Chapter Sixteen: The Wuhan Gang

  Moreover, there are too few powerful players in the Chongming Football Base 87 age group. The lower echelons have more good seedlings, but they are even younger. Not to mention other things, just the physical strength problem can't be solved at all. For this reason, Gao Jun, who has been a club head coach for many years, first thought of introducing reinforcements. As for introducing famous players, Xu Guoqiang will think of ways, but as for domestic young players, who is more familiar with them than Gao Jun, who is also a national team head coach?

  Because the purpose of digging people is mainly to cope with next year's Class B league, Gao Jun will focus on finding 86-88 age groups, requiring not only potential but also strength, and being able to at least serve as a substitute for next year's China League Two. Of course, this is also because there are many good seedlings in the back of the base, and it is not necessary to introduce too much talent from outside.

  Because Gao Jun has always been "mature beyond his years", Xu Genbao is quite at ease with him, so he didn't even send anyone to accompany him on the road. This actually saved Gao Jun a lot of trouble and made him start thinking wildly, "I wonder if in another year or two, Master will agree to let me go abroad to find people..."

  Gao Jun's target was mainly several Wuhan-born players from the national team when he coached, considering that Wuhan football emphasizes technology, so it is easier to integrate into the Chongming base with ground infiltration tactics. On the other hand, at that time, those important members of the national team were not in good condition and were even in trouble. At this time, taking them to Chongming base can help them get out of trouble earlier and spend relatively little money, which can be said to be a win-win situation.

  Since they wanted to dig up Wuhan players, Gao Jun first went to Wuhan, targeting future national team goalkeeper Zeng Cheng and left-back Rong Hao, who had reached the top level in Asia before his injury. At that time, both were in the youth team of Wuhan Huanghelou, a Jia-A league team, but neither was valued by the team, so it didn't take much effort for Gao Jun to persuade them, especially after he promised to recommend them to the national youth team to participate in the World Youth Championship the following year. The young people who yearned for fame couldn't resist such temptation.

  However, the treatment of the two is still different. Zeng Cheng was at a disadvantage due to the special nature of the goalkeeper position. Even the most daring club would not let a previously unknown 16-year-old boy take over as the main goalkeeper as soon as he joined the team. Therefore, for the time being, he can only start from the bench. However, the main goalkeeper introduced by Coach Xu is very old (relatively speaking in the second division) and will retire in one or two years after coming over. At that time, Zeng Cheng will take over, which is much better than continuing to stay at Wuhan team where he couldn't see any hope with two goalkeepers above him...

  While Rong Hao, who had matured beyond his years, was guaranteed a starting position, which thrilled him. The usually cunning Rong even came up with a plan to trick Wuhan Huanghelou into canceling their contract with him (mainly because he felt undervalued). As a result, Chongming Base managed to sign the left-back, who had once reached top-level in Asia but was ruined by injuries (Yu Hai had two consecutive major injuries, while Rong had three non-consecutive ones), without spending a single penny.

  After signing Honghao, Gao Jun casually asked him to recommend a few talents. Honghao, as expected, recommended his "childhood friend" Deng Zhuoxiang. Gao Jun followed his directions and arrived at Guangdong Mingfeng Football School, where he met Deng Zhuoxiang, who was still playing as a side defender at the time.

  To be objective, at that time Deng Zhuoxiang's level as a side defender was still okay, but until he grew up his body was still weak and the gap with other players would be even bigger than now. Even the speed that was fine when he was young became slower, and his physical ability wasn't good either, so he was no longer suitable for playing in the position of side defender.

  In the history, Deng Zhuoxiang later changed to play as a winger and achieved success before becoming famous. In the national team coached by Gao Hongbo, he was arranged in the most suitable position for him - an organizational type attacking midfielder, thus becoming the organizational core of the national football team at that time.

  However, even if Deng Zhuoxiang later suffered a serious injury due to his own sluggishness and the club's dereliction of duty, during his most impressive period, Gao Hong had already discovered his biggest weakness. Despite having an extremely broad field of vision and extremely fast passing speed, Deng Zhuoxiang's passing accuracy was not good. Although he had strong leg strength, which made his shots very powerful, his shooting accuracy in mobile warfare was not good either. These two contradictions directly limited his performance on the national team. As for problems such as poor confrontation, although they were also weaknesses, under Gao Hong's tactical system at the time, there were ways to overcome them.

  In Gao Jun's view, Deng Zhuoxiang's technique has such a big flaw because he kicked the wrong position at the most critical age for technical development, resulting in a lack of sufficient training in several key techniques. Although there are many examples in history where players have changed positions and still grown into world-class players, the organizational midfielder requires the highest level of technical skill. Therefore, if they cannot hone their skills from a young age, the height they can reach will be limited. Moreover, Deng's physical quality is very poor, which means his technique must be higher than normal requirements...

  So very early on, Gao Jun wanted to take his favorite disciple Deng Chao-yang (mainly because he saw his own shadow in him and Deng trained extremely hard) under his wing for serious training. However, due to unsuitable conditions, it was delayed until today. Nevertheless, Gao Jun believes it's still not too late, as long as they start now to repeatedly polish Deng Chao-yang's attacking techniques and continue to enhance his physical condition through reasonable nutrition and scientific exercise, Little Deng will definitely be better than the historical development. Moreover, although Dongfang has produced two free kick experts in history, none of them were left-footed, so the addition of future "Golden Left Foot" Deng Chao-yang is also very helpful for the team.

  He was originally physically inferior and had not changed his age, so Deng Zhuoxiang's performance at Guangdong Mingfeng Football School was not very good (historically, he could enter the national youth team because of the small competition, with only over 100 participants, and the proportion of defenders was also small, it would be strange if he wasn't selected...). Also because of this, the price offered by Guangdong Mingfeng Football School was not high, and they were willing to let him go for a training fee of only 500,000 yuan. They also recommended Zhou Xi, known as the genius boy, but the asking price of 7 million yuan was too expensive, and Gao Jun knew that this person's later achievements could not be compared with Deng Zhuoxiang, so he would not spend this money...