Borussia Dortmund had scored pitifully few goals over the past few seasons, even ranking on the same level as relegated Bochum. They were firmly among the Bundesliga's worst teams in scoring.
The main reason for this was Borussia Dortmund's weak forward line.
At this point, Borussia Dortmund was desperately short of powerful strikers.
And this problem had plagued them for more than just a year or two!
In order to turn things around, Dortmund had spent plenty of money over the years bringing in powerful forwards.
In 2001, they had paid a hefty 10 million Euros to poach Czech star striker Jan Koller from Anderlecht.
The following year, they had paid another 7.5 million Euros to bring Brazilian Everton over from Corinthians.
Jan Koller's ability was indeed quite good. He had scored 15 league goals the previous year and was among the league's top scorers.
But Everton's performances were much worse. Due to injuries and various other reasons, his form at Borussia Dortmund fluctuated wildly, and he struggled to maintain consistency.
And aside from those two, Borussia Dortmund could no longer find any better substitutes on their bench.
Delron Buckley, Matthew Amoah, Ebi Smolarek, Nelson Valdez...
They were all a bunch of outright Bargain Bin Players!
A bunch of useless bums who made over twenty appearances yet scored only one goal, or even none at all!
Borussia Dortmund's fans had been fleeced so badly they wanted to cry!
Worse still, Jan Koller, the team's biggest star, was already 32 years old, and his form had begun to decline.
If Borussia Dortmund did not quickly find a successor for him, then once Jan Koller retired, their forward line would truly collapse completely.
Under these circumstances, if Gao Lin were recommended to them as a promising prospect, Dortmund might actually be interested.
But Lin Feng's connections were not that extensive. If Gao Lin needed someone to help with this, he should not be looking for Lin Feng. He should be looking for someone else—the China Youth Team's Head Coach, Klopp.
Klopp had graduated from the German Sport University Cologne and had deep connections in the Ruhr Area.
And Borussia Dortmund was part of the Ruhr Area, so Klopp could absolutely get a word in.
So Lin Feng passed this information on to Gao Lin and suggested that he take some leave from the club, prepare a highlight reel, and bring it with him to Borussia Dortmund for a trial.
With Klopp's recommendation, the footage he brought, and his own presence at the team's trial, the odds of Borussia Dortmund taking a liking to him were still quite high.
After hearing Lin Feng's advice, Gao Lin was overwhelmed with gratitude.
"Brother Lin, you're truly my savior!"
Lin Feng said, "Don't get excited yet. Whether this works out is still uncertain. You can celebrate once you've actually signed with Borussia Dortmund."
"Hehe, whether this works out or not, I'll be grateful to you, Brother Lin, for showing me the way. If you ever need anything from me in the future, just say the word. Even if I have to climb a mountain of blades or dive into a sea of fire, I, Gao, will never refuse!"
Given this guy's tendency to talk big, Lin Feng did not take his words too seriously.
He merely urged him to act quickly and not drag things out for too long. Once the transfer window closed, it would be too late for everything.
Gao Lin was not someone who liked to procrastinate either. As soon as he logged off, he immediately began taking action.
He took half a month of leave from Shenhua and flew straight to Germany with his agent. After finding Klopp, he successfully joined Borussia Dortmund's training camp under Klopp's recommendation.
Gao Lin was 1.85 meters tall, certainly not short for a forward, but his Physical Confrontation ability could only be called average. He also did not particularly enjoy wrestling shoulder-to-shoulder with opposing defenders, which made it difficult for him to become a target striker.
However, Borussia Dortmund's coaches soon discovered this Eastern youngster's other strengths.
They found that Gao Lin had high Football IQ, excellent passing ability, and very refined technique at his feet. His finishing was a little unreliable, though. He often blasted shots over the bar, and in the most ridiculous ways.
If not for his slightly slow speed and average dribbling ability, he might have produced eye-catching performances as a winger.
But even if he could not play as either a winger or a traditional center forward, there was still a place for him in Borussia Dortmund's lineup.
