Chapter 1 Vladimir Borovicka

Zenit St. Petersburg's assistant coach, Vladimir Borovicka, carefully sized up Chen Hero standing before him.

At first glance, he was satisfied. The body was quite strong, full of muscles, and power seemed ready to explode from them at any moment.

Ruslan Panchenko had already told him about what happened at the CSKA Moscow training base.

But he wasn't too interested in that story. It wasn't too surprising to score over the head of a Moscow youth team defender, especially when the kid in front of him was over six-foot-three. He liked "seeing is believing," so no matter what Panchenko said, he had to see Chen Hero's performance with his own eyes before he could make a decision.

"Hello, Hero," he greeted Chen Hero in English.

"Hello, Coach," Chen Hero replied respectfully.

Borovicka was quite satisfied. The kid had a good attitude, but he didn't know if his heart was strong enough. A professional player's psychology was also very important. If he had a strong body, but that strong body was supported by a fragile heart, then this person would not go far on the road of professional football.

Chen Tao watched the two men from the sidelines, both excited and nervous.

They had taken Panchenko's car to St. Petersburg early this morning. Panchenko had wanted to rest for a day before going to the club, but Chen Hero told him he wasn't tired at all and could go straight to the training base. Panchenko checked the time. It was after four in the afternoon, and the team was training. Good, everyone would be there if they went now. So he drove straight to the Udelny Park training base (named for its proximity to the park), which was the location of Zenit St. Petersburg's training base.

Then they quickly met assistant coach Borovicka.

Chen Tao was very satisfied with the attitude the club had shown, which was completely different from CSKA. Zenit's coaches seemed friendlier and easier to get along with.

He thought that if his son could eventually stay here, it would be much better than staying in Moscow...

"I heard about your story yesterday from Ruslan."

Chen Hero grinned.

"I'm curious about your physical fitness. How about we start with a physical test?"

"No problem, Coach."

Borovicka nodded and motioned for the fitness coach, Valery Kerzhakov, to come over.

The physical test was actually very simple. First, Chen Hero's height and weight were measured, and then he was asked to do five sets of 100-meter sprints, five sets of 30-meter shuttle runs, and a twelve-minute long-distance run.

Unlike a proper fitness test, this was just to give Zenit's coaches a basic understanding of the big guy's physical qualities - he looked tall and strong, but what was his speed and endurance like? The coaches didn't know.

Chen Tao stood on the sidelines, watching his son being tested on the field.

He wasn't worried about his son's physical fitness at all.

He himself wasn't tall, and his wife, Li Yun, didn't have Lang Ping's height either, but the son they gave birth to seemed to be a genetic mutation, growing rapidly and scaring them as parents.

Chen Hero grew quickly, and he liked football, so Chen Tao sent him to play football. At first, he really didn't want to train his son to be a professional player, he just thought that since his son liked it, he would send him to play. Later, he discovered that his son showed some talent for playing football, and he began to seriously consider training him to become a professional player. At that time, China's professional league had just started and was in full swing. The Chinese fans' enthusiasm, which had been suppressed for many years, was ignited by our own professional league. The media reported on the lives of professional players and the professional league. Those stars were frequently seen in the newspapers, and Chen Tao felt that it wasn't bad for his son to become a professional football player and engage in professional football.

Since Chen Hero was a child, he had eaten the best and most nutritious food. Their family almost never ate pork, mainly beef, chicken, and fish. Milk and eggs were available every day without interruption. In the mid-1990s, not many families could do this. Chen Tao's business was successful, and their family had the financial strength to do so.

Chen Hero did not disappoint his father's hopes and those beef, milk, and eggs. From the fourth grade of elementary school, he was a head taller than all his peers, and his body grew rapidly until he gradually slowed down in high school. Even so, he is now six-foot-three, weighs two hundred pounds, and his physical development hasn't completely stopped, so there is still room for him to grow taller.

In 1994, China's first professional football league kicked off in Chen Tao's hometown, and a football craze quickly swept across China. Many teenagers were sent by their parents to various football schools for training, and Chen Hero was one of these thousands of teenagers.

From football school to professional team, and then to the echelon of professional football club, Chen Hero went up so smoothly - of course, behind the scenes, his father stuffed red envelopes to those coaches.

Relying on his excellent physical qualities, he still had a place in the club's youth team. But this smooth experience seemed to make Chen Hero's temper rise as well.

Just as he was about to become a professional player, that fighting incident happened. Everything was over. Twelve years of childhood and adolescence, hundreds of thousands of RMB in expenses, those beef, eggs, and fresh milk... all went down the drain.

What to do?

His son had been playing football since he was a child. Although he had also taken cultural classes in football school, what effect could those cultural classes, which only lasted half a day and were often skipped, have? At most, it would prevent his son from becoming illiterate.

His son knew nothing but football.

For that week, he didn't say a word to his son out of anger, and at the same time, he was considering his son's future... the hearts of parents are all the same. No matter how sad his son makes him, he still has to consider his son's future. After thinking about it, Chen Tao felt that he still had to continue playing football. But he had seen a lot of the dirty things in China's domestic football clubs over the years, and he thought that if he was still in China, with his son's personality, he probably wouldn't be able to make it at all... why not try his luck abroad? Isn't the European football league very developed? Then go to Europe!

