins to gain some fleeting fame in his prefecture. And he meets someone just as brilliant as he is: Itoshi Sae. He’s a forward just like Yoichi, a year older, very confident and self-assured, egoist by nature, but also fun to watch as he plays. He’s always with Rin, who’s a year younger than him; Rin is also very good, but he still needs to polish his skills. Sae doesn’t seem very interested in him at first, but as time goes by and they meet a few times at school tournaments, they begin to form a strange friendship, based on Isagi writing to him from time to time about games, goals, and challenges, and a stoic Sae responding in monosyllables unless they’re talking about recent games. In any case, as the years go by, Sae writes more, and they’ve even had long phone calls where they mostly talk about soccer. The older one once admits that he’d like for him and Isagi to play on the same team; the blue-haired one thinks they’d be unstoppable.
At thirteen, Isagi remains under Ego’s dictatorial regime, which involves training him until he feels like he’s dying, improving both his mind and body, sending him to analyze matches, and then trying to recreate and adapt the most interesting skills to his own development. A year ago, Sae left for Spain after being signed by La Real’s youth club. Isagi was truly happy for Sae, who seemed so excited to have been noticed by the club so early on—a real honor. Although he seemed a little annoyed about having to play on the reserve team until he turned 18—since Spanish regulations prohibit teams from officially signing underage players—if you ask Sae, he’ll tell you it’s ridiculous, but Isagi thinks he understands why. Even so, Isagi is so jealous—he’s happy for Sae, of course, but what sets them apart? They’re both really good forwards.
Unfortunately, Sae gets all the fame; after all, he was the first natural talent to emerge in Japan in a very long time. If Sae holds the title of “Japan’s Greatest Treasure,” then Isagi deserves the title of “the sharpest mind in Japanese soccer.” Even Sae once said, “But this country is so mediocre that it can’t recognize its stars. You should leave Japan before you get sick of its mediocrity, Isagi.”
Luckily, he doesn’t have to wait much longer; at fourteen, he’s finally signed by a foreign club. Although La Real isn’t the one making the offer, Bastard München is the best offensive team in the Bundesliga, so he doesn’t really have to think twice—the decision was made the moment the invitation arrived. Talking to his parents is difficult because, even though he’s sure he wants to go, leaving his parents behind is very hard. But, as always, his parents are the most understanding people in the world, always concerned about their Yo-chan’s well-being, so they sit down and have a long conversation about what Isagi wanted and what they needed as parents—assurance that their son would be okay so far from home, across the sea, where they speak another language, a language so different from the one he’s used to, with a completely different alphabet, different pronunciations, and a phonetics system that’s utterly foreign to the Japanese he’s grown up with. Even English was a challenge at first, but Ego made it a condition for his training; that, combined with the fact that Sae spoke English very well, pushed Isagi to learn even faster—though now it was German. Isagi thinks he might want to shoot himself just from doing a quick search for “German for Beginners: What You Need to Know.”
In the end, it’s Ego once again who ends up pulling the strings for Isagi, so a few months later, he finds himself at Haneda Airport. His parents say goodbye with tearful smiles, and a few tears fall from his eyes as well. It’s not easy to part from your parents like this; Isagi wonders if Sae felt the same way when she left. In the back of his mind, Isagi can hear his own voice asking what will happen to him if he doesn’t make the cut for the Bastards; he shakes his head—it doesn’t make sense to wonder about that now.
As he sits on the plane, in his small economy-class seat by the aisle, Isagi thinks about Ego, and how meeting that man so early on has changed the course of his conformist life. When Isagi first met him, he struck him as a terrifying man and then, very, very strange; he would launch into tirades about a balanced, athlete-focused diet when his main source of nutrition was instant noodles; but, as the months went by, Isagi saw another side of the man—passionate and aggressive, a staunch believer in his ideals, yet also a man who had fallen into failure, a man who had shared the field with the world’s current best striker, who had been brothers in arms—and here he is now, a nobody in Japan. Isagi thinks about this and feels a fear that runs from his stomach to his throat. Has the goddess of soccer stopped smiling at him? Well, he’ll find her and force her to look at him. Before leaving, Ego revealed a little more about himself and about Noel Noa, the world’s best striker—a robotic Frenchman. Ego describes him as a “soccer cyborg,” but he doesn’t forget to mention that he’s a terrible teacher, so Isagi will have to start figuring out how to improve on his own.
Isagi is so excited; every step he takes at Munich-Franz Josef Strauss Airport feels almost magical to him. He tries to calm his racing heart, but the thrill of being one step closer to becoming the best makes it beat even faster.
