Chapter 998: A Bigger Stage

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Having just finished a fierce derby, the head coach was not as strict with the players as he used to be. Everyone needed to relax, whether a player or a coach. So Chen Jian could dress neatly to go meet Twain, enjoy the night with him, and experience Spain’s colorful nightlife.

“Is it time for me to congratulate you on the draw at the mighty Barcelona, or regret that you didn’t finally win the game?” Twain said to Chen Jian with a smile.

“Regret,” Chen Jian replied.

Looking at the man before him, who had more gray hair than before, Chen Jian could not help but feel how time flies.

When he first met Twain, he was in high spirits. He was in his peak and it seemed like he could never tire, but now, Twain was almost like an old man.

Xia Yang became obsolete. Tonight was a conversation between Twain and Chen Jian.

“Well, I didn’t think I’d ever ask you to return again when you got out of Nottingham Forest.”

“I didn’t expect to become who I am now after leaving Nottingham Forest.”

Both of them were lamenting the impermanence of the world.

Today, Chen Jian was not only the core of the RCD Espanyol but also the main player in the Chinese national team. That’s why Twain was looking for him, because there was nothing wrong with applying for a labor certificate. As for the national team rankings, the England Football a.s.sociation has canceled that thing.

China was still second rate in Asian football, and Chen Jian was one of the few s.h.i.+ning stars on the team.

The most insignificant person in the draft was clothed in the national team’s robes to fight for the country, and those who had done better than he had now had no idea where they might look for jobs.

“I feel like I should thank you for my achievement today, Mr. Twain. The moment I received your call, I decided to transfer to Nottingham Forest.”

Twain smiled. To tell the truth, when he picked up the phone and asked Chen Jian aloud whether he would dare to give up everything to come to Nottingham and start over again, he was just encouraging him. He didn’t really think Chen Jian’s future would be much better. Chen Jian’s achievements now exceeded his original expectations, and he was also very gratified. At least he has given a person’s destiny a better direction.

“Even if the mountain stops turning, the river shall still keep flowing. And so we come back together again. Chinese people believe in fate. Chen Jian, you and Nottingham Forest are bound by fate.”

Xia Yang, who was listening silently to this dialogue, secretly rolled his eyes. What fate? It was still unknown whether Chen Jian’s choice was good or bad. He was able to play so well for the RCD Espanyol because RCD Espanyol’s head coach, Manzano, put a Chinese player at the core. Would Nottingham Forest do this too? Their core was George Wood, whose technical features were similar in style to those of Chen Jian! Chen Jian would only have a supporting role, a foil, and his play could hardly be as good as in the RCD Espanyol. The reputation he a.s.sembled with great effort before might be lost after he went to Nottingham Forest.

The agent, Mr. Xia, was only distracted for a few seconds, but the two men at the table have already talked about the issues of going to the Forest team.

“I’ve seen the derby. You’re at the core of the RCD Espanyol. I’ll give you a showdown here, you can’t be the core in Nottingham Forest. There’s George Wood…” Twain spread out his hands.

Chen Jian did not say anything like “just let me get to Forest, I’ll be willing to go even as a subst.i.tute.” He just said, “I think that if Mr. Twain is seeking me out personally, it’s not to get me sitting on a bench?”

Having fought for more than three seasons in La Liga, Chen has matured a lot and this experience made him more confident.

Twain looked at the Chinese player in front of him with a deep liking. Although some Spanish media would call Chen Jian a “smaller-sized George Wood”, in Twain’s view, this man was probably more of a “Wise General”. He may be better than George when it came to intelligence and strategy. After all, there were many people along the way to help George and teach him. Without himself, without Dunn, without the help of Albertini and other people, George would not amount to much, while Chen Jian was basically on his own.

“It’s too much luxury to bring you on as a subst.i.tute, ha!” Twain smiled happily. “According to my plan, you’re going to play together with Wood, and you two will be Forest’s double core.”

“Double core?” Chen Jian lowered his head and thought about how he would fit in with Wood. He was no longer the kid who would be excited just about stepping on the Football Field, playing the game.

He inadvertently played the game of guessing the coach’s intentions. However, this time he couldn’t figure out how he was going to fit in with George Wood, who resembled him in technique and style.

Therefore, he looked up at Twain.

