There was nothing unusual about Huali losing a game.
What team could win forever without ever losing?
And sometimes, Huali's coach even deliberately let the team lose.
Some Huali students thought they were professionals, and that beating amateurs would be a piece of cake. As a result, they tended to be frivolous and arrogant.
At times like that, the coach would avoid making too many preparations during the group stage and let the players play on their own. Once they were outplayed by a team that had prepared specifically to counter them, they would lose. Only after losing would they truly take their opponents seriously and get focused.
Huali's third team this year was actually its reserve team, and its players had never competed outside the school.
So it was perfectly normal for Huali to lose.
But this loss drew attention from Chang'an Province and even all across China, and it immediately landed on the trending lists of numerous social media platforms.
TikTok's top trending topic: Today's news: Wang Yi's Huali school team lost to Chang'an No. 9 Middle School.
Weibo's top trending topic: "Huali's school team loses to Chang'an District No. 9 Middle School; Coach Wang Yi's ability questioned."
Those weren't even the worst of it.
The most ridiculous part was that some self-media writers would say anything, no matter how outrageous, just to grab people's attention and attract traffic.
"Shocking! Infighting on Wang Yi's team!"
"Wang Yi and the opposing coach get into an argument; school leaders step in to mediate and resolve the conflict."
"How good is Wang Yi at coaching, really?"
Wang Yi didn't care much about any of it. He'd had plenty of negative press over the years.
The negative stories these self-media writers were putting out were no big deal to him—just a drop