[Blue Lock] Chapter 13 - Against the World Five (Patreon)

The Scion of Royale Madrid, Leonardo Luna.

The Goal Junkie, the Premier League’s top scorer, Adam Blake.

The World Class free kick taker from Argentina, Pablo Cavasoz.

The Heavy Tank, Dada Silva from Brazil.

Julian Loki, the prodigy and the star striker of Paris x Gen, from France.

All five of them played for their national team and they were all seen as some of the best strikers in the world. But as Naruto walked on the pitch as well, he realized that his teammates didn’t appear to be intimidated in the least. While there was a degree of nervousness present on their faces, the dominant emotion was excitement. After their extraordinary performance in the previous match, Isagi and Bachira in particular were burning with fighting spirit.

“Looks like you owe me 10 grand,” the muscular, dark-skinned player from the World Five team said and laughed.

Adam Blake was about to retort when his eyes fell on the blond teenager from the opposite team. His muscular physique was out of the ordinary even among Caucasian boys his age, let alone Japanese. His physique stood out like a sore thumb among his teammates.

“He doesn’t look like a full-blooded Japanese to me. He must be a half. If you look at his other teammates, they’re all thin and scrawny, just as I told you.”

“Hey, hey, a bet is a bet, don’t you dare go back on your word. If he wasn’t Japanese, he wouldn’t be at Blue Lock, would he?”

“Tsk! Fine,” Adam clicked his tongue.

In the end, the Brazilian’s sound argument won the debate because they both knew that Blue Lock was all about creating a world-class striker that would lead Japan’s National Team to win the World Cup. They wouldn’t accept someone who wasn’t Japanese.

On the other side of the pitch, the Blue Lock teenagers were looking at the World Five in confusion.

“What are they saying?” Nagi asked.

“I can’t speak English.” “Me neither.” Isagi and Bachira also added.

“They’re arguing about a bet they made. Something about us being skinny and weak. They bet 10 thousand on it.”

“Dollars or Euro?” Bachira asked.

“Maybe it was British pounds? Adam is from the UK,” Isagi said.

“... Is that really the important thing here?” Nagi said with a deadpan face. “They’re taking us lightly. They think they’re just going to walk over us. They’re underestimating us.”

The others became more serious when they heard his words.

“Then we’ll take full advantage of that,” Nishioka said. “Hey, Naruto, let me and Bachira start the first play.”

Naruto appeared as if he was distracted when he replied:

“Um, sure, go ahead. Assuming we’re the lucky ones to kick off.”

“You okay, dude?” Nishioka said, realising that the blonde had not said anything since they left the locker room. “Don’t tell me you got the cold feet now.”

“I’m fine,” Naruto said as he turned his head, looking intensely at the opposite team. “I’m better than ever.”

Nishioka wanted to say that he was asking about his mental, not physical, state but he didn’t have the time to further question him because the VAR’s voice came from the speakers installed on the pitch:

“Blue Lock’s Third Selection: Team Blue Lock vs Team World Five. The first team to score five goals wins. Team Blue Lock kicks off first.”

“Let’s go, guys. We’ll carve our names in their minds!” Isagi said with conviction.

⁂

The moment that the VAR’s whistle rang, Isagi kicked off and passed to Bachira, who was on the right wing.

“Bachira, tiki-taka, as we’ve practised”

“As if!” Bachira laughed as he received the pass and selfishly started sprinting ahead with the ball.

The shortest player from World Five intercepted him, but Bachira dribbled past him with a quick Zidane Turn. Cavasoz was quick to recover and attempted to tackle him again but Bachira cut inside, blocking his way by taking to the centre and sprinting ahead. Nevertheless, Cavasoz’s tackling attempts from behind and the tall, blonde British player standing just outside the penalty box were quickly closing his angles.

‘If I don’t pass in the next two seconds, I’ll lose the ball,’

As expected from world-class players, their positioning was on a different level.

