The match at the Europa-Park Stadion reaches the 72nd minute.
Kevin De Bruyne receives a raking diagonal ball from Ricardo Rodríguez. With a quick glance, his eyes lock onto the surging run of Ivica Olić, and he opens his body to strike with the arch of his foot.
Snap! The ball carves a perfect outward arc, bypassing the defensive line to find Ivan Perišić. Facing a charging goalkeeper, the Croatian opts for the unselfish route, squaring the ball across the face of the goal.
Across the frame, David Qin runs into the left side of the box. He meets the rolling ball with cold-blooded composure.
Bang! The shot screams through the narrow gap between two lunging defenders and buries itself in the back of the net.
0-2!!!
"A brace! David Qin has his second of the afternoon, and the first brace of his professional career!"
"Sensational! It has been sixteen long years since Yang Chen achieved a Bundesliga brace for Eintracht Frankfurt back in the 98-99 season. Today, history repeats itself through the boots of David Qin!"
The voice of Wolff-Christoph Fuss booms through the broadcast. On the monitors, David's radiant smile is captured in high-definition—a moment of pure joy broadcast to every fan tracking his meteoric rise. A professional brace... it was a milestone he had never reached before, another record shattered.
With less than twenty minutes of regulation time remaining, an ambitious thought flickered in David's mind.
A hat-trick.
Could he achieve his first-ever career treble? Unfortunately, having been stung twice by the teenager, Freiburg's defenders clung to him like shadows, refusing to grant him an inch of breathing room and resorting to cynical tactical fouls to halt his every stride.
Tweet-tweet-tweet!
As the three long whistles signaled the end of the match, David collapsed onto the turf, letting out a helpless sigh. He wouldn't be taking the match ball home today.
However, the fans in the away end were in a generous mood. A supporter tossed down a baseball cap emblazoned with the Wolfsburg crest. "Qin, this one's from me! It'll bring you luck!"
David scrambled up, popped the cap onto his head, and flashed a peace sign toward the stands. That image—the boy in the oversized fan hat—became the centerpiece of every sports headline the following morning.
Headline: Wolfsburg 2-0 Freiburg—Chinese Star David Qin Dons the Hat!
Wolfsburg Manager: "David Qin is a treasure for this club. He and De Bruyne possess limitless potential; it is only a matter of time before they grace the world's greatest stages."
The Giants Awaken: Bayern Munich rediscovered their clinical edge with a 6-0 demolition of Werder Bremen. Braces from Götze and Lahm, alongside strikes from Müller and Xabi Alonso, served as a six-goal warning that the Bavarian juggernaut has returned.
Dortmund in Crisis: A 1-2 defeat to Köln has left the atmosphere at BVB suffocating and bleak. The countdown to Jürgen Klopp's departure has officially begun.
@Tactical_Gnome: "Wolfsburg won by two goals... how exactly did David Qin get a hat-trick?"
@BundesligaBanter: "Read the headline again, mate. He didn't score a hat-trick; he 'donned a hat' from the fans. Top-tier pun work from the editors. "
@MiaSanMia_Global: "Bayern is absolutely terrifying right now. 4-0 vs Paderborn, 2-0 vs Köln, 4-0 vs Hannover, and now 6-0 vs Bremen? They're playing FIFA on Amateur difficulty."
@GegenPressGuest: "The individual quality at Bayern is so high you could tether a dog to the manager's seat and they'd still win the Meisterschale."
@WolfsburgWarrior12: "If David and KDB keep developing and hold their nerve in the second half of the season, I think we can actually go toe-to-toe with the giants. Believe! 🐺"
Back at the VfL training base, David lay on a massage table for his recovery therapy, scrolling through the statistics. Bayern led the Wolves by only a point, but their goal difference was vastly superior. Furthermore, the top-scorer charts were dominated by Bavarians: Robben, Lewandowski, Müller.
With four league goals, David sat in 7th place. He wondered where he would stand by the season's end.
I need to keep grinding on those finessed curlers, David told himself. The Asian Cup starts in January; I have to master them before then. The pressure of professional football was like rowing against the current—to stop moving was to drift backward. To claim the honors he craved, he had to outwork everyone else.
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Six days later, for the third round of the Europa League group stage, David and his teammates embarked on a journey to the southernmost frontiers of Russia.
The trip to Krasnodar required a transfer in Berlin, but the 2,200-kilometer journey took only four hours—hardly a grueling trek by modern standards. Founded only six years prior with a focus on youth development, FC Krasnodar was owned by Sergey Galitsky, the retail king of Russia. In short: they had money. However, their on-pitch strength was modest, having finished sixth in the Russian Premier League the previous season—hardly a match for the likes of Zenit or CSKA Moscow.
"De Bruyne!" Derek Rae's voice rings out. "Only five minutes in, and the Belgian has unleashed a thunderbolt from distance! The Krasnodar Stadium has been silenced!"
"And what a setting for it, Derek," Stewart Robson adds. "The architecture here, inspired by the ancient Greek amphitheaters with those Roman travertine columns... it's a majestic venue, but Wolfsburg is making it their own."
"De Bruyne is in rare form today! He slices through the lines with a series of quick exchanges and slips a vertical ball through!"
"Olić kills the momentum, losing his marker with a sharp stop, and squares it for the late-arriving David Qin!"
"He's clean through! A couple of step-overs to send the keeper the wrong way, and Qin slides it into the empty net!"
"0-2!!!"
The onslaught continued into the second half. In the 78th minute, De Bruyne orchestrated play again, finding Perišić on the right.
"The cross comes in! Beautiful telepathy between the two Croatians as Olić meets it at the near post with a glancing header!"
"0-3!"
"The final whistle blows! A dominant 3-0 away win for the Wolves. Aside from their solitary loss to Bayern, they are now on a ten-match unbeaten run in all competitions! David Qin nets his second European goal, and frankly, had he not been substituted early to save his legs, that tally might have been higher."
Wolfsburg didn't linger, returning home that same night. The Europa League schedule was a relentless grind, always sandwiching matches just two days before league fixtures. Their next opponent: Mainz 05, featuring the Japanese international Shinji Okazaki.
Mainz had been led by Thomas Tuchel the previous season, but a contract dispute had left the tactical mastermind sitting at home watching TV. Their current manager, Kasper Hjulmand, formerly of Nordsjælland, lacked Tuchel's pedigree but was a master of the "Parked Bus" strategy. Impressively, Mainz remained unbeaten in the league so far with five draws and three wins, including a 2-0 scalp of Dortmund.
As David Qin stood in the tunnel of the Volkswagen Arena, he spotted Okazaki. But his eyes were drawn to another familiar face in the Mainz lineup.
Loris Karius.
An infamous phrase immediately echoed in David's mind: "A mistake... a huge, huge, monumental mistake."
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