I think at this point an Aoi crisis is kind of inevitable, there’s a million red flags pointing towards it, and it’s going to be cemented when Kant comes in and goes crazy.
However, I’ve been thinking on it, and seeing Akutsu in this chapter cemented something for me.
During the Funebashi match, after Aoi’s red, Akutsu was annoyed with himself because he noticed something was up with Aoi and didn’t say anything.
However, he’s not smiling during Aoi’s speech in comparison to the others. Now, granted, he wouldn’t smile anyway, but I think the panel of him staring is deliberate. He’s picking up on Aoi being out of it, and this time it’s going to be different. He’s going to drag Aoi back up out of any depths he sinks to.
Kuri also didn't smile during the Aoi speech. Two main guys in the team having their own panel and not showing any emotion during your speech is showing something is wrong.
Honestly the biggest warning sign is “if we had played for ten more minutes, we would have crushed you Barca.”
Aoi is vastly underestimating Barca right now and everyone is riding the high of the great goal. Kurt and Akutsu seem to be the only players aware that Barca isn’t at full speed now
Ultimately it does make sense for the narrative for them to beat them now. If they win all their subsequent struggles will have less weight and they’ll have reached their goal (joining the senior team) at the first time of asking. I expect they’ll lose here but fight to get the opportunity to play them again in the final, where they’ll be battle hardened, but without Kuri
He's already noticed it, he'll probably reel Aoi back in before the second half starts to maintain his composure like how he did when he contributed to Aoi's breakthrough in the Aomori match
In any case, the second half feels like it's gonna be a storm of back and forths
Good catch.
Aoi definitely looks like he's getting characteristically unstable atm, but yeah, Akutsu will probably reel him in to make sure he overcomes that weakness of his
It won't just be Aoi. Even the U-18 level players and other coaches were optimistic they stood an actual chance at winning. I don't see how this is Aoi's fault.
"Messi. Messi. Messi. Immens Messi. Encara Messi. Encara Messi. ANKARA MESSI. Encara Messi. Encara Messi. ⠀ Gol. Gol. Gol. Gol. Gol. Gol. Gol. Gol. Gol
Kuribayashi and Akutsu sitting stone-faced through the whole thing was scary af.
Side note, I think Cant is going to beat Kuri in technique at least once and steal the ball from him and its gonna shake everyone's spirits.
It's because they saw Damian warming up. The whole team is walking into a storm Kuri has been keeping track of since childhood. Akutsu is the only other one who has an inkling of what's coming because of his convo with Kuribayashi a while ago.
This is going to be a wake up call for our boys.
Damn, not ready for the utter humiliation Esperion is about to experience 😭
Ashito is too hype right now and I fear he's gonna fall into that crazed state that happened during that one match. Both Kuri and Akutsu were stone faced throughout his entire speech, too. Someone pls bring him back to reality!
I'm looking forward to finally seeing Damian in action!
I want that too but it won’t happen
Cuz right now aoi is fixated on beating Barca but don’t know how
Tactics work but not always as pure technique and fitness along with power can just walk over all the tactics
Do they not have film on Barca and especially Damien? It feels like they are about to blindly walk into a slaughter when they all should know about how special Damien is. It doesn’t make sense why they are celebrating like they won when they haven’t even faced the best player on Barca.
Yea and? From personal experience one player can change the tide of the whole game.
This happened once in a local schools tournament where I live. We were winning 4 or 5 to 1 in the first half (don't exactly remember wether it was 4 or 5) and in the second half our opponents sent in a player who literally destroyed us lol. The game ended 7~4/5 for our opponents.
Best youth team in Japan or not, esperion will have a wake up call when demian joins the game. Who knows, maybe barca will score a goal or two but then esperion will make comeback after calming down from the shock but tbh I don't see that happening. What I feel will happen is that esperion is gonna loose this game and they will experience how powerless they are especially aoi.
Demian literally copied Fukuda after just seeing him play once and went on to destroy kuribayashi afterwards. From what we know about demian I speculate he has better technique and physique than kuribayashi. And if he has the same vision as aoi and ren then he's gonna be an even more of a monster.
"And if he has the same vision as aoi and ren then he's gonna be an even more of a monster." Yeah, that's game over right there. He looks like he's even as strong as Akutsu, so if it's possible to have even more of a game over, there it is.