“Isagi!” Bachira yelled and looked in Isagi’s direction as if he was going to pass the ball to him.

He fooled not only Isagi but Cavasoz too when he kicked the ball with his heel instead, passing it to Nishioka, who was coming from behind.

Aomori’s Messi’s full-speed sprint was a sight to behold. He passed by Bachira and Cavasoz like a bullet and even left Adam Blake in the dust too as he ran along the touchline.

Mere centimeters before the VAR was going to blow the whistle and grant the World Five team a goal kick, Nishioka shot a powerful pass from the corner.

Naruto and Nagi, who were in the opposite team’s penalty area, became alert and Dada Silva and Leonardo Luna, who were marking the two of them, focused on the incoming ball too. Despite the extreme speed at which he was running when he kicked the ball, Nishioka’s cross had been pinpoint accurate.

Naruto’s whole body rattled as the heavy and muscular Brazilian jumped together with him for the ball and slammed his shoulder into his. But Dada Silva wasn’t unaffected by their physical clash either, and they were both thrown off balance in the aftermath of their collision, neither of them managing to receive or intercept the cross.

Not having expected his tank-like teammate to not get the clear upper hand against the blonde teenager, Leonardo was half a second too late to react when the ball went astray and Nagi seized the opportunity to gain possession of the ball.

He was 10 metres away from the goal. In front of him, it was Leonardo Luna. To the right, there were Naruto and Silva, who had just landed after their aerial duel. And to the left, Jullian Loki was blocking his angle, making him unable to shoot on the goal.

Nagi needed less than a second to process all those things and the course of action he took left everyone in the opposite team bewildered.

He kicked a powerful shot to the right, aiming a curved ball towards the far corner of the goal by shooting through the hole left between Leonardo Luna and Naruto, who was being marked by Dada Silva.

“The ball can’t get that kind of curve in such a short distance. You got too greedy,” Leonardo said with a chuckle because that shot was clearly going to be off-target.

As the saying goes, those who laugh laugh best. Leonardo’s laughter abruptly stopped when he turned and saw the thin and unremarkable member of the Blue Lock team appear out of goddamn nowhere, only 1 metre to the right side of the goalpost.

After seeing that Naruto and Silva stopped each other from receiving Nishioka’s cross and that Nagi got blocked by Loki and Leonardo, Isagi decided to bet on the chance that Nagi might try to take a desperate shot on the target instead of losing the ball. Using his off-the-ball movement, he circled outside of Silva and Naruto and ran towards the goalpost.

His gamble paid off.

‘Nagi’s shot is too strong,’ Isagi thought as he pushed his body to the limit to intercept the ball. ‘I won’t be able to trap it, it will bounce away from my foot.’

And even if he was as gifted and skilled as Nagi when it came to ball control and managed to stop that shot, the second he stopped the ball, Dada Silva and the hologram goalkeeper would be able to react and stop him.

He couldn’t use his Direct Shot either because Nagi’s ball wasn’t a pass or a slow-moving ball. It was an actual shot, and it was spinning wildly too.

‘But sometimes, you have to bet everything on luck and hope for the best,’

Bearing that thought in mind, Isagi threw himself ahead with a flying kick, smashing the sole of his foot into the ball from the side.

A loud clang was heard, and the whole goalpost vibrated as Isagi crashed with his hips into the post. But the pain didn’t even register in his mind when he saw the ball that he had intercepted going inside the net.

Team Blue Lock’s shouts of joy and excitement filled the air after Isagi’s goal.

“Are you clairvoyant? Can you see into the future? What the hell, man?!” Naruto shouted in amazement.

“Haha! It was a gamble. I’m just lucky it paid off,” Isagi rubbed the back of his head before Bachira and Nishioka jumped on him and dragged him to the ground.

Leonardo found himself smiling at their exuberant celebrations.

“Look at them celebrating. Their confidence must be sky-high now.”

“They scored a goal against the Top 5 best strikers in the world. I’d say it’s warranted,” Loki said.

