Chapter 65: Hunting Wang Lie

When Sven Herden appeared at the post-match press conference, before he could even take his seat, every journalist in the room raised their hands.

Liu Zhong whispered to Guo Xuequan, "Raising your hand is useless, old Guo. You offended him terribly last time; he's definitely going to ignore you."

Guo Xuequan replied indifferently, "It doesn't matter. None of the journalists here today are going to let him off the hook anyway. If he doesn't call on me, he doesn't call on me."

"You know that and you're still raising your hand..."

"It's about attitude, little Liu. Since I can't directly give this old geezer the middle finger, raising my hand is all I can do."

With that, Guo Xuequan straightened his back and lifted his arm a bit higher.

He wasn't wrong. As soon as the Q&A session began, every question asked by the reporters was intensely aggressive, leaving him zero face.

"Mr. Herden, do you feel you should take responsibility for this disgraceful defeat?"

"Mr. Sven Herden, will you consider resigning and stepping down?"

"The team suddenly collapsed after halftime. What exactly did you say to the players during the break?"

"In the first half of the season, you managed a 1:1 draw away against the Scotsmen, and the team showed immense resilience back then. Why did you put on a performance like this away from home today? It's completely different from the first half of the season..."

"Mr. Wang scored a hat-trick against the Scotsmen in the previous league round, helping Tyne secure their first victory against them in the last six seasons. Yet this round, without him, you conceded eight goals away, setting a club record for the biggest margin of defeat. Doesn't this prove that letting Wang leave was a mistake?"

"Last match you said your team was sitting in third place. Now you've dropped back down to fourth. What are your thoughts on that?"

"Mr. Herden, are you aware that you've led the team to the most humiliating defeat in the history of Soful United? Continuing with performances like this, do you think the team can ever return to the UEFA Champions League?"

"May I ask..."

"Mr. Herden! Mr. Herden..."

***

"...We certainly made mistakes between the twenty-first and twenty-fourth minutes of the first half, which is why we conceded three goals in a very short space of time; that was the punishment... But that kind of performance in the second half is not our style, it is not the level we should be playing at... This is not Soful United, I saw eleven men lose their minds..."

Sitting on the team bus from Northumberland Football City to Leazes Park Stadium, Wang Lei wore headphones, looking at the screen of his phone where Herden, with a dark face, uttered these words. He couldn't help but chuckle softly.

His quiet laugh drew the attention of his teammate behind him, Matej Katić. The Croatian defender leaned forward and caught a glimpse of the content on Wang Lei's screen.

With a grin, he asked, "Seeing your enemy besieged like that, is it quite satisfying?"

Wang Lei took off his headphones and shook his head, saying, "If he weren't managing Soful United, it certainly would be."

"I would have thought that, at least for the short term, you'd be glad to see news of Soful United losing and making a fool of themselves. After all, in Herden's 'persecution' of you, the Soful United club also played a part. Much like Trop..."

Katić brought up the past involving his former club and Wang's former-former club.

Pablo Trop was a renowned Spanish international and a legendary figure of Atlético Barcelona. He had spent the majority of his professional career at Atlético Barcelona, achieving tremendous success.

However, he was actually an exceptional player nurtured by Real Madrid's youth academy. Because he failed to secure sufficient opportunities in Real Madrid's first team, he felt he had been treated unjustly by the club's management. Consequently, upon the expiration of his contract, he joined Real Madrid's arch-rivals Atlético Barcelona on a free transfer.

At Atlético Barcelona, he became a mainstay of the team and achieved monumental success.

He eventually retired at Atlético Barcelona as a club legend.

Before retiring, he had spent three seasons as Wang Lei's teammate at Atlético Barcelona.

That was why Katić used Trop as an example, since Wang Lei also knew Trop.

Wang Lei, however, disagreed with Katić's assessment, shaking his head: "Pablo's situation was different from mine. His time playing for you lot was very short. Although he was indeed nurtured by your youth academy, he had been a fan of Merritt since childhood, so he didn't hold any real affection for you..."

