Muju Alpine FC
Seo Tae-yang was once the Sun of Korean football, a brilliant attacking midfielder whose vision and passion lit up stadiums. Then came the career-ending injury. The empty phone calls and the slow fade into obscurity.
Now he lives in Sanbuk Village, a tiny mountain hamlet where he fixes tractors, drinks soju alone, and never watches football. His only companion is a stray cat. He's thirty-four, forgotten, and fine with it, or so he tells himself.
Cha Yoo-ri is the youngest daughter of Hwaseong Group, one of Korea's most powerful chaebols. To her father, she's invisible. To her older brother, she's a nuisance. To the business world, she's just another rich girl with expensive hobbies, but Yoo-ri has a plan: build a football club from nothing in Muju County, a dying mountain region with twice as many elderly as young people. A 70,000-seat stadium. A world-class training complex. A team that will prove she's more than just Cha Jin-ho's daughter.
There's only one problem: she needs a coach.
Park Min-jae, her newly appointed director of football, has one name he won't let go: his old teammate Seo Tae-yang. The problem? Tae-yang wants nothing to do with football, or people, or anything that reminds him of who he used to be.
When Yoo-ri's luxury car gets stuck on a muddy village road and the rude farmer who pulls her out turns out to be her target, their first meeting is less "romantic comedy" and more "disaster waiting to happen." She's entitled, sharp, and desperate to prove herself. He's bitter, quiet, and desperate to be left alone.
But Min-jae is stubborn. The stadium is rising, and somewhere beneath Tae-yang's cold exterior, a flicker of the old sun still burns.
