After taking the shot, Yan Min watched the football veer off the far post and knelt on the ground, burying his head in his hands, looking devastated.
Mark and Reus, who were waiting in front of the goal for a pass, gestured their demands, and now, seeing the ball miss, they looked at Yan Min, complaining with gestures and expressions.
"Oh! That was too reckless, wasn't it?" Zhou Jianliang shouted, slapping his thigh.
Zhou Yi, also leaning back on the sofa, looked equally disappointed.
On the sidelines, all the Borussia Dortmund coaches and players who had been anticipating a game-winning equalizer felt like they were on a rollercoaster.
Buvac turned and punched the roof of the dugout, and the others weren't doing much better.
Klopp clenched his fist, gritting his teeth.
Over on the Arsenal side, there was a sense of "escaping death," and many breathed a sigh of relief.
When Yan Min had broken through, they had been scared half to death. Now, they applauded Yan Min's reckless choice.
Online, many Chinese fans also expressed their dissatisfaction with Yan Min's final choice.
"A pass would have been so much better! Reus and Mark were both in front of the goal!"
"Sigh, it looks like this kid is still far from Zhou Yi..."
"The technique and speed are undeniable, but that final choice shows his brain wasn't clear enough..."
"That football IQ... is truly touching! If he can't learn to handle the ball correctly, I think his development prospects are limited..."
"What was that kick! I was cheering for him during the breakthrough, but that last shot made me feel like I swallowed a dead fly!"
They vented their anger and disappointment over Borussia Dortmund's potential loss on Yan Min.
But Yan Min didn't know any of this.
He looked up at the sky, immersed in his own world, not caring about how others saw him.
※※※
The TV broadcast replayed Yan Min's breakthrough and shot. The breakthrough was brilliant, his continuous changes of direction leaving Sagna bewildered, and the sudden stop to dodge Mertesacker was also fantastic, but that final shot...
If he had passed to Mark and Reus, perhaps there would have been a completely different outcome.
The commentators were still discussing the shot.
He Ping, as a Chinese commentator, naturally wanted to speak up for Yan Min from an emotional standpoint, so he tried to say in a neutral and objective manner: "Honestly, for an attacking player, after such a beautiful breakthrough, facing the goal, it's not impossible to shoot. Choosing to shoot is not an inconceivable or incomprehensible thing... it's just that the technique of the final shot was slightly lacking, I don't think we should criticize him one-sidedly..."
Marcel Reif, the German, was not so polite. After all, Yan Min's shot had buried Borussia Dortmund's hopes of equalizing: "Yan Min's choice to shoot was obviously not well thought out. Perhaps he was too fast, and his brain couldn't keep up with his speed?"
※※※
Yan Min missed the opportunity in the eighty-ninth minute of the match. Then the fourth official held up the sign for three minutes of injury time.
This injury time was not long, considered normal, but it also meant that there was not much time left for Borussia Dortmund.
In such a situation, the opportunity Yan Min had just lost seemed particularly precious and regrettable.
It could even be said that Yan Min's missed shot had a very heavy impact on the morale of the other Borussia Dortmund players.
But Yan Min himself seemed oblivious.
After the game restarted, he continued to run tirelessly in the frontcourt, looking for opportunities. He did not become like a sleepwalker or emotionally collapse just because he had missed this opportunity...
It was a pity that the other Borussia Dortmund players seemed to have lost confidence in equalizing and were unable to provide him with much support.
In the end, Borussia Dortmund lost 1:2 to Arsenal away, and the Champions League defending champion lost two of its first three group matches.
After being drawn into the group of death several times, Borussia Dortmund finally tasted the real group of death...
After the match, the media and fans were discussing the reasons for Borussia Dortmund's loss.
Before the match, Zhou Yi not going to London was considered a reason why Borussia Dortmund might lose the game away.
But after the match, that reason became Yan Min.
Yan Min's shot that went wide at the end of the match was considered the culprit for Borussia Dortmund's loss.
Almost everyone thought Yan Min's choice was wrong. He should have passed the ball to someone else after the breakthrough. Whether it was Mark or Reus, they were both waiting in front of the goal. As long as he passed the ball, it was possible to score, and the possibility was very high.
Some German media bluntly criticized Klopp's choice to bring on Yan Min as wrong.
"...Why not use Hofmann, who has more appearances and more experience? Why let a rookie with no experience play in such an important game?"
The Chinese media was not as harsh as the German media, but rather euphemistically shirked Yan Min's responsibility by blaming Klopp.
