Chapter 1 Chen Hero

Chen Hero looked at his father sitting in front of him.

He had returned home after several busy weeks of endorsements and commercials.

He had done all sorts of commercial activities and interviews.

Finally, he had some time that was entirely his own. From that moment on, his vacation officially began.

His first priority was to fly back to Chengdu, Sichuan, to see his parents.

His father was still tending to his small shop near the University of Electronic Science and Technology. He didn't abandon his business to enjoy a life of leisure just because his son was a big star.

Perhaps this showed that his father really enjoyed doing business…

So now, the son and his father were sitting together to discuss this issue—the son, Chen Hero, providing the capital, and the father contributing his efforts to establish a clothing brand. Starting small, from scratch, doing what his father did best: the clothing business.

His father had been in this line of work for decades, and he still had the eye for it, as well as ideas. What he lacked was capital.

But his father still seemed to have some reservations about this matter. That was… how could a father use his son's money to start a business? He had only heard of sons using their father's wealth to get started. The rich second generation was one thing, but no one talked about fathers becoming the rich second generation.

Chen Hero didn't see it that way at all.

"Dad, isn't it perfectly justifiable for a father to use his son's money? When children support their parents, doesn't that count as parents using their children's money?"

Chen Tao glared. "That's different. If you buy me clothes or give me money during festivals, I'll happily accept it and won't refuse. But if you give me hundreds of thousands or millions to start a business, I can't accept it. How can they be the same?"

"What's different about it? It's just the amount of money that's different…"

"No, there's no such logic in the world." Chen Tao was still quite stubborn.

In fact, he was thinking that a father should always be a father. A father should have authority in front of his son. But once he accepted his son's money, how could he, as a father, have the face to stand tall in front of his son? It would be utterly embarrassing to say it out loud.

Chen Hero saw that his father was determined and wouldn't budge, so he was helpless.

But was his father really going to spend the rest of his life stuck in such a small shop?

He looked around the cramped store. Everything here was so familiar. Even the newspaper pasted on the ceiling hadn't changed; it had been there since his childhood.

This was a small street-front shop, not a booth in a fancy shopping mall. It was very simple, but the rent was cheaper than in a large shopping mall, so the things sold here were of poor quality, not high-end, and cheap. But students liked this, especially girls. They didn't care about quality, just style.

Now that he had money, he often sent money home, not just a few thousand, but tens of thousands, in euros.

But his father hadn't said anything about renting another shop to double the size of this one. He was still keeping it as it was.

The only change was probably the obvious increase in the number of interviews he received, but this didn't make him happy. Instead, it made him a little troubled, because the more reporters came, the more it affected his small shop's business…

The newspaper-covered ceiling was stained with many other colors from the grime, there was dust and cobwebs in the corners of the walls, and the store outside was hung with cheap clothes ranging from a few dozen to two hundred yuan. There were all sorts of styles, all of which girls liked. But the quality wasn't very good, and they were easily outdated. Maybe after a season, they would no longer be popular. He haggled with customers for a few yuan, a dozen yuan, a few dozen yuan, and was given the cold shoulder.

This was the dream my father had struggled for his whole life? How could he be trapped in such a dilapidated building?

Chen Hero had an idea in his mind, and he suddenly stood up.

Chen Tao looked up at him.

"Dad, I've been thinking about it, and I think this idea is really good, but I don't have time to do it. Why don't you help me?"

"Help you?"

"That's right, help me. To put it in more fashionable terms, you can be my professional manager. I'll invest in building a company and an entire brand, and then you can help me manage it and do it according to your ideas."

"This…" Chen Tao wanted to refuse out of reflex.

Chen Hero shook his head at him. "Don't refuse, Dad."

Looking into his son's eyes, Chen Tao did think that the idea was pretty good, and he was really unwilling to do this kind of small business for the rest of his life…

"Alright," he nodded.

A smile appeared on Chen Hero's face.

"What do you think of calling it 'Hero', Dad?" Chen Hero said, grinning as he revealed the name he had been thinking about for a long time.

Unexpectedly, his father frowned after hearing it.

"I haven't asked you yet, Hero. Are you planning to make menswear or women's wear for this clothing brand? Formal wear or casual wear? Business wear or sportswear?"

Chen Tao's series of questions left Chen Hero dumbfounded and completely unable to answer. Because he… hadn't thought about any of that at all!

"Have you really been thinking about this for a long time…" Chen Tao knew from his son's expression that he hadn't really taken it to heart and was just using it as an excuse to get him on board.

