The 5th Story Arc of the Blue Lock manga series, which centers on Blue Lock's First Selection match between Team Z and Team X. The game ends up a chaotic mess due to being the first game at Blue Lock between teams made up of nothing but strikers that have been ordered to start from scratch. As Team Z struggles to organize, Team X finds their foundation in a large and imposing striker named Shoei Baro who takes control of the game.
It makes up chapters 5 to 7 of the series.
Chapter 5: Football From Scratch
Team Z plays rock-paper-scissors to see who gets to play lead striker in the first match, which Isagi ends up winning. Ego then continues his announcement by explaining how even though the bottom 3 Round-Robin teams will be eliminated from Blue Lock, the top scorers of each of the 3 losing teams will make it through to the Second Selection. He also warns that players that receiving penalty cards will affect their rankings. Ego then ends his announcement by informing Team Z that their first match will be against Team X.Before the match, Team Z holds a strategy meeting led my Kuon where everyone falls in behind Isagi acting as the center-forward other than Iemon as the goalie. Despite some complaints, everyone accepts it, and heads out to the Fifth Stratum's game-field where the members of Team X enter soon after. The game begins with Isagi starting off with the ball. However, Raichi immediately team-steals it away from him since it's every man for themselves to score the most goals. The result is the game devolving into complete chaos with everyone stealing the ball from one another, which Isagi realizes that this is what Ego meant by everything starting from scratch. Eventually, a large imposing Team X striker named Shoei Baro (Rank 250) breaks out of the chaos with the soccer ball, and charges towards Team Z's goal.
Chapter 6: Foundation
Baro turns out to be a skilled dribbler to the point of easily bypassing Isagi, Kuon, and Imamura. He then kicks the ball at Team Z's goal, which Team Z goes down 0-1 due to Iemon failing to block the kick. As Team X celebrates the goal, Baro announces how he's the King while all those around him are just the peasants that help make him shine. Isagi tries to rally his team, but they remain disorganized and out for themselves. As Team Z's next offensive series begins, Isagi attempts to pass it to Bachira to start something with the only teammate he's befriended so far. However, the ball ends up being team-stolen away by Igarashi, who in turn had it stolen away by Team X due to Igarashi's lack of skill.As Team X takes over on offense, they catch on that they can rally around Baro while Team Z remains disorganized. The ball gets passed to Baro, which all of Team Z swarms him to stop him from scoring again. However, this leaves many of Team X's players wide open, which Baro passes it off to allow his team to get an easy score to put Team Z down 0-2. The game continues on with Baro leading Team X to another 3 goals, which puts Team Z down in an 0-5 hole. Isagi realizing that unlike Team Z remaining disorganized, Team X has started to build a solid foundation for their team around Baro, who initiated the spark for his team. With only a few minutes remaining in the game, Bachira stands alongside Isagi assuring the latter that they have a chance to get something out of the game while Team X is currently relaxed with a 5 goal lead. Isagi agrees to go along with it in the hopes that he can finally start up a foundation for Team Z.
Chapter 7: Get in Front of the Goal!
Bachira agrees to be Isagi's passing support as the two of them charge forward to try to get at least one goal against Team X before the game ends. Their team-up allows them to pass to each other in order to reach Team X's goal, which Bachira's last pass is to Isagi right in front of the goal. However, Baro appears to block Isagi, which freezes the latter not knowing what to do. Kunigami and Raichi come up behind Isagi wanting the latter to pass, which results in Isagi sensing a path on the field that will allow Team Z to score. Following his instincts, Isagi ends up passing it over to Kunigami, who uses his powerful left kick to score the goal at long range to make the score 1-5.Raichi ends up exploding in anger for not having the pass sent to him, and also calls out Isagi for not going for the goal himself, which Isagi doesn't understand it either since he felt that Kunigami would get the score. Baro then approaches Isagi, and calls out the latter as a talentless striker for choking in front of the goal. The V-Z strata's Game 1 is then announced over with Team Z losing against Team X 1-5. Team X celebrates their victory while Isagi ends up disheartened for not only failing as a striker, but failing to become Team Z's foundation.
