Godfather Of Champions

Twain was not from Ningbo or Zhejiang. Before his transmigration, he had only been to three places in a big country like China—his hometown in a small town in the south of Sichuan; the capital of China, Beijing where he went to university; and Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, where he worked after he graduated from college.

Although Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou belonged to China, it was like another world for him, where he completely could not understand the spoken language there and the cuisine was not to his taste. The social customs and culture were a world of difference. Nor did he think that he would one day work up to the idea of traveling there.

But now, thanks to his soul attaching to this body, he got the opportunity to use “public money for the tour” and came to the place which was previously only a name symbol for him—the city of Ningbo in Zhejiang Province.

He certainly did not come here on vacation. In fact, during this trip to China, the quirky and charming Shania was not here to accompany him. Instead, he was accompanied by a large group of men.

Indeed, they were all the members of the Nottingham Forest Football Club.

A year ago, the Nottingham Forest Football Club secured a large piece of land in Clifton, south-west of Nottingham, to build a new stadium. The city government strongly supported it and allowed them to buy the land at a lower price. Needless to say, there was no such thing as a free lunch. In return, they had to do something for the city of Nottingham.

Now was the time to give back to the government.

Essentially, Nottingham Forest’s trip was purely a gold rush, the actions of businessmen seeking profit. But the publicity aspect of it was loftier.

In fact, this was the first cultural exchange between England’s city of Nottingham and China’s city of Ningbo. With full fanfare, the Nottingham Cultural Promotion Week would be held here in full swing along with the visit of the UEFA Champions League winner, Nottingham Forest. The Chinese people in Ningbo did not have to travel to the other side of the mainland to England and they could enjoy the most authentic English culture and atmosphere.

The relationship between Nottingham and Ningbo dated back to 2005, when the two cities signed a contract to formally cement as friendly sister cities. As a gift, the prestigious University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom collaborated with the Ningbo Municipal Government to replicate the university in its entirety and brought it to Ningbo. A completely independent University of Nottingham was established in Ningbo and used the University of Nottingham configuration from the qualified teachers to the teaching materials. The students who successfully graduated could receive the University of Nottingham diploma issued by the University of Nottingham.

With these relationships, it was not surprising that Nottingham Forest’s visit to China was set in Ningbo.

This was the result of the partnership between the club and the city government. Without this relationship, Allan Adams would not care about any relationship of the sister cities. He would prefer to visit and set the competition venue at Beijing or Shanghai in China. But since they bought the land cheaply, they naturally would have to pay the price. The good news was the loss here could be made up elsewhere—the Japanese’s feverish enthusiasm for Beckham was enough to make Allan dream and wake up laughing while Southeast Asia and Hong Kong had long been the English Premier League’s biggest audience in Asia. The Premier League’s status was simply unmatched by any other leagues.

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Nottingham Forest’s opponent had already been announced before coming to Ningbo. On the day of the announcement, the name of the opponent surprised Twain. It was China Olympic team.

This was also Allan’s stroke of genius.

Considering that the impact of this game held in Ningbo was too small, he decided to find a sufficiently influential opponent for Nottingham Forest. Now that the whole of China was crazy about the Beijing Olympic Games to be held in August, what was more convenient than to use the currently trending Olympic Games to promote themselves?

Accordingly, he got in touch with China’s Aide Group and the Chinese Football Association, hoping to arrange a friendly match—to the industry insiders, this was called a “friendly.” To the average fans, this was a “commercial game.” The opponent was the China Olympic football team.

Since the national Olympic team was intensely preparing for the Olympics, they needed a high-level opponent to do their warm-up. What team could be more suitable other than the Champions League champion?

This was an attractive plan for the Chinese Football Association. Firstly, they did not have to pay for the high-level teams from abroad to come play the friendlies; secondly, Nottingham Forest’s was indeed high and the whole world knew of this team now. It was beneficial for the China Olympic team to play against them; thirdly, it was also helpful for the UEFA Champions League winner, Nottingham Forest and the Olympic host’s Olympic team to have a friendly to promote the Olympic Games around the world. Since the torch relay, the opposition of some western countries to the Olympic Games had not stopped and was increasingly critical. This friendly should be able to convey another completely opposite voice, as long as it was in the premise of the Olympic Games, everything could be done.

