On April 1, 2002, at a famous soccer camp in London, a middle-aged coach with a tired look and windy hair stood at the side of the field with his hands behind his back. Behind him is a group of young men playing soccer against the wind.
This is the Colney training base, where Premier League giants Arsenal train, set on 143 acres, including 45 acres of forest and 27,000 trees, in Hertfordshire, a 20-minute drive from central London.
There are ten standard pitches, each with underground drainage and an automated sprinkler system. Arsenal's youth, reserve and first team teams each have three pitches, with the final tenth pitch being used as a "playing surface" for friendly matches and youth matches for the first team.
The base is equally proud of its indoor facilities, which include a sauna, a depth-adjustable swimming pool, gym, treatment room, massage room and restaurant. In addition to the players and coaches, two full-time gardeners, 10 groundskeepers, four nutritionists, three building superintendents, coaching assistants, and youth team assistants work together to serve the base.
Sadly, these wonderful things are about to have nothing to do with a certain handsome, dashing, drop-dead-gorgeous Great British Empire star.
"Let's get together and come back for a visit sometime, and the coach is not one to hold a grudge." Arsenal u18 ladder team's white manager Ziba said nonchalantly, squeezing out a smile.
Jeba, like countless middle-aged English men, had hair that went without a trace, and a scalp that stood out even more. His eyebrows were light in color, his brow bones were born high, and his looks were that of a serious man who was not good-natured at first sight.
Facing the young player who is about to leave Arsenal and who is the worst performer in the whole team, Ziba managed to hold his fire and not curse. Because this player's family situation is so unique that it's been in the news.
This man is of mixed Chinese and English descent and has an unusual name, "Arthur Wong". He is 186c tall and looks like the famous French movie star Alain Delon, so he attracts the attention of many female fans.
Arthur was the youth team's starting goalkeeper, once rated well, before a crucial contract year saw a serious dip in form and a mess of performances. His off-field life has been more described as up and down and disastrous.
He came from a wealthy family and lived a very happy life for the first 17 years of his life before his family's business suddenly failed and went bankrupt and his parents were killed in a car accident.
The car accident compensation money were used to pay off debts, he became penniless, and had to board in the home of relatives. As a member of Arsenal's youth academy, he had just turned 18 and had to leave as a failure.
In the final match of the England u18 season, Arsenal suffered a 2-8 defeat at home to Tottenham Hotspur, who are also in London. Arthur reached the magical achievement of zero saves in the entire match, the opponent shot on goal all 8 times, that's how outrageous it is.
What's even more outrageous is that Arthur set the England u18 record for goals conceded in a season. He conceded goals in every game and was able to start because all the goalkeepers in the team were out with injuries and he had to be used.
Arsenal management are unlikely to give a first-team contract to a goalkeeper who is not good enough, even though some media outlets have reported on Arthur's misery, calling him "the worst newcomer in English football".
In the face of such a story, the management and coaches are willing to give him a few points out of humanitarianism. Even though Arthur's performance was a mess, they wouldn't say anything sarcastic, in case the other party was so depressed that he wanted to commit suicide, Arsenal's gang wouldn't look good.
╭(°a°`)╮ King Arthur listened to the coach and said nothing.
He was now filled with the Chinese dubbed sound effects of the Masked Rider REVICE heroine's transformation - "What happened? What happened? What happened?"
He had just soul-stepped into 2002 three minutes earlier, had some memories of this body shoved into his head, and had gotten the news that he had been expelled from Arsenal's u18 ladder.
He is just an ordinary Chinese living in the year 2023, who likes to watch high-level soccer matches and occasionally plays on weekends, at a level that is a hundred thousand miles away from that of a professional player. Now, he has become a local player of England from the youth training of the English Premier League team Arsenal, Fantasy West.
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The reason why he traveled to England in this period is because he had nothing to do at home and used his newly purchased high end Samsung phone to download an unheard of, unasked for handheld game called "God of Football".
The game's graphics were extremely gorgeous and life-like. He excitedly followed the novice guide to create a character, ready to try the player career mode.
The career mode has three difficulties: easy, nightmare, and hell, and the game will be available for players to choose their opening nationality depending on the difficulty.
Easy difficulty is European countries where soccer is professionalized and youth training is done well, and players are easy to get ahead. Nightmare difficulty is dominated by South American countries such as Brazil and Argentina, where players have excellent initial attributes but need to go through fierce competition to become professional players. Hell difficulty has only one country, and players will start their soccer career in China.
It sounded like a single player game, he didn't think much about it and decisively chose the easy difficulty. Players were not familiar with a game, so of course they had to choose the easy one to practice first, and when he was familiar with the process, it was not too late to challenge the high difficulty.
After choosing the difficulty, he could also set the image and identity of the character. It is well known that the English account is the most valuable in the soccer world, and the English Premier League is the best-developed league, so he chose to start in England, with the identity of a Chinese-English mixed-race handsome man.
He set a height of 186c, a weight of 80 kilograms, and a body that resembles Kaka's. The face that looks like Alain Delon was randomized by the game, and he is very satisfied with it. The name "King Arthur" is his bad taste, a combination of Chinese and Western. His mixed-race identity allows him to have some connection with his home country, so that he can feel more immersed in the game.
