“He… he really said that?”

Anger was barely concealed on the other end of the phone, and the voice even trembled a little.

Wan Zongquan nodded. “Yes, I didn’t change a single word. That’s exactly what he said!” He was telling the truth. In order to disgust the Football Association, he really hadn’t changed a single word.

“This is too… too…” The person on the other end of the phone was quite angry, and after “too” for a long time, he didn’t know what to say. In the end, he squeezed out a completely bureaucratic sentence, “Too unorganized and undisciplined!”

“Anyway, my mission is complete, and there’s nothing I can do if he doesn’t agree…” Wan Zongquan spread his hands and hung up the phone. As for what kind of impact his phone call would have on the other side, he didn’t care.

Of course, the person on the other end of the phone was full of anger.

Absolutely furious…

A small player actually dared to speak to us in such a tone! Was he afraid he wasn’t dying fast enough?!

Let us apologize? Was he out of his mind? He could rummage through the old papers to see if he could find an example of the Chinese Football Association apologizing to… let alone a player, even just an individual! See if he could find a precedent for the Football Association apologizing to an individual!

In Chinese football, the Football Association had absolute authority and was the leader of all football activities in China. With such high authority, apologize to a little rascal like him? Who did he think he was?

If they set this precedent, where would the Chinese Football Association and the State General Administration of Sport put their faces—the Football Association perhaps felt it wasn't confident enough on its own, so it dragged in the State General Administration of Sport.

What qualifications did Chen Hero have to make them apologize to him!

At this time, the Football Association completely forgot to consider what qualifications they had to demand an apology from Chen Hero, especially a public apology…

Feeling as if they had been slapped hard in the face by Chen Hero, several leaders of the Football Association gathered to discuss what to do.

“What else can we do? Just let it go. Anyway, he’s not willing…”

“Just let it go like this? Should we get the media to blacklist him and not report any news about him?”

Someone laughed. “Can you blacklist him?”

The person who made the suggestion immediately fell silent. Yes, the Football Association was not the General Administration of Press and Publication or the Central Propaganda Department, and it was not qualified to demand that the media blacklist a star with huge domestic influence. On the contrary, their own Chinese Super League had been blacklisted by CCTV many times…

In the end, the newly appointed Director of the Football Management Office spoke. “Forget it, since the other party is unwilling to cooperate, we just won’t look for him. I think with a world-class coach leading the team, there shouldn’t be any problems with this Twenty Qualifying Round. The earth will keep turning even without him. China’s team is fine without him!”

That was the final decision, but the resentment in his tone was still very obvious.

So, without anyone knowing, Chen Hero’s national team career had experienced a small ripple, and it seemed like something was about to happen, but it was strangled by him and the people from the Football Association working together…

Everything returned to calm. It was the same as before.

But, was it really like that?

Once a crack appeared, it existed permanently and could never disappear for no reason.

The feud between Chen Hero and the Chinese Football Association seemed to be growing bigger and bigger…

※※※

The Football Association made the decision not to recruit Chen Hero into the national team, and Chen Hero also made his decision. This time, he was going to slap some people’s faces hard. Didn’t they want to keep a low profile? Then he would give them a push!

If they dared to humiliate him, then they should be prepared to bear his wrath!

As a result, his task list had one more task: “Apologize to your sister!”

This task required Chen Hero to represent Liverpool in the match against the national team and defeat his opponents.

However, the color of the task was… green. This meant that for Chen Hero and Liverpool, this task was very simple…

※※※

In the evening, at the Tianhe Stadium in Guangzhou, Liverpool held their first public training session before the match. Tickets were sold for this training session, and they had long since sold out.

Because of Chen Hero’s joining, many plans had been modified. For example, the time and opponents for the warm-up matches, and this training session. Although the previous training sessions were open, they were not for ordinary fans, only for sponsors and some media.

It wasn’t that Liverpool was arrogant and conceited, but that Liverpool couldn’t bring themselves to shamelessly sell tickets for ordinary training sessions to make money.

However, after Niang saw the plan drafted by his subordinates, he made a bold stroke and changed it to open all training sessions to the public, but tickets had to be sold, and the price could be negotiated with the Chinese side.

The final result was that training tickets were all 100 yuan each, but the number of tickets was limited to a maximum of 30,000.

This ticket price was not too low. It should be known that later this year, Real Madrid would also visit China, and the team had stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, Benzema, Casillas, and Higuain. Their training tickets were also only 100 yuan each.

Liverpool dared to set this ticket price without Gerrard or Suarez entirely because they had the ultimate weapon, Chen Hero!

Chen Hero had just led Napoli to win the Serie A title and the Champions League title. With both championships in hand, his popularity in China had reached its peak. If Niang and Liverpool didn’t make good use of it, they would all be fools.

