Chapter 1 The Aftermath

In the aftermath, the English media presented a divided front. Some outlets extensively covered how difficult and spiritually uplifting it was for Liverpool's reserve team to win the FA Cup.

The *Liverpool Echo* was the most excited, headlining their front page with: "There are two best teams in Merseyside, one is Liverpool, and the other is Liverpool's reserve team!"

Using Shankly's famous quote at this time couldn't have been more appropriate.

These media outlets praised the performance of Liverpool's reserve team in the game. Some, with obvious inside knowledge, published stories behind the scenes, such as Chen Yingxiong taking the initiative to join the reserve team for the FA Cup, and Martin O'Neill almost wanting to abandon the FA Cup altogether.

As for the FA Cup semi-finals and finals, it was also Chen Yingxiong who asked Martin O'Neill to allow him to participate with the reserve team. Otherwise, Martin O'Neill would have directly sent the entire first-team lineup, like in the League Cup, sidelining the reserve team.

In short, they were telling readers that if it weren't for Chen Yingxiong... the so-called reserve team miracle would never have happened!

After the final, the media overcorrected and stopped mentioning Chen Yingxiong altogether. Now, it was like exonerating him.

But Chen Yingxiong didn't care.

He just wanted a championship, and he didn't care how significant his contribution was.

There was also another thing he didn't care about.

Another segment of the media extensively reported on Chen Yingxiong yawning during the national anthem ceremony. They generally used photos of Chen Yingxiong yawning with his mouth wide open, making him look ugly.

Then, these media outlets used highly sensational language to tell readers how outrageous Chen Yingxiong's actions were before yesterday's game!

These media outlets selectively ignored Chen Yingxiong and Martin O'Neill's explanations, or if they did mention them, they used very small fonts and quickly glossed over them. In short, unless you scrutinized every word, you wouldn't have any impression of the explanation.

Just as Martin O'Neill said, these media outlets were out to smear Chen Yingxiong from the start. They didn't like him, so they would naturally look for every opportunity to criticize him. When they saw Chen Yingxiong yawning during the national anthem, their first reaction wasn't anger, but joy and excitement—finally, they had caught him red-handed!

Look, even though their articles now seemed very patriotic, scolding Chen Yingxiong for disrespecting the British national anthem and the country, in reality, patriotism was just a smokescreen. Their real purpose was to attack Chen Yingxiong.

If they truly believed Chen Yingxiong and Martin O'Neill's explanations, wouldn't they lose the opportunity to use this incident to attack Chen Yingxiong?

So, even if what Chen Yingxiong and O'Neill said was the truth, they would twist it into "sophistry." Truth, they believed, could only be controlled by them; only what they said was the truth. Any "truth" not approved by them was a lie, a lie to cover up the truth!

Manipulating public opinion and influencing people's hearts, that was the essence of it.

But unfortunately, they had encountered a stubborn rock. No matter what they said in the newspapers, Chen Yingxiong didn't care at all. Their words couldn't possibly affect Chen Yingxiong's image because, over the years, their persistent and focused smearing of Chen Yingxiong had already created immunity. Those who hated Chen Yingxiong already hated him, and those who liked Chen Yingxiong still liked him. It was impossible for their current words to make those who originally liked Chen Yingxiong turn around and hate him.

Therefore, it had no impact on Chen Yingxiong at all.

Just look at the reaction in Liverpool. All the Liverpool fans interviewed praised Chen Yingxiong's performance. As for yawning during the national anthem, who cared about such trivial details!

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Only the British cared about Chen Yingxiong yawning during the national anthem, and even then, not all British people did.

In England, in Europe, in China, and around the world, there was something that attracted even more attention than yawning during the national anthem and the Liverpool reserve team miracle.

It had been the focus of media discussion for several days.

That was Chen Yingxiong's total goals in a single season reaching triple digits!

Just like that commentator had envisioned, when he revealed this during the game, all the media realized what a huge news story they had missed.

But thankfully, not too many days had passed, and it was still within the effective time frame for news.

It was better late than never.

Precisely because they were afraid of losing the sensational impact of this news, the media unleashed enormous power in an instant, spreading the story around the world in the shortest amount of time.

In no time, everyone knew that there was a young man who had scored more than a hundred goals in a single season, and his name was Chen Yingxiong.

"...The number of goals in all official competitions in a single season... that is to say, only counting league, cup, and Champions League games, not other miscellaneous warm-up matches, only counting goals in these official matches, Chen Yingxiong has already scored one hundred and two goals this season! This is a very remarkable achievement..."

"...What is the concept of scoring over a hundred goals in official competitions in a single season? Let me put it this way... in the history of world football, no player has ever scored so many goals in official competitions in a single season! Of course, the number of games that could be played in a season was also very limited at that time. But in any case, Hero has created a piece of history. He has erected a monument for later generations that is so high, they can't even see the top!"