In this way, Chen Tao, determined, secretly borrowed some money from his relatives and friends, pieced together one hundred thousand RMB, and came out with the excuse of taking his son to Germany to see the World Cup and relax.

Who knew that he would only see what real high-level professional football was like when he came to Europe? Compared with those real professional clubs, his son might still be able to play in domestic clubs, but in Europe, people simply don't look at him! Chen Hero doesn't even have the qualifications to be selected for his national team, so how can he impress those picky Europeans?

In China, if you don't have enough strength, you can make up for it with red envelopes. If they don't want your son, you can still send money to get your son in. In Europe, you can't even find a way to send money!

Borovicka was very satisfied with Chen Hero's physical fitness test.

The times for the five 100-meter sprints were 11.79 seconds, 11.78 seconds, 11.95 seconds, 11.98 seconds, and 12.11 seconds.

Compared with speed players such as Ronaldo and Roberto Carlos in their prime, his speed was not particularly fast, but it was definitely not slow. And from this set of data, it can be seen that his speed did not decrease significantly. You should know that these five 100-meter sprints were continuous actions, with only 30 seconds of rest after each set before starting the sprint again. With such high-intensity sprints, the time used decreased so little. Moreover, it is already amazing for a big man to run at such a speed.

From this, it can be known that although Chen Hero is not a pure speed player, his body has good sustained explosive power and is in very good physical condition.

This was also confirmed in the subsequent 30-meter shuttle run and 12-minute run.

Chen Hero's 12-minute run result was 4,600 meters.

This result made Borovicka very happy. He knew that the average 12-minute run result in his team was only 3,800 meters, and the result of 4,600 meters was already the best in the current first team.

It seems that Chen Hero's physical fitness is indeed quite outstanding.

After testing his physical fitness, Borovicka asked Chen Hero to rest for a while to prepare for the ball test.

Chen Hero sat on the sidelines, and his father immediately ran up to massage and rub his legs, and also gave him a thumbs up. He had been staring at the assistant coach. The joyful expression on the assistant coach's face when he saw Chen Hero's results made Chen Tao beam with joy.

A good start is half the battle, I hope this time my son can truly win the favor of this coach.

"Piece of cake, Dad. You know that." Chen Hero seemed to be modest, but he was actually complacent. This was his style.

He was a little breathless after running for twelve minutes, but not tired.

You should know that when the Jia A league did the twelve-minute run test, everyone could see the results of those professional players. At that time, media from all over the country gathered at the Kunming Haigeng training base to report on the grand occasion of the physical test. For the Chinese professional players at that time, three thousand meters was the passing line. Only by running more than three thousand meters in twelve minutes could they directly obtain the registration qualification for the new season's Jia A league. Two thousand eight hundred meters required a retest. Three thousand two hundred meters was another benchmark, which meant that the player was in excellent physical condition.

At that time, very few people could run more than 3,200 meters. Some teams didn't have a single person who could run to this result. Some players with poor physical condition ran the result of 2,800 meters, and their saliva and tears flowed straight down. Some players even fainted directly on the track - the media rushed up like sharks smelling blood, surrounded them and kept taking pictures, while the poor "losers" could only curl up in blankets and sob. As a result, the "twelve-minute run" became synonymous with hell, making many professional players tremble with fear, and the coaches were also quite helpless. In 2002, under the unanimous opposition of players and coaches, this physical test method, which had been officially linked to competition results since 1992, was cancelled after insisting on it for a full ten years, and Chinese professional players no longer had to be frightened awake in their dreams at night. But the good times didn't last long, and they soon discovered that the yoyo test was not much more lovely than the twelve-minute run... Anyway, for those players who were not in good physical condition and did not have a correct attitude, no matter how scientific the physical test was, it would still make them feel painful.

And the result that Chen Hero ran today even surpassed the record of 4,400 meters set by Cassiano in the Jia A twelve-minute run test - it is said that Cassiano did not do his best at the time, and it is also said that Cassiano participated in this physical test for the first time, and he just ran stupidly because there was no translator.

With this comparison, you can know how good Chen Hero's physical level is.

Of course, in China, the twelve-minute run is a life-and-death test for players to obtain a new season's work permit. Now in Zenit, it is just a simple physical test to understand Chen Hero's endurance and does not determine whether he can enter Zenit.

After resting for a while, the coaching staff also arranged everything. The U18 youth team of the team accompanied Chen Hero for the test. This was the same as yesterday's CSKA Moscow.

A coach with a whistle hanging on his chest walked up to Chen Hero and said, "Are you ready, young man?"

Chen Hero nodded.

"The game time is fifty minutes, with two halves of twenty-five minutes each and a ten-minute half-time break." From this test, you can see the difference between Zenit St. Petersburg and CSKA Moscow. A formal game is obviously more formal and respectful than specially finding four people to bully one person.

The coach handed Chen Hero a yellow vest and told him to put it on.

Watching his son put on the vest and walk onto the field, Chen Tao couldn't help but feel nervous...