"Moric, their right-back is running out of steam!" While the other team celebrated, Lu Yang found Moric.
"You mean we should have Vedian make another run at him?" Moric looked at the opposing right-back, who kept rubbing his knee. It was a very clear warning sign.
After getting injured, many players looked back and said they had already felt something was wrong before it happened.
Plenty of injuries were caused directly by collisions, but far more were caused by fatigue and overuse. In fact, many of the former were simply triggered by the latter.
Soon, Moric found Vedian, and the two spoke briefly.
Tweet!
At the sound of the whistle, the match resumed.
This time, Moric gave Vedian more support than before.
Vedian made the opposing right-back run back and forth again and again.
He even created two excellent chances.
Unfortunately, the team's forwards let him down and failed to take them.
Bisceglie's coach had also spotted the problem and sent a young player out to warm up.
But just then, Lu Yang dispossessed Arnold once again.
Lu Yang pretended to pass to Moric, drawing Arnold and the opposing midfielder toward him.
But in reality... Lu Yang launched a long ball into Bisceglie's half.
The ball sailed right over Bisceglie's back line.
Vedian took off at once.
Bisceglie's right-back, who was marking Vedian, took off too, but quickly crumpled to the ground.
His already overburdened knee finally gave out. He was injured.
Vedian cut diagonally in from the left, as if there were no defenders in his way.
The moment he got the ball, he was through on goal!
To be fair, the pass wasn't a good one. Vedian had to awkwardly adjust his footing several times before he could control the ball.
But it didn't matter. Bisceglie had gotten carried away and pushed their back line much too far up the pitch.
Vedian charged forward with the ball as the opposing goalkeeper rushed out to meet him.
Thump!
Vedian slotted it into the far corner and scored!
"GOAL! Vedian, it's Vedian!"
"San Remo have seized a wonderful counterattacking opportunity, created and directly assisted by Lu Yang."
"He dispossessed Arnold, then used a feint to make it look as if he was passing to Moric, giving himself more room to play the ball. His long pass sent Vedian through on goal, and Vedian didn't let them down. They're still fighting! The match is wide open again!"
"One–nil is never a safe score, and two–nil is even less safe than one–nil. There couldn't be a more fitting saying for Bisceglie. They've been careless, far too arrogant!"
Bisceglie's coach was furious.
Part of it was frustration that he had seen the danger coming but still failed to prevent disaster.
The rest was anger over Arnold's performance today.
He had been completely shut down by the opposing number 24, a center-back.
That alone was forgivable. Every forward had days when his shots just wouldn't go in.
But if you couldn't get past someone, you shouldn't keep forcing it.
Did he have any idea how many times he had lost possession to Lu Yang?
If he hadn't stupidly handed the ball to Lu Yang, would the team have conceded that goal?
Did he really think that just because he could move up to Serie B, he could look down on his Serie D opponents, teammates, and even coach?
Idiot!
Some players shone in the lower leagues but faded into obscurity when they moved up.
Others seemed to belong in the higher leagues, yet weren't all that impressive after dropping down. They couldn't carry a team at all.
Apart from players with exceptionally distinctive qualities or absurd levels of talent, the league you played in mattered more than anything. For most players, whether they could play in Serie A or Serie B, or only in Serie C or Serie D, sometimes came down to luck rather than ability.
In the coach's eyes, Arnold was a player who'd been very lucky. It was true that he had some ability and a few strengths; otherwise, the coach wouldn't have built the attack around him.
But Arnold had mistaken his good fortune for skill.
The same tactics could work just as well if Vedian joined Bisceglie.
Arnold wasn't nearly as outstanding as he thought he was.
Bisceglie's success this season depended on their number 10 and their number 9, but Arnold and the media backing him had taken credit for their hard work and importance.
"Sorry, I was wrong about you earlier. I kept thinking you were on their side, but it turns out you were helping us. I wouldn't have gotten that assist without the ball you just passed me." Lu Yang said this as he walked past Arnold.
Arnold was so angry he could practically spew black blood.
What did he mean, "passed me"?
That was a hundred times more insulting than saying he'd been dispossessed!
Arnold lost his temper.
