Chapter 718 - 643: Do You Want to Coach a World-Class Star?

Chapter 718: Chapter 643: Do You Want to Coach a World-Class Star?

Evergreen Garden, Jiang City.

General Manager Chen Xudong emerged from the restroom with a thunderous look on his face. Under the watchful eyes of many staff members in the office area, he kicked open his office door and stormed inside, his expression ugly.

Everyone present exchanged glances, too scared to make a peep.

His assistant, Wang Xiangping, quickly stood up, followed him into the office, and closed the door behind him.

As soon as he entered, he saw Chen Xudong fuming, his face dark.

"Xiaowang, this afternoon, I need you to go to the municipal bureau again. Find Political Commissar Lin and see if you can get him out for dinner tonight. If he agrees, don’t forget to book a table at our usual spot," Chen Xudong said immediately.

Wang Xiangping nodded and made a note of it. As he went to pour some water, he asked, "General Manager Chen, what did the municipal bureau say?"

Chen Xudong irritably yanked at his collar, then pointed at the air conditioner and snapped, "How old is this piece of junk? Call someone to get it fixed."

Wang Xiangping just nodded quickly again, saying he’d make the call in a moment.

After his outburst, Chen Xudong calmed down a bit. He snorted and said, "What else could they say? Just that it’s hard to investigate and we should wait for news. But the key is, how long has it been! You see the state our club is in. We’re counting on ticket sales to make money. Them selling fake tickets is undermining our very foundation!"

Chen Xudong slammed the table again in anger.

This year, Huanghe Tower had successfully been promoted to the Chinese Super League. After years of struggling, they’d finally made it, and things were looking up.

The football market was booming, too.

Their home ground, Xinhua Road Stadium, was practically sold out for every match.

This was a good thing. What club’s general manager wouldn’t want a hot market?

The problem was, now there were counterfeit tickets.

Xinhua Road Stadium was too small, with a capacity of only ten thousand. Yet, for every match, twenty thousand people often flooded into the stadium.

This meant that at least ten thousand people were getting in with fake tickets, or simply without any tickets at all.

Selling a ticket for just thirty or forty yuan was already pitiful enough; it wasn’t easy to make a bit of money. Now, a huge chunk of that was going to the ticket scalpers.

The worst part was that the club ended up looking bad. When they had security try to stop people, the fans would complain, "I paid real money for this ticket! How was I supposed to know it was fake? Why are you hassling me instead of going after the people selling them?"

So it was simply impossible to manage.

After a few rounds of matches, looking at the jam-packed stadium, Chen Xudong was happy, but his heart was also bleeding.

Not to mention, with so many people flooding in, it was a safety hazard. The fire department had already warned them several times.

Wang Xiangping quickly tried to soothe him. "General Manager Chen, don’t be so anxious. This problem will be solved eventually."

Just as he was speaking, Pei Encai pushed the door open and walked in.

"Old Pei, you’re just in time. What happened with the match the day before yesterday?" Chen Xudong asked in a low voice.

His sharp gaze was fixed on Pei Encai.

Against Pioneer, they clearly could have gotten three points, but it ended in a draw.

They had beaten so many tougher teams, yet against the last-place Pioneer, they somehow only managed a draw. It was completely unjustifiable!

’So they really got scared when they saw Batty and didn’t dare to play, is that it?’

That’s why Chen Xudong suspected something was wrong.

Pei Encai immediately frowned. After a moment’s thought, he said, "Old Chen, don’t take it out on me. Just consider it an accident. We got a little careless."

"Careless?"

Chen Xudong snorted coldly. He thought for a moment before adding a warning, "Old Pei, we worked our asses off to get promoted to the Super League. Don’t you dare pull any funny business on me. And at the start of the season, we made a public statement that integrity would be our foundation."

He didn’t say the two words outright, but his meaning was clear.

"I know what I’m doing," Pei Encai muttered with a nod. Then he said, "Let’s not talk about this. I came here about something else."

"Go on."

Chen Xudong didn’t press the issue.