“How about we break that confidence of theirs now? After all, that’s what Ego is paying us for, isn’t it?” Silva grinned menacingly.

⁂

What followed next felt like a blur for the members of team Blue Lock. In less than 20 minutes, Team World Five scored not just one but four goals.

Naruto also managed to score one more goal from the centre circle when they kicked off after the World Five’s first goal but he couldn’t do that again after the opponent team took measures to stop his shooting.

But after that, none of them had any success in anything once the World Five Team started playing seriously. The sky-high confidence Isagi and the rest got after scoring their first goal vanished into thin air. It was as if they were stuck underwater. It was like they were drowning, they were completely overwhelmed.

“Damn it, they’re too good!” Nishioka panted with his hands on his knees. As someone who was nicknamed the “Messi of Aomori”, he took pride in his speed and dribbling but his entire skillset was shut off once the French superstar, Loki, started focusing on him.

“They stopped all of our plays after the first goal,” Isagi also said. His face looked as if he wasn’t fully present in the moment. His spatial awareness and ability to predict players’ movements on the pitch didn’t amount to anything when every single one of them was being dominated by the World Five’s net superior skills.

Bachira appeared as if he was numb too. All of his clashes with Cavasoz after the first play made him feel as if his successful dribble the first time they faced off had been a fluke all along because he had never managed to dribble past the Argentinian even once after that. Nagi looked like he was out of it too, panting in exertion while holding onto his right side.

“Is that all you’ve got?”

At the sound of that angry voice, the four of them turned their attention to the blond. His blue lock uniform was completely soaked with sweat, and he was breathing heavily like them too...But his back was straight as he was staring at the five opponents on the other side of the pitch.

“What have you all come to Blue Lock for? Are you going to give up now just because they’re better than us?”

When the others didn’t say anything in reply, he clenched his fists. He wasn’t blind to how vastly they were being outclassed by their opponents, whether it was in terms of skills or physical conditioning.

‘I’m sure Ego-san doesn’t expect us to beat them. From the beginning, we never stood a chance. These are professional players who stand at the top of the world. Then what is the meaning of this match? He must be testing us. This is called the third selection for a reason.’

He didn’t know exactly what Ego was trying to achieve by pitting them against the Top 5 best strikers in the world, but he couldn’t afford to give up.

‘I can’t fail here.’

He wasn’t like his teammates. There was no Plan B for him if he didn't become a professional football player. If he failed at Blue Lock, his life would pretty much be over. Football was the only thing he had. He was nothing without it.

The old butler’s words came back to his mind.

“You don't belong with her, boy. You're nothing but a mongrel. You have nothing, not even parents. You are a nobody. You should know your place."

But this wasn’t just about his relationship with Saeko. He couldn’t imagine going back to the life he had before coming to Blue Lock, when he was slaving his days and nights away at a shitty job and getting paid peanuts, barely making it from one day to another.

“Give up if that’s all you amount for. But I will fight until the last second,” Naruto told his teammates. “I won’t give up until I hear the whistle at the end. Football is all I have. Football is my life. I’m ready to die here.”

Isagi, Bachira, Nishioka, and Nagi felt chills going down their backs when Naruto turned to look at them, and they saw the borderline-crazy look in his eyes.

“Fuck, man, who is giving up?” Nishioka cursed and got up from his hunched over position.

“He’s right. We’ll give our best until the end,” Bachira agreed and smiled.

“Aight, let’s do this. We’ll score at least one more goal. We won’t let it end here,” Nagi also said with conviction as he and Isagi went to the centre circle to kick off.

⁂

“I don’t know what the blond kid told them, but it looks like they got their morale back,” Leonardo noticed.

For once, Silva didn’t have a mocking expression on his face.

“The blond kid…he’s different from the rest. I can tell just from his eyes and his mannerism. He’s probably just like me.”

