My Four Superstar Ex-Boyfriends

Chapter 21: Locker Room Crisis

Even though Emily had only been with the players on this team for less than two weeks, she was already able to recognize who the speakers were by their voices. The person who was making these emotional comments in the locker room was Piszczek, the team's 21-year-old defensive midfielder. According to Emily's observations, this player is one of the most talented players in the Prague Meteo team, he has a great sense of the ball, and he is still young enough that if he plays well, he will probably go from the Czech D-League to the A-League.

And now, Emily's entry into Meteo has made him very unhappy.

Emily's Czech wasn't good enough for her to understand all of Piszczek's words. Not to mention, the young man was speaking extremely fast due to his emotions as he uttered them. Emily could only understand that he was angry at her presence and emphasized her gender over and over again, repeating "woman", "woman", "woman"!

Emily wanted to knock on the locker room door, or make some kind of noise to let them know she had arrived and to get ready to open the door for her. But then Piszczek's words in the locker room left her frozen in place, and she felt an indescribable sense of helplessness. She felt a hardness that she couldn't find anyone to talk to.

But the voices in the locker room didn't stop there. As Piszczek was about to continue, Heinz had interrupted with a very cold hard voice.

"If a player fails to fulfill the tasks given to him by the manager during the game, then he should be ashamed, not irritated. I hope you will watch your words."

It was after Heinz uttered those words that a series of chaotic sounds came from inside the locker room! That sounded like someone being held down and slammed into a closet! Hearing that sound, Emily realized she couldn't stay at the door any longer, so she pounded heavily on the players' locker room door.

So the otherwise noisy locker room instantly fell silent. Seconds later, someone came running and opened the door for Emily. It was none other than Saraka, who had extremely fast reflexes. He even smiled and winked at Emily as he opened the locker room door for her. But after more than ten days together, Emily could already tell that at this moment, Saraka was very embarrassed when facing her. But Emily didn't have any heart to care about that anymore.

She walked towards the direction where Heinz and Piszczek were with extremely fast steps. Heinz was straightening his shirt as if nothing had happened, and Piszczek was in denial, but the way he didn't look Emily in the eye indicated that he felt a little bad about saying those things behind the manager's back and being overheard by him.

But at the moment Emily wasn't interested in what Piszczek was thinking, and instead asked Heinz with a look how he was doing. Heinz, who had already developed a bit of a rapport over a year together, frowned and shook his head, signaling that he was fine and that it was nothing.

Emily felt very angry about all this, but couldn't do anything about it right now, at this moment, in her capacity as the head coach of her team. Therefore, she could only hold her breath in her heart as she said loudly to everyone, "Prepare to assemble for practice!"

During the night before, Emily barely slept, she woke up once at three o'clock in the middle of the night, once at four o'clock, and again at five o'clock when it was almost six o'clock. From the end of yesterday's game until now, she'd been thinking about what kind of tactics she'd have to have her team switch to in order to go out on the field and compete with their opponents for the high score.

Perhaps Emily, who had been the girl next door only a year ago, was reaching her limits.

She felt that her mind was beginning to slow down, and that made it impossible for her to give the most appropriate reaction to many of the things that were happening at the first sign of trouble. Nor did she anticipate that the aggressive nature of males would make it easier for Piszczek and Heinz to leave each other alone.

During the day's group sparring session, Piszczek and Heinz went at it. First there was the lack of respect when facing each other, as both men looked at each other with an aggressiveness that they were not willing to hide. And then there was the verbal provocation of each other when physically close to each other. Eventually, Piszczek intentionally charged Heinz during a scrimmage, and the forward, who followed Emily all the way from Rutland High School's varsity team to the Blagometeo, wasn't ever as angry as Emily thought he would be.

After being knocked down by Piszczek, Heinz wasted almost no time in giving Piszczek a shovel-legged kick in passing and putting the man down cleanly.

Seeing this happen, both of their teammates realized that the problem had intensified somewhat and acted quickly before Emily blew her shrill whistle and ran from the sidelines, pulling both of them all back far away from each other!

