The show of affection ended.
The match resumed.
Although they had conceded a goal less than ten minutes into the match, the AC Milan players didn't seem to mind.
After all, it was just a friendly.
Winning or losing didn't matter at all!
Only someone like Li Yufei, who had a system mission to complete, would take it so seriously.
Still, the Milan players' attitude suited Li Yufei just fine.
Yes, keep it up!
If Milan started taking this seriously, how could Li Yufei finish his mission so easily?
At the end of the day, it was just a friendly.
If this hadn't been Li Yufei's first appearance for the senior team, with a system reward on the line, he wouldn't have taken it so seriously either. He would've just kicked the ball around and called it a day.
Over the next twenty minutes, AC Milan created two good chances.
First, Ronaldinho sent a free kick from the attacking third into the box for Thiago Silva, who headed the ball just wide.
Then Seedorf tried a long shot from the edge of the box, but the ball skimmed past the right post.
Arsenal had a chance of their own.
Fabregas and Wilshere played a one-two, and Fabregas slipped the ball forward.
Li Yufei once again used his top-of-the-football-world speed to leave Seedorf behind.
With Nesta and Bonera closing in to cover, Li Yufei slipped the ball to Clichy, who was making a forward run.
Clichy met the ball and swept it along the ground. Li Yufei's strike partner, Arshavin, arrived just in time to take a shot, but the ball flew over the crossbar.
The rest of the half was played out with an unspoken understanding between the two teams.
AC Milan didn't rush forward just because they were trailing, while Arsenal, as the team in front, had no problem taking it easy alongside Milan.
Wenger and Allegri were just as relaxed in the technical area, arms around each other—a picture of harmony.
The halftime whistle sounded.
The first half ended with Arsenal leading AC Milan 1–0, thanks to Li Yufei's goal.
Since most of the first half had been played at a leisurely pace, Li Yufei wasn't especially tired.
Wenger still came over to check on him, but once he heard Li Yufei was feeling fine, he didn't say anything more.
Fifteen minutes later, the second half began.
Wenger brought on Van Persie and Walcott all at once, taking off Fabregas, the Spaniard who had played in the World Cup final less than three weeks ago, and Arshavin, the Russian.
Arsenal switched from a 4-4-2 to a 4-3-3, with Li Yufei on the left wing, Van Persie at center forward, and Little Tiger Walcott on the right.
AC Milan kept to their usual lineup. After all, their players had barely made it far in the recently concluded South Africa World Cup.
As a result, Milan's players didn't need much rest.
Their top priority was to use the warm-up matches to shake off the sluggish form left over from their off-season indulgences.
In the 48th minute,
AC Milan forward Pato received the ball on the right side of the attacking third and carried it inward.
When Clichy stepped up to pressure him, Pato quickly laid the ball off to Pirlo.
Without taking a touch, Pirlo lofted the ball toward Ronaldinho on the left wing.
Ronaldinho collected it and sent in a low cross, delivering the ball into a dangerous area fifteen yards from goal.
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Vermaelen rushed to clear the ball, but Borriello got there first and managed to get a touch on it.
With Koscielny bearing down on him, Borriello had no time to set himself for a shot. He could only improvise and knock the ball goalward with his knee.
The awkwardly deflected ball should have been easy for the goalkeeper to handle. It posed no real threat.
But by sheer bad luck, it clipped Vermaelen's thigh and changed direction, bouncing toward the keeper's left.
Pato had made an off-the-ball run into the right side of the box. He met the bouncing ball and side-footed it home without a hint of doubt.
"GOOOOOOOAL!!!"
"Number 7, Pato!!!"
"After Arsenal's talented young player Li Yufei found the net, the 2009 Golden Boy Award winner, Brazilian prodigy Pato, refused to be outdone and has brought AC Milan level!"
Seeing the goal, Li Yufei shook his head in resignation.
There was no denying it: compared with their attack, Arsenal's defense left something to be desired.
Koscielny could already be considered a first-rate European defender, but the Chief Priest, Vermaelen, was not in the same form as he had been in the previous two seasons.
Li Yufei didn't know exactly when Vermaelen would become the Chief Priest who spent all his time in a hospital bed, giving his teammates a health buff.
But it probably wouldn't be long.
The thought of Arsenal being without a first-choice defender for long stretches gave Li Yufei a headache.
Arsenal had really been having one bad break after another in recent years!
As for warning Vermaelen so he could avoid getting injured—
Only an idiot would do that. Vermaelen would probably think Li Yufei was cursing him.
And if he got injured anyway, he might even blame Li Yufei.
Li Yufei wasn't about to do something so thankless!
He shook his head and put it out of his mind. Focusing on the match was more important.
After all, if they didn't win, four rewards would be cut down to two. That would be a huge loss!
Especially the extra 100 Advanced Soft Rice Points. Li Yufei needed those badly.
After all, without points, he had no way to improve any ability score of 90 or higher.
His physical talent was what it was. No amount of training could change that!
Over the years, through match experience and hard training, Li Yufei had only managed to raise his abilities to around 75 without relying on system points.
He couldn't get much further than that.
What did a rating of 75 mean?
Wu Lei, the top Chinese player of later generations, was around that level at his peak.
He might have been two or three points higher, but there was no real difference in class.
In other words, Li Yufei's body after his transmigration had roughly the same footballing talent as Wu Lei's.
At worst, he was slightly weaker, but he was definitely in the same tier.
That alone showed just how high Li Yufei's footballing talent was in this life!
Don't assume that having the same level of talent as Wu Lei meant he was mediocre!
Wu Lei was, after all, the Chinese National Team's all-time leading scorer and the holder of the Chinese Super League Single-Season Goal Record.
At his peak, he was better than 95 percent of the foreign players in the Chinese Super League!
On the Chinese National Team of later generations, he would have been a foreign-player-level asset!
The fact that Li Yufei had roughly the same footballing talent as Wu Lei already proved that, even without a cheat, he was capable of playing professional football.
He might not have been able to establish himself in the Top Five Leagues, but he could still have been a regular starter for a lower-table team in a second-tier European league like the Portuguese League or Eredivisie.
His annual salary could have reached a million euros. That was pretty good!
But in this life, Li Yufei had a cheat. If he still couldn't become the GOAT of football, then he really would have wasted his life.
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