Chapter 1 After Training

After the team training had ended, most of Arsenal's Colney training base fell into silence. As dusk approached, the densely vegetated training base was dark and lifeless.

However, on the second floor of one building, a window of a room remained lit.

That was the office of Arsenal's manager, Arsène Wenger.

While working in his office, Wenger heard a knock on the door. "Come in," he said without looking up.

The door opened, and a middle-aged man walked in. He went straight to Wenger's desk and placed a disc on it.

"What is this?" Wenger finally looked up from his notebook, glancing at the man.

"I think you should take a look at this, Arsène," said Liam Brady. "It's a video of our youth team game from a couple of days ago."

"A video of a youth team game?" Wenger found it strange. Brady wouldn't need to bring him a youth team game video personally; there were normal channels within the club. He regularly monitored youth team games to understand the players' performance.

"Well, it's not exactly one of our youth team players, but an opponent…" Brady explained. "It's from our youth team's opponent in the game. There's a player I think you should see."

"Alright." Wenger picked up the disc and inserted it into the computer's optical drive.

After inserting the disc, it began to play automatically. It was a recording of a match, and from the camera angle, it was clear that the person filming was standing in a relatively high place, holding a DV camera.

Wenger didn't speak, only watching the recording. After a while, he made a "hmm" sound, then narrowed his eyes and focused on the computer screen.

Brady stood beside him, watching along.

The video had been edited, so it wasn't very long, about twelve minutes.

After watching, Wenger didn't speak immediately, but took off his glasses, leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and rubbed his nose.

Brady didn't say anything, just standing beside him waiting.

"Japanese or Korean?" Wenger asked, rubbing his nose.

"Chinese."

"Chinese?" Wenger opened his eyes in surprise.

"Yes, Chinese," Brady confirmed.

"Okay… How old?"

"Seems to be seventeen."

"Seventeen years old…" Wenger's tone was somewhat disappointed. He sincerely hoped the kid was fourteen.

"What do you think, Liam?" he asked, looking at Brady.

"Age isn't too much of a problem. Besides, this kid's talent isn't in his physique, but here." Brady pointed to his head.

Wenger nodded, agreeing with Brady's opinion.

From the recording, it was clear that this number sixteen player's positioning was very sophisticated, and his receiving and passing were crisp and clean, without any hesitation in taking the ball. This was rare among players of the seventeen-year-old age group.

This kid had high football IQ, extremely high!

Thinking of this, Wenger said, "Do they only play this one match?"

"Of course not. It's said to be a Chinese TV reality show, traveling and competing in Europe. From what I understand, they've already challenged Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Bayern Munich, and Borussia Dortmund in Spain and Germany. We're their sixth opponent, and there are several more opponents to come, Chelsea, Manchester United, and Liverpool…" Brady introduced.

"Have our people track and observe him. The performance in this one match can't prove anything. We need to see more of his performances."

"Of course." Brady had no objection to this decision.

***

The Chinese teenagers' next match was against Chelsea's youth team. Because they were in the same city as Arsenal's youth team, the teenagers didn't need to change cities this time, and they didn't even change hotels.

This was also beneficial to their physical recovery, especially… Zhou Yi's.

In addition to his friends helping Zhou Yi with special training, Hao Dong also consciously strengthened Zhou Yi's physical training content in the regular training. After the normal training every day, the fitness coach Li Haorui would continue to train his physical fitness.

All of this was to allow Zhou Yi to persevere for a longer period of time in the upcoming matches. Even if it was just ten more minutes.

Li Haorui naturally knew that his responsibility was great, so his demands on Zhou Yi were also very strict.

To his surprise, he didn't hear a single complaint from Zhou Yi this time.

He remembered very clearly what Zhou Yi was like when he first came to train under him. He often complained endlessly.

Although he completed the training tasks he arranged for him every time, the complaints always gave people a bad first impression.

But this time, even though Zhou Yi was obviously very tired, he still didn't admit defeat.

This kid was a lot tougher than before.

***

The day of the match against Chelsea's youth team finally arrived.

In the youth team's exclusive locker room at Chelsea's Cobham training base, the Chinese teenagers had just finished touring this luxurious training base filled with high technology and modernity.

However, the excitement of the young players was not as obvious as when they first saw La Masia.

It wasn't that they looked down on Chelsea, but as the matches progressed, they were now more concerned about the games. Because of the upcoming match, everyone was actually absent-minded during the tour. The production crew even had to constantly remind them to remember to express their amazement and show envious expressions…

In the locker room, Hao Dong was boosting the players' morale.

"Compared to Arsenal, Chelsea's youth training isn't really that strong. So don't have too much pressure, just play freely. I believe in you, and I hope you believe in yourselves! In this match, we have to be proactive from the beginning and strive to score a goal…"

Chelsea's youth training wasn't really that strong, but that was only relative to traditional youth training powerhouses like Arsenal and Barcelona. For the Chinese teenagers, even if it wasn't that strong, this Chelsea youth team was still very powerful. But if Hao Dong told the truth, he was afraid that these teenagers would lose their fighting spirit before the match even started.

Dealing with children, sometimes you need to coax them.

