At dawn, the vast Skate Park was utterly deserted.
Yang Yang entered from the residential district on the eastern side with his schoolbag on his back, deftly juggling the ball as he followed the winding path straight toward the center of the park.
After two weeks of grueling, monotonous basic training, his ball-juggling skills had improved dramatically. Even while juggling the ball, he could walk at full speed, and he soon reached the heart of the park.
As its name suggested, the heart of the Skate Park contained a skateboarding area. It was said that in the past, countless young skateboarding enthusiasts gathered there every night, making it incredibly lively. But after that wave of skateboarding fever passed, the Skate Park gradually fell into decline, leaving only the abandoned facilities to remind people of its former glory.
Yang Yang's ball-juggling training could finally come to a temporary end, but Old Bing's next special training required a wall.
Almere was a large city, but finding a wall suitable for training was surprisingly difficult. In the end, Yang Yang finally found a long-abandoned wall covered in graffiti in the Skate Park.
The Skate Park was ideally located. Baken Academy lay to the north, and the residential complex where his uncle Shen Ming lived was not far to the east. A river ran along the west, while the famous Dominican Garden Villa District lay to the south. It was Almere's most upscale residential area, completed just the previous year.
South of the villa district was Almere Auto City, the largest and most professional automobile sales and repair center south of Amsterdam. His uncle Shen Ming's Chinese Restaurant was just north of the Auto City.
The Skate Park was enormous, and the skateboarding area had long since been abandoned. Even early-morning exercisers rarely passed through, so Yang Yang did not have to worry about disturbing anyone or being disturbed while training there.
After putting down his schoolbag, Yang Yang juggled the ball to the wall and stopped three meters away.
His first exercise was to kick the ball against the wall from that position, then kick it back after it rebounded. He had to touch the ball with only one kick each time, while controlling the force as much as possible to keep it consistent.
Five hundred kicks with his right foot, then another five hundred with his left.
During the dull, monotonous wall-passing exercise, Yang Yang listened to the steady thud, thud, thud in his ears while his body sensed the differences in every kick, as well as the feedback each time the ball rebounded from the wall.
Old Bing, the system, also kept correcting his movements beside his ear and offering suggestions for improvement.
After warming up with ball juggling along the way and completing a thousand passes, Yang Yang was panting and sweating. But this was only the beginning.
Backing up to five meters from the wall, Yang Yang began his second exercise: juggling against the wall.
The insides and insteps of both feet made four contact points in total. Five minutes for each point made exactly twenty minutes.
Although Yang Yang had already spent two weeks practicing ball juggling, juggling against a wall was still very different. In particular, the wall's rebound placed extremely high demands on his first touch.
Old Bing's requirement remained the same. For each of the four contact points, he had to juggle the ball five hundred times consecutively to pass.
They were all basic exercises, but Old Bing's demands on Yang Yang were exceptionally high. The slightest mistake was immediately pointed out and had to be corrected. Combined with the intense concentration required, the training was far from easy. Before he knew it, Yang Yang was drenched in sweat.
Focused on his training, he failed to notice that at some point, a middle-aged couple out for their morning exercise had stopped on the park path not far behind him and were watching him curiously.
"What's wrong?" Trus asked her boyfriend curiously.
"Nothing. I was just curious," the Dutch Middle-aged Man replied flatly, his expression impassive.
Following her boyfriend's gaze, Trus looked toward the boy training against the wall in the distant skateboarding area. "Is it strange?"
"Hmm?" The Dutch Middle-aged Man clearly had not understood her.
"I mean, is training against a wall strange?" Trus repeated.
"No, not at all. Lots of people do it. Bergkamp, for example."
Because of her boyfriend's profession, Trus knew quite a bit about football. On top of that, most of the friends who visited their home were involved in professional football, so she knew the stars by heart—especially Bergkamp, who was at the height of his fame with Arsenal.
"He looks like Bergkamp?" Trus asked tentatively.
With her boyfriend's keen eye, that was probably the only explanation for why he had stopped to watch during his morning run.
Unexpectedly, the Dutch Middle-aged Man froze when he heard that.
"Him?" The Dutch Middle-aged Man shook his head. "He's still a long way from Bergkamp."
"Is he really that bad?"
"He's about ten meters from the wall now. That's the passing distance most commonly used in professional matches, and it's something every professional player must master. It also has to be one-touch."
"But look..." The Dutch Middle-aged Man pointed toward Yang Yang in the skateboarding area. "He's using two touches, and he often fails to control the ball properly with his first touch. That shows how poor his fundamentals are. If he trains alone like this, he'll be even worse in an actual match. At his current level, he couldn't even play in an amateur league."
Trus rolled her eyes helplessly. Her boyfriend had always been extremely strict when it came to football. He spoke bluntly, but his judgment was razor-sharp. If he said this, he was certainly not wrong.
"He only looks sixteen or seventeen. Is it really that serious?"
