Football: The immortal legend on the green field

A year passes in the blink of an eye.

Suffering from the harsh treatment of society, Shen Bin quickly grew from an ignorant teenager into a 178 cm tall young man.

Shen Bin was lying alone on the gently undulating hillside, covered with green grass. Below the hillside was an endless field of tulips. The breeze brought with it the fragrance of the flowers, a very strange scent.

The wind blew across my face and clothes, and moved the huge windmills, which creaked and turned. The tulip fields rose and fell like the waves of the sea in the wind, and groups of butterflies danced in the wind...

Shen Bin found himself missing home again, even though the cozy little shop in Jinling, Longjiang no longer belonged to him and his son, but he still thought of it from time to time.

It has been almost a year since I left home, and I don’t know when I can return to that place that I miss so much.

I remember that when I was lying on a stretcher and being carried out of the hospital by medical staff, old coach Ge Jiayang turned his back and shrugged his shoulders, feeling sad about the unfortunate fate of the most outstanding disciple he had trained.

Also that evening, Li Meng stroked his injured leg in front of the hospital bed and said, "If your leg can't be cured, come back. I will work hard to make money to support you. You are leaving soon, don't forget me..." Then she opened her mouth and bit Shen Bin's left arm hard.

Next to the town of Albany is a sanatorium belonging to Ajax. It is the busiest time during the summer off-season. The geothermal heat here is very rich. The town of Albany is a volcanic rock landform, so the hot springs here contain many minerals, which have the effects of detoxification, killing insects, and removing wind and unblocking meridians.

Soaking in hot springs here can promote blood circulation throughout the body, and has the effect of treating insomnia and dreaminess, and beautifying the skin; it can relax joints and muscles and eliminate fatigue.

It can treat paralysis of hands and feet, muscle and bone cramps, scabies, stubborn arthritis, eyebrow and hair loss, sores and other diseases.

After a whole season of competition, nearly 20% of the players have injuries of one kind or another. They will use this period to recover here and prepare for the next season in a healthy state.

There are also some veterans or senior executives who have made contributions to Ajax who come here to recuperate. Shen Bin met Cruyff and Rijkaard here.

Shen Bin's three operations were all successful and he recovered very well. After reviewing his recovery report, experts from the Semetero Sports Medical Center in Madrid told him through an interpreter that he had great hope of returning to the court.

But the prerequisite is that you must undergo long-term and arduous rehabilitation treatment and gradual training under the guidance of professionals...

The cost of rehabilitation treatment was too expensive, so Shen Bin only completed the first half of the first phase of rehabilitation treatment because they had no money. Four days after the stitches were removed, the father and son quietly packed up their simple luggage and left Madrid.

The father and son could no longer afford the high cost of rehabilitation treatment.

Because of Shen Bin's injury, Shen Yuanchao could no longer ask relatives and friends for money. Even if he did, he was afraid he would not be able to borrow money. The father and son were heavily in debt in the country, and he could not drag down his relatives and friends in order to realize his dream that might never come true.

This injury not only caused the father and son to fall into poverty from their comfortable and well-off life, but also implicated all their relatives and friends.

The person Shen Bin felt most sorry for was Dai Zhao, the former captain of Liaoning Tianlun U17. He learned from his correspondence with Zhu Han that Dai Zhao had caused Wang Dong's dissatisfaction and led to a conflict between the two parties because he had forced Shen Bin to give all the 30 yuan he earned from match-fixing to Shen Bin.

During the argument, Dai Zhao broke Wang Dong's nose, and as a result, the club decided to expel Dai Zhao from the team.

Because Dai Zhao's family was in great financial difficulty, he never returned to school after leaving the team. Zhu Han found him at a construction site, where he had been working as a laborer for half a year.

This man from Northeast China who played match-fixing to raise training fees for his football dream still couldn't escape the ultimate fate of playing football for the poor in China, and returned to the place where his birth determined that he should go.

He has decided to give up football...

Fortunately, Ajax signed Shen Bin and Chen Tao, and in the first year they lured advertising business from more than a dozen domestic companies, which resulted in Ajax's advertising revenue increasing by more than 03 million euros in the 04- season.

Amid these involvements, Ajax did not turn a blind eye to Shen Yuanchao and his son. Although they did not continue to pay for Shen Bin's later rehabilitation expenses, they still arranged for Shen Yuanchao to work as a garden maintenance worker in this rest base, which can at least play a significant role in the later recovery of Shen Bin's injured leg.

Shen Bin and his son did not listen to the advice of the experts at the Semetero Sports Medical Center in Madrid and did not return there at the specified time.

His second medical examination was done at a general hospital in Amsterdam.

Later, Shen Bin did not even go to Amsterdam, but went to a clinic in the small town of Albany for examination, which saved a lot of expenses.

The father and son still owe a lot of debts, and perhaps they will never be able to pay them back in their lifetime...

