The Scout from Chelsea

The team's main goalkeeper, Sebastian Mielitz, was practicing penalty shootout tactics with the help of his teammates. Matches in the Telekom Cup often ended in penalty shootouts.

So, they needed to practice taking and defending penalties in advance to avoid being unprepared.

Facing the empty goal, penalties always felt like something was missing. Thus, Lin called upon the team's substitute goalkeeper, Wolf, to help guard the goal.

Although Wolf was the second-choice goalkeeper, his skill level was naturally strong since he could serve as a backup for a Bundesliga team.

Facing the penalties from De Bruyne and Lin, he made high leaps to block and almost saved all their shots.

"Kevin, your ball speed isn't fast enough and your trajectory is too predictable. If the goalkeeper is paying attention, it's hard to threaten the goal!" Wolf noticed that De Bruyne wanted to practice the knuckleball, so he reminded him to add some variation to the ball.

De Bruyne placed his hands on his hips, contemplating while staring at the ball on the ground.

Adding variation to the ball? How should he do that?

Controlling rotation for the knuckleball, along with maintaining high ball speed, was already difficult. Adding more variation seemed unachievable.

"Let me try?" Lin had been practicing curved shots with the outside of his foot for a while, but he felt that they lacked the flair of Quaresma's strikes. So, he became interested in practicing the knuckleball with De Bruyne.

He wasn't sure if Messi had this move in his arsenal. It seemed that Messi preferred to take curved free-kicks, but he himself had never seen Messi play the knuckleball.

De Bruyne nodded, conceding his place. Lin stood at the penalty spot, took a deep breath, and contemplated the movements of several knuckleball experts. Cristiano Ronaldo, Pirlo, Juninho...

He took a few steps backward, sprinted, aimed, and took the shot. Wolf didn't move in the goal, and the football certainly wasn't inside.

So, where did the ball go?

At that moment, a guy at the sidelines exclaimed in astonishment, having almost been hit by the ball.

"Sorry, sorry, I didn't hurt you, did I?" Lin quickly ran to the sidelines to apologize to the guy.

He hadn't controlled the angle well, and had essentially blasted the ball; it flew over fifty meters before finally landing.

The guy rubbed his dizzy head and looked up at the culprit, seeming to want to remember who had kicked him.

Seeing the green team uniform with the number 10 on it, he seemed to recall something.

"Are you the winger for Werder Bremen?" Lin was a little surprised that someone recognized him after only one official match.

Wait a minute, could this guy be a spy sent by Borussia Dortmund to gather intel?

It was only logical for competitors to focus on the opponent's players. That's what Lin thought.

"Let me introduce myself, I'm George Evans, a scout from Chelsea. I watched the recording of your game yesterday, and you performed admirably!"

"Thanks, the Chelsea scout. Are you observing Kevin's performance?" Lin realized the purpose of the scout.

De Bruyne was a player from Chelsea, for whom they had spent 8 million pounds to acquire. It was natural for them to be concerned about his status while on loan elsewhere.

Sending a scout to observe and report was very normal. However, this scout seemed too young, barely over twenty years old.

Such a young age signified that this scout was a newcomer in the field and probably didn't have much say in the club.

Chelsea sending someone like this to observe De Bruyne indicated that they didn't place much importance on him.

"Somewhat, but the team's strikers' performance collectively slumped, so I also have to observe the other team's strikers from the outside!" George replied.

"Who are you observing now?" Lin casually inquired.

It wasn't a secret that Chelsea's strikers were underperforming in football.

When they spent a hefty 50 million pounds to bring Liverpool's leading striker, Torres, to the team, they hoped he would shine at Stamford Bridge, but things didn't go as expected. Due to injuries and tactical mismatches, Torres struggled heavily at Chelsea.

After two seasons and 60 appearances, he only netted 10 times for the team – utterly disappointing!

Even though Chelsea won the Champions League last season, they heavily relied on defense rather than offense.

If they didn't solve their attacking problems, their performance this season was sure to sharply decline.

So, this summer, Chelsea is splurging money and searching for forwards all over the world.

First, they spent 35 million euros to acquire Hazard from Lille, then 8 million euros to sign Marko Marin from Werder Bremen. Afterward, they parted with 32 million euros for the attacking midfielder Oscar from Internacional in Brazil...

This summer, Chelsea has already spent over a hundred million euros and it seems like they are not going to stop.

The lavishly spendthrift owner, Abramovich, claims that he is not short of money. He wants to find a top star forward for Chelsea, preferably one of the very best in football.

Thus, there were rumors about Chelsea making an offer to try to buy Messi from Barcelona.

Of course, this is mostly a rumor. After all, last year, Manchester City was willing to pay 250 million pounds for Messi, but Barcelona didn't let him go. Given the rivalry between Chelsea and Barcelona, it's even more unlikely that Barcelona would release Messi.

George gave Lin a glance. "Why are you asking about this?" Transfer dealings are confidential matters, and if such information leaked out prematurely, it could easily lead to other teams' competitive bidding or raising the asking price.

"It's just to make sure you're not coming back to poach our team's forwards!" Lin casually replied as he saw that the scout was reluctant to share more.

"Well, that's not going to happen. Your team has too few superstars. We've already bought Marko Marin. Who else from your Werder Bremen team is worth us at Chelsea going after?" That was a blunt truth, albeit not very pleasant to hear.

Werder Bremen's players don't have much potential or future prospects. They don't even have a single star player; they are just a group of low-cost and useful players.

Therefore, the players that George's scouting mission was focused on were likely from Borussia Dortmund.

Considering Borussia Dortmund's results in the previous season and the impact of Shinji Kagawa's departure to Manchester United from Borussia Dortmund, it was quite normal for Chelsea to poach players from Borussia Dortmund.

They just didn't know who Chelsea was interested in: the future top striker Lewandowski, or Borussia Dortmund's midfield core, Gundogan?

In light of Chelsea's striker line and midfield player reserves, they are more likely to be interested in buying Lewandowski.

All of this really had nothing to do with Lin. And in any case, Chelsea couldn't spend money to buy him, and even if they did, he wouldn't want to play for Chelsea.

That kind of physical confrontation in the Premier League is too unfriendly for young players.

Before he developed immunity to injuries, it's better to stay in the Bundesliga, a suitable place for young talents to level up.

With a ball in his arms, Lin returned to the field to continue discussing the trick to shooting knuckleballs with De Bruyne.

Lin has a wealth of theoretical knowledge but lacks a little in strength. On the other hand, De Bruyne has sufficient strength but is somewhat lacking in theoretical knowledge.

Understanding theory is easy to learn, but improving strength isn't so easy.

So Lin shared the theoretical knowledge of shooting knuckleballs with De Bruyne and guided him in practicing these special shots.

If De Bruyne could master this move, the team would have an extra option for free kicks in the future.

...

The training only lasted for an hour and a half in the morning. After lunch, the team began tactical exercises.

At 5:30 in the afternoon, the players traveled by bus to Westfalenstadion, Borussia Dortmunds home stadium, to acclimate to the field earlier and conduct pre-match warm-ups.

At the same time, the Borussia Dortmund players also set off by bus. The two teams unexpectedly crossed paths at the entrance to the stadium.

The Telekom Cup final was just on the verge of starting!