Pei Encai continued, "Old Chen, see if you can squeeze out some funds to buy an Ultra-Low Temperature Freezing Chamber."

"A what?"

Chen Xudong was taken aback.

"An Ultra-Low Temperature Freezing Chamber," Pei Encai repeated. "You know how Xiaojia and the others were sent by the Football Association to the United States for advanced training."

Jia Xiuquan, who was studying in Phoenix, was Pei Encai’s protégé.

"They often send me materials, and they mentioned a piece of equipment, this Ultra-Low Temperature Freezing Chamber. The principle is probably the same as using ice packs for cold compresses, but the effect is much better."

"He’s been recommending it to me. He says it’s widely used now, with several manufacturers making them. There’s one in Japan, and the price has come down a lot. We could probably get one for three or four million."

"I was wondering if we could buy one and then ramp up our training intensity."

The main function of an Ultra-Low Temperature Freezing Chamber is to rapidly alleviate athletic fatigue and injuries.

If your recovery ability is insufficient, you can’t increase training intensity. If you do, you’ll easily get injured.

Bringing in the equipment would allow them to increase training intensity, making it easier to achieve better results.

Jia Xiuquan had sent a lot of training materials, which had greatly benefited Pei Encai. He wanted to adopt them, but the conditions just didn’t allow for it.

If you were to ask who had the worst training conditions in the entire Chinese Super League, the answer would undoubtedly be Huanghe Tower.

Have you ever seen a respectable Chinese Super League team based in a residential complex?

Huanghe Tower was one such team.

Evergreen Garden, where the team was located, was just a residential complex.

The team rented an entire building unit, which housed their daily operations and player dormitories.

The players didn’t even have single rooms; they had to share doubles, and that included national team players like Zheng Bin.

No, they hadn’t even rented a whole unit, but rather most of one.

A few apartments were still occupied by regular residents.

In other words, a resident could walk out their door and bump right into a national football player in the stairwell.

The living situation was one thing, but the training ground was even worse.

Huanghe Tower’s training base was near the complex, a straight-line distance of 200 meters. There was a large patch of turf there, about the size of two football fields, which the team rented.

You could forget about routine maintenance; the field was riddled with hidden potholes.

There weren’t even proper lines drawn. Aside from a few dilapidated goals, there was nothing.

Next to it were a few prefabricated huts, the kind you see on construction sites.

And that was their team’s gym.

These hardware conditions were truly one-of-a-kind in the Chinese Super League.

Chen Xudong understood. He blinked and said, "Wait, back up a bit. How much did you say that thing costs?"

Pei Encai said, "Only about three or four million!"

"Only?"

Chen Xudong let out a derisive laugh. "Old Pei, do you hear yourself? ’Only’ three or four million? Go find someone who wants to buy me. If you can sell me for three or four million, you won’t have to. I’ll sell myself."

Our piss-ant home stadium only brings in four or five hundred thousand in ticket revenue per game. Ten home games and we only make four or five million.

And you want to spend it all on one piece of equipment? You’ve got to be kidding me!

"Old Pei, you know the team’s situation as well as I do. If I had that three or four million, I would have rented you a proper training base long ago."

"And what’s this about an Ultra-Low Temperature Freezing Chamber? Just listen to the name. Does that sound like something we can afford?"

"Besides, you said it yourself, the principle is the same as using ice packs. So what, my air conditioner is broken, but our freezer is broken too?"

"And I’m not afraid to be blunt. With their current skill level, do they even deserve to use such a high-end piece of gear?"

This tirade made Pei Encai’s face flush red.

"Alright, forget it. It’s not happening." Chen Xudong waved a dismissive hand, grabbed a newspaper from his desk, and gestured that he could leave.

Pei Encai sighed and stood up, his face tense.

Just as he was about to leave, he heard Chen Xudong let out a sound of surprise.

Chen Xudong suddenly sat bolt upright. "Old Pei, were there sixty thousand people at the match the day before yesterday?"

Pei Encai stopped, thought for a moment, and nodded. "What’s wrong?" he asked.