“You both have good long pa.s.ses, but you’re better at short pa.s.ses than Wood, and Wood’s long-range shooting technique is better than yours.” Twain didn’t tell everything, he just pointed out the difference between the two men. “It would be too difficult for an opponent to keep an eye on both of you.”

Chen Jian’s mind already had a vague picture of him fighting side by side with Wood. It was then that he began to get excited – from his childhood ambition to the time he became a professional player, the goal has always been George Wood, No.13 of Nottingham Forest. When he was in the youth team he continued to hone himself with Wood’s training schedule. Wood became his idol. Now he would finally have the possibility to play side by side with his hero!

The meeting with Chen Jian was mainly about promising him his place in the team face-to-face – certainly not on the bench and, for now, in the main force. People in Spain were good at living at night, and Chen Jian, who has been here for more than three years, was more or less used to it, but the 50-year-old Twain was not Spanish. After only four days in Spain, he was not accustomed to it yet. Barcelona’s club derby as a major game in this round of the league, of course, was scheduled for the last game of the day. When the game was over, it was almost midnight, and now it was nearly one in the morning. Twain was tired. He had said everything he could say already. There was no need to stay. They would have plenty of time, with lots of opportunities to contact.

Twain and Chen Jian said goodbye. As they were leaving, Twain reminded Xia Yang to step up his efforts to put pressure on the RCD Espanyol Club and Chen Jian promised a showdown with the club to express his wishes of going to Nottingham Forest.

Early the next morning, Twain flew back to England, thus concluding his trip to Spain.

※※※

It wasn’t long before news came from Barcelona that a number of local clubs were attracted to Chen Jian, hoping to take him away from the RCD Espanyol during the winter break.

With such news, Twain knew that Xia Yang had already begun to act.

He didn’t care that much. Let the professionals do the job.

David Kerslake has entered the team’s coaching staff in advance as an a.s.sistant coach, to carry out the preliminary work. He was responsible for summarizing the team’s situation, submitting it to Twain, and then letting him a.n.a.lyze the decision.

Now, a week after Kerslake entered the team, the team’s internal report has basically taken shape.

In the two weeks since his absence, Nottingham Forest has narrowly stayed in the 16th with one win, one loss.

That was a pretty low starting point. Nottingham Forest has been at its lowest since returning to the English Premier League. No wonder a bunch of people was pessimistic about Forest’s prospects for this season. They believed that if Nottingham did not pay attention, even a relegation eventually wouldn’t surprise them.

In addition to Kerslake’s report, which showed the Forest team’s lack of effectiveness was a cause for concern, there was a growing feeling of insecurity and tension. In addition, the bench thickness was not enough. Together with all the other shortcomings, all let Twain feel the pressure on his shoulders.

This comeback was certainly not an easy getaway…

Before that, there was one more thing Twain needed to do. Once he became Forest’s head coach, it wouldn’t be very convenient.

※※※

At the end of November, winter came. The weather was the same in Nottingham as in the whole of England, with more cloudy and rainy days, less blue skies and less suns.h.i.+ne.

On a rare good day, and after four consecutive days of rain, the skies over Nottingham finally cleared up. Everyone who went to work in the morning could see the golden sun rising in the east, the brilliant s.h.i.+ning sunlight on the sky and the earth, the leaves still s.h.i.+mmering with last night’s raindrops, s.h.i.+ning in the sun. From a distance, the forest seemed to be hung with strings of gold beads.

Surrounded by these picturesque woods was the training ground for the Notts County club, which was half as small as the Nottingham Forest Wilford training ground. The training facilities were somewhat old-fas.h.i.+oned. As the oldest modern professional football club in the world, there was a taste of history from inside to outside. Cynics would say it smelled of rot. Fans would call it a scent of the glory of long-gone history.

Although the training facilities were old, the players on the training ground were young. There was nothing in their faces that showed the pressures and burdens of a long history.

It was just a warm-up exercise, but everybody was serious. A man in his thirties, wearing a hooded training s.h.i.+rt like an a.s.sistant coach, ran ahead with a whistle in his mouth. The man with black hair and an oriental face was the Chinese Dunn, who had left Nottingham Forest more than seven years ago.

Now he was the head coach of the English Football League Champions.h.i.+p team, Notts County.

Outside the barbed-wire fence at the training ground, some fans were a.s.sembled, although the number was small and there were few media outlets, with two of them being Nottingham natives and one from the port city of Portsmouth – Notts County’s opponent in the next round of the English Football League Champions.h.i.+p.

