The God of Football Starts With Passive Skills-Chapter 28 - 18: An Impossible Mission

After some time, Wang Shuo had gained a deeper understanding of the Ball God System.

The Passive Skills he had drawn were a huge help, and his improvement was quite obvious.

This was especially true at the People’s Bank Stadium.

After the match, Wang Shuo found the looks of newfound respect from the Frankfurt U19 players to be particularly satisfying.

But once he calmed down, he had to re-evaluate his actual situation.

After training with the Mainz first team for a few days, he clearly understood the team’s predicament.

More importantly, he understood how much head coach Klopp was counting on him.

Ultimately, what Klopp valued most in Wang Shuo was his running ability on the pitch.

Mainz’s entire tactical system was derived from Wolfgang Frank’s philosophy.

From the first team down to the second team and the U19s, high pressing in the midfield and attack was heavily emphasized.

This placed high demands on the players’ stamina and work rate.

After their relegation from the Bundesliga and the subsequent loss of players, Mainz began to face major problems.

This was primarily in the midfield and forward line.

Among the three starting midfielders, the holding midfielder Pekovic, from Black Mountain, was born in August 1977 and was about to turn 31.

Slovakian midfielder Miroslav Kalhan would already be 32 by June.

The youngest, Daniel Gunkel, who held dual citizenship with Germany and Côte d’Ivoire, was also about to turn 28.

A major reason the team had been hit by a wave of injuries this season was that many of its core players were getting older.

In the first half of the season, when their stamina was still high and injuries were few, these three starting midfielders allowed the team to function very smoothly.

Consequently, Mainz was unstoppable at the time, unleashing an offensive storm that earned praise not just in the 2nd Bundesliga, but throughout all of Germany.

But as the season wore on and the players grew fatigued, Klopp’s tactical system began to break down.

When the midfield couldn’t maintain its press, many problems with the forwards were exposed.

Take, for example, the team’s top scorer, Borja.

He was a rather traditional South American forward of smaller stature.

He was only 1.8 meters tall but had strong one-on-one skills, along with excellent scoring and heading abilities. However, his style of play was rather selfish, his tactical awareness was weak, and he barely participated in defense from the front line.

Furthermore, he was highly dependent on service from his teammates.

So, when the team was running like a well-oiled machine, he constantly received opportunities and his scoring efficiency was high.

But when the team struggled, he would also go cold and suffer a goal drought.

Serbian forward Balik had decent speed and technique, but his performances were highly inconsistent.

In terms of pressing from the front, his contribution was even less than Borja’s.

Ghanaian forward Isaac Boakye had been brought in on loan from VfL Wolfsburg during the winter break.

The player’s talent was undeniable, but his career had been plagued by misfortune.

Since his arrival in the Bundesliga in ’04 to join Bielefeld, he had consistently performed at a high level, but he suffered a major injury nearly every season.

Most notably, just before the 2006 World Cup in Germany, he was in spectacular form, only to suffer a severe knee injury in March that forced him to miss the tournament.

Despite this, VfL Wolfsburg still signed him for 1.2 million euros.

Last season at Wolfsburg, he was injured right after joining and only started playing regularly in November after a stop-start period.

His overall performance was still respectable.

But in the summer of 2007, Wolfsburg signed forwards like Griffith, Dzeko, and Radu in one fell swoop. How could there be a place for Isaac Boakye, who was plagued by injuries and consistently unstable form?

As a result, he was loaned to Mainz in January.

However, from the Bundesliga to the 2nd Bundesliga, from Magath’s Wolfsburg to Klopp’s Mainz, Boakye was initially given a great deal of trust and started several consecutive matches, but his performances were rather mediocre.

To date, he had scored only one goal in ten appearances.

It wasn’t hard to see from the performances of Mainz’s three starting forwards that none of them could meet head coach Klopp’s tactical demands. They were unable to provide the team with the necessary large-scale pressing from the front line.

As a result, all the pressure fell onto the midfield.

To make matters worse, the midfielders were all getting on in years.

This was the fundamental reason for Mainz’s collapse in the second half of the season.

Understanding the reasons, the role Wang Shuo needed to play became crystal clear.

For him, whether or not he could score was secondary.

The most crucial task was to compensate for the team’s shortcomings in its pressing and pressuring abilities in the midfield and forward line.

Having figured this out, Wang Shuo had nothing more to dwell on.

On the bus ride back to Mainz from Frankfurt, he entered the system.

This time, he didn’t choose to draw a new Passive Skill. Instead, he directly used a Skill Card to upgrade the [Breathing] Passive Skill.

"You have used a Passive Skill Card. Do you wish to upgrade the [Breathing] Passive Skill from Professional Level to Regional Level?"

Wang Shuo chose [Yes] without a second thought.

Soon, he discovered that on the giant, floating football in the center, the facet representing [Breathing] was glowing even brighter.

Based on his explorations over this period, mastering multiple Passive Skills, and especially after recently training with the first team, he had roughly gauged his own strength.

Professional Level was roughly equivalent to the standard of a starting player for a lower-to-mid-table Bundesliga team.

Upgrading to Regional Level should bring him to the standard of a player on an upper-tier Bundesliga team, which was equivalent to the level of a team in the Champions League group stage.

Beyond that, National Level would be the standard of a domestic powerhouse like Bayern, roughly the level of a player on a team in the Champions League Round of 16.

For now, this was as far as Wang Shuo could roughly estimate.

He wasn’t quite sure what lay beyond that.

