My Four Superstar Ex-Boyfriends

Chapter 11: Prague Meteo

[I've seen you play a few matches before, can you sign an autograph for me?] Apparently, it had been a long time since Borukorin had heard such words in a place he was familiar with. So he froze before giving an affirmative answer. Then he saw the girl open the door of the apartment with awkward and nervous movements and take out a soccer ball and an autograph pen from inside.

"What's your name?" After receiving the soccer ball and the autograph pen from Emily's hands, Borukorin asked for the other party's name.

"Emily."

Emily ended up just telling the other person her first name without pronouncing her last name along with it. And Borukorin then signed her name very carefully on the soccer ball and wrote, Emily.

Curious, the man who signed the soccer ball asked Emily what team she was a fan of when she played for him, and of course she told him without thinking: "Leverkusen. I was at that game against Bayern Munich when you played for Leverkusen."

Apparently the name of the Bundesliga team that Emily had mentioned gave Borukorin an indescribable feeling of nostalgia. So he extended an invitation to Emily, "May I have the honor to buy you a cup of coffee Miss Emily? If, you remember that game."

It all seemed to happen so naturally. They began to connect at a distance. Back in Russia, Borukorin remembered the girl who pretended to be a Leverkusen fan and her better known identity, but he didn't tell her straight away.

For a long time, they both tested each other, soothed each other's wounds, and sent concern in the midst of loneliness, but neither of them picked up on everything. Until ...... a shooting happened.

After a potluck dinner, one of Borukorin's clubmates and a friend of the teammate were machine-gunned as they drove home. If Borukorin hadn't gotten back early that day, he would have been in that car. The local media did not understand the situation when reporting the incident and included Borukorin's name in the press release.

You can imagine Emily's horror when she found out about the incident in England. She was so terrified that her whole body was shaking, and even her voice couldn't stay steady through the obvious sobbing. What saved her from all of this was a phone call from Borukorin.

"I'm fine now Emily, I'm just feeling a little backed up. I was supposed to be in that car, too." After a long silence, Borukorin said, "Emily, I miss you. I want to see you now."

So Emily just flew off to the airport and bought a ticket to Moscow at the airport counter. Almost at that moment, Borukorin changed his mind, and once again he called Emily, this time telling the girl he was so desperate to see at that moment not to come over here.

Borukorin said, "Listen, listen Emily, it's dangerous here! Though I never thought so in all the time past, but now I think it's dangerous you shouldn't come here."

And Emily replied, "I'm not afraid, I don't want to regret it."

Emily traveled to Moscow, where Borukorin took her to his apartment. They snuggle up to each other in the terrible cold, confirming their feelings for each other by touching their bodies, and kissing to talk about the heartbreak and fear that they might almost lose each other.

And so they were together.

Prague, Czech Republic.

Even though Emily had been psyching herself up for a long time before arriving here. She told herself that the club she was going to interview was a club in the D-League. Moreover, the country where this D-League club was located was the Czech Republic, which was ranked 14th in the professional soccer league in Europe. But when Emily actually saw the real face of this club with a home stadium capacity of only 1,500 spectators, she still couldn't hold her expression.

This club ......

This pushes up against the creaking iron door.

This muddy pitch that you don't want to play soccer on at all.

These rusty spectator seats.

After walking all the way into the Czech D-League club that had taken the training ground directly to its own home ground, Emily didn't want to say a word more now when she saw Meteo Prague's home base.

She had never! Never seen such a bad stadium at a proper club! Even the club's lowest echelon youth camp couldn't possibly use a pitch like this! Emily was able to tolerate anything else that was bad, but how were the players going to play when the pitch was muddy like this?

After thinking this in her heart, Emily panicked for a moment. In the next moment, she began to remind herself that she was here for an interview! Even if the pitch here was terrible, it wasn't up to her to decide whether she could stay and coach here!

