Royce's successful transfer was a major event for Borussia Dortmund fans, and a big piece of news in the Bundesliga's winter transfer window, but it was relatively ordinary in the entire European transfer market.

As for the impact on the Borussia Dortmund team itself, it's currently almost negligible.

Only Großkreutz, who had been teammates with Royce at Rot Weiss Ahlen, was very excited.

Everyone else had their own things and problems to solve besides training.

Like Shinji Kagawa.

He was a bit annoyed during this winter break because his contract renewal negotiations with the club weren't progressing smoothly.

The two sides couldn't agree on the issue of annual salary.

How unsuccessful were the negotiations?

As early as January 2011, Borussia Dortmund planned to renew Kagawa's contract.

As a result, a year passed, and the renewal contract was still not finalized, which shows how big the differences between the two sides were…

In addition, Lewandowski's contract renewal negotiations were also underway.

Since Barrios's transfer and Mark Wagner's injury, Lewandowski has become Borussia Dortmund's only reliable scorer on the front line.

Of course, he didn't let the team down either. He started sixteen games in the first half of the season and scored ten goals, making him the team's top scorer.

After his importance became apparent, Borussia Dortmund also began to renew his contract.

The renewal will significantly increase Lewandowski's salary.

But it is unknown whether this can satisfy the in-form Lewandowski…

As for Zhou Yi…

Transfers and contract renewals have nothing to do with him. No matter what happens this summer, he cannot leave Borussia Dortmund during the winter break. As for the contract, he just completed a renewal with the club, and his salary has risen to three million euros. The club is unlikely to immediately start a new round of renewal negotiations with him, unless the club really has too much money to spend…

In the team's training camp, in addition to completing normal training, he also continued his physical fitness training, strengthening his physical fitness and further improving his running ability to expand his range of activity.

As a midfielder organizer, being able to see far and pass far is not enough; he must also be able to run far and be able to appear in any part of the field in time during a ninety-minute game, which requires the support of inexhaustible physical strength.

Don't look at how Zhou Yi's development seems to have been smooth sailing from his debut until now—his vision is very good, his short passes are accurate, and his long passes have improved significantly after so much hard training. He is still constantly training his dribbling and breakthroughs. The future seems to be vast, allowing him to fly and gallop, and his future is limitless.

But in fact, Zhou Yi himself has a sense of crisis.

Although he hasn't hit any kind of "rookie wall," he seems to have encountered a bottleneck.

This bottleneck is physical fitness, because Zhou Yi himself is not the kind of player who can run forever, so his physical fitness is not very good. When he has enough physical strength, he can perform very well. But as the game time recedes, in the final stage of the game, the number of threatening balls he sends will obviously decrease. More often, he uses passing to control the rhythm on the field, rather than launching attacks.

In this case, if he needs to counterattack at the last moment, Zhou Yi will be unable to do so.

Of course, this is not a big problem. After all, there are so many professional players, and not everyone can maintain their physical condition from the first minute of the game until the end. Such people are, after all, in the minority.

So if Zhou Yi is satisfied with the status quo, he can continue to be the core of Borussia Dortmund and a top-notch player in the Bundesliga. Anyway, he won't have too bad a time, and he can continue to be the well-deserved core of the Chinese national team.

But Zhou Yi is an ambitious person, and he will not be content to maintain his current level.

In order to make a breakthrough, he must continue to improve himself.

Physical fitness is the foundation of modern football. Although Zhou Yi's current physical fitness is much better than when he first debuted, it is still far from the goal in his mind… He hopes that even in the 120th minute, he can still rush from the backcourt to the frontcourt to participate in the attack, and it will be no problem to send a fatal assist or score a goal himself.

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After fifteen days of training in Mallorca and playing three warm-up matches, the entire Borussia Dortmund team returned to Germany to make final preparations for the second half of the league.

In the eighteenth round of the league, the first team to appear was Bayern Munich and Borussia Mönchengladbach. Bayern Munich challenged Borussia Mönchengladbach away.

As a result, Bayern Munich lost to Borussia Mönchengladbach 1:3 away!

Royce, who was officially announced to be transferring to Borussia Dortmund in the summer, scored the first goal for Borussia Mönchengladbach in the eleventh minute of the game.

In the seventy-first minute, he assisted teammate Herrmann to score the third goal for Borussia Mönchengladbach in this game.

