Chapter 1014: Football Colonial Era

Yang Huan arrived in Japan one day earlier than the entire Southampton team, and Horikita Maki came to pick him up from the plane.

But he did not go to Hokkaido to take a hot spring bath or have a mixed bath as he said, but went directly to Osaka and watched the match between Guangzhou Evergrande and Mexico's America team live in Osaka.

Judging from the course of the game, the two sides are indeed evenly matched.

Although America scored the first goal, Yangcheng Hengda scored two goals in the last ten minutes, tenaciously reversed America and successfully advanced to the next round.

Especially the last goal, which was really admirable.

It can be seen that this team has such a momentum, and the money spent in the past few years has really not been in vain.

However, whether it is Guangzhou Evergrande or Club America, they cannot compete with a super team like Southampton for the time being. The gap between the two sides is directly reflected in the team's value.

Southampton's total value is twenty times that of Guangzhou Evergrande.

Although the market value may not necessarily reflect the strength, it at least shows that there is an irreparable gap between the two teams.

After all, the Club World Cup is still the same as the previous Toyota Cup. The only two teams that can truly compete are the European champions and the South American champions.

But from the scene, Yang Huan could also see the progress of Yangcheng Hengda.

At the very least, the overall look is quite organized, the players' ideas on the field are also very clear, coupled with strong foreign aid, so the overall strength looks pretty good.

It should be said that these are all gratifying changes.

In fact, Chinese football lags behind Europe in terms of concepts, tactics, youth training, daily training, and even team management, and is even inferior to South American teams.

Under such circumstances, introducing foreign coaches and foreign players will definitely be beneficial to improving the level of domestic football.

When the domestic football level has been improved in all aspects and the professional football industry has gradually grown in scale, everything will naturally follow suit, even youth training.

To give a simple example, suppose all sixteen Chinese Super League teams spend money and introduce strong foreign players, but how many of them can do so?

If the domestic players are not good enough, what’s the use of having great foreign players?

Therefore, foreign players and local players complement each other. While introducing strong foreign players, we will also pay attention to local players.

Even if I can't cultivate it myself, I will definitely spend money to buy it.

When outstanding domestic players are scarce and transfer fees are rising, things will be easy. There will definitely be teams dedicated to training them, then selling them for cash, and finally forming a stable player circulation system.

Just like in La Liga, Real Madrid and Barcelona are responsible for spending money, while other teams are responsible for cultivating talents.

Atletico Madrid is now eager to squeeze into the first group, and will be responsible for spending money and introducing star players in the future.

Of course, this does not mean that these teams that are responsible for spending money do not attach importance to youth training.

All we can say is that they will not rely on youth training.

Even though Southampton's youth training output is amazing now, within five years, the Saints will definitely go down this path.

The reason is simple. This is the path that all top teams must take after they develop to a certain level.

…………

…………

On the second day after Guangzhou Evergrande reversed America's victory over Mexico, the Saints finally arrived at Tokyo's Narita Airport.

Yang Huan did not go to pick up the players at the airport because fanatical Japanese fans were already waiting at Narita Airport.

As the most popular team in Europe in the past few years, this is the first time for the Saints to set foot in Japan, but unexpectedly, a large number of Japanese fans welcomed the team's arrival in an almost crazy way.

They wore Saints jerseys and held up signs with various slogans, blocking the entire airport.

Not only at the airport, but also on the Japanese Internet, the Saints have become the hottest topic of conversation, no doubt about it.

After arriving at the airport, superstars such as Ancelotti, Messi, Suarez and Neuer all accepted brief interviews with media reporters and expressed their desire for the Club World Cup.

"Yangcheng Hengda is a strong opponent, we will concentrate on the semi-finals!"

Head coach Ancelotti said in an interview.

Captain Neuer also said that he had received the news on the plane and watched the game. He believed that Guangzhou Evergrande would be a very threatening opponent.

Regardless of whether the Saints players' words were sincere or just for courtesy, they gave their opponents enough face.

Are you kidding? This is the team from Young Master Huan’s home country. How can we not give them face?

But when it comes to the football field, that may not be the case.

As the European champions, the Saints traveled thousands of miles from Europe to Japan in the middle of the season to participate in this Club World Cup, and the organizers also gave them enough face in the arrangement of the event.

Other teams have to go to Osaka to play a game first, but the Saints' semi-final is scheduled to be held in Yokohama.

Therefore, as soon as the Saints arrived in Tokyo, they immediately moved to Yokohama.

But even so, the Saints still announced that many superstars including Messi, Suarez, Hazard and Toni Kroos will not be able to participate in the semi-finals.

As for the specific reason, the saint explained that he was injured.

But everyone knows that these players have just played in the Premier League and Champions League in Europe, so how could they be injured?

The most important thing is still for competition considerations.

After the Club World Cup, the Saints will return to Europe and immediately face the devilish Christmas schedule.

If it weren't for FIFA's mandatory regulations that these stars must be included and must play, the Saints would definitely not have included them all in the roster.

To be frank, if we really count on hard power, the Saints have the strength to win the championship even if all their substitutes play.