In China, if Chen Hero’s card was played well, it would be invincible.

On this day of training, 30,000 fans from all over the country made Tianhe Stadium extremely lively. It also brought a great shock to the Liverpool players.

“Your Chinese fans… are so enthusiastic, Hero!” Škrtel was frightened. It was just a training session, but 30,000 fans had come! And that was the result of the organizers controlling the number of tickets. At the same time, a large number of fans gathered outside, trying every means to enter… but the security guards were very conscientious and did not let them succeed.

This scene did frighten Liverpool’s teammates quite a bit. Tens of thousands of people watching a training session was an unprecedented experience for them…

“So many people for just a training session, I can’t even imagine how many people will come when we play…” Kuyt was also shocked by so many enthusiastic fans.

“Maybe it can fill this stadium…” Chen Hero said.

The teammates smacked their lips.

“Your Chinese fans are so enthusiastic about football. I used to think that no one watched football in China, and they only watched table tennis…” Agger was also very strange.

“How is that possible? China has the largest number of fans, and many people like to play football…”

“Then how are your national team’s results?” Agger asked.

He asked this naturally without malice, because he didn’t know anything, but this question made Chen Hero a little embarrassed.

“This… haha!” Chen Hero shrugged. “I don’t know either! This question has stumped many people. There are very powerful experts and scholars in it, and they don’t know what the reason is.”

Agger looked worried. “It seems like there is a big problem…”

Of course there was a big problem!

This matter cannot be solved by one person alone.

He was not in the mood to explain to his teammates why Chinese football was so difficult to change, why so many people in China liked football and had such a good mass base, but why batch after batch of people were disheartened.

After that, Chen Hero’s mood was not high. After the training, when he was signing autographs for the fans and throwing souvenirs, even though so many fans were cheering his name, he could never get excited.

This scene was naturally noticed by Škrtel. On the way back to the hotel, he even asked Chen Hero if he was a little tired from flying all the way.

Even though Škrtel was currently his best friend in Liverpool, he didn’t know how to explain to him what he was feeling depressed about. So he had to nod and admit that he was tired, but in reality… how could he feel tired from such a long flight? It wasn’t like he hadn’t experienced it before. When he was playing for Zenit Saint Petersburg, he had such an experience every season…

※※※

Liverpool arrived in Guangzhou on the 16th, trained for another day on the 17th, and then on the 18th, they would play a friendly match with Evergrande at the Tianhe Sports Center.

On the 16th, Conca, the most expensive foreign aid in the history of the Chinese Super League, who was bought by Evergrande at a sky-high price, appeared in the league and received unanimous praise. Now Evergrande was really in high spirits. They not only ranked first in the Chinese Super League, but also won a player like Conca who was the best player in the Brazilian League. Now they were going to play a warm-up match with Liverpool, and in early August, they would fight Real Madrid again. They looked like the most popular warm-up team for the giants in China…

In Guangzhou, Evergrande’s popularity was indeed quite high. In China, Liverpool’s popularity was also soaring because of Chen Hero’s joining.

The encounter between these two teams had become the focus of discussion on the streets of Guangzhou. In the past two days, the Guangzhou media had almost all been reporting on Liverpool.

The contest between the “number one star in China” and the “number one star in the Chinese Super League” had also become a gimmick for the media to hype.

In fact, the event organizers were also promoting it in this way. On the tickets for the match between Liverpool and Evergrande, there were Liverpool players on one side and Guangzhou Evergrande players on the other, but the two most prominent were Chen Hero on Liverpool’s side and Conca leading Evergrande’s side.

On the 17th, at the pre-match press conference on the last day, head coach Dalglish and Chen Hero attended the press conference at the same time. This was the first time Chen Hero had attended a press conference since arriving in Guangzhou, and he became the focus of everyone’s attention at the meeting. Some reporters wanted him to comment on Guangzhou Evergrande and Conca.

Chen Hero told the truth: “I haven’t watched the Chinese Super League games, so I don’t know much about it…”

“Then what do you think of the Evergrande model?” the reporters asked again.

“I think it’s pretty good. To play football, you have to have money. You can’t do it without money.” His words made the Guangzhou media very happy. Previously, in other parts of the country, Evergrande had become a target. Everyone believed that Xu Jiayin’s way of playing would ruin Chinese football, but Chen Hero supported it.

Seeing that Chen Hero was in a good mood, everyone simply asked a deeper question: “Then may I ask you about joining the Chinese team…”

Chen Hero directly interrupted him: “The matter of me joining the Chinese team, right? I can’t control this… the initiative is with the Football Association, not with me, really not with me.”

Football Association, aren’t you trying to keep a low profile? I’ll kick this ball over and see how you handle it!