"...Of these one hundred and two goals, sixty-two were league goals, eighteen were Champions League goals, fourteen were FA Cup goals, seven were League Cup goals, and one Community Shield goal... adding up to exactly one hundred and two! A large part of Hero's improved performance came from the league, with sixty-two league goals, allowing him to break Dixie Dean's record of sixty goals..."

"Hero's goal-scoring ability is truly amazing. In terms of goal-scoring ability alone, I believe it is impossible to find his match on this planet! In his first season at Liverpool, he scored a total of forty-six goals, then suddenly increased to seventy-five in the second season, and eighty-seven in the third season, breaking the single-season goal record that Messi had just set a year ago. Now, he has greatly increased the record he created to one hundred and two goals!"

"...Hero is the first player in football history to break a hundred goals in a single season! In today's football, later generations are always repeating the footsteps of their predecessors, innovating on the experiences of their predecessors. Records are also the same, so everyone is 'breaking' records. Without the original record, how can you break it? But Hero has created a feat—he has created a brand new record. He has done something that no one has ever done before. He has become the first person in history!"

"...What makes us feel terrified is—this season isn't over yet! Hero still has one Champions League final left! He will continue to refresh the record he has created. Can he score in the Champions League final? My intuition tells me—yes! Facing his old rival Barcelona, would Hero easily let them off?"

Media outlets and major official news agencies around the world gave Chen Yingxiong's achievements very high praise.

Nike, as Chen Yingxiong's main sponsor, even designed a special trophy for Chen Yingxiong—a twenty-five-centimeter-high, pure gold, cube-shaped "monument," with a very eye-catching number "100" on the front of the monument, and the opponents of all one hundred and two goals densely engraved elsewhere on the monument.

In ancient times, when the victorious side returned from war, they would choose to gather the heads of the enemy soldiers and pile them into a small mountain, then seal it with earth to form a high mound to show off their martial prowess. This was called a *jingguan*.

Now, Nike inadvertently did something exactly the same as building a *jingguan*.

Aren't those densely packed names the corpses of enemies?

However, this is still a design draft and has not yet been made, after all, the season is not really over yet.

There is still a Champions League final, and maybe the name of another team will have to be added to this monument?

At the same time, Nike also announced that they would launch a brand new boot for Chen Yingxiong, named "Hero 100." Just knowing the name tells you that this is specially made to commemorate Chen Yingxiong's breaking a hundred goals in a single season. However, Nike also said that this is not a simple commemorative shoe. Nike plans to develop it into a series, just like they once launched the classic 90 boots. I wonder if this 100 series of boots will become a classic in the future...

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But this matter is not over yet.

Because someone suddenly thought of a question—since Chen Yingxiong has scored one hundred and two goals in a single season, how many goals has he scored in total so far in his career?

Many players are far from the time to start counting league goals when they are twenty-six years old, because their careers are still very long, and the data counted now is often meaningless.

But Chen Yingxiong is different. After everyone counted the number of goals he scored in a single season, they followed the clues and extended the topic, and felt that this matter was very promising.

Think about it, he scored one hundred and two goals this season.

How many did he score last season? Eighty-seven, breaking Messi's record.

What about the season before that? Seventy-five.

And the season before that? Forty-six...

So many goals, and these are just the numbers for four seasons, so how many goals has he scored in his career?

The media suddenly felt that this number would be quite scary...

But this prompted them to dig through the old papers even more.

Because they were eager to know the final answer.

They were full of curiosity.

The records of Chen Yingxiong's early years were not deep, because he was not very famous at that time, and he was also in the Russian Super League, a small and unpopular league, so some of the data records were not so complete.

Just going to the official website to look through the scorers list of past years may not be useful. They also have to find news reports about Chen Yingxiong from that year and look for clues from them.

Because the number of goals in a career is not just league goals, there are also many cup goals.

Finally, after a search, everyone came up with a number.

Then they were frightened by this number. Their first reaction was that they had calculated it wrong, so they went back and added up the goals one by one.

But no matter how many times they calculated it, the result was the same.

Since making his debut for Zenit St. Petersburg in August 2006, Chen Yingxiong has scored a total of... five hundred goals in ten seasons of his career!

No more, no less, five hundred!

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ps, I don't know why, but no matter how I modify this chapter, it's still the content of the previous chapter. I've modified it no less than five times, and it's still the same result. I even went to my editor to ask, and it's still the same.

I don't know why this is.

Later, I thought of a possibility, maybe it's because the number of words in this chapter is less than the number of words in the previous chapter?

So I decided to explain it at the end of this chapter and add some words to see if I can change it.

I'm really sorry for the trouble this has caused everyone...

Please forgive me!