I Want to Be the King of Football

After a 1-0 away win over Blackburn, 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 line, it can at least take a breath.

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

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

In fact, if you count Braga in the quarter-finals, 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, and the semi-finals accounted for half of the country. 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 Europa League semi-finals 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 mortal enemies in the same city. As early as that year, when Sudong and Ronnie played for Sporting Lisbon, Mendes had a close relationship with the Green Lions, which allowed him to successfully sign a vote for Sporting Lisbon. Young players.

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

The real turning point was in 2009.

At that time, due to the financial crisis, Benfica was forced to mortgage 25% of the ownership of the 12 main players in the team to a Portuguese bank, in exchange for a loan of 40 million euros to repay the club's debt.

In other words, the appraised price of these twelve main players is 160 million euros, which is actually a reasonable price.

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

Of course, these two players are more valuable among the main players, but there are also players like Coentrao and David Luiz who stay in the team, who are also very potential and powerful players.

Under the circumstances at the time, Mendes made a decisive move and bought 25% of David Luiz's ownership from the bank for 4.5 million euros, plus the operation of Di Maria to Manchester City's move, and then Ramirez's move to Chelsea, bridged the gap with Benfica's management.

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

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

In Mendez's plan, Portugal has a natural affinity 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 excellent players, who showed good strength in the Portuguese Super League, especially after their appearance in the Champions League, and were more popular with the four major league teams, and their worth naturally skyrocketed.

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

Mendes, players, clubs and teams in the four major leagues, in this chain, each got what they wanted.

Today, this supply chain of players has played a role. Benfica and Porto have reached the semi-finals of the Europa League, 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 indebted and lacks both money and people. The willingness to cooperate with Mendes is very strong. At the most outrageous time, there was only Coentrao in the starting lineup of Benfica, a Portuguese, and all the others were Foreign aid from South America.

As early as when Mendes laid out, Su Dong already knew about his plan and was quite optimistic about this prospect, but he did not participate in it.

Instead, choose to stay out of it.

Player ownership works really well.

Not to mention others, let's say that David Luiz moved to Manchester City, and Mendes made millions of euros from it. This is not counting the agent's rake, it is purely a profit from player ownership.

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

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

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

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

The lifetime contract with the American sports brand is still under negotiation. Su Dong’s offer is an unprecedented high price, let alone world football. Even in the sports world, there has never been such an astonishingly high price. The other party is still hesitating.

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

With this contract alone, Su Dong will have nothing to worry about for the rest of his life.

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

Up to now, Su Dong doesn't even 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 already been turned over. Several times, which made Su Dong have to admire his parents' investment vision.

In their words, in the future, Su Dong could spend his whole life simply by collecting rent.

Under such circumstances, how could Su Dong bet 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 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 hailed by the Portuguese media as the best scoring player in the Portuguese Super League after Sudong. , the limelight is always there.

It can be said that, apart from being a little older, there is nothing wrong with Cardoso, and it 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 9 million euros and buy 80% of Cardoso's ownership, which was also a very good deal at the time.

Mendes wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to cash out part of the profits, and Benfica’s abacus was also very good, that is, after letting Cardoso score crazy goals for another season, cash out at a high position, and then he 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. Since his comeback, he has played 33 times for Benfica and scored 18 goals. This report card is not bad, but it is better than that. There was a marked decline last season.

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

The deal is probably still rotten.

Mendes doesn't care. After all, he cashed out at a high position before and got away with luck, but it would be troublesome for Benfica to take over.

In addition to Cardoso, Benfica also introduced winger Gaitan from Boca Juniors at a high price, spending nearly 10 million. This is obviously a big gamble, and this player has so far not shown amazing performance. Less than the height of Di Maria.

Not to mention making money, it is a suspense whether it can be repaid.

On the one hand, it is his own image, and on the other hand, the risk is too great, so Su Dong never planned to participate.

When you have money, take it back to your country to buy a house for your parents, isn't it fragrant?

...

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

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

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

But in the second half, Jardel equalised for Benfica, and then City took the lead again with a header from Gareth Barry.

But in the 59th minute, Cardoso scored a direct free kick to equalize the score again for Benfica.

In the end, the two teams were in a two-to-two draw.

Manchester City ended up taking two away goals away.

...

In the other match, which was played at the same time as Manchester City's game against Benfica, Porto took on Villarreal at home.

What surprised everyone was that, with Falcao's big four, Porto beat the Yellow Submarines 5-1 at home, and the Portuguese Super League champions played an incredible victory at their own home. .

The Yellow Submarines have recently focused on the competition for the top four in the league. Everyone knows this, and some people even think that Villarreal is likely to give up the Europa League, but even so, no one thought that Porto Even in the first round, they beat Villarreal 5-1 at home.

After the end of this peak matchup, the Portuguese media sent crazy praise to Porto.

With four goals, Falcao once again proved his superb scoring ability, making Su Dong, who also participated in the Europa League semi-finals, eclipsed.

The Portuguese media even said to the ground, The era that belongs to the Soviet Union is coming to an end!

European football will usher in the era of Falcao!

And Porto's 33-year-old coach Boas has also made his name in one fell swoop this season.

As the right-hand man of Mourinho in the past, he coached Porto after a solo flight. This season, he has won the championship in domestic leagues and cups, and now the Europa League is missing.

As long as they win this championship, Porto under the coaching 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 a certain extent, it can be said that it surpassed the Porto team coached by Mourinho.

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