Chapter 309: A Show of Force!

Boom!

Clatter!

Mong Kok Stadium, which only seats six thousand, was suddenly filled with heaven-shaking cheers and deafening noise.

On the pitch, Wu Feng waved his arms and was slowly jogging back.

All around him, his teammates were full of excitement but didn't dare get too close to Wu Feng; the atmosphere was quite joyful.

As for the opposing players, they stood there one by one with their hands on their hips, looking incredibly frustrated.

The looks they cast toward Wu Feng were filled with disbelief and bewilderment.

They had originally thought this was just a friendly match to go through the motions, but they had been stunned from the start, and for a moment, their hearts were full of confusion and helplessness, not knowing what to do.

Who could tell them how someone with such formidable strength could appear in the Eastern Hong Kong, known as a football desert?

With abundant stamina to run across the pitch, physical strength no less than that of players from Europe and America, and a heavy cannon of a shot that was nothing short of miraculous and almost never missed.

The match had only just begun about twenty minutes ago, and they were already trailing zero to two, all thanks to the heavy cannon shots from their boss, Wu Feng.

If things continued in this pattern, by the time the match ended, there would likely be a double-digit score gap.

How could this be? How would they be able to hang around the football pitch in the future?

It wasn't just the boss's performance that made them feel quite incredible.

Even the strength of their opponents was not as weak as they had imagined.

Their bodies were indeed not strong enough and couldn't withstand their intense collisions; basically, they would fall upon contact, or their bodies would briefly lose balance.

But damn it, these guys were just too good at running, and their endurance was shockingly strong, as if they didn't know the meaning of fatigue at all.

They were all professional football players; there might be a significant gap in physical fitness and football technique, but it shouldn't be a one-sided crushing.

Even a young midfield powerhouse like Redondo would see his passing speed and accuracy drop significantly when facing the pressing of his Hong Kong counterparts.

Not to mention, the opponents' pressing was very methodical, not just chaotic scrambling; the interference intensity wasn't high, but it still managed to have an impact.

At this time, rookie players including Redondo, Alan Shearer, and Okocha were still in their early stages, and there was a significant gap between their strength and their peak periods.

Whether it was technique, on-the-spot adaptability, the level of coordination, or the most important shooting accuracy, there were quite a few problems.

The key was that the opponent's tactics were quite strange.

After playing for about twenty minutes, they were surprised to discover that the opponent didn't actually have a real striker!

Even if there were strikers, they basically didn't enter the penalty area, leaving the four traditional defenders fielded by Fulham at a loss, practically rendered useless.

In other words, just twenty minutes into the match, Redondo and his teammates were playing six against ten and still managing to put up a good fight, which was only because their own strength was high enough, yet they felt quite unhappy.

Standing on the sidelines, head coach Ranieri frowned and looked somewhat at a loss, clearly feeling helpless about the current situation.

As mentioned earlier, the strikerless tactic was a football tactic that appeared after 2005, and for the football professionals of this time, it was definitely novel enough and baffling enough.

Right now, even the "flying on both wings" style was the job of wingers, and it had nothing to do with the two full-backs.

Ranieri was not the type of coach to make adjustments on the fly, so he inevitably felt a bit lost and quite frustrated.

On the contrary, Bielsa, the head coach of a Dutch league team sitting in the stands, was watching with great interest and gaining a lot, his eyes even starting to shine.

The strikerless version of team tactics that Wu Feng had come up with was very much to his taste, and he was even impatient to let his own players try it out.

Conversely, Wu Feng's teammates, the spectators in the stands, and the senior officials of the Football Association who attached great importance to the match were all caught in a state of excitement they couldn't extricate themselves from.

Had they seen that correctly?

A strong team from the Hong Kong First Division League and a strong team from the English Second Division that had come from Great Britain were able to trade blows back and forth, not showing any major disadvantage, and even taking the lead with two goals.

Following simple logic, did that mean the strength of a Hong Kong First Division professional team was already on par with a team from the English Second Division?

For a moment, the fans were overjoyed, while the senior officials of the Football Association looked at each other, not knowing what kind of expression to make.

Such a deduction absolutely subverted their normal concepts!

The reputation of the five major European leagues was not just for show.

They truly and genuinely represented the highest level of world football.

Of course, many South American giants might disagree, but the concept held by fans worldwide was just that: the European football scene was the center of world football.

According to the previous deductions of the Football Association's senior officials, if a Hong Kong First Division professional team could have the strength of an English Third Division team, they would be burning incense in gratitude; they dared not imagine anything more.

But the current situation of the match left them speechless for a moment.

They didn't know how many earth-shaking changes Wu Feng's takeover had brought to the team.

Based on the team's own situation, the strikerless tactics formulated were quite advanced.

The regularization, modernization, and scientification of routine training and recovery models had continuously improved the team's overall strength over a long period of promotion.

To say nothing else, in terms of stamina alone, the Hong Kong professional football team under Wu Feng was the best in the entire league.

When player strength wasn't outstanding, being able to run and knowing how to run occupied a significant advantage; the more than half a year of uninterrupted training was no joke.

At the same time, through scientific and reasonable training to improve individual technique, the effects were gradually becoming obvious.

It was just that the nutritional intake habits formed since childhood were different, leading to a significant gap in physical fitness compared to players from Europe and America.

Otherwise, the process and result of this friendly match would definitely have exceeded everyone's expectations.

By the time the match ended, the five-to-three score made the entire Fulham team feel a burning pain in their cheeks.

And this was still the result of Wu Feng not going all out; otherwise, the scene might have been even more embarrassing.

So much time had passed, and he had never stopped practicing the "Eight Trigrams Swimming Body Palm"; at this moment, the progress bar for the Eight Trigrams Steps on his Golden Finger had reached about sixty-five percent, which could be called having entered the hall.

Not to mention that his own physical fitness was extremely outstanding, and on the pitch, he was as slippery as a swimming fish, never giving Fulham players a chance to collide with or closely interfere with him, plus his heavy cannon shots were very accurate.

Whenever he had a chance to shoot smoothly, the football he blasted could basically hit the target range and create a threat.

With the strength of his legs at this time, the area thirty to forty-five meters in front of the goal was his shooting range.

It was just that, playing a friendly match against a team from Europe, there was no need to play so exaggeratedly, and he had left some face for these future stars.

(End of this chapter)