As someone who had grown up in the favelas, surrounded by crime and poverty, he could tell from a glance that Naruto was a street rat, just like him. The Brazilian had crawled his way out of that terrible life with football. The hunger for goals burning in Naruto’s eyes and his desperation, Silva was deeply familiar with them.

“Regardless of their morale, skill-wise, they still have a long way to go,” said Loki with a smile.

“Yeah, it’s about time we put an end to this,” Adam also said.

“I agree. I can’t wait to visit Akihabara,” Cavasoz showed a happy grin before charging at Nagi, who had received Isagi’s pass from the kick off.

Knowing that he couldn’t dribble past Cavasoz, Nagi didn’t hog the ball to himself and quickly passed it back to Nishioka. Leonardo attempted to tackle him, but Nishioka passed the ball to Bachira to the right who in turn passed it to Isagi.

The boy was flustered when he saw Julian Loki sprinting towards him at full speed and quickly kicked a diagonal cross to Nagi, who was still being marked by Cavasoz.

‘I’m taller than him, I can definitely win the ball in the air,’ Nagi thought.

But what came after he trapped the ball? He would have to face off against the insanely skilled Argentinian again.

‘I can’t beat him in a one-on-one.’

He would be forced to pass in order for his team to not lose possession of the ball. But they couldn’t play tiki-taka endlessly because sooner or later, one of them was going to make a mistake and the opposing team would intercept the ball. Once the World Five regained possession, Nagi was sure that they were going to score again, thus bringing the match to an end.

‘It should be a first-touch pass. Who should I pass it to?’

With his skilful ball control, it was nothing difficult. Looking around him, he realized that Isagi, Nishioka, and Bachira were all behind him. He could pass to them, yes, but that wouldn’t do anything to get them out of this deadlock. It would just start another loop of the tiki-taka play amongst themselves.

Naruto was the only one who was deeper into the opponent’s side of the field than he was. But the problem was that Cavasoz was coincidentally blocking the angle he would need to pass the ball to the blonde.

All these thoughts went through his mind in less than a second.

Cavasoz was stunned in his place for a moment when he saw that Nagi didn’t jump to trap the incoming cross with his chest. Instead, he made a half-backflip as he bicycle-kicked the ball in Naruto’s direction.

Naruto didn’t even appear to be surprised at the unexpected pass that Nagi had sent his way. An intense look of concentration was on his face as he jumped to receive the ball.

Adam Blake jumped together with him and slammed his shoulder into his with all his strength, knowing full well that Naruto could take it after witnessing him going toe-to-toe against the Brazilian tank.

However, not only that Naruto took his shoulder charge well, but Adam Blake himself actually ended up losing his balance after their clash. He stumbled two steps back with a look of disbelief on his face as he watched Naruto trap the ball with his chest before breaking into a sprint towards their goal.

Dada Silva was 10 metres in front of him, blocking the way with his imposing physique. Three metres behind him, Jullian Loki was sprinting at his top speed, trying to catch up to him.

As adrenaline started coursing through his veins, it was as if time dilated and things began to move in slow motion in his eyes.

Loki caught up from behind and lunged from the side with a sliding tackle, but, in the distorted flow of time in his perception, Naruto had seen it coming and lightly kicked the ball ahead, making Loki’s sliding tackle narrowly miss the ball.

‘Not good, I kicked it too far ahead!’

Although he managed to avoid Loki’s tackle by pushing the ball ahead of him, the Brazilian looked like an actual rhinoceros as he started charging at him to intercept the ball.

‘No, I can reach it! I will reach it before him!’ he shouted in his mind.

His muscles and tendons cried out in protest as he exploded faster than he had ever run before in his life.

But even with the superhuman effort he had just made, he couldn’t get to the ball before Silva. The two of them reached it at the very same time!

“It’s mine!” “It’s mine!” Naruto and Silva both screamed.

As they roared, the two physical monsters kicked the ball violently at the same time!

⁂

“Holy shit!”

“Bruh.”

“No freaking way!”