At the airport, a man picks him up; Isagi is nervous about having to speak German, but they don’t call him Japan’s greatest mind for nothing. What’s so hard about learning one more language? A lot! Isagi’s only thought is to avoid making a fool of himself as he racks his brain to recall the easiest German phrases and everything he learned in those intensive German classes months ago, but a language isn’t something you learn overnight. Luckily, the friendly man driving him to the Bastard München headquarters speaks fluent English, so there aren’t any major problems. The man asks him a few simple questions and gives him a half-smile, saying something like, “My son is a little younger than you,” and something else that his brain doesn’t process because of how quickly the man switches from English to German. Finally, the man offers him some advice; apparently, he works at the club, where he’s seen many foreign kids come and go. Isagi tries his best to remember everything the older man tells him; now that he has the chance to leave the mediocrity of Japanese soccer behind, he can’t ruin everything he’s worked so hard for.
Upon arriving at the headquarters, he politely says goodbye in broken German; the man nods at him and walks away. He walks down a hallway, where he encounters more people; he assumes they are other players who have been signed. None of them seem as eccentric as he is; some look at him, while others don’t seem to care—there are no more than ten of them. Finally, someone claps twice and calls them over. Isagi walks through the crowd of players to take his place in the center, where the director of youth development, the academy, and the youth teams welcomes them and leads them into a large room, where he proceeds to explain everything they’ll be doing during these first two weeks of training camp.
In other words, Isagi believes he can summarize the vast flood of information in four subheadings. The first stage of this opportunity has already been completed: receiving the invitation. To be part of an U-17 team, you need an invitation; this is one of the club’s most prestigious closed tryouts. Before selecting players, the relevant officials review videos of the applicants and send a talent scout to watch the player compete under real pressure; finally, once the player has passed all the screening stages, the youth academy director sends the invitation that reached Isagi with the title “Official Trial Invitation – Category [U-17/Reserves].” Isagi wonders how Ego managed to hide the fact that a scout from Bastard München itself was watching him play live. He shrugs; he’ll ask him about it later.
Then, in the second stage, the selection process begins; the director explains that, of those present, one or two players will most likely be selected, given that the U-17 teams are almost always full and this is a once-in-a-million opportunity. Before letting the young players get overwhelmed by the tremendous weight of this invitation in their potential careers, the director reminds them that those selected will be placed in specific positions that serve the best interests of the club’s team.
Isagi thinks he's going to die of boredom halfway through the meeting, until the imposing man finally gets to the most interesting part: the tests. Isagi settles back in his chair and picks up his pencil again to jot down the most important points from the tests. They are divided into three critical areas.
Physical and Medical Performance Tests
These tests assess whether a player’s body can withstand elite European soccer and are conducted in the club’s laboratories:
Speed and Acceleration: Measurements are taken using photoelectric cells to track sprints over 10, 20, and 30 meters.
High-Intensity Endurance: A lactate test and VO₂ max tests on a treadmill to measure aerobic capacity.
Strength and Biomechanics: Jumps on force plates (squat jump and countermovement jump) to assess power and detect muscle imbalances that could lead to injuries
Moving on to the part that's really interesting for Isagi
Tactical and Technical Trials (On the Field)
Here, the prospect trains alongside the official U-17 or U-20 team under the guidance of the category’s head coach, and the following are assessed:
Decision-Making Under Pressure: Evaluated through exercises in confined spaces (high-speed rondos or 4v4 / 7v7 possession drills). They look for players who can think and execute in fewer than two touches.
Tactical Understanding: Ability to understand the club’s high-pressing system. Their off-the-ball positioning and how they occupy space are analyzed in intra-squad matches (11v11)
And finally, another aspect that catches the Japanese player’s attention is the psychological and character assessment; he has never participated in anything like this before, so it makes him a little nervous. In this phase, they will evaluate
Resilience and Frustration: How he reacts when he loses the ball or when the coach strictly corrects a mistake.
Leadership and Team Integration: His ability to communicate on the field (including overcoming the language barrier) and his respect for the coaching staff and residence staff.
At the end of the long, tedious discussion of technical details, the host wrapped up by talking about how long all the tests would take. There was already some information about that in the letter, so Isagi ignored most of the information the man repeated and focused on the important points: the process will last one to two weeks, with the first two days devoted to medical tests; then, from days three through six, the tactical sessions will begin; and on day seven—or at the end of the second week—there will be a final meeting at the Campus offices where Jochen Sauer (the man speaking to them) will meet with the player to announce the decision: whether he’ll be offered a development contract, whether he’ll be monitored remotely, or whether the signing will be rejected. Toward the end, there was some talk about contracts, but Isagi was already too busy thinking about how to pass all the tests to pay attention to such trivialities.
After all the hustle and bustle of the afternoon, they were finally told where they would be sleeping; Isagi is sharing a room with four guys—three Germans and one Brit. The Germans don’t seem very interested in striking up a conversation—neither does Isagi, really—but when the British guy approaches him, he can’t help but make room for a little casual chat while scribbling notes in his “egoist” notebook; he usually jots down little things he notices about different players there, so he can later apply them to his mental puzzle during the game and take down the opponent.
