The God of Football Starts With Passive Skills-Chapter 266 - 68: Qualified for the UEFA Europa League!; See You in the Premier League, Lewandowski!; Wang Shuo’s Number One Fanboy!; A Resonance of Shared Blood
"You’re getting more and more popular with the fans, kid!" Kael said, quite enviously.
As the captain, he was seriously "worried" that Wang Shuo was gradually surpassing his own status in the hearts of the Dortmund fans.
"Of course. Our Wang Shuo is handsome!" Reus chimed in.
"Hey, I’m serious, Marco, can you not be such a suck-up?" Foyelner looked at Reus with some "contempt."
’Is he seriously trying to steal my title as Wang Shuo’s number one fan?’
’The nerve of this guy!’
Reus, who was used to bickering with Foyelner, smugly slung an arm over Wang Shuo’s shoulder, with an expression that screamed, "What are you going to do about it?"
’Hey, you little brat!’
’Back when Wang Shuo and I were fighting side-by-side and winning battles, you were still playing in the German Third Division!’
After everyone had finished interacting with the fans and returned to the bench, they all noticed the head coach was grinning from ear to ear.
’Was winning the game all it took to make him this happy?’
’It’s more than that!’
"Mainz beat Bayern 2-1 at home!" Peter Krawietz announced.
"What?"
Everyone was stunned. They looked at each other, unable to believe it.
Mainz actually took down Bayern?
That was freaking incredible!
In last season’s DFB-Pokal final, it had taken a monumental effort for Klopp’s team to beat Bayern.
And now, Tuchel’s Mainz had managed to do it too.
"Life’s about to get even tougher for Van Gaal now," Buvac said with a chuckle.
Van Gaal had already been met with a storm of boos during their second-round home game.
And that was just for a draw.
Now they’d lost an away game to Mainz.
You almost had to feel sorry for Van Gaal.
There was another impressive match as well.
After beating Dortmund 3-1 at home in the last round, North King Hamburg had thrashed VfL Wolfsburg 4-2 in an away game this round.
Labbadia was really on an unstoppable tear!
Bayer Leverkusen was incredible last season, and this season’s Hamburg was just as formidable.
However, Heynckes’ Bayer Leverkusen was no slouch either, crushing Freiburg 5-0 in their away game this round.
With the three points from this round, Dortmund was now in 4th place in the Bundesliga with six points.
Currently, the team with the most points in the Bundesliga was Bayer Leverkusen, with seven.
Hamburg and Schalke 04 also had seven points.
...
「Three days later」
In the second leg of the UEFA Europa League’s fourth qualifying round, Dortmund hosted Lech Poznan.
Since they had already won the first leg 3-0 away from home, and because it was another week with two matches, Klopp appropriately rotated the team’s lineup for the home game.
Wang Shuo and several other key players were placed on the bench.
The match ended in a 1-1 draw at home against Lech Poznan, thanks to a goal from Foyelner.
The goal for the Polish team was scored by Lewandowski.
After receiving a pass from a teammate inside the box, the young Polish forward turned and smashed a shot past Weidenfeller.
The two goals were scored in the 62nd and 68th minutes, respectively.
In the end, Dortmund advanced smoothly to the UEFA Europa League group stage with a 4-1 aggregate score.
The group stage draw would be held in early September at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland.
The draw at the Grimaldi Conference Center in Monaco was only for the Champions League group stage and had nothing to do with the UEFA Europa League.
...
Chen Dongfeng, 31, was a department manager at a shipyard in Singapore.
He was born in Singapore, educated there, and started working there after graduating from university.
He had never been back to China.
He only knew from his parents that he had an ancestral home in China.
But he had no real concept of what that meant.
Just like any other Singaporean, he fell in love, got married, and had children.
His surname, Chen, and his Chinese ethnicity didn’t bring him any advantages. On the contrary, they often created obstacles at work.
For example, whenever a United States warship came into the shipyard for repairs, no one of Chinese descent was allowed to board. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦
He spoke English in his daily life, browsed foreign websites and news, and chatted with colleagues and friends about events in Europe or the United States. He’d never had any desire to learn about the distant motherland and ancestral home his parents spoke of, nor its culture.
Many of the young Singaporeans of Chinese descent around him were the same.
They had only learned a little Chinese because their stubborn parents forced them to.
That was it.
But everything began to change this past August.
The One HD channel, owned by the Japanese company Sony, was a satellite TV station aimed at Southeast Asia.
Starting in August, they began broadcasting the new Bundesliga season live.
It was available in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other Southeast Asian regions.
Oh, right, and also in Australia and other countries in Oceania.
Chen Dongfeng had always been a fan of the Premier League, but the Bundesliga’s broadcast times were a better fit for his schedule.
Local time was 2:30 PM.
Which was exactly 8:30 PM Singapore time.
By the time he got home from work, finished dinner, cleaned up, and chatted with his wife and kids, it was just about time for the broadcast.
Most importantly, One HD was broadcast for free!
Chen Dongfeng still clearly remembered the first match he watched: the opening round of the Bundesliga, Dortmund at home against Cologne.
On that fateful night, he witnessed with his own eyes a Chinese player for Dortmund in the number 9 jersey—a player who, like him, had black hair, yellow skin, and dark eyes—score against Cologne.
He helped Dortmund beat Cologne 1-0!
In that moment, he truly couldn’t help but leap up from his sofa and cheer wildly, completely unable to control himself.