The "Merritt" Wang Lei referred to was another La Liga club based in Madrid. Although they could not compare with the European football superpower Real Madrid in terms of historical honors or current strength, they were deeply rooted in the working-class communities and founded earlier than Real Madrid, making them the oldest club in the capital. Consequently, they boasted a massive fanbase in Madrid, and their local influence was by no means inferior to Real Madrid's.

Merritt was also Real Madrid's fiercest local rival in the Madrid region.

It was hardly unusual for a player who loved Merritt from childhood to receive training in Real Madrid's youth camp. Such occurrences were common at Real Madrid—they constantly scoured the globe for brilliant teenage talents and signed them to their youth academy for development.

Naturally, they would never pass up a prodigy right on their own doorstep.

Pablo Trop was selected in just this manner to enter Real Madrid's youth ranks.

Had things progressed naturally, he might have eventually become a legend and icon of Real Madrid, transforming into a staunch "Madridista." His childhood affection for Merritt would have merely been a youthful trivia anecdote in the life of a Real Madrid legend.

Instead, Trop did not wait until the day he became a Real Madrid legend; just two seasons after breaking into the first team, he left the club and defected to their mortal enemies, Atlético Barcelona.

"...I am different. I did not receive the respect I deserved at Atlético Barcelona. It was Soful United that gave me the opportunity to prove myself, and I love this club from the bottom of my heart. Even though I certainly have grievances with the club's hierarchy and the manager, I played football there for ten years... Who is hurt the most by this 0:8 defeat? Certainly not the manager, nor the management, but the fans of Soful United."

"Yet I recall that during your final half-season at Soful United, some fans even jeered you and thought you should leave."

"They were a tiny minority and cannot represent all Soful United fans," Wang Lei said, curling his lip. "And eventually, they will realize that everything I said was the absolute truth, and they will understand who was deceiving them and exploiting them. In China, we have an old proverb: 'Time reveals a person's heart,' which means that as time passes and you spend long periods together, you come to see someone's true face. So once Herden manages the team for a bit longer, they will know who truly cares about Soful United and who is merely exploiting it."

"How much longer can he possibly continue to manage Soful United? A defeat like this match is humiliating..." Katić expressed his doubts.

Thinking of Jonathan Hall, the general manager of Soful United, Wang Lei shook his head and said, "At the very least, he shouldn't be sacked this season."

***

Jonathan Hall looked at the frowning man before him—the balding team manager, Sven Herden.

Hall said, "Mr. Baker has asked me to inform you that in an hour, you will meet with him alongside me to discuss this match."

"Is the club planning to use the defeat in this match as a pretext to dismiss me?" Herden asked with a gloomy face.

Hall shook his head. "Not to that extent. But the owner needs to know what happened. Why a team that won 3:0 so convincingly in their previous match ended up putting up zero resistance in this one."

Herden looked somewhat dissatisfied. "I want to know why, too. Last night I locked myself in my study for almost the entire night, and I also want to know why we lost like this! Our players showed zero fighting spirit during the match! They just stood there and watched opponents right in front of them receive, pass, dribble, and shoot..."

At first, he merely spread his hands, but soon he began waving his arms about excitedly.

"I made five substitutions, and at halftime I told them exactly what to do in the second half... But they didn't execute a single thing I told them! You saw it yourself; the players' performance on the pitch was as if they had lost their souls—they were just eleven wooden posts! They were terrified of challenging the opponents, and they lost all confidence to win the match!"

Hall nodded. Indeed, just as Herden described, the Soful United players on the pitch seemed only to want the game to end quickly rather than figuring out how to claw a goal back.

***

Andrew Stookley could feel the immense pressure bearing down from behind him, accompanied by a muffled grunt as someone slammed heavily into his back.

Fortunately, he had already secured his position, so despite the collision, he swung his leg and cleared the incoming football away.

Then, he heard a roar from behind.

Having completed the clearance, Stookley turned around to see Wang Lei, his face contorted with fury, glaring daggers at him.

Stookley was startled at first, but after recovering, a sense of confusion washed over him:

Why are you so angry?

I'm your opponent, and I'm just doing my job.

Isn't it completely normal not to score during an attack?

