Flowers Bloom and Fade, Fade and Bloom, Eight Years Fly By!
Italy, Milan.
The morning sunlight at 6:30 pm shone through the gaps in the curtains into the dimly lit room.
The first thing illuminated was a corner of the bed.
Waaaaah--
Chivu's digital watch started vibrating.
He slightly opened his eyes and glanced at the screen.
[Woke up three times during the night, with a total deep sleep time of 1.5 hours]
Chivu lifted the covers and whispered a sentence, at which point the automatically operated curtains slowly opened with a whoosh.
"Another headache-inducing morning, sigh..." Chivu stretched lazily in the bright Milan sunshine.
After washing up.
Chivu went downstairs into the garage and opened the car door.
Before my butt even touched the seat, the central control screen started broadcasting announcements automatically.
"Christian, cheer up! It's another day full of energy!"
"We've detected that you have eight scheduled activities for today."
"The first item is to convene a meeting of the entire coaching staff to discuss the schedule for the Serie A match against Juventus in Round 38."
"Secondly, discuss the targets to pursue during the summer transfer window with assistant coach Berni."
"The third item is to observe the youth team's training session and finalize the list of promising young players for next season with youth team coach Santon."
"The fourth step is to meet with the team doctor to verify the injury status of our starting center, Bonazzoli."
"Fifth, have a private conversation with Captain Ranocchia to understand the recent demands from the locker room."
"Sixth, to appear in court as a witness and provide evidence in the bribery and embezzlement case of former Inter Milan sporting director Ausilio."
"Seventh, responding to Fiorentina's coaching offer..."
Hearing this, Chivu frowned and said loudly, "Remove this! I already said yesterday that I refused the invitation. What's wrong with you? Don't you understand what I said?!"
A large circle spun around several times on the car's infotainment screen.
"Received. Remove the seventh item. The to-do list is now updated to seven items. Announce the seventh item now."
"Alright, alright, Mr. Mancini," Chivu said with a wry smile, stepping on the trolley. "Just be quiet, don't bother me." The trolley pulled out of the garage and drove away.
There's a reason why Chivu specifically set the car's daily infotainment system to broadcast the voice of Italy coach Roberto Mancini.
Years ago, Mancini chatted with himself in a corner of the Etihad Stadium tunnel and told him that becoming a head coach was far more complicated than he had imagined.
Especially in the giants of Serie A, in this complex league, you not only have to protect the team from the storms, but also find your own support.
At the time, Chivu was only 36 years old and had just retired. He was very muscular and, despite being retired, he was full of ambition and had a very youthful mindset.
Working as an assistant coach under the renowned manager Guardiola, he gained Guardiola's favor by relying on his unparalleled video analysis skills. His mindset had already become arrogant, and he didn't take Mancini's words to heart at all, completely ignoring them.
Nine years have passed.
As Chivu approaches fifty, his temples are already gray, and his once muscular physique is gradually fading away with the loss of muscle mass.
Instead, a potbelly grew larger and larger.
In 2018, after winning the treble for two consecutive years, Chivu ended his assistant coaching career at Manchester City. He shook hands with Guardiola and returned to Serie A, starting from the lower-level Serie B, and led Palermo back to Serie A that same year.
After three seasons coaching Palermo, he left Sicily with an UEFA Europa League -final finish and joined his former club, Serie A powerhouse Roma.
For three more seasons, Roma consistently qualified for the UEFA Champions League, even reaching the UEFA Champions League midway through, equaling their best-ever performance since the UEFA Champions League change.
Chivu switched teams again immediately after the 2023-2024 season ended.
This time, he accepted Inter Milan's offer!
At the signing ceremony, facing hundreds of reporters, Chivu's eyes were filled with tears as he turned his head to show the crowd the scars left from his brain surgery.
The shocking scar caused a stir among the crowd. A young female reporter in the audience covered her mouth, but couldn't suppress a scream. However, Chivu spoke emotionally:
"You may think this scar is ugly, but to me, it is a strong bond that firmly connects me to Inter Milan."