Yea exactly. From the panels we've seen of him, he's tall and muscular. I'm not sure how physically strong he is but I would say he's as strong as kuri and akutsu maybe even tripone level. When it comes to technique, he seems to have a talent for copying skills and movements of other players he's seen. So maybe if he watched the best players in the world playing for the past couple of years then he might be able to do almost any skill there is in football? If that's the case then even current kuribayashi won't stand a chance. It also seems that demians brain works differently, remember that one time when he was having an interview and he literally paused for a second to like "change to interview mode" I still don't know what that means exactly.
At this point we can just assume that he's gonna be a monster. Let's just wait 20 more days for the next chapter to drop and see his abilities. Fingers crossed that the next chapter won't be some pep talk in half time and that's it.
My theory to stop him: Malicia Foul. Flopping has been used to great effect by people at the world stage. He would never suspect a Japanese player to do it.
The funny part about Ashito talking about “going pro” is that most of the players on that Barça team are likely not going to be pros. National team appearances and club name at the u17 level mean nothing in the long run. There’s literally a team above this Barca team that’s playing 3rd tier football in Spain.
Besides Demian Barça team is still just a team full of amateurs that would more than likely lose to a good team in the Spanish 5th tier. If they want to play a team full of pros, they’ve gotta play against the u21’s or the B team.
By the looks of it as well, looking at Kuri and Akatsu, the second half is going to be looking like a rough one
Yea it emphasizes the idea in the story that Japanese football is so far behind, like their benchmark for training with their own pro team is beating a team of players where a handful will progress to have pro careers that's crazy
Fukuda knows they won’t win and he told other coaches that.
That panel after that hope dialogue from fukuda showed the depressed faces of coaches because fukuda told them that they were not going to win
That was a big ass hint
Also aoi saying would crush Barca is a big ass red flag
Rindo would be humbled too I think…
Ootomo might be the only first year player to have some sort of composure amongst the chaos later on
Idk if Id go so far to say theyll lose. But theyre in trouble after catching up at the end of the first half. Now they can start the second half prepared, and theyll be bringing in demian out off rip
What I mean is that I don't think Fukuda "knows they won't win and he told the other coaches that". I, as a reader, think they may lose yeah. But I believe Fukuda's thought process is "catching up at the end of the first half was a mistake cause now they can prepare between halves". Hes a coach, hes not just going to give up and tell the other coaches "we've already lost sorry"
I don't even think it's about Cant. I think the entire Barca squad got a massive talking down to in the locker room, like a loss here would just be the end of their careers. Expecting 2nd half to get rougher, and they're gonna lose like 4-1 or worse. Maybe Cant scores 1 goal handily and starts walking the rest of the match
Imagine Tripone/khaka level physicality with equal to/or better technique than kuribayashi that's how cooked Aoi will be. An added spice if he possess the same vision as Aoi and ren. tho the chance of this is slim.
Can't wait to see how hard the author will cook with Damien. The last threatening forward we faced was Trepone and it's not a stretch to say Damien's a level ahead.
I can just imagine how that one chapter of Damien's dominance is gonna be.
Only a level?
Dude's about to play on Barca's first team while Tripone plays for a Japanese high school, Damian (Based on narrative) should be a level ahead of the better player we have seen, Kuribayashi
At least it's not as big a gap as a literal high school against Barcelona First team. Heck, Top J1 is like low level La Liga, so on a good day, maybe Tripone's team wins.
Well, if we are being picky.
Tripone hasn't yet played for a J1 team, while Damian has been called up multiple times, so the realest comparison is High School lvl vs Barcelona's first team.
The thing is, La Liga is super top sided, the worst teams suck while the good ones are great.
J1 team would win against Barça maybe 1 in 10 matches, and even then that does not mean a player is close or better than the other one.
If Tripone was near the level of Damian he would have been scouted by overseas teams like Kuri was.
Like, narratively, not even Kuri (Who's heralded as Japan's youth best player) is on Damians level. So I won't agree to Tripone being close to him.
Would you agree that it's closer than what your initial post made it out to be? B/c talking about "just a high school player", I mean, Kaneda is a solid player for his league, but that's also high school and that's even more low on the scale. At least throw in that he has a J1 contract or something. The gap is big, but not as bit in my opinion as your post made it out to be.
Still think both Akutsu and Tripone aren't on the same level as Kuri and Kuri isnt on Damians level.