"These are the most basic skills. They have to be mastered by the age of twelve. Spain places much more emphasis on training in this area than we do, especially..."
Halfway through, the Dutch Middle-aged Man's expression suddenly darkened, as if something had touched a sore spot in his heart.
Trus noticed it too.
Ever since that incident six months ago, he had become dispirited. Everyone knew it had not been his fault, but he still had not managed to move past it.
Watching him spend all day cooped up at home was no solution. As it happened, a friend had bought a house in Almere's Dominican Garden Villa District, and the largest golf course in the Amsterdam area was nearby. So, at Trus's suggestion, he—who loved golf almost as much as football—had decided to stay in Almere for a vacation and escape the turmoil outside.
He had only been in Almere for two days, yet this morning, the strange boy had unexpectedly drawn his attention.
"Since you think he's so bad, why are you curious?" Trus immediately changed the subject.
The Dutch Middle-aged Man's lips twitched slightly. Gazing at Yang Yang, who was sweating profusely in the distance, he muttered, "I'm curious how long he can keep up this dull, pointless exercise."
"How do you know it's pointless?"
"At his age, doing this kind of basic training is not only incredibly dull, but also terribly inefficient. He can keep going at first because it's something new, but once enough time passes and he realizes that everything he's doing is futile, he'll back down in the face of difficulty. If that isn't pointless, what is?"
Trus could hear the deeper meaning in his words. He was talking about the boy, but was he not also describing himself?
"I don't agree. I think you have to try before you can know whether something is useful."
"You're too naive."
"You're just too pessimistic. How about we make a bet?" Trus looked at her boyfriend provocatively. She felt she ought to give him something to do, so he would stop overthinking.
"A bet?" The Dutch Middle-aged Man pointed toward Yang Yang in the skateboarding area. "Over him?"
"Exactly. I think he can stick with it."
"No, Trus Opameer, I can tell you with absolute certainty that you're going to lose. He won't last a month." The Dutch Middle-aged Man spoke with complete confidence.
He had seen and experienced far too many people and situations like this.
"Then let's bet." Trus spread her hands.
"Fine. It's a deal."
Yang Yang had no idea he had become the subject of someone else's bet. He was simply focused on his special training.
After finishing the wall-passing exercise from ten meters away, he moved back to fifteen meters, then twenty. He completed several other exercises as well, but they were all basic.
With his current fundamentals, he had to start with the basics.
As Old Bing put it, ball juggling was the most fundamental exercise, but it was not the goal. As his feel for the ball gradually improved, ball-juggling practice would decrease and be replaced by other exercises with greater practical value.
Yang Yang wholeheartedly agreed.
After finishing his morning training, Yang Yang slung his schoolbag over his shoulder again and headed north while juggling the ball. He soon left the Skate Park.
Yang Yang's juggling looked casual, but anyone who watched closely would notice that he tried to keep the rhythm and force of every touch the same, while keeping the distance of every step as consistent as possible. It made him seem to move with a certain rhythm.
Baken Academy was a comprehensive school covering kindergarten through high school, and it was also one of Almere's prestigious private schools.
Ever since Yang Yang had juggled the ball to school two weeks earlier, he had become a curiosity at Baken Academy, though most of the attention consisted of ridicule and mockery.
Everyone knew that Yang Yang was an excellent student, but that he was terrible at football.
John Rep's repeated attempts to dismiss Yang Yang had long since been spread among Yang Yang's teammates. Everyone knew about it.
But Yang Yang had not responded in the slightest. He continued doing exactly as he pleased.
There was only one way to change how others viewed him: pass the semester assessment and stay in Almere.
"That bastard really won't give up!"
At the school entrance, Henk Dimer watched Yang Yang enter the campus while juggling the ball, a trace of anger flashing in his eyes.
Over the past two weeks of training, Yang Yang's performance on the team had steadily improved. He was still the worst player during the keep-away games, but everyone found it much harder to toy with him as they had before.
Yang Yang had improved, but Henk Dimer had begun to suffer. He was being sent into the middle of the circle more and more often, all because of Yang Yang. Several times, Dimer had nearly lost his temper and punched him.
"I heard he's been performing well in training lately. The coaching staff plans to put him on the roster Saturday for the match against Omnibus," said an Almere Youth Training Player beside him.
"What?" Henk Dimer was stunned.
"Nick is injured. I heard the coach wants him to play in defense."
Almere had been founded less than seven years earlier, and neither its youth system nor its First Team was fully developed. As a result, the youth team cooperated with the private Baken Academy. Players in the sixteen- and seventeen-year-old age groups represented Baken Academy in the Saturday interschool league in southern Amsterdam.
Omnibus was also an Almere team. It cooperated on youth development with an amateur club from the city that competed in the fourth tier, and its strength was considerable. It was a tough opponent.
Henk Dimer narrowed his eyes. He was the youth team captain and the school team captain, yet he had not received any notice so far.
"Then he'd better start praying for himself."