Any scoring system inevitably involved some degree of subjectivity.
The same person could have their strengths noticed by some and their weaknesses by others, so the scores naturally could never be exactly the same.
For players who had consistently performed well, such as Henk Dimer, the coaching staff's opinions were fairly uniform, and they had basically all given them decent scores. But when it came to Yang Yang, the coaching staff had clearly diverging opinions.
Yang Yang was the kind of player with extremely uneven abilities. His strengths were outstanding, but his weaknesses were just as glaring. As a result, some coaches rated him poorly, or even very poorly, while others rated him extremely highly. Thus, controversy had arisen.
Almere Youth Team had only just introduced Ajax's semester assessment system, and they still lacked a mature mechanism for evaluation and scoring. Head Coach John Rep had anticipated this and specifically invited Van Gaal to serve as a technical adviser.
Put simply, Van Gaal's scores served as the standard answers for all the coaches to use as reference.
While everyone was arguing over Yang Yang's scores, John Rep brought out Van Gaal's assessment of him.
"One-on-one offense and defense, mental strength, movement and support, the ten-meter sprint shuttle run, the thirty-meter sprint shuttle run, explosiveness and endurance..." Dick Van Pool read from the score sheet in his hand.
"Mr. Van Gaal gave him high scores of over nine in all eight of these subcategories. He even gave him a perfect ten for mental strength, off-the-ball movement, and one-on-one offense."
As Van Pul spoke, everyone's attention fell on the score sheet spread across the office desk.
Besides the eight categories mentioned above, he had also scored over eight in several other subcategories, including the vision and purposefulness of his organization and coordination, as well as explosiveness, dribbling, and agility. Those were very high scores as well.
At the same time, however, Yang Yang's scores for passing, ball control, shooting, heading, crossing, and his ability to integrate with his teammates were far from ideal. Most hovered around the passing mark, with only his ball control receiving a failing score of five.
He was, after all, a world-famous coach who had spent many years immersed in youth training. Van Gaal's score sheet could be described as highly fair and beyond reproach.
John Rep was even more impressed, though he also felt somewhat helpless.
He knew that Van Gaal admired Yang Yang, and he had wanted to lend Yang Yang a hand—at the very least, help him get a high score, which would make it more convincing if he were called up to the First Team next season. But he had never expected Van Gaal to be an impartial judge, showing no favoritism whatsoever. He had given exactly the scores each category deserved, and the gap between Yang Yang's strengths and weaknesses was considerable.
In European youth training, the coaching staff often used the Wooden Barrel Theory when assessing a player's overall abilities. They focused on the player's shortest plank—in other words, his weakest area.
To reach the standard of a European professional league, none of a player's abilities could be too poor. Even a defender obviously needed good defensive technique, but his attacking technique could not be poor either. Every skill needed to reach at least seventy points. To play for a top club, the requirements were even higher.
Even many defenders whose terrible technique had been widely criticized by fans could still display all kinds of basic skills with consummate mastery when given room to operate, leaving people dazzled.
Therefore, players like Yang Yang, whose strengths and weaknesses were worlds apart, were often unpopular.
However, in the remarks section at the bottom of the player assessment sheet, Van Gaal had suggested that besides referring to the players' scores, they should also take into account their progress over the recent period and their potential for growth in the future.
This suggestion applied to everyone, but it was undoubtedly most beneficial to Yang Yang.
Everyone turned to look at John Rep, wanting to hear the Head Coach's opinion.
"Since Louis has already made a suggestion, we should of course respect his professional judgment. My idea is that we use their performances and progress over the past two months as a basis, add a few more subcategories, and have everyone score them again."
Everyone nodded after hearing this, feeling that it was a good decision. They retrieved their score sheets and began reassessing and rescoring the players.
Although it was already June, the temperature in the Netherlands was still fairly cool. Even at noon, the highest temperature was below twenty degrees.
After training at the Skate Park for a while, Yang Yang had lunch at his uncle Shen Ming's Chinese restaurant before returning home for his midday rest.
After entering the Super Training Ground, Old Bing's first task was to summarize and analyze the morning's assessment and point out Yang Yang's mistakes through video replay.
Some mistakes had been caused by his insufficient fundamentals, some by poor passes from his teammates, and others by errors in his own in-game execution. All of these were things he had to take seriously.
"Starting today, you can reduce your ball-juggling practice, but you still need to continue strengthening your left-foot training."
Old Bing's words were also an affirmation of Yang Yang's hard work over the past period.
He could finally reduce the dull ball-juggling drills, and Yang Yang was overjoyed. He was almost sick of practicing them.
"Looking at your performances over the past few matches, you can now basically execute one-on-one breakthroughs proficiently. Your Pendulum Dribble in particular has become much more polished. For the next period, I suggest that you focus on strengthening your training in two areas."
