Chapter 734: Chapter 733: To Untie the Bell, One Must Strike by Lowering Dimensions
Others might not know, but how could these football conglomerates be unaware?
Starting from the year Sporting Lisbon won the quintuple, followed by the treble in the Champions League, Manchester City’s double, and this year’s Manchester City quintuple.
A whole four years.
Do you know how many special matches they arranged for Deng Kai?
But do you know the result?
All their arrangements, all of them... no matter how targeted they were.
As long as the result was to make Deng Kai lose.
Then Deng Kai was certain to win!
This is too unbelievable.
You must know, they even arranged several matches for Deng Kai against the top clubs.
Those were basically set up for a loss.
Because those top clubs couldn’t possibly lose to Deng Kai’s team.
Guess what happened?
Such a letdown!
Barcelona, such a letdown!
All hyped up like that, but still couldn’t win!
You can stop calling yourself Catalonia now.
"If we use all our resources to bring this matter to light, we can help you out of this predicament," Mansour personally flew to Lisbon to discuss with Deng Kai.
The European Championship was the first major global competition that Deng Kai officially participated in.
This year was even Deng Kai’s invincible year.
As long as he didn’t perform disastrously at the European Championship, whether or not he won was irrelevant; the Golden Ball at the end of the year was definitely his.
No one could snatch it away.
This was very advantageous to Manchester City.
Mansour absolutely supported the deputy owner of Manchester City in making a big splash at the European Championship.
Even if you take a step back, the Golden Ball couldn’t be missed.
Sixty-five unbeaten games, that was shockingly impressive.
But... it was infuriating.
Why should a player be victim to such dirty off-field tactics and be prevented from playing football?
"However, our intelligence indicates that this matter with the football conglomerates might just be the first layer," Jiang Yunzhu spoke up.
Mansour’s pupils shrank, "What do you mean? Could there be a second layer?"
Jiang Yunzhu whispered, "According to reliable information, several major parties participating in Spain’s grand elections this year have made Deng Kai one of their key points of contention."
"On the Catalan side, they are emphasizing the ’Deng Kai hatred theory’, using Deng Kai and Barcelona’s historical animosity to present this targeting of Deng Kai and Portugal as a major achievement."
"This also helps to cleanse the blot of Spain being knocked out by South Korea in the World Cup two years ago. At that time, the Barcelona region almost became the public enemy in all of Spain."
"And Spain’s current leader Aznar’s performance was poor during the global financial crisis, leading to a plummet in his approval ratings. His important ally Florentino, who is in charge of Real Madrid, will become a key factor in his election."
"In the season that just ended, Real Madrid won nothing, and the ’Galacticos’ became a joke. The ’Zidane + Pavon’ policy has become all talk and no action."
"Florentino is equally besieged on all sides."
"But if at this crucial moment he can bring in a world number one star like Deng Kai, Florentino’s crisis of leadership would be resolved."
"And with Real Madrid’s influence, Aznar’s sliding approval ratings are also very likely to be restored."
Mansour was stunned.
It wasn’t that all this information sounded far-fetched.
After all, Mansour was born into a royal family, and he and his brother had just been through a struggle for succession.
Their faction had become the biggest winners.
And Manchester City played no small part in that.
Otherwise, he couldn’t guarantee he would still be alive today.
If you’re gone, your legitimate status is useless.
Those who lose their cool and break the rules to take ruthless actions have always been numerous.
Similarly, Mansour understood the concept of ’fighting in a lower dimension’.
If you want to do anything well, sometimes you can’t just focus on that one thing.
If you can, it means someone must be covering for you, shielding you from the elements.
Take playing football, for instance, do you think it’s enough to just play the game?
What then is the agent for?
If a player has to both play football and deal with commercial contracts on his own, he’d be run ragged.
Similarly, does the club management only care about the team’s performance?
There must also be business considerations.
Even considerations from regional officials.
For clubs as major as Real Madrid and AC Milan, they’re directly linked to national officials.
Football is just football.
But football is never just football.
The more one loves and understands football, the clearer this becomes.
So truly loving football doesn’t mean denying the falsehoods within the game, because football is rife with falsehoods.
To truly love football is to remain passionate about the few parts that are genuine, even after recognizing the false aspects!
Mansour was actually surprised by Jiang Yunzhu’s sources of information.
After all, they currently don’t have many leads in the UAE.
That’s exactly what they’ve been trying to achieve.
They hope to participate in the international community’s games, to become an influential party in major events, thus continually expanding the UAE’s power.
But it’s too difficult.
They haven’t yet found a way in.
Manchester City is an opportunity.
But using Manchester City as a breakthrough could take them ten, twenty years to achieve what Jiang Yunzhu is capable of now.
And as for Jiang Yunzhu...
She just smiled slightly in response, offering no explanation.
The great Eastern nation.
Thousands of years of cultural accumulation.
How could they be disturbed by those with no more than two hundred and fifty years of history who throw five hundred thousand around?
This is a chess game.
A very big chess game.
Our current silence, is for the roaring tigers and soaring dragons decades hence!
"Do you have a way then?" Mansour looked at Jiang Yunzhu.
Jiang Yunzhu helplessly shook her head.
As I said, we need to keep quiet for now to avoid startling the snake in the grass.
Both of them then turned their gaze to Deng Kai.
This hurdle... would be hard to clear.
The King of Football, Deng Kai’s debut tournament in Portugal, it seems, would have to wait until the summer of 2006 in Germany.
However, Deng Kai stood up, took out a bottle of Romane-Conti from the cabinet, uncorked it, and poured it into glasses for Mansour and Jiang Yunzhu.
Mansour was startled, "Kai, this wine hasn’t breathed."
Deng Kai raised his glass, "There’s no time to let it breathe."
Mansour felt that Deng Kai was hinting at something.
Indeed, Deng Kai’s next words changed their complexions: "No matter how much a corner of Catalonia struggles, it cannot affect the bigger picture."
"Barcelona could become a very successful club, but it is unlikely to become what they aspire to be."
"Aznar has made a tremendous economic contribution to Spain. But just as the economy can prop him up, it can also be his downfall. His decline is already set, irreversible."
Having said that, Deng Kai extended his glass towards Mansour: "May I ask my most trusted and dear partner, Mr. Mansour, to take a trip to Madrid for me?"
While lifting his glass, Mansour said, "Do you want me to use UAE’s resources to convince Aznar? To get him to sort this out?"
Never mind how lively that lawyers’ organization seems, as if anyone with enough cash could put anyone else in jail.
But once officials speak up, these guys all have to back down.
