Chapter 249: Chapter 248 Hello, Drogba (Thanks to the Alliance Hierarch "Just Read Books" for the additional Chapter)
"Don’t get excited, don’t cry, speak slowly, there’s no need to hurry... Yes, I know you’ve been working hard, and your performance is there for all to see... Mr. Trigella is well-known for his talent in discovering and nurturing young soccer stars, with Figo, Simon, and Quaresma being his proud achievements!"
"Alright, good, then we can start working on the contract. Oh, you can also start some training in advance. Sporting Lisbon’s goal for the season is to win the Primeira Liga, so we will be entering the competitive mode early on. Make sure you pass the team’s physical when you join."
It didn’t take long for Deng Kai to sort things out with Barzagli.
Apparently, the latter had been crying on the phone for quite a while.
Andrea Barzagli, a name that Juventus and Italian fans would certainly not find unfamiliar.
He started out as a striker in the ’zona mista’ style and then moved to midfield; only last year, at the age of eighteen, did he switch to playing as a central defender.
He was a true star who had fought his way up from the very bottom.
Last season, he led his team, Rondinella, through the amateurs’ league and successfully into the Serie D of Italy.
That’s why a bid of 200,000 euros was an impossible-to-refuse offer for an amateur club, who usually traded players for a few thousand euros, seldom reaching tens of thousands.
Thinking about it that way, it made sense why Rondinella turned down the loan offer from Pistoiese in Serie C.
Also, Pistoiese’s offer to Barzagli didn’t include any promises of match play; had Barzagli really gone there, he probably wouldn’t have had more than five chances to play, essentially wasting his youth.
In fact, had it not been for Sporting Lisbon stepping in to purchase him...
Barzagli would have transferred to Ascoli in Serie C and once again helped the team rise to Serie B, then joined the Serie A team Chievo.
After transferring to Palermo, reaching his first peak in Wolfsburg, and reviving his career with a second peak at Juventus...
Chiellini, Bonucci, and other top Serie A central defenders would have eventually had to call him "brother," as the three would have been Italy’s most trusted defensive line in the national team.
What made Barzagli truly outstanding was his one-on-one defensive tackling.
Exceptionally strong.
In his later years, his slow turning speed became his fatal flaw, but he wasn’t even twenty years old yet, so speed wasn’t an issue.
This was definitely a good choice for a central defender position.
His natural talent as a central defender was much stronger than Feng Te’s, not by a little but by a significant margin.
...
Barzagli was just the beginning.
Trigella also landed a promising candidate on loan in the Premier League.
This player was a quality young talent, capable of playing in the first team either this year or the next.
Playing in a Premier League first team is certainly a valuable experience.
Such players are treasures; typically, teams don’t tend to loan them out, "What if you injure them or ruin them through training?"
And even if there were to be a loan, it wouldn’t come to Sporting Lisbon’s turn. These clubs would surely have partner teams to work with, preferring to ’keep the best for themselves.’
But this player was a special case this year.
Last year, he already made his debut in the first team, but later on, the club had no opportunities for him to play, so they loaned him out for half the year, fearing that his form would cool off.
This year was supposed to be his big break in the first team, but the club encountered issues with their transfers; the ones who should have left didn’t, and instead, newcomers blocked his chances, leaving this young player once again without much opportunity to play.
If he were to stay in the first team, he wouldn’t necessarily have enough playing time.
Out of a sense of responsibility towards the player, the team disclosed the situation and left the choice to him.
He had been contemplating taking a risk with the first team as he had confidence in himself.
But then Sporting Lisbon sent a loan request, which changed everything.
The club just completed a pleasant deal with Sporting Lisbon and didn’t want to burn bridges, so they let the player decide whether to go or not.
The player was also happy about the decision, since it meant he no longer had to risk it all with the first team. If he stayed with the first team and failed to compete for a starting spot as a central defender, his future would be uncertain.
So why not, just delay joining the Premier League first-team by a year?
And experiencing the fierce competition of the Portuguese league firsthand could be good, especially since its level of play is stronger than that of the English Championship and Italy’s Serie B.
These days, the Portuguese league and the Dutch Eredivisie are no less prestigious than the French Ligue 1 or even the German Bundesliga.
And so, the Premier League team called Chelsea, which had just sold Deschamps to Sporting Lisbon, discreetly announced the loan of their talented academy player John Terry to Sporting Lisbon for a season!
If we say that Barzagli was a world-class central defender at his peak.
Then John Terry is a regular in almost any version of the "top 10 central defenders."
He might not be the world number one central defender, but he is England’s number one, the most successful central defender in the Premier League’s golden era, and the future iron-willed leader of the Blues at Chelsea!
Even though it’s just a one-season loan, and even though Terry is only twenty years old now.
Honestly, he’s got to be much more useful than any of those Marcos, Facundo, or Feng Te in Sporting Lisbon’s central defense.
Feng Te: I’m really going to leave!
While the team was busy, Deng Kai continued making phone calls.
He snapped up the twenty-two-year-old striker Didier Drogba from Le Mans in France’s Ligue 2 for 400,000 Euros.
At first, Le Mans said that Ligue 1 club Guingamp was interested in Drogba and wanted to buy him, putting in an initial offer of 200,000 Euros and so on.
Deng Kai didn’t bother with small talk with Le Mans, retorting that 200,000 was too cheap, and bluntly asked if they’d sell for 400,000 Euros.
Le Mans had never seen such a situation before.
Didier Drogba looked robust and appeared to have potential as a striker, but his goal-scoring efficiency was really not that great.
Playing in Ligue 2 without making much of an impact, it was hard to believe that he would score more when playing in higher-level leagues.
But Deng Kai knew that some strikers’ goal-scoring abilities aren’t measured by the number of goals alone.
Perhaps he could score only around ten goals in lower leagues, but he could score about the same in top-tier leagues as well.
This made him a completely different type of forward compared to Jia De’er.
Jia De’er scored thirty or forty goals for several seasons in the Portuguese league.
But in top leagues, scoring ten in a season was difficult for him.
Of course, Deng Kai didn’t need to explain any of this to the other party.
The current Drogba might not yet have the ability to compete in top leagues.
But using Drogba as a backup for Jia De’er was still viable.
And if Deng Kai remembered correctly, Drogba would face a series of injuries this season. If he came over, he’d need to be checked and repaired first, and then they’d see how to use him—it wasn’t something they could decide on a whim.
Drogba grew up in a poor family, drifting between France and Ivory Coast from an early age, moving through several small clubs.
So when he learned that a Portuguese league team wanted him, he didn’t have much to hold onto and was ready to pack up and leave.
He had reasons he needed to fight for with all his might!
[PS: Alliance Hierarch, there are two more bonus Chapters to go, and I’ll strive to finish them tomorrow. I really couldn’t write today, as I just found out that one of A, B, C, who I share a roof with and dine with, tested positive, damn it.
I need to move to a two-person environment overnight to reduce the risk of infecting each other. No wonder I’ve been feeling dizzy and had diarrhea these past days...]