"When I became a professional coach, my dream was to coach Inter Milan, and now I have finally achieved it."
"I won the triple crown with this club and reached the peak of my career. This club gave me a second life, and I am willing to dedicate everything to it!"
"In the 2024-2025 season, Inter Milan will go even further, simply because our name is Inter Milan!"
The audience fell silent for a moment, then erupted in enthusiastic applause!
Former president Moratti went up on stage and embraced Chivu, both of them with tears in their eyes.
However, Chivu, who was full of ambition, suffered an unprecedented setback in his smooth-sailing head coaching career after arriving at Inter Milan!
Eliminated from the UEFA Champions League group stage.
With the season nearing its end, they were ranked 8th in Serie A.
Based on the current points total, it's impossible for them to even qualify for the UEFA Champions League next season, let alone the UEFA Europa League.
This was a huge embarrassment for Chivu, because when he signed with the club, he had set his goals for the management:
"Last season we finished fourth in the league. This season we have only one goal: to overthrow Juventus's dominance in the league and at the very least, to reach the UEFA Champions League semi-finals."
At that time, Juventus had just won the league title with over 100 points, a full 30 points ahead of Inter Milan!
In fact, since Tang Long left Inter Milan in the 2014-2015 season to join Manchester City...
The Old Lady then established a long-term dominance over Serie A.
In nine seasons, they won a total of six league titles!
The remaining three are AC Milan (two) and Napoli (one).
Inter Milan got nothing.
This season, Juventus has been hampered by a change in manager, and the team's performance under Motta has been inconsistent.
Even so, they remain fiercely competitive with Napoli, maintaining a slight one-point lead to date.
In the final round, Inter Milan will host Juventus.
Before the match, Juventus fans were already chanting. "Great opportunity! We're going to step over Inter Milan's corpse and climb to the Serie A! Nothing could be more exciting than this, hahaha!"
Of course, whether Juventus or Napoli emerges victorious has nothing to do with Inter Milan.
But if Juventus really celebrates their title victory at Inter Milan's home stadium, the scene would be too much to bear...
Thinking of this, Chivu felt a chill run down his spine.
"I need to play well. Although the management gave me a three-year contract, if we lose to Juventus, I might be sacked at the end of the season."
In his year coaching Inter Milan, he gradually came to understand the meaning behind Mancini's words from nine years ago.
Why did he have such a smooth run at Palermo and Roma, but struggle so much at Inter Milan?
He finally realized that driving a destroyer and driving a speedboat are two completely different things.
Therefore, Chivu used AI technology to change the voice of his car's infotainment system to the tone of his former mentor, Mancini, as a daily reminder that becoming a top manager is a thousand times harder than he imagined.
There weren't many cars on the road in the morning.
While waiting at a traffic light, Chivu used voice commands to have the car's infotainment system broadcast some news.
"Okay, here's the news for you."
"By 2025, artificial intelligence technology will have achieved a historic breakthrough."
"AI has become a well-known buzzword of the year and has been applied to many social fields, profoundly impacting everyone's lives."
"DeepSeek, originating from China, has emerged as a dark horse, possessing core technological advantages in natural language processing, machine learning and deep learning, and big data analysis."
"It has demonstrated outstanding performance in multiple fields such as reasoning, natural language understanding and generation, image and video analysis, and big data processing and analysis, and has become the world's fastest-growing AI tool. It is reported that..."
Chivu rolled down the window, placed his hand on the glass, and drove the car into Inter Milan's training ground.
He sighed softly.
As a technically skilled head coach with a background in film analysis, Chivu incorporated AI technology into his daily coaching routine last year.
"Sigh, what's the use of my analysis? If only my players had DeepSeek installed in their brains, they could automatically predict and choose the best routes and positions during the game." Chivu felt that his idea was a bit far-fetched and couldn't help but laugh.