For the current Wang Shuo, upgrading [Breathing] to the Regional Level should be more than enough to handle the Second Bundesliga without any issues.

But he was still a very unbalanced player.

His strengths were clear: tireless stamina that was unmatched in the 2nd Bundesliga, high speed and quickness, a strong ability to read the game, and excellent off-the-ball movement.

But in areas like on-the-ball skills and physical strength, Wang Shuo was still lacking.

He wasn’t worried, though.

In less than two months, he had transformed from an overlooked player at Frankfurt U19 into a rising star on the Mainz first team, even attracting interest from Bayern.

He was confident that with a little more time, he could continue to improve and leave everyone stunned.

...

On the afternoon of the same day that Mainz U19 thrashed Frankfurt U19 4-0 away, the Mainz first team traveled to Augsburg to face the mid-table team in an away match.

This time, Klopp’s team was the first to score.

Just eleven minutes after kickoff, Gunkel assisted a goal by Balik.

But just ten minutes later, Augsburg equalized on a fast break.

In the 64th minute of the second half, the home team scored again, capitalizing on a corner kick to breach Mainz’s goal.

2-1. Augsburg completed the comeback to defeat Mainz at home.

In the same round of matches, Cologne drew 2-2 away at Paderborn.

Hoffenheim lost 1-2 at home to Aachen.

Fuerth lost 0-3 away to Borussia Mönchengladbach.

But Freiburg defeated Jena 2-0 at home.

After 28 matches, Borussia Mönchengladbach led the league table with 55 points.

Hoffenheim remained in second with 50 points.

Cologne picked up one point this round, putting them in third place with 47 points.

Freiburg earned three points, moving them to fourth place with 46 points.

Fuerth was in fifth with 44 points.

Mainz, meanwhile, was in sixth place with 43 points.

At this point, Mainz had fallen four points behind Cologne.

The day after the Augsburg match, following the recovery training session, Klopp called a meeting with the first-team players.

He expressed his extreme disappointment with the away loss to Augsburg and called out several players by name, including Borja.

He believed the team was squandering its excellent position in the promotion race.

"I’ve said it before: to get promoted, we need at least 60 points."

"We have 43 points right now, and with only six matches left in the season, what does that mean?"

Earning 17 points in six matches was a nearly impossible task!

"I don’t care what any of you are thinking, but I’m telling you right now, in no uncertain terms: for these next six matches, I will be picking players who are truly willing to fight for this team!"

Klopp announced on the spot that he was calling up two players from the Mainz second team to join the first team.

The first was Roman Neustadter, son of the second team’s head coach, Peter Neustadter.

The 20-year-old was capable of playing both center-back and holding midfielder.

The other was midfielder Mario Franjić, who held dual citizenship with Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. He wouldn’t turn 19 until May.

Furthermore, he was calling up two more players from the U19s: Andre Schürrle and the midfielder Kirschhoff.

It was clear that Klopp was looking to strengthen his midfield and attack.

He hoped the arrival of these fresh faces would light a fire under the existing squad.

...

The first team’s dire situation didn’t have a major impact on Wang Shuo.

After scoring another hat-trick in the match against Frankfurt U19, his stock within Mainz was soaring.

If not for his age and the fact that his playing permit had not yet been approved, he would have already made his debut for the first team.

Three days after the match, Wang Shuo requested a leave of absence from Klopp.

It had been approved in advance.

He traveled south with Thomas Essien to Heizogen Orlach.

The home of the global headquarters for both Adidas and Puma.

Who would have thought that these two global sporting giants were located in the very same small town?

The purpose of Wang Shuo’s trip was to sign a contract and to take some promotional photos for Adidas to use back in China.

After a drive of over two hours, they arrived in Heizogen Orlach. The first thing on Wang Shuo’s agenda, however, wasn’t signing the contract, but touring the Adidas headquarters.

It was incredibly modern.

The horseshoe-shaped brand center, in particular, was filled with so many vintage shoes that it felt just like a football boot museum.

There were said to be over 10,000 pairs in the collection, all kept in a climate-controlled environment, which made Wang Shuo marvel at their professionalism.

But what truly captured Wang Shuo’s attention was a horseshoe-shaped corridor named the "Avenue of Stars."

The boxing boots of Muhammad Ali, the basketball shoes of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar...

As a football player, besides looking for the footprints and boots of German legends like the "Football Emperor" Beckenbauer, Wang Shuo also spotted Zidane’s boots.

Across the entire sporting world, Germany’s Adidas and the United States’ Nike could be described as evenly matched rivals.

But in the world of football, Adidas was the undisputed number one.

From Beckenbauer to Platini, then to Raul, Zidane, Beckham, Kaka, Robben, and Gerrard...

Adidas had always been the most influential brand in the world of football!

Thomas Essien privately told Wang Shuo that among the hottest superstars in world football at the moment, Manchester United’s Ronaldo and Barça’s Ronaldinho were both in the Nike camp.

Kaka and Messi, however, were with Adidas.

Of course, Messi’s status was still a bit lower at this point.

Ronaldo, on the other hand, was on track to win both the Golden Ball Award and the World Footballer of the Year award this season.

Walking along Adidas’s Avenue of Stars, Wang Shuo felt as though he were strolling among dazzling football legends.

He discovered that Zidane had signed with Adidas as far back as 1996.

Messi, just like him, had also signed with Adidas at a very young age.

They had all eventually become the "pride" of Adidas, even leaving their boots and footprints behind on this Avenue of Stars.

For the first time, a powerful desire ignited within Wang Shuo’s heart.

’I want to be just like them!’