"Holy shit...", Luna thought as he walked out of the arena after a total wipe out. Japan has dominated with a clean 3-0 victory over Spain. Ushijima and Hinata were the main characters on that team whilst a sharp sword, Bokuto, hid inside their shadows. Then there was this diva guy who has lent him his marker back at the airport. Those were some serious service aces. Plus the setting skill of him rivalled the one of the raven haired. Tobio Kageyama was his name, if Luna remembered correctly. The nail in the coffin for his home country, however, was the set, where Ushijima wasn't in the starting line up. Instead Hinata played opposite whilst a short white haired with a similar height took over at the wing.
"There you are.", someone with a deep French accent inside his English ripped him out of his thoughts. The Spanish player looked up to stare into the eyes of Julien Loki. The teammate he was met at Blue Lock before travelling to Hiroshima.
"Yes, here I am.", Luna replied. "But what are you doing here?"
The French player sighed, "To fetch you. That's what I'm doing. It's time. Ego wants us to get on with the first contestants that got through."
"So you decided to come all the way here to Hiroshima to tell me it's time, even though you know we live in the 21st century were phones and social media exist.", Luna said with a mocking tone inside of it.
"Yes, got a problem with that?", he replied calmly. "Besides. I wanted to ride the Shinkansen too. In France we have the TGV but the Shinkansen in Japan was a whole new experience."
"Oh, didn't know you were a train enthusiast.", Luna exclaimed a bit surprised at the relevation of his teammate.
"Yep. Now it's time to get back to Tokyo.", Loki said. "Let's get to work."
"Don't intimitate Snuffy, man!"
Meanwhile in Blue Lock, Yoichi had a hard time trying to figure out who he wanted to take with him.
"So, who do we take.", he asked his teammates. "Got any ideas, Rin?"
The green haired looked at the four males lying on the ground in front of them. Who should he choose?
"Can you hurry up please?", Nagi begged. "I wanna go to bed..."
"Can you seriously stop being lazy for one freaking second? ONE FREAKING SECOND!!!???", Rin shouted dead panned and focused on the task given to him again. Who out of those four would be a great addition to their team? Surely Kunigami was a great player to play with, but was he really the right choice for their team? Was he the asset that could take them to the next level? Was he the one they needed? But on the other hand, the other ones didn't have the muscular attributes Kunigami had. Though, Rin must say, they hold something special as well. For example that gloomy guy. His defense in that game was crucial for the red team to even score four goals in the first place. That Chigiri was trending as well though. His speed would have maxed out their attack possibilities but that wouldn't help them in defense. With that kept in mind his eyes were now fixed onto one player.
"Niko Ikki. Let's go.", Rin spoke and turned around to walk outside the door of the pitch.
"Alright folks. How're we gonna do this?", Luna asked as they've settled down in a quite small room. It wasn't really big but the food was on a five star level and the bed was very comfortable, so there was nothing to complain. The fact that it was like one of those training camps from their childhood clubs just brought in some kind of a deja-vu feeling.
"We're just gonna improvise.", Dada Silver answered without looking up from his phone. "Besides, what's there to plan? It's a 5v5 match. Relax Luna."
"Just pass the ball to me.", Adam muttered. "If you wanna have a plan, that's gonna be it."
"Could be one.", Pablo said and scrolled through his Instagramm feeds not caring about the things his teammates were talking about. He was too focused on being the cutest one in the world.
"Fuck you Pikachu!!!", he shouted as he has seen a post about that Pokemon that got more likes than one of his own. Luna just sighed at the act of his teammates. Clearly, they weren't taking that seriously.
"Guys, if we lose evenn once, then we won't get our money and we're supposed to play like... I don't know, Fifteen games, perhaps?", the Spanish player tried to gain the attention of his teammates. To no use. His efforts were in vain. None of them listened to him. Except for one.
"Relax, man.", Loki said. "It won't get to that state. I'll outspeed them, Pablo will outdribble them whilst Adam has the body to absolutely destroy them. Dada will win the air battles and your dribbles added to the ones from Pablo plus your crosses and passes. With that arsenal, we shouldn't really have any problems here."
"Julien is right.", Adam commented. "It's easy money."
"Team World Five.", the announcement interrupted their strategy meeting. "Your first group of challengers have arrived."
It was a victory for his team. But Yoichi himself thought it was more of a loss. He had to win on luck. Luck. Something he hates. Something he refuses to rely on. Even though, he knew that it was an essential thing to score goals. To win games. Yet, he still denied its existence. Its significance. He didn't want to need it. All he needed was his muscles, his efforts, his experience. Nothing more, nothing less. His hate for fortune was just incredible. What he hated even more though, was losing, just the same way as his very own brother. The frustration that came with it, is just unacceptable. Now to think of it, he really was starting to agree to that one quote of Noel Noa, Ego has spoken of at the starting ceremony of Blue Lock. Some would describe that as a dissatisfied behaviour. Others, with sanity, would describe it as idiotic or stupid. Either way, Yoichi was not happy with the last game he has played.
'Shit...', he thought as he walked down the dark corridor. 'I hate it. Do I have to resolve to luck for this fucking game? Fucking shit.'
"Oh man... Kageyama is overthinking again...", Bachira murmered. Only Niko could hear it. The other males in the room have already concluded that behaviour of their captain punching the wall every once in a while.
"What do you mean?", Niko asked confused.
"He's angry with something. Probably his performance...", Bachira replied.
"What's there to be angry about?", Niko got even more confused.
"Don't know. That guy is a damn perfectionist.", Nagi yawned and stretched his arms. "Can't really relate to that."
"Yes, because you're even more lazy than a sloth and that is something.", Bachira replied. "That animal is only going to move down to take a shit. Then it's going up again just to fall back asleep."
