Hearing Chen Yingxiong's boastful words, Basten laughed and said, "What do you want to learn?"

"I want to learn how you can score any kind of goal!" Chen Yingxiong replied.

Basten nodded. "What a coincidence. That's something I can teach."

"Haha, I knew it!" Chen Yingxiong was very happy because he had guessed correctly.范.Basten didn't teach him any specific techniques because he didn't actually have any specific techniques worth teaching. What he was good at wasn't how to shoot, dribble, pass, or get rid of opponents... what he was good at was using his brain to play football, instead of simply relying on his already outstanding physical condition.

"I'm also very happy." Basten said with a smile, "It seems you already know where your problem lies. Yes, your problem isn't a lack of scoring weapons. No matter how many scoring weapons you have, they're useless if you don't know how to use them correctly. You're like a gun collector who tries to collect all the guns in the world, but if you don't know how to use them skillfully, you're just a collector. You can talk at length about the parameters and origins of the guns you collect, but you still can't become a sharpshooter."

"So, what you need to learn now is... how to play football with your brain."

Basten pointed to his head.

※※※

Chen Yingxiong and Basten stood on the training ground, his teammates waiting nearby for Chen Yingxiong to assign tasks.

"Yingxiong, if you had to describe yourself as a weapon, which one would you use?" Basten asked.

Chen Yingxiong thought for a moment, then said, "A nuclear weapon!"

Basten laughed. "You're certainly confident! But you've hit the nail on the head. You're a powerful nuclear weapon, but have you ever seen anyone use nuclear weapons lightly?"

"The United States! They used two on Japan!" Chen Yingxiong held up two fingers.

"Yes, and then?"

"Uh..." Chen Yingxiong frowned, racking his brains but couldn't remember anyone else who had used atomic bombs in war. Of course, he could attribute it to his failing history knowledge, but in reality, apart from the United States, no other country had ever used atomic bombs in actual combat...

"No one else. Only the United States." At this moment, Basten looked less like a player and more like Chen Yingxiong's history teacher. "Humans have conducted many nuclear tests, but only the United States has used two in actual combat. Do you know why?"

"Too powerful to be necessary?"

"You could say that, but it's not that they're unnecessary, but that they're too powerful, and once they're used, the consequences are unimaginable. But anyway, it's the same thing, which is that they're used very rarely. You say you're a nuclear bomb, do you want to be the kind of weapon that lies in a warehouse your whole life, completely useless, only good for scaring the enemy?"

Chen Yingxiong was completely speechless. Of course, he didn't want that. He now understood that it wasn't always better to be more powerful. Atomic bombs were definitely used less frequently than ordinary assault rifles. Maybe one atomic bomb could kill 100,000 people at a time, but rifles had already killed countless people, measured in millions and tens of millions.

"So, there are many ways to score goals. But your current method is too rigid."

"Rigid?"

Chen Yingxiong didn't understand.

Basten also felt that it was difficult to explain clearly with just words. Football wasn't literature; football required practice.

So he asked Chen Yingxiong to imagine a scenario: In the penalty area, he received a ground pass from a teammate, but the goalkeeper had already rushed in front of him, blocking all his shooting angles, and was opening his arms and lowering his center of gravity to prepare to save the ball. What should he do?

"Dribble past the goalkeeper!" Chen Yingxiong said without hesitation.

"You're surrounded by the opponent's defenders on all sides, and you only have the space of your own body to move in. Apart from shooting, you'll lose the ball no matter what you do. What do you do?" Basten asked.

"Uh... then of course I'd shoot..."

"Of course you'd shoot, but how? Well... let's do a real-world example."

So the teammates, as范. Basten had said, reproduced the scene he had described on the training ground. Then Basten told the goalkeeper to rush at Chen Yingxiong when he passed the ball.

After everything was ready, he passed the ball back near the baseline, and the ball landed right at Chen Yingxiong's feet. At the same time, goalkeeper Reina came out and quickly blocked Chen Yingxiong's shooting angle.

And Chen Yingxiong? As if he couldn't see Reina at all, he swung his foot and shot hard!

*Bang!* The ball hit Reina's chest.

Then it bounced high and flew out of the penalty area.

Seeing that the ball didn't go in, Chen Yingxiong waved his hand in frustration. "Damn it!"

"See, that's what I mean by being too rigid, Yingxiong," Basten said, coming over. "You lack variety, or rather, you're always used to this one method... You should do this..." Basten then called over Dalglish, "Could you pass me the ball, Kenny, just like I passed it to Yingxiong?"

Dalglish nodded. "No problem."

Starting again, the ball landed at Basten's feet.

