Successor

Gagamaru braces as Ubers flip from defense to attack, sensing a shot is coming. Reading Baro as the main threat, Yukimiya sticks tight to him, so both are caught out when Baro slides the ball to Sendo instead. From the keeper's vantage the true carrier is impossible to pick out, and the strike arrives at the far post before Gagamaru can move to stop it.

A flashback revisits Snuffy's prep sessions. Baro dismisses the coach's approach as gutless and storms off, unwilling to play such dull soccer. Snuffy follows him onto the training pitch, acknowledging him as the squad's fiercest striker and pleading with him to buy into the system. Baro refuses, insisting the game is no job to him but a road to becoming king, and that if Snuffy wants to use him, the coach will have to bend to Baro rather than the reverse.

Snuffy admits he admires the fire, but flags the flaw in it, that Baro's belief in his own genius blinds him to everyone else. He strips the ball off Baro in a one-on-one, branding him just a human and an amateur, and confesses that he once carried the same conviction, certain alongside his closest friend that the two would rule the sport. Their downfall came, and his friend's mind eventually shattered and drove him to take his own life. Snuffy urges Baro to remember he is a person first and a player second, then floats the idea of Baro inheriting his mantle as the king of Ubers.

Ubers' fluid attacking shape leaves Gagamaru unable to identify who holds the ball, and he is caught flat-footed as the shot flies into the net. In the flashback, Baro rejects Snuffy's philosophy, Snuffy recounts how he and a friend once saw themselves as kings before the friend's death, and he offers Baro the role of his successor atop Ubers.

Successor is the third chapter of Volume 25 and the 215th overall within the Neo Egoist League Arc, running twenty pages. Mick Moon makes his debut in this chapter. It is written by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and illustrated by Yusuke Nomura.