"Who the hell do you think you are? You're just some little defender for a Serie D team! I'm ten thousand times better than you!" Arnold's trash talk was painfully unoriginal.
The angrier he got, the more he said, until he couldn't help shoving Lu Yang.
The referee saw it happen.
Tweet!
Arnold paid for his actions with a yellow card.
Moric came over. "You should've gone down just then. If the referee hadn't seen it, you'd have been the one who got the raw end of the deal."
Lu Yang smiled. "Don't worry. If the referee hadn't seen it, I'd have paid him back. Don't forget, I'm a center-back."
It wasn't especially hard for a defender to injure an attacker.
There were plenty of ways to do it without even committing a foul.
Some players spent their whole careers studying the craft and became very good at it.
Right, Ramos?
Before long, Bisceglie kicked off again.
They played more cautiously this time, and Arnold saw much less of the ball.
Bisceglie's number 10 had clearly been given instructions by the coach.
But that only made Arnold unhappy.
Even though the team was leading two–one, Arnold hadn't been involved in a single goal.
He had no stats to his name.
That wasn't what the journalist who'd been advising him had promised.
He needed stats.
Besides... Lu Yang had shut him down!
He couldn't tolerate that.
So Arnold kept dropping back into midfield and demanding the ball from his teammates.
The number 10 could ignore Arnold once or twice, but he couldn't ignore him forever.
At last, under pressure, he passed the ball to Arnold, who had dropped back to receive it.
And that became the match's second major turning point.
The eighty-second minute.
Arnold had the ball. With a flashy step-over, he burst forward and surged past San Remo's midfield.
He was heading straight for the area Lu Yang was guarding.
"What a talent," Soto sighed as he watched Arnold sprint.
Soto was known for his ferocity, stamina, tackling, and excellent defensive anticipation.
But he wasn't fast.
"I wonder if Arnold's coach ever told him to avoid explosive moves from a standing start when he's tired," Soto said, squinting. "They put too much strain on your muscles and Achilles tendons. And when you're tired, your body relaxes without you realizing it, which makes you... much more likely to get injured."
It was a matter of physics.
When you had strength to spare, some of it countered the force coming from outside, greatly reducing the pressure on your bones and muscles. A specialist in biomechanics could provide all the equations.
But when you were out of strength, your bones had to absorb that external force. At that point, all you had to rely on was their structural strength.
That was why weightlifters sometimes broke their legs while standing under a barbell. Their strength wasn't enough to support its weight, so they let their muscles relax and tried to hold it up with their body's structure instead. The barbell crushed them.
As Soto spoke, Lu Yang made another beautiful tackle while tracking back.
Arnold couldn't get past Lu Yang at all.
"Thanks!" After winning the ball, Lu Yang instinctively kept possession instead of hurriedly clearing it, even though he was already near the edge of the penalty area.
It was a risky thing to do. If the opponent won the ball back, they would almost certainly score.
Angry, Arnold roared and charged at Lu Yang.
He lunged in to take the ball back.
But the next second, Lu Yang pulled the ball back and pushed it to the other side.
V-Pull!
Arnold lunged with his left foot and missed, planting it on the grass. But his center of gravity had already shifted to the right, toward the side where Lu Yang had pulled the ball.
For an instant, his momentum was still carrying him left, while the new force was pulling him right.
The forces clashed violently.
That often left a person frozen in place.
And if they weren't strong enough, it could lead to a sprain or a strain.
"Ah!"
Lu Yang dribbled away, leaving Arnold on the ground.
Clutching his left thigh, he rolled around in pain on the grass.
He had gone down without contact, which usually meant the player was genuinely injured.
But Lu Yang didn't care.
He charged forward with the ball.
At the same time, Moric saw Lu Yang's look and started running forward too.
After playing for so long, Moric had already spotted Bisceglie's second weakness: one of their midfielders was poor.
He was a substitute who had gotten the start because the first-choice player in his position had accumulated enough yellow cards to be suspended for this match. His positional sense was lacking.
Bisceglie's number 10 was an attacking midfielder and usually played much farther forward.
That left a huge gap in the middle of their formation.
But it wasn't a weakness Moric could exploit directly.
He couldn't break through it on his own.
Unless someone joined him.
And that someone was...
