Chapter Ninety-Three: Six Years Later

Long Bisheng and the others naturally had no idea what had happened between Ding Yu and the rest. They were simply enjoying this rare chance to relax. After all, even though the facilities attached to Yunjia Tianyu Football School were excellent, they still lacked the time to truly let their bodies and minds unwind.

Only then did Long Bisheng and the other students finally understand why the Hubei players, along with Wu Bufan and the others around Dai Guangming, all called Cai Guoqing the Singing God. The moment he stepped into the private karaoke room, Cai Guoqing seemed to become a different man altogether, turning into a frightening karaoke tyrant whom everyone dreaded. Even worse, when it came to singing, he was far inferior to the singer who happened to share his name...

After the singing was over, Long Bisheng felt as though his ears had gone wrong. They rang nonstop, flooded with Cai Guoqing’s devastating vocals, so much so that once he got back to the guesthouse, it took him a very long time to fall asleep.

The others fared no better than Long Bisheng, but Dai Guangming and the other two seemed strangely unaffected. When everyone asked curiously why they had not been bothered, all three reached into their ears at once and pulled out small balls of cotton.

This selfish, disloyal behavior naturally drew the fierce scorn of everyone present. In the end, under the pressure of almost the entire class, the three Hubei boys had to sign a humiliating package of terms, such as treating the whole class to a movie after returning to Yunjia, and providing boiling water and cleaning the dormitory for a week. If Yunjia Football School had not offered free meals, they would probably have bled even more.

After signing such a humiliating agreement, Dai Guangming and the other two turned their grief and anger into strength, becoming exceptionally spirited during the next three days of training. If Dai Guangming and Zhou Wei had not been attacking players, the others probably would have had some new bruises to show for it; as it was, the defenders had already been thoroughly tormented by the two of them over those days.

Once the reason for their sudden surge of energy in training became clear, Ding Yu laughed himself nearly to pieces. It was perhaps another unexpected gain from that night at the very least, Dai Guangming and the others had plenty of resentment to vent, and while training only allowed for small-scale mischief, their next opponent would be the best target for their rage.

Sure enough, in the quarterfinal three days later, Yunjia Tianyu dispatched Chongqing with a crisp three-to-nil victory. Dai Guangming and Zhou Wei scored all three goals between them, while Wu Bufan shut down every dangerous attempt their opponents made. Once again, Yunjia Tianyu claimed an unquestionable victory in the knockout stage.

Chongqing and Yunjia were actually on fairly good terms. The youth teams of the two clubs exchanged visits frequently, which was why after the match the Chongqing players kept shouting that it had been far too unfriendly. Their coach was equally depressed, and he asked Ding Yu, "What was wrong with you today? Were you all on something? It was just one match. Was there any need to fight that hard?"

"Sorry, old friend," Ding Yu could only say in consolation. "A few of our players were provoked... But we didn’t use any dirty tricks, did we? How about this: I’ll treat you to dinner tonight, and we’ll have a proper talk, brother to brother."

Having been defeated so humiliatingly by Yunjia Tianyu, Chongqing had complaints, but not too many. Just as Ding Yu said, Yunjia had not used any underhanded methods; they had simply fought a little harder. In a sense, a loss like this was even more useful than a soft, perfunctory win. When coming to a tournament like this, results were secondary; sharpening the team was the highest goal.

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After beating Chongqing, Yunjia Tianyu’s 1989 age-group team entered the semifinals of the invitational tournament. To reach the final four, they had played five matches. That kind of pace, equivalent to a World Cup, was still a little too sparse for a team in practical terms. This was precisely why the football schools had always hoped to organize a competition more like a league. For the Football Association, however, setting up three separate divisions had already consumed too much of their energy. Being able to organize this cup competition for the football schools and club youth teams was already close to the financial limit of what they could manage at the present stage.

Nor could the clubs themselves organize youth competitions independently. These days, as clubs attached greater importance to youth development, a single club usually had to support several hundred young players in its youth system, aside from the first team and the reserves. If they were to hold a nationwide league, just the travel expenses would be astronomical. So aside from this Football Association invitational tournament, most clubs could only arrange nearby exchanges with a few friendly clubs. The youth teams of Yunjia, Wuhan, and Chongqing, for instance, interacted with one another fairly often.

Besides, having a handful of matches each year was better than having none at all. Admittedly, this created another problem: the stronger teams could advance farther, play more matches, and accumulate more experience, which in turn made them stronger still. That was exactly what had happened with the final four in the 1989 age-group tournament this year. Just as in the previous year, the four strongest football schools in overall ability—Yunjia, Shanghai, Dalian, and Shandong—had once again gathered in the semifinals.

