Chapter 1 When Yan Min Ran onto the Field

When Yan Min ran onto the field, it was the sixtieth minute of the match. Zhou Yi was still on the field, but no one knew when he would be substituted off—in the previous game against Guangzhou Hengyuan, Zhou Yi was substituted off after playing for sixty-five minutes. According to the experience of the previous game, Zhou Yi would be substituted off in five minutes at most.

Yan Min wasn't concerned about Zhou Yi now. Before the game started, he had even looked forward to competing with Zhou Yi on the same field.

Now he had no time to think about others; he only cared about how to help the team save face.

He had thirty minutes left.

This time wasn't generous, but it wasn't short either.

Less than a minute after Yan Min came on, he was called for a foul for raising his foot too high in a challenge with Piszczek.

His action had startled Piszczek. Seeing Yan Min's foot kicking toward him, he quickly gave up control of the ball and jumped away.

Immediately afterward, the referee blew his whistle, calling a foul on Yan Min.

A burst of boos rang out from the stands. Of course, the boos weren't because the referee called a foul on Yan Min, but because Yan Min's action was too dangerous and almost injured a Dortmund player. The Dortmund fans were very dissatisfied with Yan Min's rash action. Dortmund had already lost Gotze and Lewandowski in the new season. What would they do if they injured another player in a game against a Chinese team?

If European teams all thought that Chinese players were crude and reckless and stopped coming to China to play games in the future, where would fans of European teams go to see their idols up close?

Back then, Zheng Zhi's challenge against French forward Cissé resulted in Cissé fracturing his tibia, and his career went downhill from then on. Cissé's attitude toward Zheng Zhi was unknown, but in China, many fans spent years denouncing Zheng Zhi on Cissé's behalf.

But when the game restarted, Yan Min didn't show any signs of restraint. He continued to run actively, fight aggressively, and rush forward whenever he had the chance.

The boos on the field grew louder, all aimed at Yan Min.

Yan Min really seemed like the kind of person who wouldn't be very popular no matter where he went…

After another dead ball, Klopp made another substitution, taking off Zhou Yi and Piszczek.

Two voices appeared online. One breathed a sigh of relief: "Zhou Yi is finally being substituted off. If he continued to stay on the field, I was really worried that he would be injured by that silly kid…"

The other angrily denounced Yan Min's crude behavior: "It's all that idiot's fault! If he keeps playing like this, who would dare to let Zhou Yi stay on the field? Now Zhou Yi has been substituted off, and this game is no fun anymore! I'm turning off the TV!"

Both viewpoints received a lot of support.

And everyone thought that the game after Zhou Yi's departure was no longer worth watching.

Their view made sense because Zhou Yi and Piszczek were among the last of Dortmund's starting players to be substituted off. After they left the field, Dortmund was mainly composed of young players, which was a bit unfamiliar compared to last season's lineup.

Some of these people were players that Klopp had only promoted from the youth team and the reserve team this season to train with the first team and participate in preseason friendlies. It didn't mean that they would eventually stay in the first team and become first-team players. Just like Zhou Yi back then, when he was promoted to the first team, he had to work very hard and have good luck to eventually stay in the first team, otherwise, he would have to go back to where he came from.

Klopp hoped to use this preseason training camp and friendlies to observe whether there were any outstanding players in the youth team who could be promoted to the first team. The Dortmund first team suffered heavy losses this new season, losing the two core players, Götze and Lewandowski, making it urgent for the first team to replenish its ranks. The Dortmund club was also preparing on two fronts, searching for targets in the transfer market and solving the problem through youth training. Youth training, in particular, was what Dortmund valued most. In recent years, their youth training had yielded fruitful results one after another: Götze, Zhou Yi, Mark Wagner, Schmelzer… If you include Reus and Grosskreutz, who had left but also received training in Dortmund's youth teams, they could almost support half of Dortmund's first-team starting lineup.

With such precedents, the Dortmund club naturally hoped to replenish the first team's personnel through youth training. This would save money and maintain Dortmund's youth training tradition.

So Klopp recruited the most youth players to the first team for this preseason training camp than ever before.

But youth training is not the same as planting crops. It's not like you can work hard every day, take care of them carefully, and then reap a rich harvest in the autumn. There are many accidental factors in youth training.

Youth training is more like investing for many years without seeing much good return, and then suddenly erupting at a certain time, and then returning to silence… But in fact, it's not silence, but returning to normal levels.

For example, the famous Manchester United "Class of '92," as an outstanding representative of youth training, Manchester United's "Class of '92" later supported half of Manchester United's first team, helping Manchester United win the treble in 1999 and becoming an important cornerstone of Manchester United's dominance in the Premier League.

At that time, Manchester United's youth training level was considered very high, and the "Class of '92" was their representative work.

But later, no matter how much Manchester United invested in youth training, no matter how much Ferguson valued youth training, Manchester United's youth academy never produced a new "Class of '92." Not to mention a "class," not even one or two superstars. Later, Manchester United's number one star, Cristiano Ronaldo, was bought from Portugal, and Rooney was an excellent product of Everton's youth academy.

This makes youth training a bit like metaphysics—who knows which age group will suddenly erupt with a group of geniuses and be called the "Golden Generation" by later generations?

After Portugal's golden generation, they have been relying on Cristiano Ronaldo to hold on.

After Brazil's talent boom ended, they also fell into a state of talent shortage, but can you say that Brazil's youth training is not good?

Arsenal was known for its expertise in cultivating young players, and many young players were willing to go to Arsenal to play under Wenger. But how many young people actually made it? Wilshere, who was once highly anticipated, has not lived up to people's expectations of him.

Barcelona's La Masia youth academy is famous all over the world. Every attacking player who performs well in La Masia is labeled by the media as the "Second Messi": Serbian Bojan, Israeli prodigy Assulin, Mexican "Little Luo" dos Santos… But which of these players has achieved the achievements of their "predecessors"? Not to mention them, even the overall La Masia, after Messi, Pique, Busquets, Fabregas, has never produced a generation of young talents comparable to them.

So Dortmund's successive harvests of Gotze, Zhou Yi, and Mark in the past two years do not mean that genius players comparable to these three will continue to emerge.

In fact, many of the young people that Klopp brought this time, although they performed well in the youth team or the reserve team, their performance in the first team was far worse.

There is still a huge, almost insurmountable gap between youth football and adult football. Those who are geniuses in the youth team may just be qualified role players when they come to the adult team.

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Although they are mainly young players, and the performance and strength of these young players have not met Klopp's requirements, this does not mean that they will be at a disadvantage when facing a mid-table Chinese Super League team with no fighting spirit.

If the players perform normally, they can still control the situation.

Of course, there is also a very important prerequisite, that is, Shanghai Chongming team should not have any overly激进 (jī jìn - radical) resistance, otherwise, it will make the inexperienced young players feel a little… panicked.

Under such circumstances, Yan Min, this reckless fool who was unwilling to be blanked, began to try to muddy the waters.

After Zhou Yi left the field, Yan Min could keenly feel that Dortmund's control on the field had changed somewhat compared to before. It had become worse.

He looked around, wanting to see if his teammates had noticed this change.

But looking at his teammates' expressions, it seemed that they hadn't noticed at all.

But he couldn't wait any longer. Yan Min decided to take action himself.

When he opened up the situation, he believed that other teammates would definitely join in!