Kai laughed. "It's easier to score goals in the Portuguese Super League... I'm kidding. The level of competition in the Portuguese Super League is obviously much higher than in the Portuguese Liga, but fortunately, both my teammates and I have adapted to the rhythm pretty quickly."
Reporter: "A total of seven goals were scored by your team in this match, but none of the league's top five scorers are from Sporting Lisbon. How do you view this situation?"
Kai: "That just reflects how strong we are at creating chances right now. Almost everyone on our team has the opportunity to score. So our opponents better be careful—any one of our players can change the scoreline!"
Reporter: "But does that also mean you lack a player with explosive scoring ability?"
Kai laughed again. "How explosive does someone have to be before it counts as explosive? Actually, both Quaresma and Ronaldo had plenty of scoring chances today. Even Ibrahimović had several clear opportunities."
"If they focused entirely on scoring for themselves, then of course they'd all appear on the scoring charts, just like Jardel did. But then we definitely wouldn't have scored seven goals."
"Between personal honors and team honors, I think the latter is more important. And I believe the others think the same way."
"Sporting Lisbon returns to the top of the table for the first time in three years! Seven-nil, the biggest scoreline of the season!"
"Seven-goal massacre against Beira-Mar! The king of Sporting Lisbon has returned, and the winds are rising over Alvalade!"
"Eleven players under twenty years old! Sporting Lisbon unleashes a youth storm!"
"One goal and three assists! Caesar of Lisbon tops the assists chart in the very first round of the Portuguese Super League! An assist hat trick leads the team to a historic victory!"
"While people were still debating whether Kai and Ronaldo were merely training with the first team or would actually make the squad, the two have already become the team's core players!"
"Quaresma completed the most passes in the game, fully showcasing his core role!"
"Viana integrated perfectly into the squad and delivered a core-level performance!"
"Fonte, the lowest-rated player in Sporting Lisbon's lineup, still received a higher rating than Beira-Mar's highest-rated player!"
"The Ballon d'Or never grows old! Matthäus unleashes another thunderous strike and leads the youngsters to the top of the Portuguese Super League!"
After a season of silence, Sporting Lisbon finally became the media's darling once again.
From now on, every move they made would become a hot topic of discussion.
...
"Ding! You won the match and received the following game rating rewards!"
"Obtained basic rewards ×30 and star drop: 'Drogba's Sliding Knee Celebration.'"
"'Drogba's Sliding Knee Celebration' is one of the most common and iconic celebrations in football history. Among them, Drogba's version is the most legendary. You have obtained the blue player-level skill 'Savage Collision.' There is a chance that during a knee-slide celebration, three lines will appear behind you."
"'Savage Collision': When advancing with the ball, your physical confrontation ability increases."
The so-called basic rewards were random drops like blue fragments, training cones, medical bandages, and similar junk.
Kai had originally expected a drop from either Matthäus or Ibrahimović.
Unexpectedly, the final MVP was Drogba.
And what he dropped was his iconic...
Celebration.
There were countless legends surrounding Drogba's three-stripe knee slide. The scientific explanation was that Drogba dragged his trailing foot sideways during the slide, causing his toes and heel to carve marks into the turf, which formed three lines.
But the most widely discussed explanation was much dirtier—
Drogba was simply too fucking monstrous. Three lines represented three legs, which sounded perfectly reasonable.
Of course, this skill wouldn't actually increase the size of any special body parts.
But there was now a chance that Kai's sliding celebration would mysteriously leave behind three lines.
This...
If Kai scored before Drogba in the future, he might have to apologize to him first.
After all, if football was missing the three stripes, it would truly be a loss for the sport.
"Savage Collision" was also an extremely practical skill.
It sounded crude, but nearly every top midfielder possessed this kind of ability.
Whether it was the seemingly frail Luka Modrić, the slightly skinny Frenkie de Jong, the physically strong Kevin De Bruyne, or the powerhouse Paul Pogba, the ability to fight through physical pressure was the foundation of their dribbling and press resistance.
A midfielder who collapsed at the first touch could never become a great midfielder.
"Kai, let's go!"
Outside the small villa, Ronaldo dribbled a football while calling out to Kai.
Behind him were Drogba, Ibrahimović, Barzagli, Pepe, Terry, and the others.
This was Sporting Lisbon's extra training squad.
At first, these players had lived in the club dormitories.
But because they trained together so often and regularly went out to eat after extra sessions, they naturally became closer over time. Eventually, Ronaldo invited everyone to move into the villa he had rented.
Unlike Kai, Ronaldo still carried the burden of paying for the place himself.
So after seeing how satisfied everyone was with the living conditions, he suggested they rent it together.
After splitting the costs, it wasn't expensive at all, and the conditions were far better than the club dormitories, so everyone agreed immediately.
As a result, every morning the group would run toward the training ground together while dribbling footballs.
Of course, the route they took was a pedestrian path some distance away from the main road, so there were no safety concerns.
"Coming, coming!" Kai hugged a football under his arm as he walked out and joined the group heading toward the training ground.
Along the way, many people stopped to take photos.
Some even followed them while dribbling footballs themselves, clearly inspired by them.
Running to the training ground while dribbling had always been a habit shared by Kai and Ronaldo.
And after Sporting Lisbon's seven-goal demolition job in the Portuguese Super League, their popularity had exploded.
What had originally been just a local story was now attracting attention from more and more people.
The local government was even considering building a football-themed greenway to commemorate and encourage this behavior while also turning it into a tourist attraction.
It had to be said—
As long as you played football well in Europe, endless possibilities opened up before you.
Of course, there were also professional players who criticized this kind of flashy behavior, believing that dribbling a ball while running on the streets was useless for real professional footballers.
The media asked Kai similar questions as well.
Kai replied, "Anything displayed publicly, aside from pure imagination, can be called a performance. The only difference is whether the influence it brings is good or bad."
"If what we're doing can make more children fall in love with football, make them run and jump instead of sitting at home playing games, and let more people who normally don't pay attention to football gain a simple understanding of the sport, then why shouldn't we do it?"
"It doesn't matter whether this method itself is particularly effective. Me, Ronaldo, and everyone else—we all put in plenty of effort outside of this. We have professional training methods. We don't just dribble balls around like this every day."
"But you can't expect ordinary football lovers to use those professional, boring, and difficult training methods. That would only kill normal people's enthusiasm for football."
"As the number one sport in the world, football absolutely needs elite-level competition to keep fans invested. But it also needs more creative forms of promotion to maintain and expand its foundation. Those things don't conflict with each other at all."
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