The Head Coach's Astonishing Discovery

"Again!"

De Bruyne said stubbornly.

Lin Quan felt his defense was a bit weak, but even weak defense was better than stationary dummies, right?

So he gladly accepted the challenge.

This time, it should have been Lin Quan's turn to defend while De Bruyne attacked.

But De Bruyne was determined to steal the ball from Lin Quan, giving up the chance to attack and staying in the defensive position instead.

Clearly, this guy wasn't one to admit defeat easily.

Lin Quan held the ball and tried the same trick again. This time, De Bruyne was still fooled by Lin Quan's feint, but he didn't make a rash move.

He had obviously realized that Lin Quan could use shifts in his center of gravity to mess with his judgment. If he assumed a direction change just because of that, he'd likely be deceived.

But what De Bruyne didn't expect was that even though he stayed still, Lin Quan moved.

With a quick nudge of the ball forward, Lin Quan's body exploded into motion, darting past De Bruyne like a gust of wind.

By the time De Bruyne reacted, it was too late. He had no chance to stick out a foot to break it up, nor any opportunity for physical contact.

After completing the breakthrough, Lin Quan stopped the ball and looked at De Bruyne curiously.

"Kevin, when you saw my center of gravity shift, why didn't you stick out your foot to stop it?"

De Bruyne was reflecting on the same question.

"I got tricked by your feint before. Just now, when I saw your center of gravity change, I was afraid it was another fake, so I hesitated for a beat."

Lin Quan nodded, acknowledging his answer.

This wasn't just De Bruyne's problem—it was a common dilemma for every defender facing Messi.

Messi's movement frequency was faster than most players, and with his exceptional talent, he could easily shift his center of gravity and pull off all kinds of deceptive feints.

If a defender noticed his shift and blocked the direction he intended to break through, Messi would use his quicker rhythm to change direction in an instant. By then, the defender's body couldn't keep up, and all they could do was watch him go.

If the defender wasn't fooled and didn't block his path, it was even easier for Messi.

He just had to keep pushing forward and blow past the defender.

After all, Messi's movement frequency was already faster than the vast majority of players. If you couldn't match his first step, catching up on the second was absolutely impossible.

In short, compared to ordinary attackers, Messi merged the two steps of feinting and breaking through into one.

Regular attackers had to make a feint first, fool the defender, and then exploit the mistake to get past them.

Messi was different. He blended these two actions together, making every move look like a feint. No matter what choice you made, he could still get past you.

So, defending against Messi couldn't rely on experience—it had to rely on prediction.

Only defenders with top-tier prediction could possibly stop Messi.

And in today's football world, such players were few and far between.

"Let's go again. I refuse to believe I can't find a way to defend against you!"

De Bruyne had seen Lin Quan's skill, but it only fueled his fighting spirit.

The kid was at most sixteen or seventeen, probably just a youth team player for Werder Bremen. If he couldn't even stop someone like this, he might as well go buy a block of tofu and smash his head against it.

Half an hour later.

"I'm done. I'm exhausted!"

De Bruyne collapsed onto the ground, lying spread-eagled, staring blankly at the sky, already questioning his existence.

Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing?

Why did I get dribbled past by some kid seventy times without a single successful tackle?

Do I even know how to play football?

Lin Quan was also worn out. Repeated dribbling put a heavy strain on his knees.

Even if De Bruyne hadn't called it quits, he would have stopped on his own.

He wondered how Messi had managed to keep this up for so many years. Lin Quan felt that with this kind of frequent acceleration, direction changes, and dribbling, his knees would eventually give out.

After that in-depth conversation with Allofs, Werder Bremen's head coach, Thomas Schaaf, had relaxed his mindset and stopped putting so much pressure on himself.

But letting go of the pressure didn't mean giving up.

He had feelings for the team and didn't want to see them relegated under his watch.

So, even if the cards he held weren't great, he tried his best to make changes, combining them to maximize their effectiveness.

As for whether Werder Bremen could stay in the Bundesliga by the end of the season, that was up to fate.

With many veteran players leaving and several new ones brought in on loan for the new season, he needed to adjust the starting lineup.

To pick the best starting eleven, he had to thoroughly understand the profiles of these young players on the team.

These tasks were best completed before the start of the new season's training camp, so that by the time training began, he would understand each player's technical characteristics.

If the players didn't meet his requirements, he could still use the summer transfer window to strengthen the squad.

So he cut his vacation short, drove to the club, and planned to start work early.

On his way past the training ground, he spotted Lin Quan and De Bruyne training together.

Seeing the two of them training together, Schaaf felt a bit curious.

They should be competitors on the team, and he'd assumed they might not get along—but they'd already hit it off so quickly?

Driven by curiosity, he watched from the sidelines for a while.

And once he started watching, he found it hard to look away.

Half an hour later, both young players collapsed to the ground from exhaustion, but Schaaf on the sidelines was trembling with barely contained excitement.

Seventy times—a full seventy successful breakthroughs, and the opponent hadn't managed a single successful defense.

This shocked him deeply, as if he'd just watched a sci-fi movie.

Although De Bruyne's defense had its issues, the other side hadn't made a single mistake—every attempt succeeded, using no fewer than ten different breakthrough techniques.

Was this kind of explosive breakthrough ability something a player his age should possess?

Wasn't this just absurdly overpowered?

How could Barca bear to let a player like this go out on loan? Weren't they afraid another team would steal him away?

Had their team just stumbled upon a breakthrough king for free?

A player like this, in any team, would be a future core winger to be groomed as a top priority.

The kind of core you build a team around—just like Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo!

But wait, he remembered this guy played as a defensive midfielder in Barca's youth team!

Was it that Barca's judgment was poor, and they didn't know how to use their players?

Or had a cosmic team like Barca already developed a brand-new tactic of putting wingers in the defensive midfield position?