"Tell me."
"While continuing to strengthen your Pendulum Dribble, add training for several other moves from Ronaldo's Rush. Also, strengthen your one-against-many breakthrough training."
After hearing Old Bing's words, Yang Yang nodded repeatedly.
In his past few matches, he had encountered plenty of one-against-many situations, but he usually passed the ball away instead of taking them on himself. After all, he had not been confident of beating several opponents at once. It was the safest strategy.
He also understood clearly that as his position moved forward and he became the team's right winger, he would encounter one-against-many situations more and more often. He truly needed to strengthen this aspect of his training.
"Let me show you a few video clips first."
As soon as Old Bing finished speaking, the stands beside the field immediately switched to screen mode, displaying scenes familiar to Yang Yang.
They were several moments from when he had represented Baken Academy in interschool matches, all showing him failing to break through against two opponents.
"If you pay close attention, you'll notice that you made the same mistake in each of these failed breakthroughs. You focused too much on the first defender and neglected the second player covering you from behind or the side."
As Old Bing spoke, the video replayed the sequence in slow motion.
"After using the Pendulum Dribble to break through, you often took a large touch forward to accelerate. Your goal was to shake off the defender as quickly as possible, but that made it easy for you to lose control of the ball and push it beyond your reach. Any defender with even a little experience would immediately close you down. Even if the ball kept moving, they could quickly cut between you and it."
Yang Yang understood. "The key is to maintain control of the ball after getting past the first opponent."
"Exactly. That's the focus of your training."
Yang Yang understood his current problem very clearly. The Pendulum Dribble was indeed extremely sharp, but he sometimes went too far with it. This was especially true after breaking through at high speed, when he could easily lose control of the ball. He had to learn how to keep control of it even after accelerating past an opponent. That would also help him continue learning Ronaldo's Rush, the Star Skill.
The principle was simple: one of Ronaldo's Rush's advantages lay in controlling the ball at high speed.
Soon, Old Bing had arranged the training ground.
It was a circular area outlined with white lines, roughly twenty meters in diameter. Inside it were many red, cone-shaped marker poles scattered in a random pattern, with varying distances between each one.
Old Bing's training requirement was for Yang Yang to dribble into the area and accelerate past or evade the red marker poles. Neither he nor the ball could touch any of them. Otherwise, it counted as a failure.
This was only for familiarization and warm-up. As Yang Yang progressed, the distances between the red marker poles would continue to shrink. Requirements would also be imposed on his speed and on the number of touches he could take while dribbling around each marker. The standards would become extremely strict. Later, they would even simulate real opponents to train against Yang Yang, but that was for the future.
"This is much harder than juggling," Yang Yang said with a wry smile as he looked at the training ground before him.
But he was even more excited.
Compared with the dullness of juggling, this kind of training was not only more interesting, but also far more valuable in actual matches. It came up frequently in games and would clearly improve Yang Yang's match ability.
This was what Van Gaal had said before: juggling was fundamental and basic, but there was no need to juggle simply for the sake of juggling. What mattered more was learning how to perform better in matches.
With a smack, Yang Yang clapped his hands forcefully. Rubbing his fists, he grinned and said, "Then let's begin."
The two-hour midday break passed quickly.
Yang Yang emerged from the Super Training Ground full of energy. After washing his face, he headed out and jogged north while juggling the ball to the Skate Park. There, he practiced some of the most basic drills against the wall, especially ball control, which was his weakest area.
Time passed amid the dull training. Near four o'clock, Yang Yang juggled the ball northward and arrived at the Almere training ground.
By then, everyone from the youth team was already waiting outside the locker-room entrance for the coaching staff to post the morning's assessment results.
This time, they would not only announce the morning's test scores, but also combine them with records from daily training and matches, as well as academic results, to produce a final comprehensive score.
By comparison, the club's requirements for academic results were not high. Top students like Yang Yang received no special treatment. As long as they met the Football Association's requirements and passed the academic assessment, they would basically receive a score.
Therefore, Yang Yang had little confidence in his comprehensive score.
He knew his weakness very well. Fundamentals depended on years of accumulated practice, and it was impossible to undergo a complete transformation in just over a month. He could only earn points through his match performances and certain strengths, but even then, he probably would not have much of an advantage overall.
After all, players like Henk Dimer had spent more than a decade training painstakingly, building an incomparably solid foundation.
Meanwhile, the Almere Youth Team captain wore a relaxed expression, as if victory were already assured and first place had long since become his property.
Boo-hoo-hoo, I really wished that what I saw last night had been a fake World Cup final!
It had been thrilling and full of twists and turns, but Croatia had been so unfortunate. They had given it everything they had, and though they had lost, they had held their heads high!
Modric thoroughly deserved it!
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