Chapter 319: Chapter 318: Deng Kai Understands Soccer
On March 5th, the 24th round of the Portuguese League.
Quaresma finally broke his goal drought, scoring for his team.
Ronaldo was in red-hot form, scoring a brace and earning the title of the match’s best player.
Deng Kai made both a goal and an assist, scoring the same as Ronaldo.
Viana and Pepe both provided assists.
Sporting Lisbon won the match with a decisive 4-1 victory over their opponents.
However, Schmeichel was not happy because of a last-minute mistake by Pepe and Feng Te that led to an easy goal for the opponents, stripping Schmeichel of his clean sheet bonus.
On March 12th, the 25th round of the Portuguese League.
Viana scored and assisted, being chosen as the best player on the pitch.
Ronaldo scored in consecutive games, quietly maintaining his position as the second highest goal scorer in the Portuguese League, not overtaken by Nuno Gomes behind him, nor left behind by the top goal scorer Jia De’er.
Drogba finally scored, maintaining a pace of hitting the net roughly every four or five games.
Other forwards might have panicked at such an efficiency, which seemed laughable.
But not Drogba. Trigella was extremely satisfied with Drogbas performance, and after an initial fixation on scoring goals, Drogba had evolved into a more mature state.
Even if he didn’t score a single goal afterwards, as long as he could help the team and they could win, he knew his starting spot was secure.
And there, the brilliantly talented Swedish giant Ibrahimovic was also benched by the lesser-known Drogba.
Haha.
In this game, Pepe and Deng Kai also delivered assists.
Pepe’s assist was particularly surprising, as his through pass from midfield broke straight through the opposition’s defense.
This was indeed an eye-opener.
Sporting Lisbon continued to put pressure on Porto in the league standings, trail them closely.
After experiencing the baptism of AC Milan, the players of Sporting Lisbon grew invisibly.
They didn’t feel any change in themselves, but this wave of big victories told them everything was different.
They couldn’t go back anymore.
In this wave of performances, Deng Kai, Ronaldo, and Viana were all standout players.
Drogba, Pepe, and Ibrahimovic each had their moments of brilliance.
Quaresma’s form was still inconsistent.
Matthaus’s injury had healed, and he started returning to the team for adaptive training.
But in the midst of this galaxy of stars, Viana’s popularity surged once again.
The reason was... the just-concluded Milan derby, where AC Milan thrashed Inter Milan 6-0, shocking the world!
This was Inter Milan, after all!
When was the last time such a scoreline appeared?
It was arguably the most humiliating moment for Inter Milan in decades.
Parma, at least, needed two legs to beat Inter with a score of 6-1.
AC Milan, their arch-rival, achieved this in one game, and did it more emphatically!
Albertini, known as the darling of Italy, said after the match, "This is crazy; to outsiders, it seems insane. But what I want to say mirrors what Deng Kai wanted to say half a month ago: people have overestimated this Inter Milan."
"Deng Kai knows football, we aren’t too strong, it’s that they’re too weak!"
The superstar Rivaldo, who joined AC Milan from Real Madrid and is known as one of the four great talents in the defensive midfielder position in the 90s, along with Albertini, also said, "Inter Milan has a big problem with their midfield, we can take whatever we want on the pitch."
Though the youngster Gattuso, bought by AC Milan, has had an unstable performance this season, he excelled in the derby: "The Inter midfield is just a pile of crap, their midfield players are really awful."
"Seedorf is passable, but that Pirlo is really bad, too soft and slow. I can totally imagine the pain of partnering with him, but he’s still not the worst performing midfielder at Inter, so you can imagine how overrated they are."
The Ukrainian missile Shevchenko: "I’m happy to defeat Inter, but you can tell their form is not good. They haven’t been the same since being eliminated by Sporting Lisbon."
The German star Bierhoff: "Inter’s defense lacks height, and even Sporting Lisbon’s youngsters like Drogba and Ibrahimovic can do as they please here, let alone a top-class center forward like me?"
The stars of AC Milan don’t hold back on or off the pitch.
Inter’s fans don’t even have the courage to talk back to their opponents.
Because their home team was just too disappointing this time.
Because of this, they once again strongly call for the team to buy Viana and perform a radical makeover of the midfield.
Viana’s popularity thus soared.
It is reported that Inter fans generally believe that if they can get Viana for twenty million euros, they would agree.
Seedorf was bought for twenty-two million euros at the time, and Viana is not inferior to Seedorf, although his original platform has been hyped a lot, the key is that Inter has tried him out.
Useful.
Consequently, Viana’s valuation on Transfermarkt continued to soar to twenty million euros.
It even surpassed Quaresma.
Quaresma’s peak valuation was over twenty million, but with this fluctuation in form, his value fell slightly to eighteen million euros.
Cristiano Ronaldo and Deng Kai currently have no valuation, as they are still some distance from a transfer, and no team has made a bid for them yet, so it remains blank.
In the future, once a team makes a bid for them, their valuation will be constantly updated.
Cristiano Ronaldo, unless something unexpected happens, will also have a valuation close to twenty million when he leaves Sporting Lisbon.
As for Deng Kai, it’s hard to say.
He’s got too many debuffs on him.
Though he grew a bit this season and is probably around one meter seventy, the season records the start data, which was one meter sixty-five, and this height is a big disadvantage.
Yellow race, Chinese descent, there has never been a top player of this ethnic origin, and it’s not looked favorably upon in terms of bloodlines.
Furthermore, the Asian market, the Chinese market hasn’t been fully developed yet, limiting the commercial value of the players.
Nationalities from England, France, Spain, and Germany are considered more valuable, other European countries come next, followed by South America, and Asian countries are even less so.
Last but not least, Deng Kai has fallen out with the three football giants: Barcelona, Bayern Munich, and Inter Milan.
This has seriously affected his marketability.
It’s not that he’s certain to join these three teams, but without the price-driving actions of these three teams, his valuation will definitely be several million less.
...
March 15th.
The entire Kaiserslautern team landed in Lisbon.
The quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup are about to kick off.
Rehhagel, in an interview with reporters, said, "Trigella is widely recognized as a master in youth training within the circle, he is very good at coaching young players, and Sporting Lisbon’s current performance is inseparable from his coaching."
"Moreover, I think many people underestimate Trigella’s tactical coaching ability as a head coach. Being able to collaborate closely with a tactical master like Maxa can only prove that Trigella is at least on the same level as Maxa as a head coach."