"What... sleep is important.", Nagi defended himself.
"I guess he's angry with the execution of the victory.", Niko interrupted their little argument. "Jesus Christ, he's almost like James May."
"Who's that?", Bachira asked.
"A British moderator. From Top Gear.", Niko explained and was met with even more confusion. "Seriously!!!! You don't know that series?! That 'Oh no. Anyway.'-meme from Jeremy Clarkson was from there!!"
"Never heard of them.", Bachira replied, since Nagi was way too lazy to do it himself.
"Oh boy... once we're done here, we're gonna do a bing watching boys night, where I'm gonna show you the iconic stuff you've missed out."
Just then, Niko bumped into Yoichi who suddenly stopped.
"I had to resort to luck. Fucking luck.", he heard him curse in front of himself. Rin, the green haired, standing right next to him, staid silent.
"What do you mean luck?", Niko asked. The corridor came to an end. A closed door blocked their path to the room it lead to.
"Well, well, my unpolished gems.", came from the speakers. "Congratulations on clearing the second selection. You cursed your luck, Kageyama. Didn't you? To explain it to those who didn't get it... it's quite an alluring discussion. You see... in the football world it isn't just a concidence. Let me teach you the mechanism of luck."
"What's that supposed to mean?", Niko asked. "Luck is just luck! There's no way something like that exists. It's pure and simple concidence. Nothing more!!"
"Shut up and listen.", Ego retorted rather strictly. "First, let me ask you this question."
He paused for some seconds, "Have you ever been shat on by a pigeon?"
"What the hell?", Yoichi murmered as a reaction to the explaination.
"Well... yes?!", Bachira questioned answered.
"It's the worst when it happens, isn't it?", Ego continued anyway. A hologram of a man getting shit on by pigeons appeared in his hand.
"And only afterwards, do you notice that there's shit on the ground all around you.", Ego described the everyday life situation. "Once you look up, you'll see a ton of pigeons on the telephone lines. However, this is something you could have avoided if you'd noticed beforehand. So can you really say that you had bad luck?"
"What's he talking about?", Nagi woke up.
"He's shitting on luck, I guess...", Bachira answered. It was obvious that he didn't listen to or care about anything the four eyes on the monitor had to say.
"I'll ask you another question.", Ego turned around in his office chair. "Let's see... Imagine a lottery game at a summer festival. If the unscrupulous store owner didn't put in a single winning ticket, and someone drew a losing ticket. Could you really say they had bad luck?"
"What the fuck are you trying to say...?", Niko said.
"I'm saying that 'luck' is not something to be found just anywhere.", the four eyes on the other end of the line spoke. "Rather, it is something that descends only upon those standing where it will drop. The same concept applies in a game of football. Think of those 90 minutes. As a series of inevitabilities and coincidences. Improving your shooting, dribbling, passing in order to make full use of one's strategies and formations... all of these acts are deliberated with the intention of creating the inevitability called a goal. Think back. You've made 'I' from 'O'. Increased repeatability of your goals and learned to wield your own weapons and formulas. You could say that everything you've learned in Blue Lock was for the purpose of increasing the rate of inevitability of your goals. Like it or not. Coincidences begin to crop up. These become the epicenter of the so called 'luck' and that's exactly what happened in the final play. The moment when Bachira broke through the defense line and made his shot onto the goal. There were four of you who either slowed down or stopped entirely. With the exception of Kunigami who rushed to save the game, Rin who still ran for the goal along with Kageyama, the striker of the winning goal."
"Hold on, but Kageyama could have only scored that goal because he continued to run.", Niko analysed out loud. "It was also pure luck, that the ball Kunigami deflected has gone to him."
"Alright, then let's say, Kageyama slowed down like everybody else. There is still a chance that the ball would have gotten to him. Even if... his greatest weapon he could use in such moment, would be his direct shot. There would still be many people to lock down his angles to reach the goal. Combined with the theory I've explained to you earlier, we can say, the shit wouldn't have fallen there. That's why, Kageyama and Rin both sped up because only there, where the ball landed, they could grasp the winning ticket. In other words, they were the only ones to challenge their 'luck' in order to win."
Ego took a sip from his coffee.
"So Kageyama went to where the shit would hit him...", Bachira put his thoughts into words. "... to maxmize his chances of scoring a goal."
"Of course, there was always the chance of the ball falling into the possession of the other team.", the four eyes continued. "In that case, given their positions and their numbers, the outcome of the game would likely have gone the other way. That's how close and fierce of a game that was. There's no denying that luck was the determining factor in who won this game, but... when 'luck' does come around, those who only sit back and watch will invariably waste that chance. Isn't it a given if you aren't prepared to take advantage of that coincidence and only reach out for 'luck' when it's staring you in the face, it'll already too late. Only those who foresee the possibility and prepare for it, those who have trained in order to be able to seize the opportunity whenever it presents itself, those who have determined where that chance will fall, and lie in wait. Only those with that keen sense of smell, will be smiled upon by the goddess of 'luck'."
The man with glasses then stared at Yoichi in the room, "Isn't that the same with volleyball? Doesn't it sound familiar, Kageyama Yoichi? Isn't it the reason why you always run to secure the ball even though the best attacker of the team is jumping up to strike it? Do you understand now? Luck and coincidence are both a part of football. In fact, it's part of any sport in the world. So, will you accept this fact and give it your all to fight for it to happen? Or will you continue to whine that the results were by pure coincidence? Those who leave themselves at the mercy of 'luck' will always be second-rate. But THOSE, who give it their all and hold their head high, who can take to heart that the outcome lies beyond that coincidence. Only those, who are truly prepared to fight anything at any time. Only those will then emerge as the victor."