What's there to be angry about?

Then a thought followed:

Is it because I ruined your scoring opportunity that you're mad?

Ha!

Well, you're going to have plenty more reasons to be angry coming up!

Because we specifically tailored our tactical approach around you today!

***

"We are nearly half an hour into the match, and the score remains 0:0. Wang Lei is trapped deep within Brighton White Mountain's heavy encirclement, especially near the White Mountain penalty area... Perhaps White Mountain's manager and players were frightened by Wang Lei's hat-trick in the last game..."

Patrick Mandeville, the manager of Brighton White Mountain, stood on the touchline, nervously biting his fingernails.

He had drawn inspiration from Tyne's 2:3 defeat to the Scotsmen in the previous round.

At that time, Scotsmen manager Giuseppe Gill had instructed his players to apply tight, double-teaming defense against Wang Lei.

For a period, it was remarkably successful, making it almost impossible for Tyne's offense to flow through Wang Lei.

Mandeville had also carefully analyzed why Gill ultimately failed.

It was because Gill only marshaled a coordinated defense against Wang Lei in midfield, failing to do so near the penalty box.

He could understand why Gill did that; he was worried that fouling Wang Lei would concede too many free-kick opportunities.

And indeed, Wang Lei had scored the opening goal precisely from a free kick.

However, in reality, that free kick was nearly forty meters away from the goal—strictly speaking, outside the "vicinity of the penalty area." The Scotsmen successfully prevented Wang Lei from scoring via free kicks near their box, only for Wang Lei to score directly from a free kick far away from their box...

Mandeville learned a valuable lesson from Gill's failure. He believed that double-teaming Wang Lei was still the right approach, but rather than in midfield, it should be implemented near the penalty area.

In midfield, he refrained from heavily hunting down a dropping Wang Lei, as doing so would dilute his defensive resources. Instead, he preferred to construct a resolute defensive block in the defensive third—meaning right around his own penalty box.

As for the issue of free kicks, he simply instructed his players to exercise extreme caution.

Moreover, he had dedicated the entire preceding week of training sessions to targeted free-kick defensive drills, establishing thorough plans covering everything from defensive wall arrangements to the goalkeeper's positioning.

Based on the thirty minutes of play so far, his tactical arrangements had paid off. Surrounded on all fronts, Wang Lei struggled even to receive the ball, let alone score. The few occasional half-chances he managed were far from ideal, and under the suffocating, close-marking pressure of Brighton White Mountain's defenders, he failed to capitalize...

Yet Mandeville remained profoundly nervous, feeling no sense of relief.

He knew a football match is a ninety-minute contest, not a thirty-minute sprint.

Not conceding a goal now did not guarantee a clean sheet later.

When facing a top-tier player like Wang Lei, who had proven his capabilities time and time again, it was best not to pop the champagne early.

He still remembered how Herlingham FC's manager, Kofi Roster, had ended up looking like a "clown."

Consequently, prior to this match, whenever journalists asked him about Wang Lei, he responded with nothing but praise and flattery.

He lauded everything from Wang's recent form to his historical status.

He practically sounded like one of Wang's fanboys...

Yet once the match kicked off, he showed absolutely no mercy to his "idol"!

Aside from cautioning his players against committing deliberate fouls, he threw virtually every defensive trick in the book at Wang Lei.

He felt as though he were hunting a prehistoric Tyrannosaurus Rex.

It required the collective mobilization of all resources, explicit division of labor, and flawless cooperation.

The hunting process was agonizingly long and required absolute concentration without a single lapse in focus or error, all while praying for the favor of the Goddess of Fortune...

Only after confirming the hunt was successful and the T-Rex was dead could one truly breathe a sigh of relief.

Until then, he had to hold his breath.

Mandeville glanced up at the stadium scoreboard, where the match clock displayed the time alongside the score.

It was now the thirty-third minute of the match.

Twelve minutes remained until halftime.

So far everything looked normal, but he knew this style of defense demanded an immense physical toll.

During halftime, he would need to arrange for the physio and medical staff to massage the players, fully relaxing their muscles so they could quickly recover their stamina...