Basten also swung his foot to shoot, but the ball drew an arc, flying over the head of goalkeeper Reina, who was lowering his center of gravity to save the ball at his feet, and then fell into the goal behind him.

Basten didn't end it there. He said to Dalglish, "One more time!"

This time, after the ball rolled over, Basten stretched out his foot in a seemingly awkward motion and flicked it. The ball skimmed along the grass, rushing forward at a rapid speed, and shot into the goal through Reina's legs before he could block it.

After making these two shots,范. Basten turned to look at Chen Yingxiong. "How about that?"

"Uh... I can do all that..." Chen Yingxiong scratched his head.

Yes, poking the ball and chipping the ball were not difficult moves. He had done similar shots before.

It was just... "I just don't use them much."

"That's it. You don't mind if I say your brain is full of muscles, do you? You always get used to meeting force with force in any situation, but you don't think about what would happen if I changed my method... So," Basten pointed to his head again, "What you need to change isn't your technique, but your way of thinking. From now on, you have to learn to play football with your head."

"Then wouldn't all my muscles be wasted?" Chen Yingxiong said, spreading his hands.

He had always been very proud of his body because that was his capital!

"Who said they'd be wasted? Learning to use your body reasonably is also a sign of playing football with your head. Besides, when you can score with this clever method and also bulldoze your way through with your strong body, don't you think you'll be even more powerful?"

Chen Yingxiong clapped his hands. "You're right!" He immediately asked, "But how do I play football with my head?"

"Yingxiong, I heard that some of your goals in Italy were called 'fantasia.' You should know what that word means, right?"

Chen Yingxiong nodded. It meant imagination, inspiration, a flash of inspiration in the way you play football, full of surprises that everyone didn't expect.

That came from Chen Yingxiong's never-boring, flamboyant personality.

"You're not a boring person in life either, are you?"

Chen Yingxiong continued to nod.

"Then isn't it right for you to follow this path on the field as well?"

"But some people in life say I'm an idiot..."

范. Basten glanced at him. "Do you care?"

Chen Yingxiong laughed heartily. He really didn't care if others said he was an idiot or a fool or anything like that.

"But there's one prerequisite for playing football with your head, Yingxiong,"范. Basten said. "You have to be proficient enough in your basic skills. When a football flies over, you have to know what's the best way to handle it. Also, there are many difficult passes to control. You can't expect your teammates to always pass the ball to you in a way that you can control comfortably... If you can control a very bad pass well, it will become an excellent opportunity. So what you need to strengthen is basic practice. If you want me to teach you, I can only teach you these things. Start with the most basic ball control. The key point is 'accuracy.' You need to have an extraordinary accurate judgment of the landing point, spin—whether it's inward or outward, which requires different techniques—speed, and force of the incoming ball. When you've practiced this well..."

"I can graduate?" Chen Yingxiong asked impatiently.

"Then you can start practicing striking the ball," Basten said slowly.

"Uh... striking the ball?"

"To improve your scoring efficiency, the moment of striking the ball when shooting is very important. A slight difference can lead to a great error. The choice of footwork for striking the ball, the application, the control of the spin, and the control of the power must be just right. Just like the chipped shot I demonstrated just now, if I had used a little more force when chipping, the ball might have flown directly over the crossbar, and you would have missed an excellent scoring opportunity..."

Chen Yingxiong thought to himself, the goalkeeper has already blocked the angle, and you still think it's an excellent opportunity. You really are Basten...

"But I've practiced the accuracy of striking the ball..." Chen Yingxiong remembered and retorted. "I practiced this specifically when I was practicing free kicks with Juninho..."

Basten asked him, "Did you practice with the ball moving?"

"Huh?" Chen Yingxiong was very surprised. "Do I have to make the ball move?"

"When shooting, is the ball completely stationary?"

Chen Yingxiong was speechless. When he practiced, he did make the ball completely stationary because it was a free kick, so of course it was completely stationary before touching the ball.

But shooting in open play was different. The ball was always in motion. To accurately hit that point on a moving ball... this requirement was indeed very high.

"If you can do this, and combine it with your imagination, hitting the ball to a place that the opponent can't even imagine, even if they do imagine it, they can't reach it, then you can graduate, Yingxiong."

Chen Yingxiong was dumbfounded after listening. "How long will I have to practice this?"

"Or did you think it would be so easy to abandon the smooth road full of flowers and cheers and choose to take the thorny path?"

"Is it very difficult?"

"Very difficult."

Chen Yingxiong nodded. "Then I must succeed!"

"Then start practicing, Yingxiong. This road is quite difficult."

"I never take the ordinary path, hahaha!"