Chapter 864 The era of Su Dong is about to end!
After a narrow 1-0 away win over Blackburn, Manchester City finally got out of this devilish schedule at the end of April.
Although the team will still have to fight on three fronts, they can at least take a breather.
After all, the next opponents are not Premier League powerhouses like Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur. In the Europa League, Manchester City's opponent is Benfica of the Portuguese Super League, and the other match is Porto against Villarreal.
The top four of this season's Europa League is very interesting.
In fact, if we include Braga, which is in the quarterfinals, we can clearly see the strength of the Portuguese Super League in Europe's second-tier leagues.
With three seats in the quarterfinals and half of the semifinals, the Portuguese Super League is the best among Europe's second-tier leagues.
Before the Europa League is about to start, the British media also paid attention to the Portuguese Super League. The Times even made a detailed report on the Portuguese Super League to help fans better understand the Portuguese Super League, especially Manchester City's next opponent Benfica.
It is actually quite surprising that Benfica can reach the semi-finals of the Europa League.
The team's financial situation has not been ideal in recent years.
As we all know, Benfica and Sporting Lisbon are sworn rivals in the same city. As early as the time when Sudong and Ronaldo played for Sporting Lisbon, Mendes had a close relationship with the Green Lions, which allowed him to successfully sign a number of young players from Sporting Lisbon.
But precisely because of the relationship with Sporting Lisbon, Mendes did not have much cooperation with Benfica.
The real turning point came in 2009.
At that time, due to a financial crisis, Benfica was forced to mortgage 25% of the ownership of its 12 main players to a Portuguese bank in exchange for a loan of 40 million euros to repay the club's debts.
In other words, the estimated value of these twelve main players is 160 million euros, which is actually a reasonable price.
Subsequently, the transfers of Di Maria and Ramires proved that the value of Benfica players was still acceptable.
Of course, these two players are considered to be the more valuable among the main players, but there are also players like Coentrao and David Luiz who remain in the team, who are also players with great potential and strength.
Under the circumstances at the time, Mendes acted decisively and bought David Luiz's 25% ownership from the bank for 4.5 million euros. In addition, he arranged Di Maria's transfer to Manchester City and Ramires' subsequent transfer to Chelsea, thereby breaking the cooperation gap with Benfica's management.
From that moment on, Mendes had complete control over the players of the top three teams in the Portuguese Super League.
It was also from that year that Mendes started his South American star plan, introducing many South American stars including Falcao and Hulk to the Portuguese Super League, using Portugal as a springboard to enter the four major European leagues.
In Mendes' plan, there is a natural affinity between Portuguese and South American players. The stars are more adapted to the Portuguese Super League, and can also use the Portuguese Super League to adapt to the European league. The Portuguese Super League can also use these South American players to improve its strength, especially some outstanding players. After their debut in the Portuguese Super League, especially in the Champions League, they have shown good strength and are more popular with the teams in the four major leagues, and their value has naturally skyrocketed.
I have to say that this is a very smart channel for player transfers.
Mendes, the players, the clubs and the teams in the four major leagues, in this chain, each got what they wanted.
Today, this player supply chain has paid off. Benfica and Porto have both reached the semi-finals of the Europa League, and Braga has also reached the quarter-finals. Portuguese Super League teams are rising strongly in the second-tier European leagues.
Benfica is the most outrageous among them.
The team was heavily in debt and lacked both money and people, so they had a strong desire to cooperate with Mendes. At the most outrageous time, there was only one Portuguese player, Coentrao, in Benfica's starting lineup, and all the others were foreign players from South America.
As early as when Mendes was making his plans, Su Dong already knew his plan and was optimistic about the prospect, but he did not participate in it and chose to stay out of it.
Player ownership operations are indeed very profitable.
Let’s not talk about others, just take David Luiz’s transfer to Manchester City as an example. Mendes made millions of euros from it, not counting the agent’s commission. It was purely the profit from the player’s ownership.
However, the world of football has different attitudes towards third-party ownership of player ownership. The Portuguese Super League recognizes it, but other leagues do not. Some are ambiguous and turn a blind eye.
It is undeniable that this mode of operation is prone to problems.
Su Dong is very careful about his reputation. He has great commercial value and carries the images of many world brands, so he is unwilling to get involved, fearing that if something goes wrong, he will not benefit much, but will get into trouble and damage his image.
Now he doesn't need to worry about money at all.
The lifetime contract with the American sports brand is still under negotiation. Su Dong offered an unprecedented sky-high price. Not to mention in world football, even in the sports world, there has never been such an astonishingly high price, so much so that the other party is still hesitating.
