Portuguese Twin Stars

Over the next few days, Su Dong's life was fulfilling yet monotonous.

Every day, he got up at four in the morning. After washing up, he started with strength training at home.

Pontes had arranged exercises such as push-ups, squats, sit-ups, pull-ups, and handstand holds. He did three sets of each exercise. At first, each set consisted of twenty repetitions. After completing a set in one go, he could take a short break if necessary.

It looked like it was not much, but in reality, that was completely untrue.

First of all, the movements had to be slow.

Take push-ups, for example. With Su Dong's ability, doing twenty was easy, but Pontes had many requirements. He wanted Su Dong to lower himself slowly, pause for one or two seconds, and then push himself up slowly. Each repetition took about six seconds, and every movement had to be precise and complete.

At first, he did not feel much, but after finishing one set, Su Dong found it more exhausting than doing two sets in a row normally.

The same applied not only to push-ups, but also to squats, sit-ups, pull-ups, and handstand holds.

Rony relayed Pontes's words: These exercises could be completed in the dormitory and were very simple, but they trained every muscle in the body. Handstand holds mainly trained balance and coordination.

Once he could steadily complete the training task of 3*20, he would then increase the number of repetitions and the difficulty.

As for the number of repetitions, that went without saying. He would slowly increase them from twenty to thirty and finally to fifty, depending on his training.

The difficulty mainly lay in certain techniques. Take push-ups, for example: first, he supported himself with both hands placed shoulder-width apart. Then he gradually narrowed the distance, eventually doing them with one hand. The difficulty increased step by step.

The same went for pull-ups, squats, and the other exercises.

In the end, all these exercises, which looked simple and were familiar to everyone, would turn into high-difficulty movements.

Pontes had originally required Su Dong to train once a day. He also warned Su Dong that too much training might overwhelm his body and even cause injuries. But after completing one routine, Su Dong decisively added another session, turning it into two workouts a day, morning and evening.

The nutritional meals exchanged with King of Football Points in the System Store did not look like much, but strangely enough, after Su Dong finished his three meals a day, he never felt hungry no matter when it was or how much he trained, nor did he feel bloated.

There was also the Bull Drink. After drinking it, his physical recovery was noticeably faster.

With those things, Su Dong had the confidence to train twice a day.

After finishing his training at home, Su Dong went out after breakfast.

He tied weighted sandbags around his legs, waist, and other areas, then ran all the way to Edward VII Park Stadium.

There, he underwent the basic training supervised by Rony, followed by the two of them training against each other.

To achieve better training results, Su Dong wore the weighted sandbags during all his basic training.

Jose Semedo had come once as well, but the Cape Verdean was more focused on carrying out his grand plan to pick up girls.

Su Dong and Rony stayed in the park until the afternoon before going their separate ways and returning to train with their respective teams.

After training, Su Dong still had to undergo an hour of specialized training with Matello. He could not return to the dormitory until nightfall.

At that point, he would begin his second physical-training session of the day.

Only afterward would he shower and go to bed.

His days continued to repeat like this, monotonous and dull, yet fulfilling and tightly scheduled.

Su Dong felt his progress every day. In particular, the Personal Attribute Panel in the system allowed him to clearly sense the numbers increasing. That feeling gave him tremendous encouragement and motivation.

It also made him carry out his training with even greater meticulousness.

On Saturday, Sporting Portugal welcomed the first match of the new season.

Since Su Dong had only just joined the team and was not yet familiar with his teammates' coordination, and since it was an away match, head coach Antonio Pereira arranged for him to stay behind instead of traveling with the team.

However, he promised that in the second-round home match the following week, he would definitely arrange for Su Dong to play.

Although Su Dong really wanted to play in an official match, he could only accept the head coach's arrangement.

Although Pereira and the team had made thorough preparations, they still lost their first match of the new season. They had even lost to a team that had been close to relegation the previous season. The final score was 1–2.

The teammates felt terrible after the loss, but they did not remain upset for long. After all, this was a semi-professional league, and for Sporting Portugal's players, playing football was more a matter of interest and enjoyment.

As long as they could avoid relegation, they did not care too much about winning or losing.

It was not as if the team could get promoted to the Portuguese League anyway.

In fact, many teammates had already impatiently called their friends and made plans to go to a nearby bar that evening to watch the nationally anticipated marquee match.

The opening match of the new Portuguese Super League season: Sporting Lisbon hosting Porto.

Someone once said that Lisbon was like a palette overturned by God.

Vivid colors were the city's most beautiful and captivating feature.

Even the metro, which carried people around the city, possessed an elegance unlike any other.

Every station had decorations based on a different theme, earning the metro the reputation of being Lisbon's largest art museum.

The four metro lines used four different colors, and their names were quite interesting as well.