Mandeville was already plotting his halftime adjustments.

This was not because he neglected the ongoing match, but rather because he had to plan ahead and prepare for the future.

***

Because Wang Lei found himself heavily surrounded and tightly marked by Brighton White Mountain's players,

Tyne attempted to bypass him during their build-up play, directing the ball to other options instead.

Players like Vitini, Dean, or the Dutch attacking midfielder Van Ginkel, who pushed forward into the penalty area.

This time, Dean's cross from the right flank was deflected out of bounds by a Brighton White Mountain defender, winning Tyne a throw-in near the opponent's penalty box corner.

Right-back Jacob Barnabas hurried over and threw the ball to the supporting Dean.

He then quickly retreated to create space and an angle.

True to expectation, Dean received the ball with his back to the goal, a Brighton White Mountain player pressed tightly against his back, preventing him from turning easily.

Simultaneously, another Brighton White Mountain player rushed forward to join the first, subjecting Dean to a double-team press.

Because Brighton White Mountain dropped their overall defensive block very deep, they could stack bodies in the defensive third, creating a numerical advantage to swarm Tyne's ball-carriers in every zone of the pitch.

In such situations, Tyne needed to use quick passing to stretch the space and find the right timing for a delivery.

Take the current moment, for example: after taking the throw-in, Barnabas immediately re-entered the pitch, stepping backward to widen the passing angle and distance.

Under pressure from two defenders, Dean laid the football back to Barnabas.

Accompanying the ball was one of the Brighton White Mountain players who had just been swarming Dean.

Barnabas had no time for hesitation. Facing the on-rushing press, without even taking a touch to control the ball, he immediately whipped in a cross!

In truth, however, this was far from an ideal moment for a cross.

Inside the Brighton White Mountain penalty area, Vitini had just run from the far post toward the near post to offer support. He undoubtedly hoped Barnabas would slide a low ball along the turf.

Instead, Barnabas lofted a high cross.

In the central area, the only player available to contest for the header was attacking midfielder Van Ginkel, who was occupying the space Wang Lei typically filled.

Aside from him, there were no other Tyne players inside the Brighton White Mountain box.

When only two players—and specifically just one player in the central channel—are available to contest a header, lofting a high ball is categorically the wrong choice...

Yet since Barnabas had already delivered the cross, he could only watch as his teammates scrambled to attack the drop zone.

Van Ginkel leaped simultaneously with Brighton White Mountain center-back Andrew Stookley, challenging for the dropping ball.

Neither of them made contact.

In his haste to get the cross off before a defender could block it, Barnabas had put a bit too much power on the delivery...

The football sailed straight past the near post and the center, drifting all the way toward the... far post.

There, Brighton White Mountain right-back Amissy Jean had tucked into the penalty area, tilting his head back to track the flight of the ball as he leaped to head it clear.

At that exact moment, the commentators let out synchronized cries of astonishment:

"Wang!"

"WAAAAANG——!"

"Wang Lei!"

Audiences in front of their televisions watched as Wang Lei suddenly flew in from outside the broadcast frame!

Jean, already airborne, felt the world go dark before his eyes...

A figure completely blocked his line of sight, and he lost track of the football!

And then he lost his balance entirely.

Suspended in mid-air, Wang Lei only felt as though he had collided with someone, though he had no idea who it was; his eyes were fixed solely on the oncoming football!

Meeting the soaring ball, he stabilized his upper body, flexing his neck muscles to keep his head rigidly upright.

As the football arrived, he tucked his chin and nodded his head downward, ensuring the widest surface of his forehead struck the center of the ball...

Thud!

He made a solid, pristine connection!

The football sharply changed trajectory, rocketing toward the goal!

Faced with such an abrupt header, Brighton White Mountain goalkeeper Bailey Grant failed to react entirely, standing frozen on his feet and watching helplessly as the ball zipped just over his shoulder and into the back of the net...

"Wang——Lei!!! Thirty-fifth minute! He finally breaks the deadlock for Tyne! First blood! 1:0! Tyne leads Brighton White Mountain away from home!"