i want to be king

Chapter 864 The era belonging to Su Dong is coming to an end!
After a narrow away win over Blackburn Rovers [-]-[-], Manchester City finally got out of the devil's schedule at the end of April.

Although the team will continue to fight on the third front, at least they can take a breather.

After all, the next opponents are not like the Premier League teams like Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur. In the Europa League, Manchester City's opponent is Benfica in the Portuguese Super League, and the other matchup is Porto against Villarreal.

The pattern of the Europa League semi-finals this season is very interesting.

In fact, if you count Braga in the top eight, you can clearly see the strength of the Portuguese Super League in the second-tier European leagues.

The top eight teams accounted for three seats, half of the semi-finals, and the Portuguese Super League ranked first in the second-tier European leagues.

Before the Europa League is about to start, the British media also paid attention to the Portuguese Super League. The Times even made a detailed report on the Portuguese Super League to help fans better understand the Portuguese Super League, especially Manchester City's next opponent Benfica.

Benfica's ability to reach the semi-finals of the Europa League is actually quite surprising.

The team's financial situation in recent years has not been ideal.

As we all know, Benfica and Sporting Lisbon are rivals in the same city, and as early as that year, when Su Dong and Ronnie played for Sporting Lisbon, Mendes had a close relationship with the Green Lions, which allowed him to successfully sign a group of young players from Sporting Lisbon.

But it is precisely because of the relationship with Sporting Lisbon that Mendes does not cooperate much with Benfica.

The real turning point came in [-].

At that time, due to the financial crisis, Benfica was forced to mortgage 20.00% of the ownership of the twelve main players in the team to a Portuguese bank in exchange for a loan of 4000 million euros to repay the club's debts.

In other words, the estimated price of these twelve main players is 6000 million euros, which is actually a reasonable price.

Subsequently, the transfers of Di Maria and Ramirez proved that the value of Benfica players is still acceptable.

Of course, these two players are relatively valuable among the main players, but there are also players like Coentram and David Luiz who stay on the team, and they are also players with great potential and strength.

Under the circumstances at the time, Mendes made a decisive move and bought David Luiz's 450% ownership of David Luiz for 20.00 million euros from the bank, coupled with the transfer of Di Maria to Manchester City, and the subsequent transfer of Ramirez to Chelsea, thereby breaking through the gap in cooperation with the Benfica management.

From that moment on, Mendes has completely controlled the top three players in the Portuguese Super League.

It was also from that year that Mendes started his South American star project, introducing many South American stars including Falcao and Hulk to the Portuguese Super League, using Portugal as a springboard to land in the four major European leagues.

In Mendes' plan, Portugal has a natural sense of closeness with South American players. The stars are more adaptable to the Portuguese Super League. At the same time, they can also use the Portuguese Super League to adapt to the European League. The Portuguese Super League can also use these South American players to improve their strength, especially some outstanding players.

It has to be said that this is a very shrewd player transfer channel.

In this chain, Mendes, players, clubs and the teams of the four major leagues have each got what they want.

Today, this supply chain of players has played a role. Both Benfica and Porto have reached the Europa League semi-finals, Braga has also entered the quarter-finals, and the Portuguese Super League team has risen strongly in the second-tier European leagues.

Among them, Benfica is the most outrageous.

This team is heavily in debt, short of money and people, and has a very strong willingness to cooperate with Mendes. At the most outrageous time, Benfica's starting lineup even has only one Portuguese in the starting lineup, and all the others are foreign aid from South America.

Su Dong already knew about Mendes' plan when he made the layout, and he was quite optimistic about the prospect, but he did not participate in it, but chose to stay out of it.

The player ownership operation is very lucrative indeed.

Don't talk about others, let's just say that David Luiz moved to Manchester City, and Mendes earned millions of euros from it.

However, the world football world also has different attitudes towards the third-party ownership of players. The Portuguese Super League recognizes it, but other leagues do not recognize it. Some are ambiguous and turn a blind eye.

It is undeniable that this method of operation is prone to problems.

Su Dong cherishes his feathers. He has strong commercial value and bears the image of many world brands, so he is unwilling to participate in it. He is afraid that if something happens, he will not benefit much, but will cause trouble and damage his image.

Today, he doesn't need to worry about money at all.

The lifetime contract with the American sports brand is still being negotiated. What Su Dong offered was an unprecedented sky-high price. Not to mention the world football, even in the sports world, there has never been such an astonishingly high price, so that the other party is still hesitating.