The son, whose little thoughts had been seen through, scratched his head embarrassedly.

"Oh, I told you to take care of it. You definitely have more experience in this area than I do, Dad. Just do what you think is best! I'll just… pay the money! Anyway, I'll leave it all to you to find office space, find people, find factories… and so on!"

Chen Hero looked like he was leaving everything to someone else.

"This is a football sports novel, not an urban business warfare novel."

※※※

Chen Hero's vacation was quite precious. After spending ten days at home with his parents, he had to embark on his return journey.

The day to return to the team was approaching.

This year was 2010, with the South Africa World Cup, a major tournament year.

Because of the World Cup, players who participated in the World Cup could return to the team half a month later. This time was calculated from the day they were eliminated, not from the final day. Only players who made it to the final had the right to return to the team half a month after the final.

Napoli was not a team full of national team players. Not many of the national team players they contributed participated in the World Cup. Originally, Cassano had a great chance. With his excellent performance, he had been selected for the Italian national team. He had played a few friendly matches for the national team, and his performance was remarkable, as if he had found his old feeling. Unfortunately, he had a heart attack at this time.

Maggio was selected for the Italian national team based on his outstanding performance at Napoli, but in the Italian national team, he was just a substitute.

Arshavin was the main player in the Russian national team, but unfortunately, Russia did not make it to the final round this time.

So, when all was said and done, the most famous of them was only Hamsik. As Napoli's midfield core, after his wonderful performance in the Champions League, he had long been favored by many experts. He was also a core main player in the Slovakian team, and many scouts were watching his every move. After every World Cup, there would always be many transfers. Who knew if Hamsik would be one of them?

In fact, the most regrettable people in the World Cup were not Cassano and Arshavin, but Chen Hero. The top scorer who had dominated in Serie A and the Champions League hadn't even made it to the Chinese team, let alone the World Cup.

Before the World Cup, the Chinese team had played a warm-up match with the World Cup champion France. In that match, midfielder Deng Zhuoxiang scored a beautiful free kick, and the Chinese team finally defeated France 1:0. It was a major upset.

Chen Hero was also absent from that match.

Chinese football had already entered the stage of cracking down on corruption, and the question of whether Chen Hero could be selected for the national team remained unresolved.

Public opinion was very high, but the Football Association seemed to have other considerations.

Many people now felt that if Chen Hero had a good relationship with the Football Association and could enter the Chinese team, maybe the Chinese team would still have a chance to reach the World Cup finals? At that time, they would be able to see how Chen Hero would show his power in the World Cup…

Of course, a more common view was that with the nature of Chinese football, even if there were eleven Chen Heroes, it would be useless, let alone one.

In short, in this lively World Cup summer, these noises had nothing to do with Chen Hero himself.

He was just a spectator, watching France and Italy roll home in the group stage, watching Kaka helplessly facing Brazil's precarious situation, watching Messi single-handedly unable to prevent Argentina from being defeated by Germany by four goals, watching Özil become famous in the World Cup, watching the Netherlands make it all the way to the final despite not being favored, and watching Saint Iker Casillas, who had been breached by him twice, lead Spain to lift the trophy, and a new king was crowned.

He could only watch the excitement of other people's homes.

What was he doing? He was buried in hard training in the instance dungeon.

Since he easily scored a goal using off-ball movement in the last round of the league last season, he had become more interested in practicing off-ball movement.

So, he had also returned to Naples earlier than most of his teammates, just so that he could continuously grind the instance dungeon without being disturbed.

Following Inzaghi's hard training in off-ball movement, many of his goals in training in the instance dungeon were now scored by off-ball movement. Inzaghi was surprised by his progress.

Although this was in the instance dungeon, and the training effect was enhanced, Chen Hero's progress was fast enough to be described as "lightning speed". Originally, it was thought that it would take at least a season to see initial results, but now it seemed that in less than a season, Chen Hero had mastered off-ball movement.

In fact, off-ball movement was really just a feeling. Once you found the feeling, everything else was simple. There was nothing to keep practicing. Next, if you wanted to improve your off-ball movement further, you could only rely on constantly accumulating experience in matches to learn how to do better off-ball movement, how to abandon those truly useless efforts in off-ball movement, and how to appear in the most suitable position in the most effective and simple way. That was a high-end skill, but practice alone was not enough. That was the accumulation of experience and a kind of insight in continuous matches.

He just kept grinding and grinding until one day when Chen Hero was having breakfast, he found that the door was opened and Christine Cabella walked in.

He knew that the new season had arrived.