But these children probably weren't that easy to coax…

Zhang Tao raised his hand with a worried look, "Coach Hao, even if they're not strong, they're only not strong compared to Arsenal, right? Aren't they still very strong for us?"

Looking at many other players, although they didn't say it like Zhang Tao, it could be seen from the expressions on their faces that they lacked confidence. They didn't think Chelsea's youth team wasn't strong. They only took it as the coach's words to coax them.

After personally experiencing the high level of European youth football, they were no longer the ignorant children they were before going abroad. They weren't easily fooled.

Especially after losing 0:7 to Arsenal's youth team in the last match, the confidence they had managed to build up was destroyed.

Even if Zhou Yi played in this match, everyone would be worried because he couldn't last long.

Seeing the little players like this, Hao Dong knew that the thing he was worried about had still happened.

These kids had also become more astute…

Just as he was thinking about how to convince these kids and rekindle their fighting spirit, someone stepped in front of him.

"It's true, Coach Hao is right." Zhou Yi stood up and said, "This Chelsea u17 youth team isn't really that strong."

Everyone turned their attention to him, including the surprised Hao Dong.

"What nonsense are you talking about!" Liang Qiqi, who couldn't stand Zhou Yi, finally found an opportunity to criticize him—we're discussing professional issues here, what right do you, an amateur, have to interrupt? "Do you even know anything about Chelsea's youth training?"

"As a fan, I know a little bit." Unexpectedly, Zhou Yi didn't back down at all and directly confronted him head-on.

"What a joke!" Liang Qiqi sneered.

Zhou Yi ignored Liang Qiqi and continued, "This Chelsea youth team only has one really good player, their striker Gaël Kakuta, a black guy. He can play striker and winger, and also midfielder. His physical qualities are very good, his breakthrough ability and sense of rhythm are great, and his overall vision is also good. As a black guy, it's not easy to have such a good overall vision…"

Listening to Zhou Yi's endless introduction of this Gaël Kakuta's playing style, everyone was stunned.

They didn't even know this person's name before, let alone his playing style!

Seeing Zhou Yi's serious expression, Sun Pan was suspicious—this kid is spouting nonsense again, isn't he?

He's done that before…

Because Sun Pan was Zhou Yi's friend, he was considering Zhou Yi's face, and only muttered in his heart. Liang Qiqi directly expressed this guess, yelling, "Just making up a name and spouting nonsense, and you dare to say you understand?"

Xu Yang, who hadn't spoken all along, was already in shock—because there really was a person named Gaël Kakuta in Chelsea's youth team! And listening to Zhou Yi's words, he seemed to know more about this Gaël Kakuta than the Chinese coaching staff!

Now hearing Liang Qiqi not believe it, Xu Yang, who couldn't stand his attitude of targeting Zhou Yi everywhere, snorted, "Zhou Yi is right, there is indeed such a person on Chelsea's youth team."

Now, the teammates who hadn't believed Zhou Yi before were all shocked.

Sun Pan's mouth was so wide open that he could probably directly stuff a light bulb in it, and take it out without any difficulty.

Yang Muge also stood up to prove that Zhou Yi wasn't making things up: "Zhou Yi really knows a lot about European youth training. When we were at Dortmund, he told me about Götze's playing style and weaknesses before the match, and his words were verified in the match."

Yang Muge was an honest person who never lied, which everyone knew. If he said there was such a thing, then there really was such a thing.

So everyone looked at Zhou Yi with even more complicated expressions.

Even Hao Dong was a little puzzled as to why Zhou Yi knew so much.

Xu Yang directly asked this question: "Zhou Yi, why do you know so much?"

"Uh, I'm a fan, I usually like to watch football and everything related to football when I have nothing to do…" Zhou Yi explained. "And there's a football game called 'fm', which has detailed information on many real football prodigies, which is almost identical to reality."

He didn't know if everyone believed his explanation, but he couldn't tell everyone that he had already faced this Chelsea youth team dozens of times in his dreams, and had studied each of his data-ized abilities one by one, and found that the one with the best-looking data was that Gaël Kakuta, right?

As for Kakuta's playing style, he naturally summarized it based on those data. He hadn't actually watched Kakuta play, and didn't know if Kakuta's playing style was really like that, because in the virtual system, this Kakuta of Chelsea's youth team was grayed out. He could only see the data, but couldn't play in the match.

Chu Ling told him that this was because Kakuta was injured and couldn't play.

After Zhou Yi finished explaining, Xu Yang didn't continue to ask, obviously accepting Zhou Yi's answer—what else could he do if he didn't accept it? Could he think of other possibilities? He couldn't even imagine that Zhou Yi had a virtual world in his mind that could perfectly reflect reality…

Seeing that everyone was silent, Zhou Yi continued, "They only have one good player, and that good player… is also injured, so he shouldn't be playing in this match. Then what do they have to be afraid of? I think we can totally compete with them!"

Hearing Zhou Yi say this, Hao Dong looked at Zhou Yi again in surprise, then nodded and said, "Indeed, the latest news we received is that this top player of Chelsea u17 was injured at the beginning of the season and hasn't returned to the team yet, so he can't play in today's match."

The players' gazes towards Zhou Yi could only be described as "worshiping"…

Sun Pan's mouth could probably directly fit a light bulb in it, and take it out without any difficulty.