Chapter 143 The huge impact of the first Golden Boy Award on Chinese football! "Beat Messi, Lin Feng won the 2005 European Golden Boy Award!" "Inter Milan's new king becomes the youngest Golden Boy Award winner in history!" 《Breaking the record, the first non-European Golden Boy Award winner is born! 》 …… The arguments and discussions surrounding the Golden Boy Award did not end with the final winner being revealed. On the contrary, after Turin Sports Daily announced the final winner, the entire football world was in an uproar. The first two winners of the Golden Boy Award were both Europeans. This is the first time in history that the award is given to a non-European player. This has come as a great shock to many Europeans, especially some conservatives. There has been considerable debate within European football over whether the Golden Boy award should be given to players from other continents. "He is a Chinese who has no European nationality at all. How can he win the European Golden Boy Award? Isn't this just selling dog meat under the guise of selling mutton?" Opponents feel that since it is called the European Golden Boy Award, the scope of the award should naturally be limited.
"That's right. Don't Asians have their own Golden Boy Award? Why do they have to come and snatch the trophy from us European players?" There is really no such award in Asia... In fact, even the European Golden Boy Award has only been around for two years, and this year is only the third edition. Where there are opponents, there will naturally be supporters: "Even the European Ballon d'Or has opened up its selection scope, so why is the lower-level Golden Boy Award still so conservative and closed?" "According to the Ballon d'Or criteria, any player who plays in a European Football Association league, regardless of whether they are European nationals, can participate in the Ballon d'Or selection. The Golden Boy Award has been a benchmark for the Golden Globe Award since its inception, so there is no problem with Lin Feng winning this award!" “Haha, there are always people who want to reverse history, but they don’t know that only openness and tolerance are the fundamental reasons for the prosperity of European football!” "If we want to attract outstanding young players from all over the world to play in Europe, we must keep an open attitude and not close the door to anyone. Otherwise, we will miss out on a lot of great talent.” Before 1994, the Ballon d'Or was only awarded to European players. However, as more and more foreign players joined the five major leagues, the organizers of the Golden Globe Award were forced to change the rules. After all, the principle of the Golden Ball Award is to select the best player of the year. If the best players are excluded because of nationality issues, it will greatly weaken the fairness and authority of the Golden Ball Award. Today's dispute over the Golden Boy Award is just a continuation of the dispute over the Golden Globe Award ten years ago! But in 2005, conservatives were not as powerful as they would be 20 years later. At a time when globalization is advancing by leaps and bounds and the world is advocating openness, tolerance and diverse culture, conservatives are politically incorrect. Therefore, the voices of supporters overwhelmingly outweigh those of opponents, especially in leagues and clubs with a large number of foreign players. These vested interests who have enjoyed the benefits brought by foreign players strongly support this policy. For a time, many clubs in the five major leagues publicly expressed their support for Lin Feng. As the incident continued to spread, in the end it was not just Europeans who were paying attention and discussing it, but fans from five other continents were also closely following the development of the situation. Ten years ago, most of the players who went to Europe to study abroad were famous football stars. But nowadays, more and more young players are arriving in Europe and starting their overseas careers before they even reach adulthood.