Players from Team World Five and Team Blue Lock alike let out a collective curse of shock when the ball smashed by Silva and Naruto couldn’t bear with the monstrous force behind their kicks and exploded with a loud bang.

Naruto’s and Silva’s legs bounced away from the clash, and they fell painfully on the ground, rolling two-three times before their momentum finally ceased.

But while Dada Silva grabbed onto his ankle and grunted in pain, Naruto crawled on his fours and tried to stand up like a zombie.

“What the-”

He couldn’t muster the strength to stand up. After that massive adrenaline dump, his legs were like jelly. He ended up falling back on the ground. He was so out of it that he didn’t even hear the VAR’s robotic voice calling for a momentary timeout.

It was only when he felt two pairs of hands grab him from his legs and armpits that he realised what was going on.

“No-, stop!”

He tried to push away the stretcher-bearers who came to take him off the pitch, but his resistance was too feeble to stop them from doing their job.

“Don’t take me away. The match isn’t over yet. I have to score-”

When the two men were about to lift the stretcher and walk away, Naruto rolled off, falling to the ground.

“Uzumaki-san, you’re injured. We have to take you to the medical wing so the doctor can take a look at you,” one of them tried to explain to him.

It took the two men nearly five minutes to finally drag him away from the pitch and for the game to be restarted.

Unlike Naruto, Dada Silva didn’t need to be taken away on a stretcher, but he still went to the side of the field and sat on a bench while two people from the medical staff started fussing around him.

Naruto’s teammates looked at each other at a loss for words. From the little time they had spent together with the blonde, they knew that he was obsessed with training and that he worked harder than all of them, but they never knew he was that desperate until then. They’ve never seen anyone playing football in that manner, seemingly willing to even drop dead on the pitch just for the sake of scoring one more goal.

They remembered the words that Ego told everyone before the start of the second selection:

“Listen. Let's take Noel Noa as an example. He's currently considered the best striker in the world, but he grew up in a slum in France. Surrounded by crime and poverty, the only way to change his fate was with a ball. Soccer was literally his only option."

"There are countless strikers with similar stories all around the world. Their hunger for goals is immeasurable. Since you were born and raised in Japan, where losing doesn't affect your life, most of you will never know the level of hunger for goals these players have."

It was only now that they finally understood how big was the difference between them and those strikers that Ego was talking about.

‘Just what kind of life did he have before coming to Blue Lock?’ Isagi wondered when he realised that Naruto saying that he was even ready to die on the pitch had not been a metaphor.

He and Naruto had not been teammates for long, and the blonde wasn’t exactly forthcoming with information about himself either so he couldn’t help being curious. In comparison, he knew that Bachira was an only child and his mother was a painter; Nishioka could often be seen having video calls with his parents and little brother; he knew that Nagi was a lazy bum who loved video games and that he and Reo had been good friends before coming to Blue Lock and so on. But he didn’t know anything about Naruto.

Alas, he couldn’t dwell on his thoughts for long because the game was soon restarted by the VAR giving out a dropped ball.

⁂

Lying on his back on the infirmary bed, Naruto was deeply sunken in anxious thoughts.

‘Did they manage to score again?’

‘What was the third selection testing us for?’

‘Did I fail?’

‘What’s coming next?’

He was a little startled when the doctor talked to him and showed him the results of the X-ray he took of his right leg.

“You’ll be pleased to hear that you aren’t injured. Just put some ice on it today to be safe, and you’ll get better in no time. Take it easy with the training for the next three or four days. Your body needs time to rest and recover.”

Seeing Naruto let out a sigh of relief, the doctor added:

“But I have to say, you should be more careful. It’s the second time that you were brought to the infirmary. While I understand your desire to score goals, if you don’t take proper care of your body, you won’t have longevity in this sport. You can’t score if you get injured, you can’t even be on the pitch. An injured player is a liability not only to the team but to the football club as a whole.”

“I understand. Thank you, doctor,” Naruto said in a downcast voice.

Grabbing the crutches the doctor’s assistant brought to him, Naruto stood up and limped out of the infirmary.

