The first time Jiang Yu seriously thought about "going to play football in Europe" was on the cinder track of County No. 1 Middle School.
The middle of the track is a piece of solid loess, the goal is a welded iron frame, and the net has been broken for several years and has not been replaced. Apart from the small cement floor of the Sports Bureau, this is the only place in the county where football can be played. He arrives on time at 7:30 every morning. He sets up the bottoms of four mineral water bottles as sign discs by himself, and practices pole-circling, changing directions, and cutting inside to hit the goal.
No one forced him. I started learning German by myself in the second grade of junior high school, half an hour a day, and it was unbeatable. While his peers were discussing which university was easier to get admitted to, he was already checking the German league's non-EU player registration rules over the wall.
At the age of sixteen, Yali Middle School received a spot in a German high school exchange program. There is only one.
His competitor has a Goethe B2 certificate, but he is all self-taught - listening to Berlin accent podcasts for three years and writing hundreds of pages of training notes in German. During the interview, he temporarily added a sentence that was not in the manuscript: "I don't just want to dream, I want to do it. And I have already started."
This is not a genius story.
His speed is not fast enough, his body is not strong enough, and he has never been the absolute main force of any team in his entire career. I've failed trials, been seriously injured, and been told, "It's the end of the road here." Some people on domestic forums encourage him, some slander him, and some say he has no future at all if he comes from such a wild way.
But he can always practice more quietly when he is looked down upon.
If you can't run, start in advance; if you can't hit, just predict in advance.
