The Fiorentina team has been getting a lot of people to join through trials, with the squad number reaching 20 a week later. As one of the former seven sisters of Serie A, Fiorentina has some appeal.
Cristian Rigano, the 28-year-old "Brute", joined the team anyway. Manager Gali felt that the team needed an experienced striker, and Rigano proved himself last season in the C1 league. At 191c and 84 kilograms, he is a high center forward who specializes in headers.
Galli doesn't think Arthur and Rigano overlap in position, and Viljovod believes the two can play together. This is because Arthur is very fast and is not just a goalkeeper.
The confident Rigano was a bit undermined by Arthur in his first training session. He's taller, less confrontational and bouncy than Arthur, and loses in his best fight for the top.
Viljovod congratulated Arthur after practice, telling him that the starting spot for the new season is secure, even if it's only on a striker.
Arthur joining the Fiorentina team created two larger butterfly effects.
One is 18-year-old Swedish forward Bjorn Lundström, 186c, who failed a tryout and didn't get a contract.
Bjorn's physicality was crushed by Arthur and his strength was not in the same class. The two played a group match, Arthur scored a hat-trick of head kicks and Bjorn was defended by veteran Roberto Ripa.
The only thing he has going for him is hustle and age, and he doesn't look like much of a developer compared to Arthur at the same age.
Fiorentina signed almost all homegrown players and only two foreigners. Apart from Arthur, the other is Ghanaian winger Bismarck Ekye, a physically impressive 21-year-old black player.
You can see how good Arthur is just by the number of wide receivers alone, and he's already been approached by female fans at practice asking for autographs and photo numbers.
The second butterfly effect was that Arthur wanted to wear the No. 9 jersey, and coach Virchowald agreed.
How could the team's new Batista not wear number 9? So Rigano, who in a parallel world would have worn #9, had to choose another number.
Even more awkwardly, Rigano couldn't wear the other number 11 jersey that symbolizes the main striker either, with the number 11 being reserved by Fabio Quagliarella, a player on loan from Torino.
Born in 1983, youngster Quagliarella entered the Torino first team at the age of 16, able to play as a center forward as well as a winger, attacking midfielder, and shadow striker. He didn't get a chance to play in Serie A and Torino had to loan him out to play in C2, having his favorite back number was a must.
Depressed, Rigano began to fight Arthur in training and rolled up in the team. But he just couldn't compete with Arthur on headers, and his speed and agility were even further behind.
If Rigano's talent was exceptional, he wouldn't have been in the amateur league for a long time in his youth. It wasn't until the 2000-2001 season that he played professionally for Taranto in C2 and was promoted to C1 with Taranto.
Rigano felt that if Nuno Gomez, who left the team in the summer, was an "assassin with a jade face", Arthur was simply a "beast with a jade face". His style of play is so inconsistent with his looks that he is constantly looking for a physical confrontation on the field, and it's hard not to collide with someone.
Quagliarella reported to the team on Aug. 15 and was also a bit confused by his first team practice.
He thought that as the Italian "golden boy" to Fiorentina team will be very outstanding performance, unrivaled, but it turned out that the two big strikers are better than him. With a height of 180c, it is difficult for him to grab a point in the center of the field, and he can only pull out to play as a striker.
Physically Quagliarella was also a complete failure, Arthur had a 90 minute training session with no pressure and finished looking great. ap.
This is a young player from a C2 team? How did this guy go from Arsenal's youth training to Italy's C2? Is that so hard to believe?
The more the forward line rolls, the happier Gali and Viljovod will be. The team's forward line is considered strong in League C2, and it's probably good enough to play in Serie B.
Arthur scored another hat trick in the rivalry game this day, all snaps in the box. After training, Viljovod asked Arthur to join him for dinner, with a treat.
Coach shows his goodwill, and naturally Arthur doesn't go out of his way to call Emily up as well.