Much to his surprise, after coming out into the hallway, Ego was waiting for him with his arms crossed at his chest and leaning with his back against the wall.

“What did the doctor say? Is everything alright?”

Inwardly, the blonde wondered why would Ego himself come to check up on him? After all, he hadn’t seen Ego in person even once since he came to Blue Lock because Ego never left the surveillance room.

“He said I’m okay. No injuries. I just need to rest.”

“I see. That’s good to hear. Come, I’ll walk you to your dorm.”

“Is that okay? What if the others think you’re giving me preferential treatment?” Naruto said.

“Even if that was true and I treated you specially, so what? What are they going to do about it?” Ego said nonchalantly. “Whoever doesn’t like it, they can leave anytime they want. Blue Lock isn’t a prison, it’s an opportunity.”

The two walked in silence for a minute before Ego finally started the conversation again.

“You know, you remind me a bit of myself and of a former teammate of mine too. Noel Noa. Have you heard of him?”

Startled, Naruto stopped walking and looked at him with wide eyes.

“You were teammates with Noel Noa?! Wait, you were a football player before?”

Thinking of it, Naruto realised that, although Jinpachi Ego was the director of Blue Lock, he didn’t know anything about his past or what he used to do.

“Do you think that the Japan Football Association would’ve funded a project like Blue Lock and put me in charge of it if I hadn’t had the credentials for it? This project costed tens of millions of euros. Not to mention, even with how well I’m paying them, do you think that the world’s five best strikers would have agreed to come to an underdeveloped country like Japan to play against children if it wasn’t for me asking them?”

“O-Oh,” Naruto gasped, dumbfounded as it finally dawned on him the magnitude of the Blue Lock project.

“I used to be a promising prospect, a rising star, not unlike Jullian Loki. When I was your age, I was Noel Noa’s first rival. Your impressive natural fitness and your hunger for goals remind me a bit of him. He came from a rough background, just like yourself. Football saved him from a life filled with poverty and crime… …However, the reckless way in which you’re playing football makes me think of myself instead.”

Not knowing what to say, Naruto remained silent.

“Why is it that Noel Noa became the best striker in the world while hardly anybody knows about my name? What’s the reason why Noel Noa is currently playing for Bastard Munchen and the national team of France while I’m here, in Japan, teaching kids how to play football? My football talent and the amount of work I put in wasn’t inferior to his in the least.”

It was a rhetorical question; he wasn’t expecting an answer from the blonde, so he continued:

“It’s because I wasn’t wise when I was younger. Mindlessly chasing goals, I didn’t respect my body’s limits. Overtraining, a lack of sufficient rest, and a reckless playing style on the field led to me getting three herniated discs in my spine by the age of 20. Even after several surgeries, my back has never been the same. I never fully recovered. This injury forced me into an early retirement. My football career was over before it could even start properly. I didn’t even get the chance to win the French League, much less the Champions League or the World Cup. All my dreams went up in smoke.”

Now, they arrived at the dorms where Naruto and his team lived.

“I pay close attention to everyone at Blue Lock, so I’ve taken note of how much effort you put into your training. But too much of anything is harmful. Giving 120% of yourself every day is bound to lead to ruin one day. You need to pace yourself. In football, your body is your lifeline. Treat your own body with care and respect because whether you are successful or not depends on it. Don’t make the same mistakes that I made when I was your age.”

“I understand. Thank you for the advice,” Naruto said in a serious voice. The number of people that the blonde respected could be counted on the fingers of one hand, but Ego was definitely one of them.

“Take some time to rest today. I don’t want to see you on the pitch. Tomorrow, I will make an important announcement.”

As Ego turned to leave, Naruto couldn’t help asking:

“Ego-san! About the second selection, what happened? Did I pass?”

“This last match was never about passing or failing. I pitted you all against the world’s best strikers in order to give you a taste of reality and prevent you from getting an overinflated confidence in your meagre skills.”