Chapter 175: Chapter 174 Maxa’s Fearful Secrety Exposed (Please subscribe, please share everywhere, spread the word, ha)
He was mischievous on the pitch, but very low-profile off it, so much so that he, once the leading figure among the "Three Rs" of Rivaldo, Ronaldo, and Ronaldinho, became the one with the least presence in the fans’ hearts.
Such a person would not take issue with Deng Kai’s comments.
Similarly, Beckham felt a bit better after hearing what Deng Kai had said.
Victoria was even happier.
Whether or not the Golden Ball award was important to her was irrelevant; instead, Beckham’s deep-rooted handsomeness was perhaps of even greater value to Victoria.
Without a doubt, Deng Kai’s remarks had highlighted Beckham’s overlooked strength, which would become his trademark in the future!
Victoria had already thought about how to market this trademark.
And other professional footballers also agreed with Deng Kai’s point of view.
Due to differing leagues, it was common for several players to be eligible for the Golden Ball award at the same time.
Choosing one of them was fine, of course.
But did that mean there was a problem if the others won?
Not at all.
Deng Kai made people aware of this situation, providing some psychological comfort to many players who missed the Golden Ball and the FIFA World Player of the Year awards by a hairsbreadth.
How soothing it was.
After the award ceremony, as expected, the ownership of the Golden Ball sparked intense discussions.
Beckham had far more fans than Rivaldo.
But that couldn’t beat the fact that Rivaldo was the key player.
Moreover, Beckham himself did not express much dissatisfaction about this in front of the media.
Rivaldo also did not make any targeted responses to amplify the issue.
In the end, it was Deng Kai’s evaluation that spread the widest.
People took it for granted that Rivaldo was the Golden Ball winner of the year, but no one would have objected if Beckham had received the award.
Along with these discussions, the market price for Beckham’s signed footballs skyrocketed, becoming hard to come by.
If you wanted to buy one, you could only wait in the black market of Lisbon, Portugal, where one or two would occasionally slip out.
Later, even a kind of blind box signature football auction appeared.
Each issue was guaranteed to contain a Beckham-signed ball.
Of course, there were other star-signed balls as well.
But they were all guaranteed to be stars’ signatures.
The price of buying a blind box was very expensive, equal to the cost of buying twenty Guardiola-signed footballs or five Figo-signed footballs.
Of course, occasionally there were blind box auctions featuring mainly Zidane and Ronaldo.
Essentially, if all these blind boxes were sold out, the profits would be nearly ten times more than selling them at the actual price!
Deng’s parents were almost going crazy.
Was this like robbing money?
But Deng Kai said that this was already tamed.
If there were conditions to do it properly, making a hundred or a thousand times more was not a problem.
In the future, those blind boxes, one or two hundred a piece, would the contents even be worth five dollars?
How many multiples is that?
Now, buying something is about seeing its worth, which can be calculated based on the cost.
In the future, buying something will depend on how much the seller is asking, and the added value can be declared at will—there will always be someone willing to pay.
So, among Lisbon fans, "Damn! Another Guardiola" gradually became common parlance, broadly indicating that today was an unlucky day.
Fans would also joke with each other, saying, "Did you get Guardiolaed today?"
"Nonsense! You’re the one who got Guardiolaed!"
"I’ll Guardiola your entire family!"
"Your whole life is just a Guardiola!"
When Guardiola came to Lisbon to sign a contract with his advertising partners, he couldn’t stop smiling.
Was Guardiola this popular in Portugal?
Even the local Spanish fans didn’t adore me this much, keeping me on their lips every day, right?
...
The year 2000 had arrived.
On January 4th, Lisbon Athletic faced Disport.
On January 11th, Lisbon Athletic took on Boavista.
The team notched another consecutive win, rounding out the season with a terrifying record of fifteen wins and three losses.
Deng Kai finished the half-season with twenty-five goals and nineteen assists, crowning him the mid-season ’Striker King’ and ’Assistant King’.
Afterward, the team entered the winter break.
On January 15th, the World Footballer of the Year award ceremony was held.
Beckham missed out on the opportunity once again, finishing in second place.
Batistuta took third.
Rivaldo reached the peak again, winning football’s two most prestigious awards within a year.
Meanwhile, Beckham’s popularity surged even more.
It’s not terrifying to be handsome.
What’s terrifying is being handsome, yet carrying a look of melancholy with enough sorrowful experiences.
Who could resist a man with a story?
Keanu Reeves’s experiences to some extent became one of the reasons for his immense popularity with audiences later on.
Beckham’s reputation was evolving from being merely handsome to being so strikingly good-looking that even his hard work was being overlooked.
Isn’t this better than just being a handsome face with positive energy?
This added an element of spiritual quality!
Love starts with the face, deepens with talent, and stays loyal to character.
Beckham had it all — a hat-trick in allure.
He might have lost the Golden Ball, but he won the sympathy of girls all over the world.
It’s tough to count this as a loss.
However, amidst the major currents of the Golden Ball and World Footballer of the Year,
there were also some undercurrents stirring within the world of football.
Lisbon Athletic officially announced the dismissal of their first-team head coach Augustus on the second day of the winter break.
The reason was that the team had only placed sixth in the Portuguese League at the halfway mark, a slide down from last year’s fourth place.
You have to understand, they had spent a lot of money bringing in stars like Jia De’er!
Augustus expressed his resignation towards being fired from Sporting Portugal.
Jia De’er had scored eighteen goals in half a season, leading the pack with his data.
Quaresma had just joined the first team this year and contributed six goals and six assists in the first half of the season.
And Simon from last year? He only managed to score ten goals the entire season.
Augustus even believed he had exceeded the expectations set for him.
The stars had emerged, but the team’s performance was still not good enough. Could this not be because the team lacked enough stars?
What’s the point of firing me!
Throughout this whole time, Augustus never doubted his assistant, Maxa.
The sophistication in the tactics Maxa had crafted for Jia De’er and Quaresma, Augustus had only seen on Ronaldo and Deng Kai.
The demands for interconnectedness and tactical understanding were taxing for Jia De’er and Quaresma to meet.
To truly reach the level Maxa envisioned, perhaps it would take Ronaldo and Zidane!
And Maxa would be at the training field before dawn, and wouldn’t leave even after dark.
He was always the last one to leave the team.
Where could you find such an assistant coach?
To this, Maxa said, "I can’t sleep, I really can’t sleep!"
"In my dreams, I’m afraid people will realize I don’t understand tactics at all."
"I just reuse the tactics that Kai talked about; if you ask me why or how to do it, I’m not sure! If I knew that much, would I be content being a U15 youth coach?"
"Kai, Terry, when are you coming to save me! I’m afraid of being cyberbullied by fans! I’m afraid the club will fire me!"
Augustus was not an unknown figure. He had just lost his contract when he found a new job in the second division of Portugal, coaching the team Gandoma.
When he left, he invited Maxa to join him, acknowledging Maxa’s capability and wanting to introduce his own connections to Maxa to help him go further in the coaching industry.
Maxa declined the offer.
He wasn’t quite convinced by Augustus’s confidence in him.
Even at this point, if one couldn’t see who was the old fox, Maxa thought Augustus wasn’t losing out by being terminated.
Maxa didn’t dare venture too far away. He believed that Kai and Mr. Trigella would eventually come to the first team.
