Chapter 400: Chapter 399: The First Warm-Up Match, Dalian Shide
As time went by, major teams successively began their preseason training camps.
Some even announced their warm-up matches, friendly matches, and other follow-up plans.
This year, Sporting Lisbon has three friendly matches.
Friendly matches are quite a science.
Opponents can’t all be weak, as that won’t test new players or new formations.
But the opponents also can’t all be strong, as consecutive losses might dampen the players’ enthusiasm at the start of the season, or even bring bad omens.
Sporting Lisbon’s arrangements this year seem quite reasonable; their third friendly match is against the French league team Nice.
This summer, Sporting Lisbon took Evra from Nice.
The transfer fee of two million euros made Nice very satisfied, so when Sporting Lisbon approached them for a friendly match later, they didn’t hesitate for a second.
Evra’s position was a mess, lacking the composure a midfielder or forward should have while moving around the mid-front, and Nice had been wanting to sell him but never found a sucker.
Evra: "That’s not what you said at first!"
Sporting Lisbon’s second friendly match opponent is the Premier League team Chelsea.
That goes without saying, Chelsea is very satisfied with Sporting Lisbon now.
They generally believe that Sporting Lisbon has trained for them a center back currently worth over fifteen million euros.
Some extreme fans even believe Terry could become a Chelsea legend in the future, with a potential peak value reaching thirty million euros.
But to this, Deng Kai said dismissively, put that twenty years later, and a hundred million won’t be a problem!
After all, in the future, it’s hard for anyone Chelsea buys for around a hundred million to become a club legend.
But from another perspective, Sporting Lisbon getting a Premier League starting-level center back like Terry on loan for a minimal fee is also a good deal.
Besides, this center back also helped the team win the treble as a key player last season.
As for Sporting Lisbon’s first preseason match opponent this year... it’s got the domestic fans excited.
Because it’s a domestic club—Dalian Shide!
Even more bizarre, it’s said that Sporting Lisbon took the initiative to contact Shide for this warm-up match!
Just how awesome is that!
When this news spread, there was jubilation in the Chinese football scene.
Has the European football finally taken note of our Chinese football?
Is Chinese football on the rise?
But soon, the truth behind the matter was dug up by "Soccer Connoisseur".
Soccer Connoisseur: "Witness the latest lineup of the European treble winner first-hand, and behind this exclusive enjoyment, there might be Maksa’s friendly gesture towards the national team!"
This report recounted the great achievements of Maksa over the past three years, calling him the biggest contributor behind Sporting Lisbon’s treble win.
It even shamelessly credited the World Youth Championship achievements to Maksa’s account.
Let’s be clear, that was the Portugal team led by Deng Kai, whom you could replace with a dog on the coach’s bench and they’d still win the championship.
The article suggested that Maksa was very interested in joining the national team’s coaching staff, so he took the initiative to facilitate this collaboration.
Domestic journalists tried to confirm this with Dalian Shide, but Shide themselves were clueless about the specifics. Saying they had nothing to tell would be too embarrassing, so they simply agreed with "Soccer Connoisseur’s" explanation.
Word spread from one to ten, and from ten to a hundred, and suddenly the domestic football community found itself in a bit of a bind.
The public’s demand for Maksa to take on the coaching role was overwhelming.
Eventually, even the leaders inquired about the matter.
Consequently, the football authorities decided internally that if Maksa could lead this new Sporting Lisbon team to defeat Dalian Shide by three or more goals, and manage to play superstars like Matthaus, Guardiola, and Deschamps...
They would give Maksa a surprise, for instance... offering him a position in the national team’s coaching staff after the match!
Maksa, upon receiving the news, immediately sought advice from Deng Kai.
Deng Kai assured him that he had everything under control.
The reason why Deng Kai made such arrangements has to do with his understanding of the national team.
In the future, when a programmer gets into trouble, some say it wouldn’t mean much for the national team; those bad things will inevitably crop up again.
But Deng Kai confirmed that the saying often mentioned in "Wild Gale" is very true.
"The normalization of cracking down on evils!"
"Just clean more, eliminate more, strike more, and scrub harder. Even if football shoes can’t lead Chinese football to rise, at least they can avoid dragging it down,"
From Chen Tao and Dong Fangzhuo to Deng Zhuoxiang and Wang Chu... these are just the overt reasons. Behind the scenes... in a nutshell, rather than flipping the table twenty years from now, it’s better to pierce through this darkness early and let Chinese football develop in the sunshine for a while and see how it goes.