Chen Xudong showed the copy of Southern Sports in his hand to Pei Encai. "Look at this. The report says sixty thousand people were at Tianhe Stadium for the match the other day. It says tickets were impossible to find, and the price was jacked up to 2,000 yuan a pop."

"Pioneer also disclosed that for this one match, the average ticket price reached 104 yuan. Sixty thousand people... that’s a full six million in revenue."

He scratched his messy hair fiercely, sighing with a mix of envy and frustration.

Huanghe Tower’s total projected home ticket revenue for this year was only a little over six million. ’And you guys earned that in a single home game?’

"And that’s not all. They’re also holding a fan meet-and-greet at the Tianhe Stadium, selling tickets for that too. And they’re even more expensive, 100 yuan each."

"Tickets are just as hard to get for that. Their interviews say many people paid three or four times the price just to get a ticket."

"I remember the Tianhe Stadium can hold over 8,000 people, right? So that’s almost another million!"

Pei Encai took the newspaper and began to read it carefully.

The front page of Southern Sports had a headline: "A Booming Football Market: Pioneer Sports’s Code to Profitability."

The stadium had been full at the time, but Pei Encai hadn’t thought much of it. Now he realized how incredible it was.

An average ticket price of one hundred yuan... that was a bit outrageous.

’Are people in Guang City really that rich?!’

"Old Chen, there’s more," Pei Encai said, pointing at the report. "There’s an interview with Dr. Chen further down. He said that after announcing the signings of Batty and Kaginya, they’ve already sold 120,000 of their jerseys. At a market price of 118 yuan each, that alone is over fourteen million in revenue."

"And then there’s team naming rights and jersey sponsorships. Look, they announced it directly. Someone has already offered sixteen million for the secondary naming rights. He’s making an insane amount of money!"

Chen Xudong saw it too and nodded emphatically.

The league had just started, and they’d already made this much.

Just selling 120,000 jerseys sounded like something out of a fairy tale to him.

’What kind of idiot would buy an official jersey?’

’Can’t you just wear a knockoff?’

They sold jerseys too. After bringing back Zheng Bin this year, Chen Xudong had also planned to sell his jerseys. But in the end? Forget 120,000, they had probably sold about 12.

He knew Batty’s influence was astounding and that his fans were countless, but he still felt it was a bit of an exaggeration. He suspected Pioneer was faking its numbers.

"You think they’re just making it up?" Chen Xudong said.

It’s easy to say whatever you want; who knows if it’s true or not.

Pei Encai shook his head. "I doubt it. The guy’s an American. Foreigners tend to do things by the book. He probably wouldn’t just make things up."

At that moment, Wang Xiangping, who was standing nearby, chimed in. "General Manager Chen, the thing is, their income is high, but so are their expenses, right? I saw media reports that Pioneer’s contract with Batty is for four million US dollars a year, and that’s after taxes. Kaginya’s is probably similar."

Four million US dollars was nearly thirty million yuan. For two players, that was an investment of sixty million. If they weren’t making money like this, it would be hard to break even.

Chen Xudong quickly did the math in his head. "Even with a sixty-million-yuan investment for two players, if they make six million in ticket sales per home game, they’ll recoup the cost in just ten home games. But there are still more than ten home games left after that. Breaking even shouldn’t be a problem."

"And that’s not even counting jerseys and other things. I think they’ll definitely turn a profit in the end."

At this point, Chen Xudong suddenly snatched the newspaper back and started reading it carefully again.

He remembered a line from Chen Yu’s interview.

A closer look confirmed he hadn’t misread it. When talking about foreign players, Chen Yu said that not only would Pioneer continue to sign top-tier stars, but they were also willing to act as intermediaries to help bring more stars to the Chinese Super League.

An idea sparked in his mind. Chen Xudong looked up at Pei Encai and said, "Old Pei, how would you like to coach a world-class superstar?"

Huh?

Pei Encai froze, giving Chen Xudong a strange look.

’You won’t even shell out for a piece of equipment that costs three or four million, and you’re dreaming about a world-class star? You must be dreaming.’