The Chinese Football Association agreed in principle to the proposal, but they also had their own requirements…

The Chinese Football Association wanted to partake in the sharing of the revenue from the competition.

Allan and the head of Aide Group looked at each other when they heard this proposal. Allan did not quite understand this approach, but Adidas was a professional company that often operated foreign teams to play commercial games in China. They told Allan that if they wanted to deal with the Chinese Football Association, they would often come across this kind of incidents which would make the foreigners feel outrageous. And to be honest, this request was not really too demanding…

It was only then that Allan recalled what Twain said about “China’s national conditions.” He had been traveling back and forth from England to China for half a year and thought he should have similar understanding of China as Twain. He realized now that he was still far behind that guy Tony Twain….

Allan Adams agreed to the Chinese Football Association’s proposal. After agreeing on the specific splits, the Chinese Football Association, Aide Group and Nottingham Forest jointly announced that Nottingham Forest’s opponent in the friendly match in China was the China Olympic team.

As soon as the news came out, it immediately garnered the attention of the Chinese media and fans. The press covered the upcoming game extensively. They introduced, promoted and covered Nottingham Forest. The fans also showed a lot of interest in this game. There were also Chinese state-level television stations that had bought the rights to broadcast the game live.

These were what Allan wanted to see most. The China Olympic team’s competition plan had been very successful.

Twain had no objection to this opponent. Not only that, he felt that playing against China Olympic team might be the best choice. If they played against a local team in Zhejiang, Twain would find it boring. Playing those temporarily cobbled together league team would not be able to train the team. Whereas there was some competitive value to compete against a national Olympic team which had trained together for a long time.

Yes, Allan only thought about the economic effects, while Twain cared about the competitive value. These two words were spelled the same in Chinese Pinyin, but they were completely unrelated. In professional football clubs, it was almost the opposite.

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The Nottingham Forest star players received a very warm welcome when they disembarked. The drizzle also did not prevent the fans from coming to the airport. The beautiful young ladies lined up below the airport escalators to offer flowers. The warm and bright Ningbo girls delighted the Nottingham Forest players. Other than a few big star players who were a little reserved and had to maintain their personal images, the younger players were stopped short of hugging the girls for a group photo.

Twain did not mind them as it showed that his team was in good shape in his view.

Picking up the floral wreaths from the young ladies, the team walked to the airport bus parked outside the terminal. There was no shortage of warm welcome along the way from the fans who had hurried here after they saw the news., it could be directly observed from the posters which the fans had held up and see who the most popular player on the team was.

Before coming to China, the Nottingham Forest players were bored and decided to make a bet—who was the most popular player in China? Of course, this bet excluded Beckham from the start…

Now the answer was revealed. Besides Beckham, the most popular person was George Wood. Van der Vaart was the runner-up by a narrow margin.

“Wood! Wood!” The enthusiastic Chinese fans held up George Wood’s posters and caricature , shouting his Chinese nickname.

In front of a crowd that welcomed him so warmly, George Wood remained calm and barely smiled. But what he did only prompted a higher decibel of cries and more people’s pursuit.

“Look! That’s a star player! So suave!”

“Wood is so cool!”

“I think he’s cute – ah, Wood! I love you!”

…

“Incredible, the zombie face can be so popular…” Ribéry said with gritted teeth as he took in the scene.

Fortunately, some people soon comforted by his “injured heart.””Ribéry! Ribéry! Look this way, look this way!” Someone shouted in English.

He happily turned his head in a hurry and only to see an awkward scene:

A Chinese fan held up a sign and next to him, two fans pointed their fingers at the sign, which read in French: “How much money for you to stay in Nottingham?!”

It was clearly meant to mock the news that he had delayed signing the renewal contract with the club for a reported price of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds and wanted go to Real Madrid.

He could only pretend that he had not seen and gazed at the grey sky.

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“This is China!” On the way from the airport to CITIC Ningbo International Hotel where they were staying, the Nottingham Forest teammates looked out of the bus window with great wonder.