Otherwise... to just watch helplessly as the girl groups of neighboring countries and Little Neon gain fame and fortune at the World Cup, wouldn’t that be heartbreaking!
...
Time flew, and the day of the friendly match arrived.
At the Dalian People’s Stadium, the stadium, with a seating capacity of 80,000, was flooded with at least 100,000 fans.
The star-studded Lisbon Sporting players received enthusiastic support from the fans during their warm-up.
Apart from Deschamps, who was absent due to significant private matters, the Lisbon Sporting team was fully present.
Although the head coach was Trigella, it was Maxa who took charge of everything from the press conference to on-the-spot coaching for this friendly.
Maxa even stated in the pre-match press conference that if all went well, his goal for this game was to let all team players play, to give Chinese fans the most value for their ticket price!
This further endeared him to the Chinese fans.
During the warm-up, different players received varying degrees of welcome, as there were many unknown players in the Lisbon Sporting team.
Yaya Touré, Vidic, Evra, Maicon, Kaká, and Veloso... most people didn’t recognize them.
Reina and "Little Ron" Ronaldinho were slightly better known; the former was a backup goalkeeper for Barcelona, the pride of a top-tier club. The latter was the team’s record signing, who had to be noticed by anyone following Lisbon Sporting, referred to as the Football Sprite by experts.
Ibrahimovic, Drogba, Pepe, and Barzagli were a bit more popular, benefiting from their presence in Lisbon Sporting the previous season.
Among them, Ibrahimovic stood a notch higher because of his aloof character and passion for practicing Tai Chi.
Pepe rose half a notch for his flying kick at Barcelona’s De Boer in the Europa League.
Then came the superstars like Guardiola and Deschamps, known to all fans. Wu Xudong, who was promoted from the Sporting Lisbon youth ranks to the first team this season, also had this level of popularity in China.
After all, he was their own child, and when the fans saw him, they saw the hope of Chinese football.
Next up were the superstars Matthaus and Schmeichel; the former was once the world’s top player, and the latter a Manchester United legend and twice a treble winner, who always attracted crowds wherever he went.
But unexpectedly, Feng Te’s popularity was just as high as Matthaus’s.
Feng Te: ???
Feng Te: Normal, my ability and Matthaus’s are evenly matched. He is stronger, but I am taller, with advantages on both sides.
The reason for this lay in Feng Te’s frequent public expressions of support for Deng Kai.
Yes, it was support, well actually, it was endorsement.
He was jokingly referred to by domestic fans as "Europe’s Number One Deng Kai Superfan."
In China, Trigella’s popularity was also in this rank.
The only ones higher than them in the Lisbon Sporting team were Maxa and Ronaldo.
The former needs no explanation, the Saint!
The future chief assistant of the national team’s coaching staff, the cornerstone of Chinese football! If he really joined the national team after the match, this year could even be defined as the genesis year of Chinese football!
Ronaldo was likewise endowed with a nickname by domestic fans—Portugal’s Number One Passionate Man!
Because almost every time there was an interview at the training ground, if Deng Kai was there, Ronaldo was there, and if Ronaldo was there, Deng Kai was there.
Ron doesn’t leave Kai, and Kai doesn’t leave Ron.
Even the person who spent the most personal time with Deng Kai each year wasn’t his girlfriend Hathaway but Ronaldo!
This season, due to the addition of Ronaldinho, the name "Ron" in China became ambiguous.
To make it easier for domestic fans to differentiate, they altered the New Chinese Dictionary, oh no... they altered the internet encyclopedia. Except for "Little Ron," which refers exclusively to Ronaldinho, any other mention of "Ron" by domestic fans specifically refers to Ronaldo!
This is the treatment for the first among Deng Kai’s five tiger generals!
Ronaldo: Under me???
Of course, Deng Kai’s appearance whipped up a frenzy across the stadium.
What moved Chinese fans was that Deng Kai didn’t rush to warm up or just wave his hand to discharge the formality.
Instead, he jogged around the field, carefully greeting fans from all sides and even engaging in some interactions.
At that moment, domestic fans felt they were the happiest fans in the world.
Because they knew, no matter where Deng Kai played, he was "one of their own"!
