Chapter 1 The First Team

For Chen Tao, the first team meant his son had become successful. For Chen Yingxiong, it meant even more.

Chen Yingxiong was full of anticipation for life on the first team. Here, he would have the opportunity to participate in professional leagues, the chance to score and celebrate in front of tens of thousands of live spectators and millions of television viewers...

He would become a household name, receive more lucrative contracts, and gain numerous advertising endorsements. And, of course... he would be pursued by passionate, gold-haired beauties, and then he would reluctantly give in...

Of course, these were all just his daydreams. What he needed to do now was... meet his teammates on the first team.

Assistant coach Potter took Chen Yingxiong to the locker room, handed him over to the team captain, Vladislav Radimov, and left.

It was the captain's responsibility to introduce the new player to his teammates.

The Zenit first team was definitely more international than the youth team. It included players from all over the world, speaking different languages and with diverse experiences.

Like the team captain, Radimov.

This former Russian star, who had emerged from the Smena football academy in St. Petersburg, had played for CSKA Moscow, Zaragoza, Dynamo Moscow, Levski Sofia, and Krylia Sovetov Samara before finally returning to Zenit St. Petersburg.

He had been a member of the Soviet Union's under-16 and under-18 youth teams, and later became a member of the Russian under-21 youth team. He represented Russia in the 1996 European Championship and performed well. He then transferred to the Spanish team Zaragoza.

But his performance in Zaragoza was terrible, and after a period of lackluster performance, he went to the Bulgarian league.

Although Radimov had been to three countries, he did not speak English. Without a translator, communication was a bit difficult.

Standing at 1.82 meters, Radimov had to look up to see Chen Yingxiong.

*An Eastern face,* he thought. *This must be a teammate of those three Koreans.* The new coach really liked Koreans. He brought four of them with him as soon as he took office!

If Chen Yingxiong knew what he was thinking, he would definitely shout, "You're the Korean! Your whole family is Korean!"

As a Chinese person who didn't idolize Koreans, this kind of reaction was perfectly normal…

Radimov asked him in Russian, "Do you speak Russian, young man?"

Chen Yingxiong thought for a long time, and then replied in broken, very unskilled Russian, "Only a little bit, I just started learning..." Although Yesenin's teaching method was very interesting, and Chen Yingxiong felt that he was improving quickly, it hadn't reached the point where he could chat fluently with his teammates in Russian.

Seeing his pained expression when he spoke Russian, Radimov knew that this kid hadn't even scratched the surface. He thought it would be better to hand him over to those three Koreans and let them introduce him—although they had only transferred this summer, at least they had been here for three weeks...

So he took Chen Yingxiong to the Korean player Lee Ho, who was changing his clothes, and said to him, "Lee, your compatriot, new here. Introduce him to everyone..."

Lee Ho was very happy to hear that the team had another Korean player. The Korean group was growing stronger!

He turned around and saw an unfamiliar face...

As a player on the South Korean national team, he knew all the South Korean national players, but this person was a complete stranger.

He thought that maybe he was from the domestic league. Looking at his face, he was quite young, maybe even a child...

Since he was his junior, the younger one should greet him first. As a rising star in South Korea, Lee Ho didn't believe that a Korean soccer player wouldn't recognize him. So, there was no need to introduce himself; the other party should bow and greet him.

So he looked at Chen Yingxiong and didn't say anything.

Chen Yingxiong knew that Zenit St. Petersburg had several Korean players, but he couldn't tell them apart. To him, Koreans, male or female, all looked the same...

He thought that Captain Radimov was introducing him to this new teammate, and waited for the new teammate to greet him.

Radimov was waiting for Lee Ho to take over his task...

The three of them stood in a circle, looking at each other. For a full half minute, no one spoke.

The others in the locker room were initially curious when they saw the captain leading in a big guy, and they kept staring at Chen Yingxiong and the others. But after Radimov said a word to Lee Ho, the three of them seemed to be frozen, not saying a word and just looking at each other.

The locker room suddenly fell silent. Everyone was wondering what was going on. Those who were talking also stopped and turned to look at the three of them.

This strange silence lasted for a long time.

Until Chen Yingxiong broke the silence and asked in English, "What's wrong?"

Radimov didn't understand English, and neither did Lee Ho.

Lee Ho also felt strange. Anxiously, he asked the captain in Korean, "Who is he?"

Radimov and Chen Yingxiong didn't understand Korean. Radimov asked Lee Ho in Russian, "Don't you know each other?"

The other two Korean players, Kim Dong-jin and Hyun Young-min, also came over, but unfortunately, neither of them spoke Russian either, and could only ask Lee Ho in Korean, "What's going on?"

Lee Ho shook his head and frowned, "I don't know..."

The Russian players surrounded Radimov and asked him what was happening.

