by Chris Harris
For Korean superstar Jin Seo-jun, being holed up in the Savoy was not his idea of fun. Away from the cameras, his evenings were increasingly spent behind closed doors at The Den, obsessing about football with Piotr and Dean. The more time he spent at Denham Phoenix, the clearer it became that pop stardom had never been the life he really wanted. And very soon, he was about to make that abundantly clear to the rest of the world.
For the Korean superstar, Jin Seo-jun, being holed up in the Savoy was not his idea of fun. He thrived on energy, not gauche. Instead, his two bodyguards and driver would drive them all down to The Den three or four nights a week, where, for three or four hours, he would sit with Piotr and Dean and obsess about football in the clubhouse, blinds down; they were cocooned from potential prying eyes.
He didn’t enjoy being a pop star. Sure, the fame, money, and glamour would be amazing to most people, but for him, he loved football. He was never sure whether he’d be able to make it as a professional footballer. He’d had to deliberate over a mouth-watering career choice, and what a choice: whether his undoubted talent for dancing and singing or his already established pathway in professional football was the thing for him.
For such is the way of pop stardom; this option manifests within a couple of months, and he didn’t have to wait for his body to mature or do all the training and everything that came with football. That was the advice from his greedy family and advisors. His gut instinct was to be a footballer, but he was young and impressionable. This was clearly something that he was very much regretting now. But as Piotr said, it’s easy to regret things when you’ve made all the money you have and can repent at leisure. He fired back at him, “Yes, but that’s why I’m doing this. And this is much better fun than touring, recording, and pimping myself out.”
They would spend the evenings going over tactics, videos, anything football related. The three of them were engrossed and loved every minute of each other’s company as they began to build a very strong relationship. Both Piotr and Dean were slightly intimidated by his fame at first, but his warmth and kindness quickly put them at ease.
Seo-jun was always the first for training on Thursdays, and would also always turn up for the fitness training on Mondays with the first team, under-18s and the women. The club had installed a large five-bar gate at the entrance. After the initial week of it being a free for all for the media and his fans, a semblance of organisation had returned, and the Korean was allowed to wander around the club and socialise with people at will. Everybody loved him. Of course, everyone assumed he’d be a bit of a jerk and pompous, but he had been brought up to be humble, and his experiences of being a star and all the media training meant that even if he met people he didn’t like, there was always a portance to carry himself off with an astute friendliness.
The game at Cray Wanderers on Saturday was going to be interesting in their tight little ground. There was going to be media interest in this game because it was the first away game, and people wanted to see what his impact would be on the road. The Korean had already said to Piotr and Dean, “This game is not about how many people turn up or media cameras. It’s about the new young player from Hastings United.” They had already decided to bring him on for the second half to replace Chandler, to see how he bedded in; they were delighted Seo-jun wasn’t interested in all the fandom and the stardom. He was buying into how Denham Phoenix FC was run and the team’s progress.
The game at Cray was a damp squib. For Cray, who were hoping for a bumper gate, only 750 turned up, which was still 400 above their average. Two hundred of those were screaming teenagers, and another couple of hundred looked like ground hoppers. Media interest had dropped significantly. A handful of cameramen and a couple of TV cameras from Korean television were still there. But to be honest, the board liked the idea of the whole thing beginning to blow over, albeit deep down missing the excitement and adrenaline of the last couple of weeks. After all, the sponsorship money was secure and they were going to make a lot of money from the home games at the Dripping Pan. The only spanner in the works for a simpler period for the club was the Korean. He scored a hat-trick. All three of them, absolutely blinding goals. It sparked a debate across sports and internet channels about whether this guy was big enough and good enough to play in the Premier League, as the focus shifted from the pop star playing football to how good he really was.
With the game at the Dripping Pan against Chatham on Tuesday night, the sponsorship arrangements meant they had to hold a pre-match press conference in the afternoon. Contractually, the Korean had to make an appearance, and he sat between Piotr and Dean. The pair waxed lyrical about how good he was, about the forthcoming game and the comfort of their position at the top of the league.