Players have a huge advantage in choosing easy difficulty with a very large number of freely assigned initial attribute points.
When setting his initial attributes, he brainstormed and added all of his points to physical qualities, with his body balance, physical fitness, speed, bouncing, and agility all reaching 80+, which was close to the top. However, his ball carrying accuracy, short passes, long passes, shooting skills, and so on were all poor, and only his shooting power was as high as 85.
He believes that it does not matter if the skill is poor at the beginning, whether the character is powerful or not mainly depends on the player's operation, and fast speed and strong power is the king. The career mode can develop players, and they can get stronger by playing matches. Lara
He learned the importance of a player's body when he played Real Soccer 10 Master League back in the day. He used the initial player Ordaz as a center forward with a bunch of numerical garbage white just fighting against strong and shooting accuracy over 80 to score a lot of goals in the box.
He was also able to set the time and the team where the player's career started, and chose 2002 to kick things off. he was impressed by China's historic appearance in Asia in the 2002 World Cup. The Arsenal team was at its peak in those years, and if he could, he would have wanted to play Henry, Pire, Bergkamp and other famous players.
Strangely, just as he finished setting it up, the phone turned hot and glowed a lurid red light that seemed flammable and explosive.
He was so mad that he threw his cell phone on the table and yelled "My holy sword, my holy sword, aaaaaaahhhh" and was about to reach for the paper.
As it turned out, the phone didn't explode, and he was outdoors and traveling through the world as soon as his eyes closed and then opened again.
After listening to Coach Jeba read a few sentences, King Arthur understood his current situation and dressed as the game character he had just set up. Crossing over has benefits, he automatically learns English and can fluently communicate with the English.
After a while of being in a trance, Arthur accepts the fact that he has crossed over. He doesn't cry with sadness over it, and kind of wants to laugh.
He had a childhood dream of stardom, but his adult life has been ordinary. He has nothing to hold on to, his life before that was a life of living and dying, and he can see the end of his life at a glance.
"What's the fear of being expelled from u18? I'm in superb physical condition now, have the basic conditions to become a professional player, and even ...... have a huge physical advantage!"
In soccer games, if a player's multiple values are above 75 green, he has the strength to play in the top five leagues. His initial multiple values of 80 + yellow values, in the game belongs to the top "demon", has a horrible growth curve.
Arthur is a veteran gamer, he just lacks real-world match experience. He can't play to his full strength right now, and crossing over has to be on the field, not with hand-to-hand combat.
The British are not worried about playing soccer, the City of London alone has more than a dozen professional soccer teams. The only thing he regrets is that he didn't opt for the Hell difficulty opening and is no longer a Chinese national.
At the same time he had a little bit of hindsight, coming from the year 2023 he was well aware that being a professional soccer player in China was really a hell of a start.
Even if your talent is as strong as c Luo or Messi, you may not be able to play Chinese Super League for the rest of your life. Your family is poor, you can't afford to give gifts to the crap coaches at the sports schools you'll be rejected and won't even be able to touch the threshold of a professional team.
You're far more likely to become a Jung after spending dozens or millions of dollars to get coaching and recognition from a crap coach with the support of your parents, and you're still likely to be shoveled into oblivion by your crap teammates in intra-team competition.
Even if you have successfully played in the Chinese Super League with a group of big men in your circle and are super strong, it will be very difficult to play abroad in the future. Chinese Super League clubs usually don't release people and pay for them first. If you are lucky enough to get out of the country, you will have to go back home for free to participate in the National Games and other low-level high-risk competitions, and if you are not careful, you will be crippled again.
If you want to raise your stature you have to get into the national team for gold plating, and it's not a small amount of money to buy off the very criminal bigwigs. You may also have to be forced to eat food you don't like that is sponsored by the bigwigs pulling the strings.
How can you play soccer well in that environment?
Chinese pros only need to play for 10 years, even the most talented people will be pigs near pigs, and even the nicest people will become scum. Good people can't play pro league well in China. Funny thing is, then the bad guys are going to run out of soccer too, because the Chinese Super League is getting played to death.
It's common for Chinese Super League teams to owe wages, and teams that just won the championship can just disband. There are middle league teams that play fake soccer in order not to be promoted to the premier league because the players are afraid of losing their jobs after they make it to the premier league, can you believe that?
The chairman of the Football Association shouted anti-corruption slogans to be at loggerheads with the corrupt, and the next week he himself was arrested by the anti-corruption authorities, how magical.
Arthur has a chance of becoming a star when he starts his soccer career in England, but it's definitely out of the question to try and make it at Arsenal.
He is unhappy with his "random" goalkeeper status, and suspects that the game has arranged this because it is easy to get ahead as a goalkeeper at Arsenal. The star goalkeeper of the first team, the giant of the universe, Heman, is getting old, and the team is in desperate need of a young starter to take over.
Arthur only likes to play up front when he plays field hockey and is bound to make the transition next and will have to leave Arsenal anyway.