Lin Feng is one of them, so what happened to Lin Feng made many young foreign players empathize. If Lin Feng is eventually deprived of the Golden Boy Award due to nationality issues, this incident will inevitably have a huge impact on the entire European football world, and even the entire world football world. In the future, young talents from other countries may think twice before going to study in Europe. As for ordinary fans from other continents, when they learned about the xenophobic remarks made by Europeans, they could not help but feel disgust and aversion, which had a certain impact on the overall image of Europe. Seeing that public opinion was developing in a bad direction, this incident finally attracted the attention of UEFA. In an interview, UEFA President Olsson publicly congratulated Lin Feng, the Golden Boy Award winner. "Congratulations to Lin Feng for winning this year's Golden Boy Award. He fully deserves this honor. I hope his success can inspire the enthusiasm of young Asian players and lead more Asian players to play in Europe!" In UEFA's view, letting an Asian win the Golden Boy Award is not a bad thing, but a great thing. Asia has a population of more than 30 billion, which is a huge and yet to be fully developed market. The major European leagues have been eyeing this vast market, but they have been unable to get a piece of it because they have not been able to find the right way to open it. Europeans learned from their mistakes and finally came to a conclusion. The reason why we have not been able to open up the Asian market is because Asian football lacks benchmark figures! Although some Asian players have gone to Europe to study abroad in the past, there is a lack of benchmark figures like Maradona, Ronaldinho and Ronaldinho among these players. Without such big-name stars, Asian players are just supporting roles in European football. Although these supporting roles can attract some Asian fans, if you want to attract a large number of Asian fans, you must support a real protagonist. Take the NBA for example. Because of Yao Ming's joining, the popularity of the NBA in China has skyrocketed. Up to now, the popularity of basketball in China is even about to surpass football, the world's number one sport. The reason why NBA is so popular in China is that Yao Ming was selected as the No. 1 pick and became an absolute main force after joining the Rockets. What a perfect protagonist template! If Yao Ming played as a substitute or even a water dispenser manager in the NBA, no matter how much the NBA promoted it, it would not be as popular as it is now. With the NBA's successful experience in front of them, UEFA just needs to follow suit! In UEFA's view, Lin Feng winning the Golden Boy Award is equivalent to Yao Ming getting the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft. Yao Ming is a main player in the Rockets, and Lin Feng is also a main player in Inter Milan, and his status in the team is comparable to that of Yao Ming. Therefore, UEFA was even happier than AFC about Lin Feng's sudden rise. The Asian protagonist they have been waiting for for many years has finally appeared! The appearance of an iconic Asian player like Lin Feng can greatly increase the sense of involvement of Asians. This will be of great help to them in attracting more Asian players to study abroad and taking the opportunity to develop the vast Asian market. Therefore, Olsson did not hesitate to make a public statement to support Lin Feng. The award given to a foreigner like Lin Feng is a great opportunity to promote the openness and inclusiveness of European football. How could this group of stubborn conservatives ruin a win-win situation by allowing them to capture the vast Asian market at the same time? In fact, if it is not handled properly, it will not only affect the Asian market, but will also make young players from other continents concerned about going abroad to Europe. In that case, all the efforts made by UEFA over the past decade or so would have been in vain! ...UEFA's guess was correct. The news that Lin Feng won the Golden Boy Award caused an uproar in China and even in the whole of Asia.
Not only did domestic media report this incident extensively, Lin Feng's name once again made the front pages of major media outlets. Even the media in Japan, South Korea and other countries could not ignore such a major event as the first Asian player to win the Golden Boy Award, and followed up with reports. However, the media of both countries reported the incident with a strong sense of sourness. The Japanese couldn't understand it. China's youth football training had collapsed, the domestic league was in a mess, and match-fixing and refereeing were rampant. How could a super genius like Lin Feng be born in such an environment? "Originally, with the decline of youth training, the future of Chinese football should have been bleak, but with the success of Lin Feng and others in the European league, Chinese football may be reborn, which has sounded the alarm for Japanese football. Our neighbors may have taken some detours, but with their strong human resources reserves, they have a chance to survive. This has brought a great challenge to Japanese football's climb to the top of Asia. If we don't want our neighboring countries to take away our unsecured No. 1 spot in Asia, Japanese football players should work harder." Consecutive defeats to the Chinese team in the East Asian Cup and the East Asian Games have given Japanese football players a strong sense of crisis. Although the Japanese national team is still in the lead, they are very worried. If they allow this situation to continue, how long can their lead last? Once Chinese football regains their throne and becomes number one in Asia! Then, with this favorable trend and relying on the huge football market, Chinese football will be able to attract more funds and talents to participate in football. By then, China’s weak youth