Chapter 4: Li Luo’s Conclusion? (Thanks to the alliance leader for the mighty club that hit the man)

English football’s youth academies place great emphasis on the mental well-being of young players.

In the late 1990s, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger submitted a proposal to the Football Association titled Mental Development Matters, calling for every club to appoint a dedicated psychological counselor.

He believed that:

Sixty-seven percent of academy players quit professional football before the age of twenty-one, and need psychological support to help them face reality.

The Premier League is brutally physical, and when a player makes his first appearance, her is subjected to intense outside pressure; afterward, psychological guidance is essential.

But as time went on, the whole process gradually began to lose its original meaning. Reports emerged of some young talents insisting they were perfectly mentally healthy, only to be told by the counselor that they were not.

In the twenty-first century, by the standards of club psychological counselors, everyone seemed to be a little unwell...

...

Li Luo had no chance to go out and revel in the bright lights with Rooney.

At that moment, he was sitting in a spacious, well-ventilated room, receiving counseling from Manchester United’s psychologist.

When he learned that tomorrow would be a day off, he was no longer anxious or at sea; instead, he began thinking about what to do next.

Nervousness and unease were useless. Time was no longer a matter of desperate urgency. He needed to calm down and solve the problem.

"Li?"

"Were you listening to me just now?"

"Ha, it’s fine. You were probably carefully reviewing the match in your head, so let’s talk about something light. From the video the club recorded, I found that two Swansea players tried to intimidate you during the game."

"But you smiled back at them..."

"You have a psychological problem."

The psychologist introduced himself briefly: Ham, thirty-two years old, once served in the French Army in his youth, then retired because of injury and became a team doctor at Southampton. Only two days ago, he had just transferred to Manchester United.

At that moment, his expression was grave and his tone gentle. "Open your heart."

Li Luo: "???"

What was this supposed to mean?

Saying I’m sick?

Trying to make a performance review out of me?

"Ham, I’m perfectly normal."

"No, you’re not. A normal child would react to intimidation with anger or fear. You did neither."

"Looking through your records, you never cared about your opponents’ trash talk on the pitch before. This psychological issue must have lasted for many years."

"..."

The counseling session did not last long.

Li Luo absolutely refused to believe there was anything wrong with his mind. He brushed things off with a few perfunctory words and left in a hurry.

A moment later, a young player named Lingard came swaggering in with a grin.

His carefree smile was especially likable.

Ham repeated the exact same script: "You smiled back at your opponent’s provocation. You have a psychological disorder. You’re not normal..."

Lingard stood there dumbfounded, mouth hanging open. Then he sprang to his feet, did a little dance, and ran off laughing.

...

The club bus driver was extremely enthusiastic, calling him a hero every other sentence as he sent Li Luo back to the Manchester United first-team dormitory.

The staff said they had already moved his luggage today, from the youth team dormitory to the first-team quarters.

The residential area was very quiet.

Two collie sheepdogs suddenly bolted out. The chains restraining them stretched tight to the limit, but they only barked a few times. It seemed that once they saw the Manchester United crest on the bus, they instantly quieted down. With the soft, crisp scrape of chains against the ground, they slowly retreated into the doghouses on either side of the gate.

The security guard at the first-team booth was a chubby old man. Meeting a Chinese boy face-to-face for the first time, he waved excitedly.

"Li, your performance at the Dream Theatre tonight was absolutely brilliant. I’ll have to get your autograph in advance!"

Feeling the night breeze, Li Luo’s mood eased considerably.

"Really? Bring me a pen. I’ll sign it right now."

"Haha, but you can’t let Mr. Van Gaal know. He’s got new rules..."

"No problem. If you keep asking me for signatures, I won’t have time for anything else!"

He quickly wrote his Chinese name, then followed the staff’s directions to his dorm room.

After closing the door, the first thing he did was turn on the computer and write a post-match self-assessment for the coaching staff.

There was no requirement for a specific length or content.

He had heard that Lingard and Pogba either handed in blank sheets or drew crooked little animals for their former Manchester United manager.

Li Luo was different. He had to take it seriously, like a newbie studying a game’s mechanics.

Following the sample format Giggs had given him, he began typing:

"First, physical duels? Most of the time this body could withstand the static collisions from Swansea’s midfielders and defenders. The opponent could not knock me down at once. Even after I completed the header in the closing moments, Swansea’s tall defender, who charged in over a short distance, still could not send me flying. I merely staggered out of bounds, and by grabbing the goalpost with one hand I was able to steady my balance."

"No, in the email I need to change 'this body' to 'my body'!"

"Second, space? Third, passing and receiving? Fourth, defensive positioning? Giggs said I only played for a few minutes, so these can be left blank. Wow, there are so many places that can be left blank."

Li Luo breathed a sigh of relief.

"Fifteenth: match feelings? Just write that I was a little nervous at first, but happy in the end."

As for his physical sensations, he did not write everything down.

Back on the pitch, once his breathing rhythm was adjusted and he was no longer nervous, this body’s athletic ability was truly explosive. Setting aside everything related to ball contact, Li Luo had even felt, for a while, as though he were controlling a high-level character in a game and mowing everything down.

As for the role of the spatial awareness module, he was not stupid enough to put that in the email.

With that module, at the very least, he would not be running aimlessly all over the pitch anymore.

...

He prepared to tidy up his luggage.

As soon as he opened the suitcase, a crumpled little notebook fell out.

When he opened it, he found it was a diary.

The original owner’s diary, filled with crooked English letters, like a child’s handwriting.

...

He flipped open to the middle at random.

"April 29, 2006. Ronaldo came today to demonstrate dribbling. He said he was the strongest, and I said I was the strongest."

"April 30, 2006. I am the strongest."

"May 1, 2006. I am the strongest."

"May 2, 2006. Number seven is the strongest number at Manchester United. I want to wear it in the future."

"May 3, 2006. Messi is amazing on TV, but I am the strongest."

"..."

So confident from such a young age?

In 2006, he would have been nine years old, so he probably just liked writing the phrase I am the strongest.

Li Luo smiled, closed the diary, and carefully placed it back at the bottom of the suitcase.

There was no time to dwell on such things.

Once he calmed down, he felt a little anxious again.

Tomorrow was a day off, but what about the training session the day after? He was very likely to be exposed.

While the night was still young, he had to hurry up and study!

Much later.

He finished watching the first episode of teaching content featuring Morata, Lukaku, Giroud, Calhanoglu, and others.

He felt he had gained a great deal. His inner world and understanding of football had been enriched!

Wait, no. The crown prince of Manchester United’s four-piece set of passing, controlling, dribbling, and shooting—he could expose himself with any one of them right now. There was no way he could train them up in the short term.

After today’s debut, Li Luo realized that the local application of individual technique was not the whole of football.

He had to find a way to learn formations and tactics.

Another long while passed.

At last, he found accessible football material, and it was in Chinese too: The Ninety Minutes You See, by Cai Huiqiang.

Perhaps because he now possessed spatial awareness, Li Luo found the content on the page extremely intuitive, especially the changes in formation structure, and he soon began reading with great interest.

....

No one knew how long he had been reading when drowsiness and exhaustion quietly crept in.

Lying in bed, Li Luo still half-dreamed the same thought: there was no way to digest so much information in such a short time, and the training session the day after tomorrow would be troublesome...

For the moment, the system still had not provided any way to obtain attribute points or skill modules.

If this were a game,

then the newbie player, Li Luo, would definitely have plenty to complain about when it came to the developers.