Seo-jun grew agitated when someone asked him, “Where do you think your real level will be?” He answered in such a way that it went viral. “I’ve come here as a break from touring, recording, and all of the associated commitments with it. I had a choice to follow a football career, and I don’t know where that would have led me. But I chose NEON7. I’ve been welcomed into the bosom of this football club. I have met some of the nicest people I’ve ever met and have been treated beautifully. I have absolutely no ambition whatsoever to play anywhere else. I am happy here. I have everything I want, and in the managers, I now have two very close friends. Two Premier League clubs have approached me about joining them on a short loan. I have said no. I play here for free. They offered me lots of money. Let’s kill this story now, okay? I’m staying here. It’s not all about money and fame. The world’s culture has to change and move away from the age of greed we’re living in now. You press, you social media, you find something nice, and you just want to rip it down. What is wrong with you all?”
Nobody knew where that had come from. As the press cleared out of the makeshift conference room, he spoke with Dean and Piotr. Nobody had approached him; he just wanted to kill the story, and yes, nobody had written the script for him. But it went viral. The young Korean set the internet alight, questioning modern morality and where the tragic world we have ended up with is, ill at ease with itself.
After the outburst, the club made what felt like a remarkably sensible decision. They would hire a part-time press and communications team for ten weeks, just long enough to get them through the Korean’s stay and the inevitable aftershocks. The brief was straightforward: deal with the media, organise press conferences, manage interview requests, keep sponsors informed, issue club statements when necessary and, most importantly, stop everyone spending half their lives answering emails and giving separate answers to everything. It was not a permanent appointment, but for the next ten weeks they needed somebody whose entire job was to mediate the growing chaos.
Deep down, Tarquin Pippins was slightly pleased that only 1,200 tickets had sold for the game. Denham had paid for a 3,000-seat scaffolding stand to be erected along the grassy bank of Mountfield Road, bringing capacity to 5,750. Historically, the biggest gate at Lewes had been shy of 3,000, although rumour was that a Boxing Day fixture after the war drew a crowd of 5,000 against down the road Newhaven, still to be verified. However, the conference and the furore around it meant that by the end of Sunday all the tickets had sold out, and whether it was 5,000 or not, Tarquin Pippins had to come to terms with the fact that, in over a century playing at the Dripping Pan, the highest attendance was going to belong to a tiny village club two miles outside the town, which pretty much said it all about Lewes Football Club. Denham obliterated Ramsgate 8-1, with four goals for the Korean and three assists, which just merely made the story bigger.
Lewes FC has always struggled with gates over 1,000 to provide food and drink with any semblance of organisation. But with Catherine Brown, in charge of catering, there wasn’t a queue for the catering anywhere in the ground. She’d already worked out that if you sell pretentious food for middle-class people at football matches, like Lewes did, rather than quick food you can bang out, bish, bash, bosh, you’re going to fail to, A, maximise your profits and, B, keep your customers happy. It wasn’t lost on the local Lewes social media and football forums that, contrary to what the club historically said about how impossible it was to feed and water the fans at the Pan, it wasn’t, begging the question: why can’t Catherine Brown cover-run our catering? Of course, the simple answer is that she’s a smart woman and doesn’t want to be involved with a shitshow.
The post-match interviews were suspended until 11 pm, when the ground was cleared, and the Rook Inn was quickly made fit for purpose for a press conference.
It was packed inside. With no Premier League fixtures because of international duties, the press focus was on the weird story in Sussex. It may have been freezing outside, but inside the condensation poured down the windows from body heat and the hastily assembled old gas heaters. The press pack were chasing a story, but in reality, Seo-jun’s outburst had been the story; what else was there to be said? But the conference descended into chaos; there was no organisation or system, and it ended up with Seo-jun spending half an hour saying, “I am here to talk football; I have already said my piece,” as the press got more and mre tetchy as there was actually no story and their readers couldn’t care less about the Welex Waste Products Div 3, Korean pop star or no Korean pop star.
Thankfully within three days, and in time for Saturday’s away game at Hastings, the new team media team had arrived.
