Chapter 4: Like Father and Son

  At that time, the Chongming Football Base charged students 600 yuan per month for full board and lodging. However, the actual expenditure far exceeded this amount, with Xu Genbao subsidizing around 20,000 yuan per student per year on average. In order to increase revenue as much as possible to fill the deficit, Director Xu had to put aside his pride and welcome every visiting guest with a smile, satisfying their trivial requests such as signing autographs and taking photos. As a result, Gao Jun easily met Xu Genbao himself.

  "Master Xu looks just as old as he did ten years ago, these two years have really taken a toll on him..." Gao Jun looked at his master's aged face with a mix of emotions, feeling a pang in his heart. To Gao Hong, Xu Genbao was not only a kind and wise teacher who had guided him, but also someone with whom he shared a deep bond, almost like father and son...

  At that time, Gao Hong came from a poor working-class family. As an athlete, he had high nutritional needs due to his intense physical exertion, but his family could not afford to support him. Xu Genbao, the coach of the amateur sports school who was also not wealthy at the time, cherished Gao's talent and kept him at home for food and lodging for a long time to alleviate the economic burden on his family. He even tried every means to save money from his meager salary to buy beef to supplement Gao's weak body. Although it didn't have much effect due to Gao's unknown congenital lung dysfunction at the time, Gao would never forget this kindness for generations to come.

  Although he was later excluded from the national team due to the feud between coach Gao Fengwen and Xu Genbao, Gao Hong never hated Coach Xu because without him, he might not have been able to continue playing football during his youth team period, let alone join the national team.

  When he saw Gao Jun, he didn't say a word. The Lin police officer who was eager to recommend talent took the initiative to describe Gao Jun's amazing skills to Director Xu, but Director Xu wasn't as excited as him. In the eyes of an outsider, the techniques that seemed incredible were not necessarily that powerful. Instead, it was Gao Jun's experience that moved his heart and made up his mind: as long as this kid's talent wasn't so bad that he didn't have any hope of becoming a professional player, he would try to keep him.

  After the physical test began, Gao Jun's extremely fast pace made Xu Genbao's eyes light up. However, due to his short stature, the 100m speed of 13 seconds 2 (hand-timed) could only be considered decent. Since Xu Genbao had not seen Gao Jun's parents, he could only estimate based on his current height, so he did not have high expectations for Gao Jun's speed. With Gao Jun's frail physique, the results of the strength test were naturally also dismal...

  Even compared to his peers in the Chongming base who were already at a disadvantage in terms of height and strength, Gao Jun was always among the worst. His jumping ability was also only average. This made it difficult for Xu Guobao to have high expectations for him. It wasn't until the technical tests began that Coach Xu's eyes lit up, "Some professional players from top-tier teams may not even be able to compare, he's indeed a good seedling."

  "Fundamentally, the technique is not bad. Even if he had received basic training before, it's still quite rare at this age... but we'll have to see how he performs in a match..." Coach Xu immediately arranged Gao Jun into the second-phase students with high expectations, having him participate in a practice match against the 90 and 89 age groups. The reason for letting Gao Jun "play above his age" was mainly because he had only just been rescued a few days ago and his physical condition was still not good, plus he would definitely be at a disadvantage compared to the other kids, so they were giving him some special consideration by having him play against younger opponents.

  Due to his excellent skills, Gao Jun was arranged by Xu Genbao to play as the main midfielder in the 90-year-old age group. However, just a while after the game started, Coach Xu's face turned gloomy, "How can you not even run? A lazy person with great talent will never become a great player!"

  But during this time, Gao Jun had been observing the characteristics of his teammates and opponents. After just a few minutes, he found a fatal weakness in the 89 age group: one of the two central defenders, a short fat guy, was slow to react and extremely slow to turn around...

  After having a plan in mind, Gao Jun opened his mouth to ask for the ball from his teammates. Although he was not familiar with the kids from the 90s age group before, as a former national team head coach, his words carried weight and were enough to intimidate the ten-year-old kids. Moreover, the position of forward midfielder couldn't be avoided no matter what, so the ball quickly flew to Gao Jun's feet. The little fatty immediately pounced on him fiercely, but was directly passed by Gao Jun...

  After passing the little fatty, Gao Jun took a step forward and swung his right foot. The opposing goalkeeper immediately moved to the left to prepare for the save, but didn't expect that Gao Jun would suddenly use the outside of his foot to lightly push the ball at the moment he touched it. The ball slowly rolled into the net along the right post, while the goalkeeper could only watch helplessly due to inertia and couldn't stop it. As for the little fatty, it wasn't until the ball went in that he finally turned around after continuously rushing forward several steps...

  "Beautiful, too beautiful!", even the usually strict Director Xue couldn't help but applaud, while Lin, the police officer who thought he had discovered a genius in Gao Jun, puffed out his chest with pride...

  After this wonderful goal, Gao Jun obviously gained more trust from his teammates. Two minutes later, the right-back of the 90-year-old age group actively assisted in the front court, not choosing to pass under but directly passing a 45-degree pass. Gao Jun suddenly inserted in front, jumping high before the little fat man jumped up and heading the ball into a high parabola, rolling over the goalkeeper's head and into the net. This unexpected goal stunned the entire field, knowing that the little fat man was a whole head taller than Gao Jun! Is Gao Jun's bounce really so amazing?

  Coach Xu, who had just seen Gao Jun's physical test results, naturally knew it wasn't like that. Gao Jun's vertical jump data was actually quite ordinary, and the reason he was able to grab the top spot before Little Fatty Cai Huikang earlier was because he relied on the inertia from his rapid forward dash, and accurately judged the trajectory of the ball to jump up ahead of Cai Huikang, thus gaining the upper hand...

  Note 1: Due to financial constraints, the scale of this timeline's Chongming base is much smaller than in history, so there are only a dozen or so people per age group. It's not possible to divide them into "Brazil team", "Argentina team" and so on like in history, they can only be divided directly by age, and many times even need to merge teams just to have enough players for the competition...