"I don't know, I asked Lee to introduce the team to his compatriot..." Radimov pointed at Lee Ho and then at Chen Yingxiong.

"Another Korean?" The team's right back, Alexandr Anyukov, exclaimed. He realized that he shouldn't have said that in front of his Korean teammates, so he quickly looked at the three Koreans and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that they hadn't noticed him.

"Seriously? The coach really likes Korean players... I think if this continues, we'll have to change our name to Seoul Zenit, right?" It was clear that Anyukov wasn't the only one who thought there were too many Koreans on the team.

Radimov, of course, wanted to prioritize the team's unity, so he stopped his men from gossiping and asked, "Stop arguing, the problem now is... how are we going to communicate with them?"

"Does he speak English?" asked the team's Norwegian center back, Erik Hagen. He had transferred from Norway to Zenit last season and could speak English.

Radimov looked at him as if he had seen a savior—"Ask him!"

Hagen went over to Chen Yingxiong and said, "Hi, hello." He used English.

The locker room, after a strange silence, fell into an uproar again, and throughout the whole process, Chen Yingxiong didn't know what was going on. He could only stand alone in the locker room, at a loss, with nothing but unfamiliar languages in his ears.

Listening to those people talking, he didn't know what they were talking about. A sense of separation was forming. Chen Yingxiong vowed in his heart that he would go back and have Yesenin give him a crash course in Russian!

Just then, he heard Hagen's English!

The feeling... was as exciting as hearing Chinese at Ruilongju. He quickly nodded, "Hello. You speak English?"

Hagen smiled. It would be easy to deal with this kid if he spoke English. At least they could communicate...

He patted Chen Yingxiong on the shoulder to show his friendliness, and then he asked, "Are you Korean?"

"Huh?" Chen Yingxiong was stunned.

A huge laugh rang out in Zenit's locker room.

Everyone was amused by what had just happened.

Radimov also laughed. He used Hagen as a translator to apologize to Chen Yingxiong. "I'm very sorry, since there are already three Korean teammates on the team, I assumed that anyone with an Eastern face was Korean..."

Lee Ho, on the other hand, had a look of mixed amusement and annoyance on his face—he wasn't happy to be mistaken for a Chinese person. As a rising star in South Korean football, he looked down on Chinese players. For more than twenty years, the Chinese team had never beaten South Korea, which gave South Korean players a great sense of pride when facing Chinese players. How could the captain mistake him for a Chinese person? The difference was obvious...

Chen Yingxiong was indeed angry at first when he found out that he had been mistaken for a Korean, but Radimov apologized so sincerely that he had to accept it. He didn't know what Lee Ho was thinking, but his thoughts were the same as Lee Ho's—how could anyone mistake a Chinese person for a Korean? Koreans clearly had such small eyes...

After the misunderstanding was cleared up, Hagen took Chen Yingxiong to meet his teammates.

Hagen introduced them one by one.

"This is goalkeeper Kamil Contofalsky, this is goalkeeper Vyacheslav Malafeev, this is defender Pavel Mareš, the one who's about the same height as you is center back Martin Škrtel, that person is Alexandr Anyukov... and of course, you can't miss this person, he's our team's number one star, nicknamed 'Tsar' Andrey Arshavin!"

In fact, Chen Yingxiong didn't know how good Arshavin was, but after seeing Arshavin's appearance, he thought that this kid was about the same age as him. He thought it was amazing that someone so young was called "Tsar"!

His teammates welcomed him, both the old and new players.

Only Lee Ho's expression was a little awkward—he had previously thought that Chen Yingxiong was his junior and had been waiting for Chen Yingxiong to greet him, but what he got was the news that the other party was Chinese...

Chen Yingxiong didn't feel awkward at all. As long as he proved that he wasn't Korean, but Chinese, that was enough.

Finally, Captain Radimov introduced Chen Yingxiong's background to everyone—"He was promoted from the youth team, I hope everyone will help him out!"

Some people were very interested in Chen Yingxiong, while others seemed absent-minded.

Many players were promoted from the youth team, but unfortunately, none of them could stay for too long and went to the reserve team. Who knew how long this big guy could last on the first team?

Perhaps the reserve team was his final destination.

Those who were interested in Chen Yingxiong were interested in his physique.

He seemed even taller than Martin Škrtel and goalkeeper Kamil Contofalsky, who were currently the tallest on the team...

Martin Škrtel used Hagen as a translator to ask Chen Yingxiong, "How tall are you, Chen?"

Chen Yingxiong replied, "1.92 meters."

"Ah, my team record for tallest has been broken." Škrtel sighed after hearing this answer, and then he patted Chen Yingxiong on the shoulder, "Congratulations, you are now the tallest person at Zenit!"

This was Chen Yingxiong's first meeting with his teammates on the first team.