On this cold morning, the whistle in the training ground was so clear and sharp that it even startled some birds in the woods. The distant woods were shrouded by a rising white haze of water vapor that began to evaporate under the sun and spread out, wrapping almost the entire training ground in a gentle mist.

Twain, who was wrapped in a thick coat, took a deep breath. The air in the woods was much better than in the city center.

The so-called one more thing that couldn’t be done after he began coaching the Forest team was to meet Dunn here. Although his relations.h.i.+p with Tang Zhijian offered him many opportunities to engage in private, once he became Forest’s head coach, he was bound to be a key target of the paparazzi, and his meeting with Dunn was a secret that he didn’t want to become the headlines of tomorrow’s newspaper.

Watching Dunn leading the team’s warm-up, Twain had a smile on his face. It was completely different from his own style. Dunn was doing a good job here. Although he didn’t know much about Notts County, from only seeing the players, Twain believed that it was a team that worked well with Dunn and that his goal was achieved when he left Forest.

However, such a team could not go any further. A small team in Notts County lacked funding. Dunn’s success in bringing it to the English Football League Champions.h.i.+p has already surprised a lot of people. However, it would end there. If they wanted to go to the Premier League, without strong financial support it would be absolutely impossible. Even if they were lucky enough to make the Premier League, in a huge advantage over their opponents, the only way left to them would be to return to the English Football League Champions.h.i.+p.

In 2004, when Notts County was on the verge of bankruptcy, its fans made voluntary donations in the hopes of saving their beloved team. However, in the end, it was the unrelated team, Chelsea, who became the savior. It was because Notts County had drawn Chelsea in the Football a.s.sociation Cup that they received a lot of ticket revenue. When the Chelsea club agreed to give all the ticket income they received at Stamford Bridge to the Notts County club to help them get through, the share of television broadcast fees and ticket revenue saved the team, preventing the demise of the world’s oldest modern professional football club.

This told enough about the situation of Notts County. The cost of filming a game and the revenue of tickets were not worth mentioning in the eyes of the Premier League teams, but it was enough to save Notts County. How pitiful the budget of this team was!

Dunn’s success in recent years was inseparable from his insistence on the youth team construction from the beginning of his term. Without the youth training camp to provide him with enough good players, the poor budget for every season in Notts County would not be enough to buy all eleven starters in the transfer market alone.

Despite having a good youth camp, he also faced the same grievance as a number of small club managers – he couldn’t afford to keep the most prominent young players from going out of Notts County in pursuit of a higher stage. For a club like Notts County, the only way to survive was by selling some of its promising young players. Dunn was just a head coach, he couldn’t interfere with the team’s business strategy, and he was in no position to interfere – the team wouldn’t be able to survive, so why keep the talented players? The level of these players was not the type of world superstar who could lead a team to the Premier League alone. They were exchanges for a good price while they were still worthy. Then he would reorganize the first team out of the youth camp to train them from the starting point.

Thus it moved in circles.

Twain shook his head. That was the tragedy of the little club. Didn’t the same thing happen to the Forest team before he took over? Michael Dawson, Andy Reid, and Jenas were all sold to other teams in times of financial distress for the Forest. It was just that Nottingham Forest, compared with Notts County, was, after all, well-established, and with better funding, it was not too difficult to rise again.

For Notts County, it was really difficult to rebuild with almost nothing.

Twain finished all the morning training and then met Dunn at noon.

On the phone last night, Twain told Dunn he was coming to him today, so Dunn wasn’t surprised at all to see Twain in front of him.

“You certainly didn’t come to invite me to dinner, Tony,” At a Chinese restaurant, Dunn spoke to Twain, who was sitting opposite from him.

“Of course. And the Chinese restaurant is too unauthentic,” Twain commented on the most famous Chinese restaurant in Nottingham as if there was no one else around them, ignoring a Chinese waiter standing beside him. It made this Chinese overseas student – judging by his look, he was here for a part-time job – stare at the old man wearing sungla.s.ses.

After the waiter had gone, Dunn began to laugh. “What you say about the restaurant is too offensive.”

Twain shrugged and didn’t go on with the topic. “I came to you to ask you a question, Dunn.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice so that only Dunn could hear.

“Do you want a bigger stage?”