training and league may be able to revive. In this way, the advantages that Japanese football is proud of will disappear. With a tenfold population disadvantage, Japanese football simply cannot compete with Chinese football. It is highly likely that we will be overtaken by Chinese football or even suppressed forever. Compared to the Japanese who are worried, Koreans are arrogant, conceited and ignorant: "The Chinese stole South Korea's Golden Boy Award!" "The inside story of the Golden Boy Awards: Chinese people stole the trophy using dishonorable means!" Koreans feel that Lin Feng has snatched the Golden Boy Award that belongs to Koreans, and they also question whether Lin Feng won the award by relying on the Chinese fans' human wave tactics, through hype and exerting public pressure on the organizers and other dishonorable means. But if you ask them which Korean player can win the Golden Boy Award? Don’t ask, he won’t say a word if you ask! As for their human wave tactics to attack Chinese fans, that is even more ridiculous. After all, the Golden Boy Award is not awarded based on fans' votes. If they understood the selection process of the Golden Boy Award, they would not be so ignorant. The concerns and breakdown of defenses of Japan and South Korea made Chinese fans feel proud. In the past, Chinese fans envied Japan and South Korea for sending players to the top five leagues, and envied them for having so many players playing in the top leagues. Now that the Chinese national football team has made up for this shortcoming, it is the other team's turn to envy us. This feeling is so satisfying. "The Japanese are quite self-aware and their analysis makes sense. Our youth training and league are not good enough and we need to improve them as soon as possible." "Don't worry, the reason why football has fallen to this point is because the national football team's record is too poor and there is a lack of flagship representatives overseas. Now these two problems have been solved. We now have our own big-name stars. In the future, under the leadership of Lin Feng and his team, the national team's performance will gradually recover. As long as the Chinese national football team can make it to the World Cup again, football will become popular again in China. By then, we will have the talent and funds, and there will be no worries about the development of football." "Having said that, before the youth training is resumed, the national football team may lose talent. We must hurry up and save the youth training now!"
Some knowledgeable people have realized that there is a generation gap in Chinese football among young players born after 85. Relying on Lin Feng and other post-85 players, there will be no problem in playing for ten or eight years, but it is impossible to rely on them forever. After these players retire around 2018, the Chinese national football team must have young people to take over. According to the calculation that the golden age is 25, the players who can represent the Chinese national football team in 2018 must have been born around 93. But the problem is that players of this age group are in a period when youth training completely collapsed after the Hongshankou Conference. When thinking of this, many football people became worried again. There is really not much time left for Chinese football to save itself! The work of saving youth training is urgent and must be started now. …… SH City, Chongming Island. In the Genbao Football Base, Xu Genbao, who had just returned from Barcelona, stood at the side of the training ground and looked at the young players active on the training ground. He felt both relieved and melancholy. The good news is that after more than four years of training, many talented players have begun to emerge among this group of players. The successful overseas studies of Wu Lei and Zhang Linpeng gave him great motivation and made him feel that his efforts over the past few years were not in vain. The sad thing is that as they get older, these young players need to participate in professional competitions to continue to improve their abilities, and they can’t train behind closed doors like they do now. It's time to send them to the professional league to gain competition experience! There is no need for him to even think about the Chinese Super League or China League One, as he cannot afford such a spot and the young players under his command cannot play there either. Xu Genbao was considering the China League One and China League Two. The China League One is an amateur league and belongs to the fourth level. China League Two is a professional league and belongs to the third level. He was more inclined to form a team to participate in the China League Two, because the teams in the China League Three were a mixed bag with varying levels of skill, plus there were a lot of street football hooligans who had a lot of bad football habits, and he was afraid that they would be a bad influence on the kids under his command. But it costs money to form a professional team. The expenses of renting venues, traveling to away games, and accommodation are all unaffordable for him now. In order to establish this base, he had already taken out all his assets and even borrowed tens of millions from the bank to build the base. If you ask him to pay to set up a professional team, where would he get the money? Just when Xu Genbao was worrying about this problem, a call came to his cell phone: "What? East Asia Group wants to form a professional club with us?" "What? The Shanghai Football Association is willing to provide our football base with 5 million yuan in funding every year?" "What? There are a lot of companies that want to sponsor our team, but we don't even have a team yet??" Happiness came so suddenly that Xu Genbao was caught off guard. What's going on? How come youth football, which was once disliked by everyone, suddenly became so popular overnight? (End of this chapter)