Ego once told him that he was like a spider in the field—calm, weaving a strong, invisible web to trap his opponent in its webs at the most opportune moment—and then said that this was the key skill for a midfielder, not a forward. Just remembering that makes Isagi feel rage coursing through his veins.
“I’m Liam.” The guy speaks perfect English. (Come on, Isagi, he’s British—of course he speaks English really well!) “What did you think of the introduction? It was sooooooo boring”
The conversation with Liam, the British guy, went on until dinner, which took place at a typical soccer bar; they were served whatever was available, and he sat down at a random table without drawing much attention, next to the tall Liam, who remarked that the food looked good. One more person joined them—another foreigner, this time from France, named Demian—who sat down saying something along the lines of, “Since the three of us are foreigners, we should stick together.”
There was a man in a suit standing near the trainees’ room; Isagi assumed he was there to keep them from getting into trouble. The man approached them for a moment and told them to take advantage of whatever brief breaks they had to get to know each other or chat about things other than soccer, because once the Bastard trials began, they’d be so focused on soccer that casual conversations would be buried for a long, long time. Isagi really didn’t think that comment was necessary—he already breathed, ate, and slept soccer while training with Ego—but it opened the door for his now—foreign friends?—to start talking. Liam talked at length about the many problems he’d had getting to the tryouts, since, with Great Britain’s recent withdrawal from the United Nations, that had made it difficult to sign underage players due to Article 19 of the PIFA. Afterward, Demian spoke a bit about the differences between France and Germany; apparently, he had visited the country before, but only briefly. Isagi, for his part, shared some tidbits about Japan and strategically dropped Sae’s name, hoping to gauge his teammates’ reactions; as expected, young Liam seemed very excited to learn that Isagi knew the forwar...-midfielder.
That’s something that’s been bothering Isagi for a while. Sae has never been the type to open up about his emotions. If he was a kind person before leaving for Spain, Isagi doesn’t know what could have happened there, but something bad must have happened to him—a change like that in such a short time, coupled with a shift in position from forward to midfielder. Ego had once told him: he and Sae were so alike in their strategic mindsets, yet both had vowed to pursue the dream of becoming the best forwards… What a shame that one has given up on that promise and retreated from his position. La Real’s U-17 team’s recent matches have revealed Sae to be a star in midfield, and Isagi, on the one hand, is happy; a great midfielder for a great forward—he’s glad there’s someone in Japan who can provide him with such exquisite passes in the future, even though he knows he’ll have to work extremely hard to get the now-bitter Sae to cast his arrogant gaze upon the greatest mind in Japanese soccer. But there’s also an underlying sadness in this whole situation; Isagi must admit that it saddens him deeply that Sae has changed so much.
He returns to the conversation at the table, where Demian makes a comment about that other talented Japanese soccer player he’s heard Sae mention in some interviews; Isagi pays a little more attention. Were they talking about him? It’s a shame to be known as the guy who brought up someone else, but he’ll just have to accept it.
"In one of his interviews, he said something about a friend of his—Yoichi? I don't know, he said he was a forward and that he saw a glimmer of talent in him… I don't remember much, but he said something about him being one of the best analysts he's ever met and that he hoped to see him leave Japan. ‘He seems to really hate his country.’" Isagi rolls his eyes. "Huh? Do you know him?"
“Something like that,” Isagi replies.
“Oh! Sorry, I didn’t ask your name.”
Liam, who had been silent, suddenly opens his eyes and says:
“Yoichi Isagi?!” Liam points at him. “I knew you sounded familiar, that’s why I came over to you. Haven’t you heard of him, Demian?”
“Actually, no.”
“He’s known as a strategic prodigy; there was a lot of talk about him after Sae signed with Real.”
“Huh?”
“And that’s Yoichi Isagi!” Liam points at him again, speaking more forcefully.
“How embarrassing,” Isagi thinks, wanting to hide from the unexpected attention he had just received.
“Hey! Stop yelling—you’re drawing attention to yourself.” Demian seems almost as embarrassed as he is.
Little by little, the room returns to its usual noise, and Demian now looks at Isagi as if he were a weirdo.
“So you’re a well-known player?” He seems genuinely curious.
“Something like that. Japan isn’t really a soccer country, but I think I’ve earned a decent reputation.”
“Ha, we’ll see about that, little Japanese guy.”
“Huh?”
“Anyway,” Demian claps his hands, looking at Liam and Isagi with a piercing gaze. “On the field, we can compete until we kill each other, but until then, I’m really interested in getting to know you guys.”
“Yay!” Liam smiles at them as he finishes his lunch.
They talk for a little while longer, and at some point Isagi feels an overwhelming urge to tell them not to call him Yoichi; it’s very strange, of course—he knows that in the West people refer to others by their first name followed by their last name—but it just seems very odd to him. He decides to keep quiet; he doesn’t want to seem too arrogant—it’s just a name.