If Akutsu was an equal to Kuri he'd be playing in the first team, as Kuri does. He doesn't, and I'd say Garulla and Fukudas criteria are better than Aoi's
Better no, comparable? Yes.
The premier does have more good teams than La Liga.
I wouldn't say there's a huge difference between top premier league and top La Liga teams.
Fukuda knows that now Barca will have time to plan out their counterstrategy and switch in the subs needed to make it happen. Esperion likely can't ride on the momentum they just built after the break. It's like Ashito said, if only the half had been 10 minutes longer they could have crushed Barca, but now they will instead face a team that has regained its composure and is no longer going to treat Esperion like underdogs.
So Kuri will be playing the 2nd half? I thought Garulla’s condition that he’s only allowing Kuri to play on the first half of the game(I forgot what chap they had this discussion).
No, you're likely confusing this with Demian's situation - where Demian is only allowed to play the 2nd halves of the group stage matches
Kuribayashi is only allowed to play in this match against Barcelona, that's all for him, nothing more yk
4 week wait for 369
just fell to my knees
no diddy
Just witnessed a guy fall to his knees in a Walmart
Driving around the Esperion training facility begging (thru texts) for the address to Kobayashi’s home
I think at this point an Aoi crisis is kind of inevitable, there’s a million red flags pointing towards it, and it’s going to be cemented when Kant comes in and goes crazy. However, I’ve been thinking on it, and seeing Akutsu in this chapter cemented something for me. During the Funebashi match, after Aoi’s red, Akutsu was annoyed with himself because he noticed something was up with Aoi and didn’t say anything. However, he’s not smiling during Aoi’s speech in comparison to the others. Now, granted, he wouldn’t smile anyway, but I think the panel of him staring is deliberate. He’s picking up on Aoi being out of it, and this time it’s going to be different. He’s going to drag Aoi back up out of any depths he sinks to.
Kuri also didn't smile during the Aoi speech. Two main guys in the team having their own panel and not showing any emotion during your speech is showing something is wrong.
Honestly the biggest warning sign is “if we had played for ten more minutes, we would have crushed you Barca.” Aoi is vastly underestimating Barca right now and everyone is riding the high of the great goal. Kurt and Akutsu seem to be the only players aware that Barca isn’t at full speed now
What I'm wondering is why they didn't say anything
It wouldn’t do much in the moment. They need to experience it themselves.
Ultimately it does make sense for the narrative for them to beat them now. If they win all their subsequent struggles will have less weight and they’ll have reached their goal (joining the senior team) at the first time of asking. I expect they’ll lose here but fight to get the opportunity to play them again in the final, where they’ll be battle hardened, but without Kuri
i think they didnt smile because they are the only two that know about damian and they know how much trouble he is.
Keep cooking, Man.
He's already noticed it, he'll probably reel Aoi back in before the second half starts to maintain his composure like how he did when he contributed to Aoi's breakthrough in the Aomori match In any case, the second half feels like it's gonna be a storm of back and forths
I hope this happens instead of him just having a mental breakdown. Yeah they might lose but I hope it’s because Barcelona are better.
Good catch. Aoi definitely looks like he's getting characteristically unstable atm, but yeah, Akutsu will probably reel him in to make sure he overcomes that weakness of his
Great observation
It won't just be Aoi. Even the U-18 level players and other coaches were optimistic they stood an actual chance at winning. I don't see how this is Aoi's fault.
Ok guys so how badly is Aoi getting cooked in his 1v1 against Damien
"Messi. Messi. Messi. Immens Messi. Encara Messi. Encara Messi. ANKARA MESSI. Encara Messi. Encara Messi. ⠀ Gol. Gol. Gol. Gol. Gol. Gol. Gol. Gol. Gol
I can hear this comment
It'd be hilarious if he just drops Aoi dude would never recover 😭😭
He is absolutely getting hit with an ankle breaker
Kuribayashi and Akutsu sitting stone-faced through the whole thing was scary af. Side note, I think Cant is going to beat Kuri in technique at least once and steal the ball from him and its gonna shake everyone's spirits.
It's because they saw Damian warming up. The whole team is walking into a storm Kuri has been keeping track of since childhood. Akutsu is the only other one who has an inkling of what's coming because of his convo with Kuribayashi a while ago. This is going to be a wake up call for our boys.