As soon as Emily saw the scene in front of her, she knew that this really was the worst thing that could happen.

"Saraka!"

Emily started by calling out the name of the midfielder who was the most capable of regulating the atmosphere of this team, good at all kinds of maneuvering and also very good-tempered, exhorting, "Take over the training, and you'll supervise your teammates to finish it."

After saying that, she then put her eyes on Heinz and Piszczek, "As for you two, come with me!"

It was as if Emily had demanded of this group of players that any comments could be directed at her, but never to question her to her face. She wouldn't reprimand in front of the others when confronted with a problem player either.

On this particular day, Mr. Translator, the club's interpreter for Emily, was at Emily's side. Therefore, when she asked both Heinz and Piszczek to follow her over, she also asked Mr. Translator to follow her over.

Considering the two men's respective personalities and temperaments, Emily asked Piszczek to go into her office first, and asked Heinz to come in and get a chair, while she sat outside the door and waited for a while.

She decided to have a good talk with the two men one by one.

"I heard everything you said in the locker room earlier. I can't speak Czech very well yet, but that doesn't stop me from getting to the point."

After thinking for a while, Emily spoke those words in English. The interpreter next to her thought for a moment after Emily had finished before translating her words into Czech and telling Piszczek.

"Just now you had a not so friendly confrontation with Heinz in training. But I know that it wasn't Heinz you were targeting, but me. Do you think I'm right?"

Emily's eyes were unapologetic as she looked at the 21-year-old amateur, even though her stature was too petite compared to the Czech youth in front of her. But in this moment, Emily had brought out her swagger. This made the youth, who was many years younger than her, feel a little uncomfortable. He heard Emily's words through Mr. Translator's relay, but did not give an answer on that.

So Emily continued after waiting for a few moments, "We all know that instincts and impulses are not enough to become a good soccer player. We all have to learn to use our brains to play soccer, not to mention, you are the best defender in the whole team, when you stand on the field, you need to be able to control the rhythm of the whole field. You're a very intelligent and perceptive player. Why don't we talk about it? What happened today was just a trigger. Even if you hadn't hit Heinz in practice today, I'd still be here to have this conversation with you. The fact is that you've been negative since the start of the new season's recovery training and that you don't like to play according to my instructions, you've been resisting everything that has to do with me."

After saying this, Emily let out a deep breath and spoke once more after hearing Mr. Translator translate all that she had said, not giving Piszczek any chance to interrupt her.

She said, "You're a pretty stubborn person, and you stick to the way you play soccer. But then what? What kind of a result are you trying to get by doing that? I think you have to tell me that today."

When these words of Emily's were also translated into Czech, Piszczek, who was sitting across from her, seeing this step by step look of Emily just inclined his face very repulsively and then said in a bad tone of voice, "I don't like to argue with women."

After Piszczek said this, Emily, who didn't even need a translator to understand this sentence, slammed the table hard, stood up violently, and smashed the folders and books on the table on the floor with a heavy hand, and smashed them right next to the legs of the chair Piszczek was sitting on.

"Dang!"

The loud thud of these folders and thick books of information falling to the ground along with the papers flying up one by one caused both Mr. Translator and Piszczek to be taken aback.

Neither of the men in the room expected Emily, who hadn't lost her temper once since arriving at Meteo, to act in such a manner. Heinz, who was sitting in front of the office, simply knocked on the door after hearing the sound and anxiously asked, "Ms. Emily, are you okay?"

Emily, who had heard Heinz's voice, said loudly to the door, "Sit there! I smashed the stuff myself!"

After saying this, Emily turned her attention back to the startled Piszczek and said in a lowered voice with a sense of forbearance, "Before you say that to me, you should first remember that I am the head coach of your club. To you, I am your head coach first and foremost before I am a woman!!!"

In response, Piszczek looked to the translator after his initial stunned silence and grunted as he faithfully translated Emily's words into Czech, "But to me, you are a woman first. You shouldn't be standing amongst the male players, giving us this order, that order, telling us to do this and that! I've said similar things in the locker room, and I can still say them to your face!"