It turns out that there is nothing wrong with the Saints’ confidence.

In the semi-final match against Yangcheng Hengda, although the Saints did not give their best, they still won Yangcheng Hengda 4-0 very cleanly and successfully advanced to the final.

England striker Harry Kane scored twice, while Martial and Sturridge each scored a goal.

It is worth mentioning that the player who replaced Toni Kroos in the starting lineup in this game was not Kovacic, but the Belgian teenager Youri Tielemans.

The Belgian played like a general in the midfield and his performance was remarkable and impressive.

He has delicate skills in the midfield and solid basic skills. He cooperated with Pogba and Oscar to firmly control the midfield and suppress Yangcheng Evergrande.

Three days after the semi-final match against Guangzhou Evergrande in the Club World Cup, the Saints faced the final.

Before the final, Guangzhou Evergrande played a third and fourth place match with Japan's Hiroshima team.

Yangcheng Hengda took the lead in scoring soon after the opening and then firmly controlled the game.

But in the second half, Hiroshima team began to exert its strength, Yangcheng Hengda made two mistakes, and the opponent scored two goals in a row.

But in the final moments of the game, captain Zheng Zhi scored an equalizer for Yangcheng Hengda and the two sides entered overtime.

In the extra time, Guangzhou Evergrande performed very tenaciously. Despite great physical consumption, they managed to score two goals in a row, defeating the Japanese Hiroshima team 4-2 and winning the third place in the Club World Cup.

This also made Yang Huan, who was watching the game, applaud continuously and congratulate Yangcheng Evergrande on WeChat. He thought this was a victory for Chinese football and it was so awesome!

Compared to the intense third and fourth place finals, the final was relatively calm.

It’s not that the game was not interesting to watch. On the contrary, the Saints sent out all their main players this time, including superstars such as Messi, Suarez and Hazard, who all appeared on the field and played the entire game.

The reason why it was calm was mainly because the Saints crushed the Argentine River Plate team throughout the game.

Less than six minutes into the game, the Saints scored the first goal.

The first goal for the Saints was scored by Argentine player Messi!

Then in the 27th minute, with another assist from Hazard, Suarez scored in the small penalty area and broke through River Plate's goal again, changing the score to 2-0.

In the second half, the Saints continued to attack and firmly controlled the game situation. In the 68th minute, Fabregas made a straight pass and Suarez made an offside and scored again, scoring his second goal.

Three to zero, the Saints defeated River Plate and won the Club World Cup!

Yang Huan was also very sad watching from the stands.

It can be said that River Plate is no match for the Saints. If the Saints had not conserved their strength throughout the game, the Argentine team would have lost even more miserably.

It can be said that the strength of European teams in this event is absolutely overwhelming.

Even the intensity and watchability of the competition were far inferior to the International Champions Cup organized and planned by Yang Huan himself.

Originally, according to Yang Huan's plan, if the International Champions Cup was to reflect the word "international", it could not be limited to the participation of European teams, so he considered inviting South American teams to participate.

But after some investigation, he found that if South American teams were invited to participate, not only would it be difficult to arrange the schedule, but the viewing experience of the game would definitely be affected.

The bottom line is that the South American teams are not strong enough.

Looking back over the years, South America has suffered from a serious loss of football talent.

Not to mention that the top five European leagues are still attracting the top football talents in South America, just look at the Portuguese Super League. How many South American foreign players are there there?

There are also wealthy leagues such as Ukraine, Russia and Türkiye, and they are also frantically recruiting foreign players from South America.

Now, China is rising in Asia.

The best star resources in South America have long been divided up. What can they use to compete with Europe?

The best football stars in the world went to Europe. Coupled with Europe's well-developed football industry and ample football capital operation, the European leagues have prospered and are sold all over the world with the help of copyrights.

If we really want to compete, who can stop Europe?

Although no one says it, in fact, today's world football has quietly entered the era of football colonization.

Or it could be the era of capital football colonization!

Therefore, today's professional football league has already entered the era of capital operation.

If the Chinese Super League wants to rise, it must either keep up and follow this trend, or it will fall like those small countries.

Another point is youth training.

Suppose that China's youth training is really improved, with a huge population base and a large number of talents, but the league is as disappointing as the national team, what will be the result?

No matter how China's football industry develops, the worst that can happen is that it will end up like Brazil and Argentina, relying on exporting players to earn foreign exchange.

This is definitely not a good thing for the domestic football industry, nor is it a long-term solution.

Therefore, the government’s direction of football reform is correct, but this road is not easy to take and cannot be completed in a short period of time.

But as Yang Huan said before when he was in Longhai, with such a large population base and such a huge consumer market, who would believe that China cannot create a world-class professional league?

Now, sitting in the stands of the stadium, watching River Plate's helpless performance against the Saints, Yang Huan believes this even more.

After the competition, there was a brief award ceremony.

The Saints won the Golden Ball, Silver Ball and Bronze Ball.

What’s interesting is that the award presenter turned out to be the legendary Ma Yun.

It was also at this moment that Yang Huan realized that Ali Baba was the sponsor of this Club World Cup.

No wonder Ma Yun was able to come out to present the award!