The massive screen flickered back to life, lighting up the dim room.
Jinpachi Ego's unmistakable bowl-cut head appeared once again, waving nonchalantly.
"Good work, my little diamonds in the rough. How's life treating you in Blue Lock?"
From below, Raichi Jingo shouted furiously, veins bulging.
"How do you expect us to play football in this dump?! This place is worse than a prison!"
Naruhaya Asahi crossed his arms, backing him up.
"Yeah, we'd like to eat something that isn't cardboard, you know!"
Ego's smirk widened.
"Of course it's garbage because your soccer is garbage. Perfectly fitting, isn't it, idiots?"
The players fell silent. Ego adjusted his glasses, continuing coolly.
"Let me explain how Blue Lock is structured. There are 25 teams, from B to Z five teams per building.
After the tag game, one player from each team was eliminated. That leaves 275 players remaining."
Isagi checked his monitor Rank 275.
"Huh… still dead last. Great. What a waste of excitement."
Ego went on.
"Teams are divided by rank.
The top eleven players form Team B, the next group Team C, and so on.
You, my dear Team Z, are in the lowest-ranked building the very bottom."
Isagi frowned.
"Wait, even with my level… I'm 275th? Are the players above us all pros from Europe or something?"
Before Ego could answer, Ryan Hoshino raised a hand lazily.
"Yeah, question. You seriously telling me there are 274 people stronger than me?"
The rest murmured in agreement. It seemed absurd. They were all high schoolers and yet, after witnessing Ryan's dominance, none of them could imagine someone stronger than him.
Ego's expression twitched slightly.
"Heh. Frogs at the bottom of the well, all of you. There are always players stronger than you."
But even Ego himself was sweating inside.
Who am I kidding? Among high schoolers, there's barely anyone who could match him…
Still, he forced a grin and changed the topic.
"Anyway! The higher your rank, the better your living conditions, better food, better facilities, better everything.
In Blue Lock, strength equals luxury.
If you want to live like humans, win your way up."
His tone sharpened.
"Now then… the First Selection begins."
Meanwhile, outside Blue Lock, the media buzzed with a different kind of energy.
Reporters swarmed around Sae Itoshi, Japan's prodigy midfielder, calm, poised, and infamously cold.
"Itoshi-kun," one reporter asked, "as the genius midfielder of the youth team of a prestigious Spanish club, you've returned to Japan due to league restrictions. Does that mean we'll see you play in Japan's domestic league soon?"
Sae's face twisted in disgust.
"Not in a million years. I'd rather play pickup matches with German college students than waste my talent here."
"Then… do you have any hopes for Japan's national team, perhaps representing your country one day?"
Sae stood from his chair and walked toward the door.
"None. A country this weak at football can't produce a team worth my time.
Winning the Champions League that's my dream.
Japan doesn't have a single striker who can even receive my passes.
I was just born in the wrong place."
With that, he left the room, his agent hurrying after him.
"Sae, please! Be more careful with the press!"
"Whatever. I just came back because my passport expired," Sae replied flatly.
As they passed a nearby conference hall, Sae paused.
Inside, Anri Teieri, Ego's young assistant, stood before a crowd of skeptical journalists, passionately defending Blue Lock.
"To push Japanese football forward, we need to take this leap of madness!
Don't you want to witness it the exact moment a new hero is born in Japan?"
Back inside Blue Lock, the screen showed Ego again, glasses glinting.
"The First Selection will be a round-robin tournament between the five teams in Building Five 55 players total.
Only the top two teams will advance to the Second Selection.
It's survival."
He laid out the rules crisply.
"Win: 3 points. Draw: 1. Loss: 0."
Even the usually composed Chigiri Hyōma spoke up.
"Wait, so all eleven of us in Team Z will play as one team?
But we're all strikers."
Ryan stretched, yawning.
"Doesn't matter. I'm the boss, so I'm taking center forward.
As long as it's not me versus twenty-one of you, I'll win anyway because I'm invincible."
Bachira's eyes sparkled.
"That line was so cool! Teach me how to say it like that!"
Ryan grinned.
"Haha, you think so too? Took me two and a half days to come up with that one.
The secret is confidence real, bone-deep confidence."
No one objected to him claiming the striker position.
Instead, the others quietly discussed where they should play.
Then Ego's voice returned over the speakers.
"Listen carefully.
Football has always been about one thing: scoring goals.
The positions and tactics you worship are nothing but words created in the sport's long history.
Football began when everyone was a striker.
Now, return to that origin and create football anew from zero, with your own brains."
At the same time, Anri's passionate speech echoed through the JFA press room, aligning perfectly with Ego's philosophy.
"This is a revolution, a point of no return. Japan's football must risk everything to find its next step… to find its hero."
Ego's final words overlapped hers, his voice resonating like a prophecy:
"And that hero… lies within Blue Lock."
The room of reporters erupted in protest, voices overlapping with outrage.
But outside the commotion, Sae Itoshi simply smiled faintly.
"Heh. Cancel my flight back to Spain," he told his agent.
"I want to see what kind of idiot this country produces."