The blue line was called Seagull. The green line was named after the caravel sailing ships developed by Portugal in the fifteenth century. The yellow line was called Sunflower, while the red line was called Eastern Age of Exploration.

Marquis of Pombal Square was the transfer station for the yellow and blue lines. By taking either of those two lines, passengers could transfer to the red or green line after two stops, making it extremely convenient.

From Marquis of Pombal Square, taking the yellow line for six stops led directly to Alvalade Stadium.

That was also a transfer station for the yellow and green lines.

When Su Dong, Rony, and Semedo emerged from the metro station amid the surging crowds, the magnificent Alvalade Stadium came into view. It was currently the largest football stadium in Lisbon.

But it would not be for long.

To prepare for the 2004 European Cup, the other powerhouse club in Lisbon, Benfica, would demolish and rebuild Estádio da Luz after the end of this season. Once completed, it would be expanded into a massive stadium with a capacity of 64,000, making it larger than the renovated Alvalade Stadium.

The exterior of the Alvalade Stadium, which was undergoing renovations, was covered in scaffolding, with only the entrances for fans left open.

"Our Youth Team training ground is right across the main road. It's called the Sports Tower training ground, but it's already been sold. After this season ends, we'll move to Alcochete in the suburbs. The Sports Tower will be converted into an equestrian center."

Rony walked shoulder to shoulder with Su Dong and pointed toward the pitch-black darkness across the road.

Su Dong listened silently, still deeply shaken.

This stadium was truly enormous.

On his first day in Lisbon, he had passed by it in a car from the airport. Back then, he had looked at it from a distance while traveling on an elevated road. But now he was walking beneath it, and it felt like he was beneath a lurking Beast.

Rony and Semedo were extremely familiar with this place. Last year, Sporting Lisbon's youth dormitory had been located at Gate 10 of the stadium. When construction began, they had moved to an apartment on Duke Lore Street.

Following the surging crowd and the directions on their tickets, they entered the stadium and quickly found their seats.

They were in the front row, slightly to the right of center, on the second tier of the main stand, where the most Sporting Lisbon fans were seated. The view was excellent.

When the three of them found their seats, the players from both teams were warming up on the pitch.

Semedo secretly nudged Su Dong lightly with his elbow and pointed toward Sporting Lisbon. "See that? The one with the ball is Ricardo Quaresma. He made the squad."

Following Semedo's gesture, Su Dong saw a short, slightly thin young Portuguese player. His ball control was highly skilled, and he was very fast. He struck a curling shot, but the goalkeeper caught it.

"The two tall, darker-skinned players are Jardel. We traded three first-team regulars from last season to bring him back. Before this, there had always been rumors that he was going to Inter Milan."

Before Semedo had finished speaking, Jardel received a pass from a teammate inside the penalty area. He nimbly feinted past the teammate blocking his path, then unleashed a powerful right-footed shot that blasted directly into the goal, earning enthusiastic applause from the fans.

He was Sporting Lisbon's biggest star in the new season.

"The other white player is Marius Niculae. We spent nearly five million euros on his transfer," Semedo said with a click of his tongue. "Last season, our attack was the weakest among the Big Three. This season, we're determined to strengthen our offense."

Su Dong had read reports about him before. Niculae was said to have been the top scorer in the Romanian league, scoring twenty goals the previous season and putting in a dazzling performance. Sporting Lisbon's head coach, meanwhile, was Romanian Boloni.

It was clear that competition among the powerhouse clubs was truly fierce and brutal.

Turning his gaze to the other side, Su Dong easily recognized Pena among Porto's players. He had been the top scorer in the Portuguese Super League the previous season, and at twenty-six, he was in his prime.

Besides Pena, there was international midfielder Costinha and international center-back Andrade. Andrade had been the second-youngest center-back to appear for the Portugal national team in its history, surpassed only by Couto. He was just twenty-two years old.

There was also the young center-back Ricardo Carvalho, who had performed outstandingly while on loan at Alverca the previous season, as well as the eighteen-year-old prodigy Postiga, who had just been promoted from the youth academy this season.

If Quaresma was hailed as Portugal's most talented wing prodigy, then Postiga was the super talent on the front line whom all of Portugal placed its hopes on for the next decade. Both were hailed as the hope of Portuguese football.

Amid the deafening roar of voices, Su Dong sat in the stands and gazed at the familiar players on the pitch, his heart filled with envy.

This was the first time in his life that he had watched a top-level match from one of Europe's major leagues in person. When those famous stars appeared right in front of him, he truly felt his own insignificance and smallness.

More than fifty thousand Sporting Lisbon fans filled the surrounding stands. Viewed from a distance, they formed a dense and spectacular sea of people.

And all those tens of thousands had entered the stadium and taken their seats simply to watch them play and see them decide the winner.