The God of Football Starts With Passive Skills-Chapter 262 - 68: Advancing in the Europa League, Wang Shuo’s Number One Fanboy
The UEFA Europa League fourth qualifying round, first-leg match on August 20, 2009, was destined to be extraordinary for Polish striker Robert Lewandowski.
It wasn’t just because it was a home game, nor was it just because their opponent was the Bundesliga giant, Dortmund.
It was also because the day after the match, August 21st, would be Lewandowski’s 21st birthday.
He’d made an early birthday wish for himself: to score a goal!
To score against Dortmund!
As the previous season’s Best Rookie in the Polish Ekstraklasa, Lewandowski, who seemed born to score goals, was very confident.
More importantly, there was someone on the Dortmund team.
A young striker from China, Wang Shuo!
In the fourth round of the previous Bundesliga season, during Mainz’s crushing defeat to Bayern, Wang Shuo had scored a spectacular goal.
This shot him to fame, and the news even reached Poland.
It was after that match that Lewandowski heard Wang Shuo’s name for the first time.
He immediately committed the 18-year-old Chinese striker’s name to memory!
As one of the most outstanding players of Poland’s younger generation, Lewandowski’s career had been anything but smooth sailing.
He was born into a sports family in Warsaw, the capital of Poland.
His father was a Polish national judo champion and also a football player.
His mother and sister were both professional volleyball players.
Even his girlfriend, Anna, whom he met in 2007, was a karate athlete.
So, he had always been certain that his life would be inextricably linked to sports and football.
At the age of nine, with his father’s support, he joined the youth academy of his hometown team, MKS Warsaw Varsavia.
Seven years later, he transferred to another team, Warsaw Delta.
The year 2005, when he was 17, was destined to be the most difficult and unforgettable year of his life.
His father passed away from cancer.
That same year, Lewandowski received a call with an invitation from the Polish powerhouse, Legia Warsaw.
It was the dream of almost every child in Poland!
But just over half a year later, he suffered a severe knee injury and began a long period of recovery.
At the same time, because he wasn’t physically strong enough, and coupled with the injury, Legia Warsaw was not optimistic about his future.
They decided to develop other young strikers instead.
His good friend, Szczeny, left for the Premier League, joining the powerhouse club Arsenal.
He, on the other hand, could only go to Preskov in Poland’s third division.
That season, he trained and improved himself like a man possessed. He became the top scorer in Poland’s third division with 15 goals, helping his team get promoted.
The following season, he once again won the Golden Boot Award in the second division with 21 goals, making a name for himself throughout Poland.
From the low point of his life in 2005 and 2006 to his emergence in 2008, no one knew just how much effort Lewandowski had put in.
He also had to force himself to move on from the pain of losing his father!
In 2008, he arrived at the top-division club Lech Poznan.
Unfortunately, in the past 08/09 season, he only scored 14 goals and failed to win the top division’s Golden Boot Award, missing a perfect opportunity to make history.
This left him feeling disappointed.
But he did win Best Rookie.
And it was during this very season that the man named Wang Shuo—the Chinese player who had been rejected after trials with 18 different teams—became the youngest Golden Boot Award winner in Bundesliga history with 29 goals!
Lewandowski even felt that the reason he only scored 14 goals might have been Wang Shuo’s "fault."
Because sometimes, Wang Shuo’s matches were played before his, and whenever Wang Shuo scored, his own mentality would be easily affected.
Of course, that sounded more like an excuse.
Lewandowski didn’t have the same lofty ideals as Wang Shuo.
He had never thought about becoming the best football player in the world.
His ambitions were more practical.
He wanted to go to the Premier League, to Blackburn!
The Premier League team had been watching him for a while now. As long as he continued to perform well this season, they were willing to extend an olive branch.
At that point, Lewandowski would be able to make his Premier League debut.
That meant money and fame, the fulfillment of his dreams, and most importantly, his late father’s expectations for him!
For all Polish players, European competitions were a rare stage to showcase their skills to the outside world.
After all, the Polish league had very little influence.
Even though they were neighboring countries, German clubs didn’t pay much attention to Poland.
Because the level of football there was too weak.
But things were different in European competitions.
Facing teams from across Europe, the level of performance they displayed would be far more convincing.
Especially when facing a Bundesliga giant like Dortmund.
Therefore, everyone at Lech Poznan was giving it their all.
Lewandowski was especially ambitious, eager to compete against Wang Shuo.
He wanted to see for himself—Wang Shuo was indeed impressive on TV broadcasts.
But would the Wang Shuo facing Lech Poznan be just as formidable as the one on TV?
...
Poland was poor.
So poor that hosting the 2012 European Cup was a massive struggle for them.
For example, Lech Poznan’s home ground was the Poznan City Stadium.
To prepare for the European Cup, renovations began in 2003, but now, in 2009, they were still not finished.
Initial estimates suggested the earliest completion date would be in 2010.
During this period of stadium renovation, Lech Poznan’s matches were scheduled in Fronki, 60 kilometers northwest of Poznan.
A small town. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮
But a surprisingly strong football team had once emerged from here: Amica-Fronki.
