"Is this the gift you wanted to give me?"
Cruz lifted his head and looked at Su Dong, his eyes thick with gunpowder, with a faint trace of admiration hidden beneath it.
"How did it feel?" Su Dong asked with a grin.
Cruz gave a cold snort. "Good. But you've pissed me off."
Su Dong laughed. He didn't mind.
Cruz still had a bit of pride in his bones—or rather, anyone who could become a professional player had a bit of pride in them, because it gave them more fighting spirit and drive.
At Sporting Lisbon, he had never been played like that before.
Though he was unwilling to admit that Su Dong had deceived him; he preferred to think that he had made a mistake in the moment.
Of course, he acknowledged that before and after Su Dong tricked him, every technical movement had been linked together with remarkable logic and precision, leaving him no room at all to intervene, which was why he had been beaten and scored on.
To Cruz, this was a humiliation.
At least, that was how the Brazilian center-back saw it.
So in the training that followed, he tormented Su Dong even more ruthlessly, even trying to completely cut off any passes to him from the outside. All kinds of petty moves came one after another, with every trick imaginable.
In his own words, he had started using all the little tricks he normally used on opponents on Su Dong.
Of course, Su Dong did not simply take the beating passively.
Through wide-ranging runs and link-up play, he also got quite a few chances to receive the ball.
Although several attempts to break past Cruz again all failed, as the team's center forward up front, his receiving and passing were still quite well executed.