Liaoning had long possessed the best youth training in the country, but the years they spent in the second division had drained too much of their vitality. The most talented young players preferred to go to Dalian, the nation’s top club. Although the new owner, Zhang Bing, had taken over and placed great emphasis on youth development, training young players was not something that could be accomplished overnight. At the very least, within two or three years, Liaoning Football School’s players would still not be able to contend with those four semifinalists.

Ding Yu did not concern himself with that situation. After all, it was not something he alone had the power to change. What mattered to him now was only the next match.

Yunjia Tianyu’s semifinal opponent was last year’s champion, Dalian East Football School. In the previous year they had beaten Shanghai Chongming Island Football School with a golden goal in extra time. It was worth noting that in that final, the men in charge of the two teams were Chi Shangbing and Xu Genbao.

Those two had been the absolute main characters in the old Dalian-Shanghai rivalry before Yunjia’s rise in the league. By the latter half of the 1990s, both had stepped away from the front line and become, in effect, leaders of children’s teams. Xu Genbao retired two years earlier than Chi Shangbing. After spending a year at Yunjia Tianyu Football School, he found retirement unbearable, returned to Shanghai, and founded Shanghai Chongming Island Football School on his own. Chi Shangbing, meanwhile, became the principal of Dalian East Football School directly. On the level of youth football development, the two old rivals were equally unwilling to be outdone.

Ding Yu understood very well that only now had this invitational tournament truly begun to test them. With Yunjia Tianyu’s strength, as long as they played properly in the group stage, qualifying was absolutely not a problem. In the two knockout matches they had faced fairly friendly opponents, and when playing Hubei and Chongqing, neither side was interested in resorting to dirty tricks. Everyone knew one another pretty well; they simply threw themselves into the fight and let the better side win. In that situation, so long as Yunjia Tianyu did not collectively lose their heads, failure was basically impossible.

But once they reached the final four, Yunjia, Shanghai, Shandong, and Dalian all looked down on none of the others. They fought each other to the death in the league, and in a youth competition like this, nobody was willing to lose. Even when they knew they were not quite as strong, they still wanted to prove a point. And over the past two years, with Yunjia once again shining brightly, they had become the target of everyone’s hostility: if we have already lost to you in the league, at least we cannot lose to you in youth football too.

For that very reason, although they had only finished as runners-up last year, Shanghai Chongming Island’s 1989 age-group team, which had eliminated Yunjia Tianyu, still received praise from the club.

This time, Yunjia Tianyu’s opponent was last year’s champion, Dalian East Football School. Ding Yu knew that their principal, Chi Shangbing, one of the most famous coaches China had ever produced, would certainly use every last brain cell he had to deal with Yunjia Tianyu’s 1989 age-group team.

In the early years of the professional league, Dalian had always been one of the dominant forces in Chinese football. What allowed them to run rampant was their terrifyingly solid defense and an attack that, once unleashed, struck like thunder and earthquake. They were fearsome, composed, and airtight.

A great deal of that team’s character came from their head coach, Chi Shangbing, and Ding Yu understood this all too well. During his brief six-month spell as head coach, when Yunjia Tianyu’s nominal manager was the Yugoslavian Rade but the matches were actually directed by Ding Yu, he had once had the chance to lead Yunjia Tianyu to a league title. That title might have brought something different, perhaps even more glorious, to the life that followed. Unfortunately, that still-unrealized glory was snuffed out, and the one who extinguished it was Chi Shangbing and the Dalian East side he led.

In one league round during the second half of the 1996 season, Yunjia Tianyu traveled away to challenge Dalian East. In that match, Ding Yu ordered Yunjia Tianyu forward wave after wave, and Dalian East endured the ugliest game of the three-year league period. Shots were seventeen to five, corners thirteen to two, and possession was sixty-seven percent to thirty-three percent. In each of those figures, the first number belonged to the visitors, Yunjia Tianyu, while the second belonged to the home side, Dalian East. Yet the final score was still nil-nil. Chi Shangbing chose the ugliest possible method to earn a point, but the result ultimately proved him right. In the 1996 top-flight league, Dalian East edged Yunjia Tianyu by one point to win the championship, and it remains Dalian East’s last top-division title to this day.

Six years later, in a youth football match, Ding Yu encountered Chi Shangbing once more. Only this time, in the past they had led professional clubs, elite league sides, the assembled finest players in the country. Today, they led a band of schoolboys, albeit an elite band of schoolboys.

P.S. Ha-ha, that chapter title really startled you, didn’t it?