That was to make use of his passing and playmaking strengths by having him serve as a supporting forward, helping other teammates score.
After speaking with China Youth Team Head Coach Klopp and carefully watching the footage Gao Lin had brought, Borussia Dortmund ultimately decided to sign him.
They offered Shenhua 1.5 million Euros. Shenhua was not very satisfied with that offer, but after some bargaining, the two sides finally reached an agreement at 1.9 million Euros.
On July 23, Borussia Dortmund officially announced the news on its website.
At this point, among the China Youth Team's main players from the 2005 Youth World Cup, nearly all of them except the goalkeeper had successfully gone abroad.
News of Gao Lin's transfer once again caused a sensation across the country.
While fans everywhere offered their blessings to Gao Lin for heading overseas, they also began reflecting: why could none of our goalkeepers go abroad?
Going abroad was not scary. The missing position was the embarrassing one!
The other China Youth Team players had all gone abroad, yet the goalkeeper alone had been left behind. There had to be a reason for that.
"In competitive sports, being bad is the original sin. At the end of the day, our goalkeepers simply aren't good enough to catch the eye of foreign clubs, which is why they aren't willing to sign Chinese goalkeepers."
"Hehe, I often see armchair fans making ridiculous claims like goalkeeper is the position where Chinese football is closest to world football, or how amazing Chinese goalkeepers are. It makes me laugh!"
"If our domestic goalkeepers were really that good, would the Football Association have needed to ban foreign goalkeepers?"
Years earlier, Shandong Luneng had brought in a Montenegrin goalkeeper named Sasha Petrovic. Yet this obscure goalkeeper, who was considered a nobody in Europe, had somehow raised Shandong Luneng's defensive quality by an entire level.
His countless miraculous saves had once made the forwards of every Jia-A League team question their lives.
In the same era, foreign goalkeepers brought in by teams such as Shenhua and Chuanxing had all performed exceptionally well for their respective clubs, consistently outclassing domestic goalkeepers.
It was precisely because they had seen how formidable foreign goalkeepers could be that, in order to prevent other teams from following suit and causing domestic goalkeepers to lose their jobs, the Football Association had no choice but to issue the goalkeeper ban.
Starting in 2000, clubs were forbidden from bringing in goalkeepers from abroad and had to use domestic goalkeepers instead. Shandong Luneng's foreign goalkeeper Sasha was thus forced to leave.
This closed-door measure not only failed to improve the level of domestic goalkeepers, but because they lacked outside exchange, the gap in their overall abilities only grew wider and wider.
There was a lack of professional, high-level goalkeeper coaches domestically, making goalkeeper training highly unscientific and unstandardized.
Some goalkeepers even had the wrong hand positioning when making saves, yet they themselves did not know it, and neither did the coaches teaching them.
That was simply absurd!
If they could not even teach something that basic properly, what else could anyone expect?
To make up for this weakness, they had to open up exchanges with the outside world, hire high-level goalkeeper coaches from abroad with high salaries, and use the most advanced and scientific training methods available to properly develop domestic goalkeepers from the very basics.
But when everyone used domestic goalkeepers and they were all equally terrible, few people were willing to waste that kind of money.
The Football Association had to step in for something like this.
But given the Football Association's capabilities, never mind whether they could recognize this problem—even if they did, with their decision-making ability and efficiency, who knew how long it would take before they made any changes.
Just as Gao Lin was transferring to Borussia Dortmund, the National Football Team announced its 23-man squad for the East Asian Football Championship on July 22.
What drew great attention from the outside world was that five players on the squad had recently appeared in the Youth World Cup as China Youth Team youngsters.
Those five were Lin Feng, Zhao Xuri, Feng Xiaoting, Hao Junmin, and Chen Tao.
Among them, Lin Feng, who had been selected for the National Football Team squad for the first time, broke the record as the youngest player in the history of China's men's National Football Team at 17 years and 62 days old.
The previous record holder had been his China Youth Team teammate Zhou Haibin. Zhou Haibin had first been selected for the National Football Team on January 26, 2003, when he was 17 years and 161 days old.
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