After that, Emily took a deep breath after stopping, and she became solemn as she walked towards the club office room in Bragmetio again. She kept reminding herself that she was in a different position now; no matter how luxurious the facilities and the grandeur of the home stadium were, she used to go there only as the girlfriend of a player of the club. At any given time, she had nothing to do with the clubs that had a huge number of supporters all over the world. But this unassuming, even too old and poorly equipped club could well be the place where she gets her first professional contract as a soccer coach.

Emily felt an indescribable sense of excitement and pride at the thought!

Even though, everything was still an unknown right now, she felt an indescribable sense of pride. For her own sake, and for the sake of this league club that was still very amateurish now.

"Ms. Emily?"

As Emily was led to the room responsible for conducting her interview, she was quite surprised to find that her interviewer was a woman! This made the corners of her mouth unconsciously rise a little more. As the person took out the materials she had brought from the information packet she had brought with her and read out the name on her passport, Emily was almost about to tell the person, out of habit, that her name might be difficult for Europeans to pronounce and that it would be fine to call her Emily.

But for some reason, Emily stopped short of saying the words as they were about to come out of her mouth, and nodded with a smile and said, "Yes, Emily."

The woman, who was about fifty or sixty years old, pulled her glasses, which were perched on the bridge of her nose and had a slightly presbyopic prescription, down a bit to look at the shape of Emily's mouth. So Emily smiled again and said her name again in a very slow speech. This time, her interviewer smiled at her to signal that he understood. And at this moment, the atmosphere in the office used for the interview had been completely energized.

"Hello, Emily," the lady greeted Emily very kindly, and next she made some introductions to Emily.

"Well, first of all, I'd like to introduce myself, my English is not bad. So I think we can communicate in English. I'm Crixus, the manager of this club. As you've seen on your way in here, our club is very small. I co-own Meteo with my older brother, and I'm in charge of the day-to-day running of the club, and of course a whole host of things. Because we're so small, each of us has to wear several hats."

Emily nodded, signaling that she understood what the other man was saying.

"To be honest, after receiving your job application resume, I was surprised. I didn't expect that this time the person who came to apply for the job of our club's head coach would be a young woman like you. Honestly at first I was puzzled as to why you would let go of your high school varsity coaching job to come to us. After all, the salary we can offer you isn't going to be any more than what you would have gotten if you had coached in high school. But the difficulty of the two jobs will be completely different."

The first topic that Crixus and Emily talked about was one that Emily hadn't anticipated. She had prepared a lot for this interview, she had even memorized a lot of the history of this D-League club, including the results of their wins and losses against different teams last season.

But from this question onwards, she felt that what she had prepared earlier might not be useful.

Emily tried to speak after a moment of silence, "Yes, before that I did teach at Rutland High School in Krumlov. The school gave me a simple assignment, four to five-thirty in the afternoon Monday through Friday. Half days on Saturday or Sunday. But after taking over the varsity team at Rutland High School, I would ride my bike behind the morning running group of varsity members every morning at 6:30 a.m. because I had given them the task of running a 10,000-meter run alternating between a slow pace and a very fast sprint every day. I would explain tactics to the kids every day at noon during the school lunch break and draw them different formations on the board, explaining how those would be utilized in the real world. Almost every afternoon I would take them on a two-and-a-half to three-hour training session, after which specific members of the varsity team would stay behind to practice shooting, corner kicks, and free kicks, and I would be with them to make sure that each of them was safe during the training. I only have one day off a week, and I spend it going to the opponents we are going to meet to watch them and get to know them. I would even spend an hour or more each day compiling the recent performances and subtle improvements of each of the varsity members I coached and adjusting their training programs based on those."

At first, Emily, who hadn't yet participated in an interview of this nature, was a little nervous, but once she opened her mouth, her head went back to everything she'd done for that team over the course of the year. So her voice slowly became firm, and her demeanor began to become confident and relaxed.

After finishing those words, she paused before asking with a smile, "So now do you still think that my career goal will be just to lead a varsity team and at best participate in the Czech nationwide high school intercollegiate league?"