Bayern Munich only scored a face-saving goal in the seventy-sixth minute by "Little Pig" Schweinsteiger.

During the game, commentator Duan Xin also joked: "This must be Royce's pledge of allegiance to his new club!"

The next day, Schalke 04 played against Stuttgart at home. Yang Mu, who trained with the team during the winter break, appeared in the starting lineup for the fourth consecutive league game and helped Schalke 04 defeat Stuttgart 3:1 at home.

A day later, Borussia Dortmund challenged Hamburg away.

Zhou Yi used two assists to help the team win 5:1 against Hamburg away.

Now Borussia Dortmund is four points ahead of Bayern Munich in the standings.

In the nineteenth round of the league, Borussia Dortmund, Bayern Munich, Schalke 04, and Borussia Mönchengladbach all defeated their respective opponents.

The top four teams in the league all won, and the rankings remained unchanged.

Borussia Dortmund is ranked first with forty-four points, Bayern Munich is ranked second with forty points, and Schalke 04 has also caught up with a wave of winning streaks, also with forty points, but ranked third due to the disadvantage of goal difference. And Borussia Mönchengladbach, where Royce is located, can be said to be a dark horse this season. They are ranked fourth with thirty-nine points.

These four teams can be regarded as the first group, because the points gap between them is very close, and anyone has a chance to surpass their opponents.

However, the gap between fifth-placed Werder Bremen and the top four is a bit large. Werder Bremen currently has thirty-one points, which is a full eight points behind Borussia Mönchengladbach.

However, Schalke 04 will lose their main defensive midfielder Yang Mu next. Because Yang Mu is going to participate in the Olympic qualifiers, the Chinese Olympic team will challenge the Qatar Olympic team away.

Yang Mu also participated in the Olympic qualifiers before, but at that time Yang Mu was only a marginal player in Schalke 04's first team. His presence or absence had no impact on the team, and Stevens never felt that there was anything wrong with it.

But now the situation is different.

Yang Mu is Schalke 04's main midfielder. Although watching the game, you wouldn't think he is dazzling. Most of the time, he seems to be invisible. But Stevens knows very well that Yang Mu's presence has indeed improved the team's defense. This can be seen from the goals conceded in Schalke 04's recent games.

In the first fifteen league games without Yang Mu, Schalke 04 conceded twenty goals, averaging 1.43 goals per game. In the five games in which Yang Mu played, Schalke 04 only conceded four goals, averaging 0.8 goals per game.

Numbers don't lie. Although Yang Mu is not a player that the broadcast camera likes to focus on on the field, the improvement he brings to Schalke 04 is real.

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After finishing the game with Cologne, Yang Mu left Schalke 04 and flew to Qatar, where he will meet with his teammates. At the same time, Sun Pan, He Ying, and Guo Nu will also meet with the main force there to prepare for the group stage a few days later.

This game is very difficult for the Chinese Olympic team, because this is their home field, and everyone understands the home advantage in West Asia.

In the end, the Olympic team drew 2:2 with Qatar away.

In the game, the Qatar Olympic team scored first and took the lead.

In the first half, He Ying equalized the score for the Chinese team.

In the seventy-fifth minute, He Ying scored twice, giving the Chinese Olympic team the lead.

At that time, Chinese fans thought that this game could be won. Who knew that in the eighty-sixth minute, the referee awarded Qatar a penalty!

At the critical moment, the home advantage was really brought into full play.

In the end, Qatar relied on this penalty to tie the Chinese Olympic team 2:2 at home.

Failing to defeat Qatar made many Chinese fans sweat for the Olympic team.

But God is still fair—the Chinese team encountered unfair treatment in the game against Qatar, and their luck was really bad. Good luck made up for them in the game between the Korean team and Saudi Arabia.

The Korean Olympic team was tied 1:1 by the Saudi Arabian Olympic team away!

Everyone drew, and the two sides were still one point apart.

Next, as long as the Chinese team defeats the Korean team at home, they can overtake them and become the first in the group, taking their destiny into their own hands.

And this game will be played on February 22nd.

Fortunately, none of the teams that the Four Little Dragons play for participated in the Champions League, otherwise it would be really hard to say whether the club would let them go at that time… because that time is the second match day of the first leg of the Champions League Round of 16…