However, sports brands from Germany are gearing up to take action, just waiting for the breakdown of negotiations between Su Dong and American brands, and they will take the opportunity to enter the market.
With this contract alone, Su Dong will have no worries about food and clothing for the rest of his life.
Not to mention that in the country, Su Dong's parents left him a large number of houses.
Up to now, Su Dong doesn’t know how many houses he has. He only knows that Wang Chuqing has set up a company specifically to rent out these houses. According to Wang Chuqing, some of the houses bought by Su Dong’s parents have increased in value several times, which makes Su Dong admire his parents’ investment vision.
According to them, Su Dong could live a life of luxury just by collecting rent.
In this case, how could Su Dong gamble his own image for the share of profits promised by Mendes?
What’s more, the operational risks of third-party ownership of players are also very high.
Just like Benfica's Paraguayan striker Oscar Cardozo.
The 27-year-old striker performed very well last season, making 47 appearances for Benfica and scoring 38 goals. He was hailed by the Portuguese media as the player with the best scoring ability in the Portuguese Super League after the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and was unrivaled at the time.
It can be said that apart from being a little older, Cardozo has no problems and has attracted the interest and attention of teams such as Napoli, Genoa, and even Inter Milan, AC Milan and Juventus.
It was for this reason that Benfica decided to raise 9 million euros to buy 80% of Cardozo's ownership, which was a very cost-effective deal at the time.
Mendes wanted to take the opportunity to cash out part of the profits, while Benfica's plan was also very clever, which was to let Cardozo score goals like crazy for another season and then cash out at a high position, so that they could make a lot of money.
But who would have thought that not long after the start of the new season, Cardozo suffered a serious injury. Since his comeback, he has made 33 appearances for Benfica and scored 18 goals. This record is not bad, but it is a significant decline compared to last season.
Given his age, injuries and declining performance, everyone knows that it will be difficult for Cardozo to return to his peak.
This deal is probably going to end up in tatters.
Mendes doesn't care, after all, he cashed out at a high price before and got away with it, but Benfica, the buyer, is in trouble.
In addition to Cardozo, Benfica also introduced winger Gaitan from Boca Juniors at a high price, spending nearly 10 million. This is obviously a gamble, and the player has not put up a stunning performance so far, and has not reached the level of Di Maria back then.
Not to mention making money, it is still a mystery whether one can get back the investment.
On the one hand, it was because of his own image, and on the other hand, the risk was too great, so Su Dong never intended to participate.
When you have money, wouldn’t it be great to bring it back home and buy a house for your parents?
…
Three days after playing Blackburn, Manchester City went south again, to Portugal, to challenge Benfica away.
Due to continuous multi-line operations and the long journey south, Manchester City's condition is not ideal.
Su Dong started the game and scored the first goal for Manchester City in the first half.
But in the second half, Jardel equalized the score for Benfica, and then Manchester City once again took the lead with Gareth Barry's header.
But in the 59th minute, Cardozo scored a direct free kick to equalize the score for Benfica again.
In the end, the two teams shook hands and agreed to a 2-2 draw.
Manchester City eventually took away two away goals.
…
In another match that took place at the same time as Manchester City's match against Benfica, Porto hosted Villarreal at home.
The result surprised everyone. Thanks to Falcao's four goals, Porto beat the Yellow Submarine 5-1 at home. The Portuguese Super League champions won an incredible victory at their home stadium.
Everyone knows that the Yellow Submarine has been focusing on the battle for the top four in the league recently. Some people even thought that Villarreal might give up the Europa League. But even so, no one expected that Porto would beat Villarreal 5-1 at home in the first leg.
After this peak showdown, the Portuguese media gave Porto crazy praise.
With four goals, Falcao once again proved his superb scoring ability, overshadowing Sudirman, who also participated in the Europa League semi-finals.
The Portuguese media even added insult to injury, saying, "The era of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is coming to an end!"
"European football will usher in the era of Falcao!"
Porto's 33-year-old head coach Villas-Boas also became famous this season.
As Mourinho's former right-hand man, he coached Porto after going solo. This season, they have already won the domestic league and cup championships. Now all they lack is the Europa League.
As long as they win this championship, Porto under the coaching of Boas will be the true triple crown winner.
Although it is only the Europa League, it is already a rare achievement given the current situation in European football.
In fact, to some extent, it can be said that it surpassed the Porto team coached by Mourinho.
Of course, the premise is that Porto can win the championship.
(End of this chapter)
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