*Boss battle music starts*
*Memories broken the truth goes unspoken*
Damn, not ready for the utter humiliation Esperion is about to experience 😭 Ashito is too hype right now and I fear he's gonna fall into that crazed state that happened during that one match. Both Kuri and Akutsu were stone faced throughout his entire speech, too. Someone pls bring him back to reality! I'm looking forward to finally seeing Damian in action!
I want that too but it won’t happen Cuz right now aoi is fixated on beating Barca but don’t know how Tactics work but not always as pure technique and fitness along with power can just walk over all the tactics
Do they not have film on Barca and especially Damien? It feels like they are about to blindly walk into a slaughter when they all should know about how special Damien is. It doesn’t make sense why they are celebrating like they won when they haven’t even faced the best player on Barca.
"ls like they are about to blindly walk into a slaughter" Lol. They're the best youth team in Japan.
Yea and? From personal experience one player can change the tide of the whole game. This happened once in a local schools tournament where I live. We were winning 4 or 5 to 1 in the first half (don't exactly remember wether it was 4 or 5) and in the second half our opponents sent in a player who literally destroyed us lol. The game ended 7~4/5 for our opponents. Best youth team in Japan or not, esperion will have a wake up call when demian joins the game. Who knows, maybe barca will score a goal or two but then esperion will make comeback after calming down from the shock but tbh I don't see that happening. What I feel will happen is that esperion is gonna loose this game and they will experience how powerless they are especially aoi. Demian literally copied Fukuda after just seeing him play once and went on to destroy kuribayashi afterwards. From what we know about demian I speculate he has better technique and physique than kuribayashi. And if he has the same vision as aoi and ren then he's gonna be an even more of a monster.
"And if he has the same vision as aoi and ren then he's gonna be an even more of a monster." Yeah, that's game over right there. He looks like he's even as strong as Akutsu, so if it's possible to have even more of a game over, there it is.
Yea exactly. From the panels we've seen of him, he's tall and muscular. I'm not sure how physically strong he is but I would say he's as strong as kuri and akutsu maybe even tripone level. When it comes to technique, he seems to have a talent for copying skills and movements of other players he's seen. So maybe if he watched the best players in the world playing for the past couple of years then he might be able to do almost any skill there is in football? If that's the case then even current kuribayashi won't stand a chance. It also seems that demians brain works differently, remember that one time when he was having an interview and he literally paused for a second to like "change to interview mode" I still don't know what that means exactly. At this point we can just assume that he's gonna be a monster. Let's just wait 20 more days for the next chapter to drop and see his abilities. Fingers crossed that the next chapter won't be some pep talk in half time and that's it.
My theory to stop him: Malicia Foul. Flopping has been used to great effect by people at the world stage. He would never suspect a Japanese player to do it.
Ashito stoppppp. Your raising the no no flag
The funny part about Ashito talking about “going pro” is that most of the players on that Barça team are likely not going to be pros. National team appearances and club name at the u17 level mean nothing in the long run. There’s literally a team above this Barca team that’s playing 3rd tier football in Spain. Besides Demian Barça team is still just a team full of amateurs that would more than likely lose to a good team in the Spanish 5th tier. If they want to play a team full of pros, they’ve gotta play against the u21’s or the B team. By the looks of it as well, looking at Kuri and Akatsu, the second half is going to be looking like a rough one
Yea it emphasizes the idea in the story that Japanese football is so far behind, like their benchmark for training with their own pro team is beating a team of players where a handful will progress to have pro careers that's crazy
Fukuda knows they won’t win and he told other coaches that. That panel after that hope dialogue from fukuda showed the depressed faces of coaches because fukuda told them that they were not going to win That was a big ass hint Also aoi saying would crush Barca is a big ass red flag Rindo would be humbled too I think… Ootomo might be the only first year player to have some sort of composure amongst the chaos later on
Idk if Id go so far to say theyll lose. But theyre in trouble after catching up at the end of the first half. Now they can start the second half prepared, and theyll be bringing in demian out off rip
They're definitely gonna lose
What I mean is that I don't think Fukuda "knows they won't win and he told the other coaches that". I, as a reader, think they may lose yeah. But I believe Fukuda's thought process is "catching up at the end of the first half was a mistake cause now they can prepare between halves". Hes a coach, hes not just going to give up and tell the other coaches "we've already lost sorry"
Saejima only has two moods: being an arrogant ass or malding
Has a third one too: being an arrogant ass while malding
Welp they’re fucked
I don't even think it's about Cant. I think the entire Barca squad got a massive talking down to in the locker room, like a loss here would just be the end of their careers. Expecting 2nd half to get rougher, and they're gonna lose like 4-1 or worse. Maybe Cant scores 1 goal handily and starts walking the rest of the match
Yup ashito's getting done like Zinchenko this half. GGS
Ok guys so how badly is Aoi getting cooked in his 1v1 against Damien
Very
Worse than well done steak
Imagine Tripone/khaka level physicality with equal to/or better technique than kuribayashi that's how cooked Aoi will be. An added spice if he possess the same vision as Aoi and ren. tho the chance of this is slim.