"...Yan Min, as a newcomer who has just joined the team, has not had a minute of official game time before this. Suddenly, he was allowed to play in the Champions League game and given such an important task. The pressure he was under can be imagined. I think Yan Min's performance in the game is mainly Klopp's responsibility. If you want a newcomer to find the feeling of the game, the German Cup is a very suitable stage, or in the league, when leading by a large margin, it is also a good choice. But Klopp insisted on putting Yan Min on in a Champions League game that must be won, and then Yan Min missed the best opportunity..."
"Klopp's approach put Yan Min under tremendous pressure for no reason. As a head coach, he should have considered this. But he didn't. Foreign media are saying that Yan Min should be responsible for Borussia Dortmund's failure, but I don't think this accusation makes any sense at all. The one who should be responsible for the team's failure is Klopp, not Yan Min!"
However, their approach also provoked dissatisfaction from many domestic fans, who believed that the Chinese media's blindly protecting their own players was not conducive to the development of Chinese players in Europe.
"...Why didn't Zhou Yi ever encounter such a thing?"
"That's right, He Ying, Sun Pan, Yang Muge, and Guo Nu, when they were developing abroad, where did they encounter such a mess? I think we should reflect on it. Blindly defending our own players is harming him!"
"Playing badly is playing badly, why so many reasons and excuses?"
"I know Yan Min, I've watched him play football in Shanghai. His biggest characteristic is that he's selfish! He doesn't like to pass the ball. I didn't expect that he would be the same even after going abroad..."
"I remember that in that reality show, he played like this too, right? And he was criticized by Zhou Yi, right? I didn't expect it to be the same as always, not forgetting his original intention... After so many years, this problem has not been changed. I don't know what Borussia Dortmund saw in him..."
Unlike the Chinese media, the Chinese fans have much stricter requirements for their own players, so strict that people even doubt whether Yan Min is Chinese. This may be due to our parents' educational tradition of always strictly demanding us, emphasizing "being lenient with others and strict with oneself" since childhood.
Therefore, they are particularly strict with their own players, and even the slightest mistake is not allowed.
For a time, after losing the game, all kinds of criticisms and pressures came at Yan Min.
When the entire Borussia Dortmund team returned to Dortmund Airport, many reporters directly threw questions at Yan Min, which was the first time this had happened since Yan Min joined Borussia Dortmund.
Obviously, after losing the game, Yan Min became the focus of media attention instead.
"Do you regret your choice to shoot in the end?"
"Would it have been better to pass the ball to Mark or Reus?"
"Have you ever thought that if that kick had been a pass instead of a shot, Borussia Dortmund would not have lost?"
"Some people say that you have always been this style in China, you don't like to pass the ball to your teammates, you like to go it alone... Is this true?"
……
Chinese and German reporters, speaking in Chinese or German, English, threw their questions at him all at once.
If Zhou Yi was in the team at this time, he would definitely pull Yan Min away, or help him block these aggressive questions.
But unfortunately, Zhou Yi did not travel with the team, so Yan Min could only face this scene by himself.
And with Yan Min's usual temper, it seemed difficult for him to say a proper answer.
So it was not surprising when he said to the camera: "I don't regret choosing to shoot. If I have the chance again, I will do it again."…
※※※
"...Chinese player Yan Min, who just joined the team this season, said when facing questions at the airport about shooting or passing that he does not regret his shot that caused the team to lose the game, and if he had the chance again, he would still choose to shoot instead of pass..."
The evening sports news was playing the news of the entire Borussia Dortmund team returning, and Yan Min's answer was repeated by the host.
"Damn, these media are really bored!"
When Zhou Yi saw this news on TV, he almost slammed the table.
And on the Internet, Yan Min's answer had already caused an uproar.
On Twitter and Facebook, many Borussia Dortmund fans criticized Yan Min for not being responsible and not having a sense of the overall situation. Some fans also demanded that Yan Min apologize for his answer.
And on the Chinese Internet, it was even more lively...
"Did Yan Min's brain get water? How could he say such an answer?"
"Hehe, this is the quality of your country's professional players, it's not surprising at all. I feel sorry for my Reus, he actually got such an idiot teammate..."
"Yan Min is so inflated, since joining Borussia Dortmund, doesn't he know who he is anymore? How could he say such a thing..."
"So I said that Chinese players can't change their nature, this kind of words and deeds is simply tarnishing the country's reputation!"
"It's embarrassing to go abroad, really!"
"I think we should go over the wall to Twitter to apologize to Borussia Dortmund, to Reus, Mark, and the others, we must not let them have a negative impression of our Chinese players..."
"I feel sorry for Zhou Yi, he must be caught in the middle now, it must be very uncomfortable, right?"
……
For a time, it seemed that the new image of Chinese professional football players that Zhou Yi and the others had worked so hard to create was destroyed by Yan Min's one sentence...