Chen Tao, who went abroad with Shen Yuanchao and his son, was unable to stay in Ajax. Last year, when Chen Tao was 18 years old, he failed to be selected for the reserve team.

Ajax's youth training system is very cruel. If Shen Bin had not been injured, he would have joined Ajax's U17 team. Ajax's U7/U9/U11/U13 teams have 6 teams in each year, and each team has about 150 people. They are all talents recruited by scouts from all over the world.

After they arrive here, they will be divided into 6 teams according to their abilities: A, B, C, D, E, and F. Only teams A and B can play formal games. Team A participates in the Dutch National Youth League, and Team B can only participate in the Amsterdam Regional League.

At the end of each month, the six teams will make personnel adjustments based on the situation. As long as you don’t perform well this month, you may drop directly from Team A to Team C next month.

Starting from U15, two teams will be cut, which means there are four U15 teams. Every year, one-third of the children who fail to develop up to expectations will pack up and go home.

When it comes to U17, two more teams will be cut, and only 17 people will be left in U70, who will be divided into two teams A/B according to their level.

Chen Tao passed the test and was selected for the U17B team. He played for half a season in the Amsterdam Regional League with the U17B team. Due to injuries in Team A, he was substituted in during this period and played a national youth league game with Team A.

Chen Tao turned 18 in March this year. At this age, Ajax's U19 team will only retain one team, and all players promoted from the U17 team will have to make the first choice in their lives.

The best performing players have a certain chance of being spotted by adult team coaches, entering the adult team directly, and signing their first formal professional contract in their lives. In that case, their future will be bright. At the very least, they can transfer to a relegation team in the top five European leagues and continue their professional career.

Of course, the chances of this happening are very small, with only about three or five lucky people every year.

Then they will go to the adult team reserve team, also signing a professional contract, but the salary is much less. They will participate in the reserve team league with the substitutes of the substitutes in the team, or represent the team in some cup competitions and miscellaneous competitions that the coach has to give up.

The next ones will enter the U19 youth team. The current performance of these players will not be considered. They are all assessed by youth training experts as players with potential. Due to the speed of individual growth, these people are players with unlimited potential but relatively late development.

A total of about thirty-five people will be drawn from the above three types, and the remaining half of the players will be disposed of by Ajax. They will first be spotted by some Ajax satellite teams, and then loaned out or directly transferred to some low-level leagues in Western Europe to gain points. If no one wants them, the remaining dozen or so will be given by Ajax to teams in the second and third tier leagues in the Netherlands at a bargain price.

The channels for these players to rise are relatively narrow. Although they are considered professional players, very few of them can finally make it. The vast majority of them will spend their entire careers in low-level leagues until they retire.

After the above four rounds of screening, about 50 to 60 people will be left. If no one wants you even after you give them away, I'm sorry, you have to go home and do what you need to do.

At that time, Chen Tao had three choices. During the training camp, he was spotted by the head coach of Cheltenham Club in Hungary, one of Ajax's satellite teams. Cheltenham is a lower-middle team in Hungary's first-level league.

The second option was to take a fancy to SBV Elite, a relegation underdog in the Dutch second division, the Eredivisie.

At that time, the Ajax U19 coach gave Chen Tao three options. One was to transfer directly to Cheltenham with a transfer fee of 30 euros, and the other option was to transfer to SBV Elite for 10 euros, but Ajax owned half of Chen Tao's ownership. The last option was to stay in the U19B team temporarily to continue his studies.

Chen Tao finally chose to stay in the Netherlands because he didn't want to leave Amsterdam, leave Shen Bin and his son to start from scratch in a strange place. He also didn't want to stay in the U19 and just wanted to get a professional contract as soon as possible and make money to pay off his family's debts. Because of football, his parents also owed a lot of foreign debts in China.

Chen Tao signed a semi-exclusive contract when he transferred to SBV Elite.

Generally, there are three modes for young Ajax players to play for other teams. The first is loan, which is for players that Ajax thinks have a promising future. In order to let these players play more official games, cultivate their game experience, and then sell them for a good price in the future.

The second type is that both parties to the transfer hold half of the player's ownership. This type of coach is not too sure about the future development of the player. There are also people like Chen Tao.

The third type is players that the coach thinks are good enough at first glance, most of whom can only play in low-level leagues. But there are times when the coach makes a mistake.

SBV Elite is a long-established strong team in the Netherlands, but after the glory of the 1960s and 1970s, they have been falling behind in the competition with strong teams such as Ajax, PSV Eindhoven and Feyenoord. The team's strength has been declining year by year until they were relegated from the First Division five years ago. They have been in the Second Division for five years and have no hope of returning to the top league.

A few days ago, after signing the contract, Chen Tao came to say goodbye to Shen Bin and his son and then returned to China to visit his relatives.

He has to wait until the Dutch league's new season pre-match call before he can come back to meet Shen Bin and his son.