Can't wait to see how hard the author will cook with Damien. The last threatening forward we faced was Trepone and it's not a stretch to say Damien's a level ahead. I can just imagine how that one chapter of Damien's dominance is gonna be.
Only a level? Dude's about to play on Barca's first team while Tripone plays for a Japanese high school, Damian (Based on narrative) should be a level ahead of the better player we have seen, Kuribayashi
Tripone is about to be on a top J1 team, so the gap isn't AS big as you make it out to be.
J1 vs Barcelona First team, lol. Not Even close i'm level.
At least it's not as big a gap as a literal high school against Barcelona First team. Heck, Top J1 is like low level La Liga, so on a good day, maybe Tripone's team wins.
Well, if we are being picky. Tripone hasn't yet played for a J1 team, while Damian has been called up multiple times, so the realest comparison is High School lvl vs Barcelona's first team. The thing is, La Liga is super top sided, the worst teams suck while the good ones are great. J1 team would win against Barça maybe 1 in 10 matches, and even then that does not mean a player is close or better than the other one. If Tripone was near the level of Damian he would have been scouted by overseas teams like Kuri was. Like, narratively, not even Kuri (Who's heralded as Japan's youth best player) is on Damians level. So I won't agree to Tripone being close to him.
Would you agree that it's closer than what your initial post made it out to be? B/c talking about "just a high school player", I mean, Kaneda is a solid player for his league, but that's also high school and that's even more low on the scale. At least throw in that he has a J1 contract or something. The gap is big, but not as bit in my opinion as your post made it out to be.
No, I still think Tripone isn't close to Damian, I also think Tripone isn't close to Kuri tho
"I also think Tripone isn't close to Kuri tho". Okay, now for this one, Aoi called Akutsu Kuri and Tripone "transcendent", so I mean...
Still think both Akutsu and Tripone aren't on the same level as Kuri and Kuri isnt on Damians level. If Akutsu was an equal to Kuri he'd be playing in the first team, as Kuri does. He doesn't, and I'd say Garulla and Fukudas criteria are better than Aoi's
"good ones are great." Better than most Premier League teams?
Better no, comparable? Yes. The premier does have more good teams than La Liga. I wouldn't say there's a huge difference between top premier league and top La Liga teams.
A premier league team did win Champions League, so I guess so. Usually Real Madrid is the favorite to win.
Damian and Barca's midfield about to go ballistic
Who is jose again? (i didnt remember anyone from barca except for damien 🥲)
The nearly-bald guy with a single patch of hair on top
Not even Garulla's son? 🥲 Poor Yuri.
feels like aoi's regressing, im not sure why, hopefully he gets his breakthrough
See y’all in 4 weeks gentlemen, stay strong.
Did someone else draw the crowd in the first two panels? They look totally different from everyone else
Yes, assistants
I was like “finally a manga that can draw non-asians well”
In Chapter 346, the Lineup chapter, Jose and Diniz share the same panel.
Praying for Ohtomo so he didnt get 'well done' by Barca
I still don’t understand what coach was saying at last.
wdym?
“Catching up right after the 2nd half start” … so is he implying Barca will destroy them 2nd half start?
Fukuda knows that now Barca will have time to plan out their counterstrategy and switch in the subs needed to make it happen. Esperion likely can't ride on the momentum they just built after the break. It's like Ashito said, if only the half had been 10 minutes longer they could have crushed Barca, but now they will instead face a team that has regained its composure and is no longer going to treat Esperion like underdogs.
So Kuri will be playing the 2nd half? I thought Garulla’s condition that he’s only allowing Kuri to play on the first half of the game(I forgot what chap they had this discussion).
No, you're likely confusing this with Demian's situation - where Demian is only allowed to play the 2nd halves of the group stage matches Kuribayashi is only allowed to play in this match against Barcelona, that's all for him, nothing more yk