At just 170 centimeters tall, Cui Qilin was once the “short-statured killer” on the pickup courts at Yancheng’s vegetable market. On the day the Jiangsu youth team disbanded, he clutched his number 9 jersey and watched a red-crowned crane fly over the training ground. Later, this became why he pointed to the sky whenever he scored.
When Su Chao Yancheng coach Gao Fei picked him up from the mud, no one believed this rough-and-ready player, whose first touch was like “catching a bomb,” could make it. But he used the spatial awareness he had honed at the market to weave through the penalty area like a ghost, answering every doubt with one tricky shot after another: his brace against Taizhou, his fated showdown with Nanjing goalkeeper Mu Yi, and his back-and-forth battle with archrival Tang Yunpeng for the top spot on the scoring charts... Every inch of turf in the Su Chao bears the mark of his comeback.