"Ping-pong!" Lu Yang shouted as he ran.
Moric immediately moved forward to the right.
The two of them advanced on opposite sides of the center line, one behind the other.
Bisceglie's number 9 rushed at Lu Yang.
Lu Yang passed to Moric, then kept moving forward. Bisceglie's number 10 rushed at Moric.
Moric passed to Lu Yang, then kept moving forward. Bisceglie's substitute midfielder rushed at Lu Yang.
Since Lu Yang and Moric had both shown that they intended to push forward, Bisceglie's defenders had closed in on them. They no longer had the space to hold the ball, look up, and pick out a pass as they had before.
But who could have guessed that Lu Yang would pass it on the first touch?
A give-and-go!
The ball rolled toward Moric.
One center-back rushed forward, while another hung back to stop Moric from shooting from distance.
Moric was already thirty-two meters from goal, and he could shoot from there.
Thump!
Bisceglie's center-back failed to intercept.
If Moric had taken a touch to set himself, the defender could have stopped him.
But Moric didn't take a touch. He passed it straight on.
Another give-and-go!
Four quick exchanges, the last two a pair of consecutive give-and-gos.
Lu Yang and Moric tore through what had looked like Bisceglie's impregnable defense.
For a moment, Bisceglie's midfield and back line seemed utterly helpless.
The ball rolled to the edge of the penalty arc, and the next second, Lu Yang was right behind it.
He drew back his leg and fired!
Thump!
Bisceglie's center-back could only turn his back, hoping to block the shot with his body.
But Lu Yang had clearly picked his spot. He deliberately avoided the far side where the center-back stood and aimed for the near post.
Bisceglie's goalkeeper breathed a sigh of relief. The angle at the near post was narrow, and he could cover it... surely.
Boom!
The ball dropped suddenly out of the air, slipped just under Bisceglie's goalkeeper's armpit, and bounced into the net.
Another Dipping Shot!
"GOAL!!!"
"Good heavens, you can't believe what you're seeing!"
"This isn't football. It's art!"
"The goal stands! San Remo have fought back to level the score, and the scorer is... Lu!"
San Remo's fans in the stands went wild with celebration.
Meanwhile, even more Bisceglie fans clutched their heads, unable to accept what they'd just seen.
They'd been pegged back?
And by a center-back, of all people!
The crazy thing was, the entire attack had been started by just two players.
Two players had carved through Bisceglie's midfield and defense?
This...
This made no damn sense!
"It's Lu Yang again! Once again, he stepped up, and once again, his unconventional play broke the deadlock. Before this, no one would have believed that a center-back could combine with a midfielder through a series of passes—even a one-two—and break through two lines of defense!"
"This was a flash of genius, and a display of the understanding between two academy graduates! They must have rehearsed this kind of movement countless times to pull off such a sublime combination in a real match."
"Moric's final pass was perfectly weighted. Any softer, and the recovering center-back could have disrupted it. Any harder, and the other center-back might have intercepted it. What a pass! In fact, we can see that Moric's ball to Lu Yang was far better than Lu Yang's pass to him."
"But that doesn't matter, because Lu Yang's spectacular dipping shot at the end made up for everything! He has a goal and an assist today, and he's been the biggest reason his team have leveled the score!"
"They say the Chinese are great at table tennis, and wasn't that combination just like a game of ping-pong? Back and forth, four touches, two players showing off the beauty of team football!"
"If Lu Yang hadn't kept Arnold under wraps for the entire match so far, I'd really be wondering whether Lu Yang was a center-back at all. That shot was top quality. He's a born killer!"
"San Remo's strength has surpassed everyone's expectations. They've managed to take a point from the league leaders!"
"Oh, we can see the stretcher coming on. Arnold just went down without any contact. He seems to have pulled a thigh muscle, though we don't know how serious it is. Either way, he won't be able to continue."
"Bisceglie have been forced into two substitutions, so their options are limited. If they're sensible, they'll play more cautiously from here and make sure they turn these three points into one."
"Wait, Bisceglie aren't dropping back. They're still attacking in force!"
"That's right, Bisceglie won't settle for a draw! This is their home ground. They're top of the league. They have no reason to back down!"
"Well, everyone, the rest of this match is going to be a treat!"