I Am Scouted by Real Madrid

"Hey, Chen!"

Kaka’s smile was radiant. Chen Zhong and he were once teammates at Milan, and later Kaka joined Real Madrid. The two of them worked seamlessly together for a considerable period of time.

In the later stages of his career, Kaka joined the Provincial Super League, playing for the wealthy Zhejiang Hangzhou team, where he became the absolute core of the team, even helping them win the first Chinese Crown Cup in the 2015-16 season.

"Long time no see!"

"Yeah!" Chen Zhong and Kaka hug each other. After retiring, Kaka went to Harvard University to study sports management courses, later obtaining the Brazilian Football Association A-level coaching certificate. Now, he is serving China’s national team as a member of the coaching staff.

"You’ve set an example for the people of this land." Kaka looked at Chen Zhong with a bit of admiration and said, "All those young players take you as their goal."

Kaka’s words contained an unmistakable surprise. He hadn’t expected that Chen Zhong would be regarded as a hero in this country.

With the increasing number of youth training players, a place originally barren in football now sees the emergence of quite a few talented players, one of whom is Ding Wei, who was just officially announced to have joined Real Madrid.

Moreover, in China, there’s a style similar to Brazil or the Portuguese Primeira Liga, where the Provincial Super League mainly serves as a platform for young players to showcase themselves. The players who excel there tend to venture abroad.

This is something that the previous Chinese Super League couldn’t offer.

Even domestically, in some well-organized and economically advanced provinces, such as Guangzhou, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, etc., their league’s overall level can even rank among the top ten in the world, with some matches being as intense as those in the Portuguese Primeira Liga or the Saudi Professional League.

Even on the streets, you can see many kids playing football.

And in many campuses, tournaments similar to Japan’s campus football leagues are being held. In 2020, they officially started the National Dominator Tournament, a system where schools in each province compete, and the winners go on to participate in the National Campus Cup.

Teams from the Chinese Crown Cup are also extremely competitive when participating in the Asian Champions League.

Due to the population base, China has now become a second goldmine for fans. There was once a short video domestically that suggested a club could only introduce three Chinese players.

If this development trend continues, it’s exaggerated but said that China alone could satisfy the world’s demand for players.

Of course, this is somewhat an exaggeration.

...

During this period, Chen Zhong and Kaka watched the final round of the Provincial Super League together, then went on to watch the Chinese Crown Cup match.

The Provincial Super League games were extremely intense, especially in provinces where cities had grievances against each other, making their matches particularly fierce. By the time of the Chinese Crown Cup, teams from southern and northern cities also played with great intensity.

This change contributed to the national team developing a more "iron-blooded" style.

They even gradually came to be known as the toughest team in Asia.

"This year the national team will undergo a transition," Kaka said to Chen Zhong. "But there’s good news, the club hopes Ancelotti can coach the national team."

"Ancelotti?"

Chen Zhong was a bit surprised because his information at the club suggested Ancelotti would head to coach the Brazilian national team after his current tenure.

But thinking it over, Ancelotti indeed seems very well suited for the current national team.

Moreover, his coaching experience is indeed rich enough to integrate well with the current national team players.

In 1999, Ancelotti was appointed as Juventus’ head coach. The home team fans displayed a banner: "Pigs can’t coach, go back home."

Ancelotti was furious: "This really made me intolerable because their words showed no respect for a pig."

Later, when Ancelotti went to Milan, because of his insistence on using Seedorf, fans cursed, "Pighead, go back to Parma and continue eating your Italian ravioli."

Ancelotti wrote about this experience in his autobiography, saying, "I didn’t fight back because of Seedorf, I just couldn’t tolerate some people insulting a plate of wonderful Italian ravioli."

This is Ancelotti, a simple kid from a farming family who loves eating pig’s neck meat (coppa) and also loves winning trophies (coppa means trophy in Italian).

He said he was raised by two exceptional "coaches" (referring to his parents), "They worked in the real fields, while I worked on the football field. Their peak time was the harvest, while my seasons aimed for league wins, Italian Cup victories or any other trophies."

In early May 2022, at 63, Ancelotti suddenly made people realize that he was even more outstanding than the "simple farmer" we imagined him to be.

In his coaching career at Real Madrid, Ancelotti became the first coach in history to win the championships of the five major leagues (Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1); leading Real Madrid into the Champions League final, he also became the first coach in history to take his team to the Champions League final five times.

He was never like Shankly to Liverpool, Ferguson to Manchester United, Lippi to Juventus, or Cruyff to Barcelona, never creating any trendsetting tactical styles, never leaving a mark as a godfather anywhere. Fans mockingly call him "the adaptable type", "the best utility man", but data confirms he has become the most successful club coach in history, and you cannot question that.