After eating for a while, Virchowald chatted about soccer. "We've been practicing together for less than a week and the day after tomorrow is your first career game, nervous?"
"So many of the opponents are amateurs, there's nothing to be nervous about, I'm ready to score the day after tomorrow!" Arthur laughed.
On August 17th, Fiorentina will have their first match of the new season at home. Not in the league, but in the first stage of the Coppa Italia, against a Romanian team made up of a bunch of amateurs in the D-League.
The name of this team is quite loud, and it is renamed with the national team. The bottom ranked teams in Serie A have to wait for the third round of the Coppa Italia to compete, which shows how low the level is in the first three rounds, and Arthur doesn't take it to heart.
Virchowald said seriously, "Our primary goal this season is promotion, and both the Serie C Cup and the Coppa Italia are strategically abandoned. But even if we give up, we must not fall in the first two rounds, so I will arrange for you to start."
"No matter what the game is, I'll give it my all whenever I'm on the pitch. In fact, I'd prefer the Coppa Italia to go the distance, preferably against a Serie A team."
Viljoward laughed, "You're so much like me when I was young, wanting to compete against the best players as soon as you start. Do you still want to be the best scorer?"
"Will there be a striker who doesn't want to be the top scorer? If he doesn't want to, I don't think he should play as a striker."
"Keep that mentality and you'll be playing Serie A soon." Viljovod believes that ambitious people are more likely to succeed.
Ambition is motivation, and a person without ambition will accomplish nothing.
Rigano is the top scorer in the Parallel World C2 league with 30 goals. Arthur has been training better than Rigano and is confident that it's only right that he takes top scorer this season.
He would prefer to play against high level teams in the Coppa Italia. It doesn't matter if he wins or not, he wants to see what Serie A and Serie B teams are capable of, and it would be nice to play against star defenders.
There won't be much focus on C2, this season he's using it to improve and gain match experience. When the team gets promoted to Serie B next year, that's where he'll play.
Virchowald instructed, "Your fundamentals are not good, your technique is flawed, and you need to work hard on your fundamentals next as well. Your girlfriend is beautiful, don't spend all your energy off the court."
The two of them exchanged words in Italian, which Emily couldn't understand, but looked at the coach and felt like she was saying something complimentary about herself.
Arthur gave her an explanation. "He's afraid I'll love you too much and it'll affect my form for the race the day after tomorrow, and advised me to take it easy."
"That's certainly not what he said ... " Emily reddened and gently hammered him.
Arthur thought for a moment and said to Virchowald, "She's an actress and will be going back to college in England soon, so I'll have plenty of time to practice. In fact, I plan to spend most of my time practicing soccer besides eating and sleeping. I don't have much entertainment here on my own with her gone anyway."
"Are you sure you can do it? You'll have quite a few female fans now, and those boys are envious of you." Veljo Ward deliberately joked.
A lot of talented players are ruined because of women, and everyone on the team thinks Arthur has the potential to be a playboy. After only a few days of joining the team, there were a lot of female fans coming to watch practice and trying to make friends with him.
"I'll do what I say. There are people who can live on their face but rely on their talent, and it's obvious I'm one of those people." Arthur said in a serious voice.
"Hahahahaha, I can't wait to see you abuse your opponent's defender. It's a shame you were born too late, it would have been more fun to play soccer with you as a teammate." Virchowald hadn't heard this kind of joke before and was amused.
Neither put the Romanian team on the map.
What they didn't know was that in a parallel world, Fiorentina lost their first match 0-1. The visitors' Negri broke the home team's door in the 31st minute, while the visitors' Zagaglioni also missed a penalty kick in the 68th minute.
The players on that Fiorentina team had no time to train and bond, had no tactics on the field and played purely blindly. Rigano the Brute had just reported to the team not long ago and didn't play.
Now that Arthur joined the team a little earlier, Virchowald immediately arranged tactical training with him as the centerpiece. With the team having a backbone, the opponents are going to be out of luck as long as they play what they trained for.