“Sun! Sun!” The teammates warmly beckoned Sun Jihai and wanted him to be their tour guide, introducing the scenery along the way which full of China’s Jiangnan flair. “What’s that? And that… Ah, this is beautiful!”

This put Sun Jihai in a very difficult spot. Because although he was Chinese, he was not from Ningbo and not even Jiangnan. He knew nothing about Ningbo and Jiangnan.

If he really wanted to explain to his teammates, he would have to start with China was a very big country. It was so big that it was beyond the imagination of these foreign teammates. In this way, the topic would expand and could not be clarified with two or three sentences.

“Ha… In fact, I do not know anything about Ningbo, I rarely come here…” He could only smile and state his predicament.

His teammates were very disappointed. Since they had a Chinese teammate, they thought they could pull him along to go out and have fun after they reached the hotel. A free local guide would be great!

Dunn looked at Twain, who hurriedly widened his eyes and said, “Don’t look at me. Although I am … I don’t know anything about Ningbo.” He almost let slipped, but luckily Kerslake, sitting in front, was busy taking the digital video to film the scenery along the way.

No one was quiet in the bus compartment. Everyone was holding digital cameras or digital video camera and facing the window. Twain did not do so. He was not interested in what was going on outside, and he was not here for a holiday anyway.

However, he turned his head and a tall billboard erected on the side along the airport road. The background was red and the dark words were Nottingham Forest and the national Olympic team players. The languages on the advertisement were a bit interesting, written in both English and Chinese—A warm welcome to the UEFA Champions League and the English Premier League champions, Nottingham Forest Football Club visiting our city!

He smiled. There was really some “Chinese characteristics” which gave off a cordial feeling to people when they saw this…

There were several billboards on the side of the road. In addition to those which directly promoted the Forest team, there was the Nottingham Forest-related brand sponsors, as well as Aide Group’s advertising. It looked like Allan did a lot of work. Although the game had not yet started to play, the publicity campaign was executed beautifully. Seeing such billboards, he also felt a sense of accomplishment as the Forest team’s manager. He was very proud of his achievements.

It was drizzling in the world outside the window, but this did not affect Ningbo’s image in the hearts of these foreign guests. Because this dynamic Jiangnan-style painting in the hazy rain appeared to be more poetic, adding to the foreigner’s impression of a mysterious country like China. It was surreal like a dream.

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After they arrived at the CITIC Ningbo International Hotel, a press conference was held in the hotel, where all the members of the team changed their clothes in the room and attended. This was considered a formal introduction of the team to the Chinese community.

Tony Twain became the main character at the press conference because his love of the Chinese culture was not new, even the football fans in China knew.

Throughout the press conference, he communicated with the media and fan representatives in fluent Mandarin, earning the applause of everyone present each time. Everyone applauded his fluency in Mandarin and his familiarity with China.

Twain was a little sorry about this. If he had gone to Chengdu, Sichuan, he could also use fluent Sichuanese to say hello to everyone…

“… I love China. I love its culture and the friendly people here. I am honored and proud to bring the team to Ningbo. I also hope to show the best of China to my players. I believe this trip to Ningbo must be a wonderful experience for my players!”

His last remarks won him a lot of applause.

Sitting behind, Evan Doughty smiled and clapped while he turned to Allan Adams sitting next to him and said, “And you were worried that he could get you in trouble. Look at his performance. He acted perfectly!”

Allan nodded too, “Yes, I must admit that he did better than I thought. He’s a natural public speaker…”

After the press conference ended, the players returned to their rooms for a rest, and then would gather as a group to ride to the banquet—the Ningbo municipal government held a welcoming dinner for them.

While some reporters and hardcore fans were still staying outside of the hotel lobby and not wanting to leave, Allan had found Twain, “Tony, are you free now?”

Twain knew that Allan had something to discuss with him. But he did not know what it was about. Could it be the matter about Ribéry that happened a while ago?

He nodded and said, “I have some time. What’s the matter, Allan?”

“Come to my room. I have something I want to talk to you about.”

Twain looked at Evan Doughty standing behind Allan and nodded in agreement.