However, sports brands from Germany are gearing up, and they will take the opportunity to enter just waiting for Su Dong to talk to American brands.

With this contract alone, Su Dong will have no worries about food and clothing for the rest of his life.

Not to mention that in China, Su Dong's parents left him a large number of houses.

Up to now, Su Dong doesn't know how many houses he owns. He only knows that Wang Chuqing has set up a company to rent these houses. According to Wang Chuqing, some of the houses bought by Su Dong's parents have doubled in value. This makes Su Dong have to admire his parents' investment vision.

According to them, in the future, Su Dong can squander his whole life just by collecting rent.

Under such circumstances, how could Su Dong gamble on his own image for the part of the proceeds that Mendes promised?

What's more, the operational risk of third-party ownership of players is also great.

Like Benfica's Paraguayan striker Oscar Cardoso.

The 27-year-old striker performed very well last season. He played 47 times for Benfica and scored 38 goals. He was praised by the Portuguese media as the player with the strongest scoring ability in the Portuguese Super League after Sudong.

It can be said that apart from being a little older, Cardoso has nothing wrong with him, and he has also attracted the interest and attention of teams such as Naples, Genoa, and even Inter Milan, AC Milan and Juventus.

It is precisely because of this that Benfica made a decision to raise 900 million euros and buy 80.00% of Cardoso's ownership, which was also a very cost-effective deal at the time.

Mendes wants to take the opportunity to cash out part of the proceeds, and Benfica's calculations are also very smart, that is, after another season of Cardoso scoring crazy goals, they can cash out at a high position, and then they can make a lot of money.

But who would have thought that not long after the start of the new season, Cardoso suffered a serious injury. So far after his comeback, he has played 33 times for Benfica and scored [-] goals. This report card is not bad, but it is significantly lower than last season.

Age, injuries are there, and his performance has also declined. Everyone knows that it will be difficult for Cardoso to return to the top.

This deal is probably still in the hands of bad.

It doesn't matter to Mendes, after all, he cashed out at a high position before and got away with it by chance, but it would be troublesome to take over Benfica.

In addition to Cardoso, Benfica also introduced winger Gaitan from Boca Juniors at a high price, spending nearly [-] million. This is obviously a gamble, and this player has not shown amazing performance so far, not reaching the height of Di Maria back then.

Not to mention making money, it is still a suspense whether it will be able to pay back.

On the one hand, his own image, on the other hand, was too risky, so Su Dong never planned to participate.

When you have money, wouldn’t it be nice to take it back to China to buy a house for your parents?

……

Three days after playing Blackburn, Manchester City went south again, on an expedition to Portugal, and challenged Benfica away.

Continuous multi-line battles, coupled with the long journey south, Manchester City's state is not ideal.

Su Dong started the game and opened the scoring for Manchester City in the first half.

But in the second half, it was Jardel who equalized for Benfica before City put the score in again with a header from Gareth Barry.

But in 9 minutes, Cardoso scored a direct free kick to equalize the score for Benfica again.

In the end, the two teams shook hands two to two.

Manchester City eventually took away two away goals in the away game.

……

In another match that was played at the same time as Manchester City's game against Benfica, Porto played at home against Villarreal.

What surprised everyone was that with Falcao's four goals, Porto beat the Yellow Submarine [-]-[-] at home. The Portuguese Super League champion played an unbelievable victory at his home court.

The Yellow Submarine has been focusing on the top four of the league recently. Everyone knows this. Some people even thought that Villarreal might give up the Europa League. But even so, no one thought that Porto would beat Villarreal [-]-[-] at home in the first round.

After this peak duel, the Portuguese media gave Porto crazy praise.

With four goals, Falcao once again proved his super scoring ability, which made Sudong, who also participated in the Europa League semi-finals, unavoidably overshadowed.

The Portuguese media even added insult to injury, saying, "The era belonging to the Soviet Union is coming to an end!"

"European football will usher in the era of Falcao!"

Porto's 33-year-old head coach Villas-Boas also became famous this season.

As Mourinho's right-hand man in the past, he coached Porto after his solo flight. He has already won the domestic league and cup this season, and now he is short of the Europa League.

As long as this championship is won, Porto under the coach of Boas is a veritable triple crown.

Although it is only the Europa League, in the current situation of European football, this is already quite a rare achievement.

Even, to some extent, it can be said that it surpassed the Porto team under Mourinho's coaching.

Of course, the premise is that Porto can win the championship.

(End of this chapter)