The situation was not as simple as fans imagined, nor was it due to a lack of experience in professional leagues. Frankly, it was because the terms were not agreed upon.
In fact, as early as two years ago, Jiangnan Group had begun communicating with the Football Association, hoping to include a batch of youth players aged 17 and above in the national team's roster to play for the country and gain experience in world competitions, with the slim possibility of helping the national team qualify for the 2030 World Cup.
Initially, negotiations were very pleasant. Jiangnan Group was the largest private capital in China, and Boss Huang was always generous with his spending. Upon their first meeting, representatives from Jiangnan Group expressed their willingness to provide the Football Association with 1 billion yuan in special funds specifically to promote the development of domestic professional leagues.
At this point, it seemed a certainty that the youth team players would enter the national team.
However, problems soon arose during the further implementation of these plans.
Jiangnan Group proactively proposed to hire Messi as the new national team head coach specifically to lead the team in the 2030 World Cup.
They also offered to scout a group of top foreign assistant coaches, performance analysts, tactical analysts, and player physiological health support teams, thereby elevating the national team's support staff to world-class standards. This would ensure everyone received the best logistical services and could perform at 100% capacity in competitions.
Naturally, Jiangnan Group would bear all these costs, requiring no financial contribution from the Football Association.
In Jiangnan Group's view, this was a condition the Football Association could not refuse, as the entire national team operation would cost at least several hundred million US dollars annually.
Furthermore, it would generate significant media exposure for the national team. It was a no-brainer proposal.
Then, the unexpected happened. The Football Association actually rejected Jiangnan Group's proposal and instead put forward their own candidate for head coach, a former national team captain. They also stated that the national team's support staff would be assembled by the Football Association, and Jiangnan Group would only need to provide the players.
The staff of Jiangnan Group were dumbfounded by this outcome. They naturally dared not agree to anything further and immediately reported the proposal to Boss Huang.
Boss Huang, after a brief glance, understood exactly what the Football Association was scheming.
The logic was simple: if the national team, from the head coach to the muscle recovery specialists, were all paid by Jiangnan Group, who would truly control the national team – Jiangnan Group or the Football Association?
And if the Football Association wished to use the team to achieve some unspoken objectives, would the team still obediently follow their directives?
As for whether the national team could qualify for the World Cup, the Football Association never gave it much thought. After all, the national team had not qualified for the World Cup in 28 years, and domestic fans had grown accustomed to it. Failing to qualify only resulted in some criticism, which meant nothing to the Football Association.
However, if they could not cooperate with the Football Association on certain commercial activities, they would lose a substantial amount of profit. Therefore, the Football Association would never relinquish control of the national team to Jiangnan Group.
On the other hand, Boss Huang was also unwilling to simply send his players into the national team.
Boss Huang wasn't afraid of losing. The 2030 World Cup was not the optimal opportunity; the best chance to qualify for the World Cup would likely be in 2034. The 2030 World Cup was merely a practice ground for the young players, and qualifying was not essential.
What Boss Huang feared was what his most talented young players might become once they entered the national team's system, and he himself did not know.
These children had undergone rigorous, closed-door training. While their individual skills and techniques were strong, they had also been very well protected by the entire training team, remaining as pure as a blank sheet of paper.
Such blank sheets could play the purest form of football, but they were also the most susceptible to being corrupted by the cesspool that was society, and the national team was the biggest cesspool within that cesspool.
Once these players, pure as blank sheets, were sent into that environment, without their own people to protect and guide them, who knew what they would become?
Boss Huang had spent over ten years cultivating this group of young geniuses. He did not have another ten years to wait for these players to mature, nor could his own youth be recovered. He couldn't wait another decade for another batch of prodigies to lead him to the top.
Therefore, no misstep could be afforded with this group of youth trainees. If the national team could not be controlled by him, then these core players absolutely could not be sent into it. Otherwise, who knew what they would be like upon their return.
Thus, the negotiations between Jiangnan Group and the Football Association ended unhappily.
The Football Association felt embarrassed to admit that they had rejected a world-class coaching team provided by Jiangnan Group, so they concocted a flimsy excuse about the players not having played in domestic leagues.
However, a new problem now presented itself to Boss Huang: if they couldn't participate with the national team, they couldn't compete in the World Cup, and his meticulously planned decade-long project would turn to dust.
Boss Huang now had two paths before him. One was to replace the current leadership of the Football Association with people he trusted.
But this was extremely difficult, as the Football Association was an institution, and it was not advisable for Liu Xu to interfere too much, as it would trigger many negative repercussions.
The other path was to find a way to participate under the name of another region.
Many people might not be aware, but participating in the World Cup does not necessarily require representing a country; it can also be done as a region.
For example, China's Macao, China's Hong Kong, China's Taiwan, and so on, as well as England's Wales and Scotland, all participate in the World Cup as independent regions.
However, apart from Wales, which frequently qualifies for the World Cup finals, other independent regions generally lack the strength to advance, leading many to believe that only countries can participate in the World Cup.
Although participating as the national team was the best outcome, given the inability to achieve this, Boss Huang had to swiftly activate his contingency plan to participate as an independent region.
Under normal circumstances, the best region would have been Florence, which was controlled by Boss Huang. However, Florence was nominally still a territory of the Kingdom of Dashia. If they were to participate in the name of Florence, they would have to preface it with "Dashia," thus becoming the Dashia Florence representative team.
Furthermore, all players' nationalities would have to be transferred to the Kingdom of Dashia. Even if they qualified for the World Cup under these conditions, what would it signify?
Would the honor still belong to China?
Would the Chinese people tear Huang He apart with their criticism? Therefore, this plan was absolutely out of the question. Fortunately, due to special national circumstances, China actually had three regions participating independently in the World Cup.
The difficulty for Hong Kong and Taiwan was very high, and Boss Huang felt it would be too costly to manage. Therefore, the only viable option was China's Macao.
Regarding this, Jiangnan Group had already engaged in thorough and close communication with the Macao Football Association.
Macao had never achieved any significant results in the World Cup, not even advancing past the first round of the World Cup qualifiers. Moreover, the players in the Macao team were almost all semi-professional. They played football more for their own enjoyment and never dreamed of reaching the World Cup. Consequently, the attention given to football in Macao society could be described as almost zero.
Coupled with Macao's peculiar historical situation, this made the Macao people very amenable to negotiation; as long as money was offered, everything could be arranged.
Therefore, after several rounds of consultations with the Macao Football Association and relevant high-level officials, Jiangnan Group provided Macao with 300 million US dollars in development funds. Subsequently, the household registration for over 30 players was directly transferred to Macao, and they quickly joined the Macao team, becoming players for the Macao representative team. Even the chairman of the Macao Football Association was replaced by Huang He himself. The people of Macao were very happy and genuinely welcomed the world's richest man serving as the chairman of the Macao Football Association.
Concurrently, the original team players had no objections to this; on the contrary, they were ecstatic.
As mentioned earlier, they had never considered qualifying for the World Cup, but they genuinely loved football. Therefore, when they learned that this newly formed Macao team had the potential to compete for a World Cup spot, they unhesitatingly gave up their positions without a single objection.
Of course, this might also have been influenced by Jiangnan Group gifting each of them a house and promising them a job placement within the company.