Homecoming
Part 20 | Yanbian FC | 延边足球俱乐部 | 연변축구 | FM23 Hardcore Mode
We Win Again
Well, we won another one by a 7-0 scoreline.
Mr. Kwon wound up with two goals, but Luciano Parra wound up being the hero. Parra had 1 goal, 2 assists, and a number of other key passes, and simply ran Zibo ragged.
That makes 10 road wins in a row for us, and means that the dream season continues. We’ll see how long we can keep this up.
We’re also one win away from setting the record for this division with 18. It’s not a great record, of course, since it stems from the days of much smaller leagues in the Chinese third tier. With 23 clubs and 44 games, most clubs will win more than 18. But it’s still a nice record to have.
Homecoming
The female part of our fan base will be out in full force for this next match.
That’s right: Lee Jin-Yong is coming back for his first home game after his injury. And, as predicted, Charlotte has the Lee Jin-Yong fan club ready in full force.
I think he’ll be able to stay out there for the full match this time around. We’ll see how he looks. We certainly could use him, at any rate.
Looking to the Future
Han Songfeng, my assistant manager, stopped me in the hall the other day to talk about two players he thought I should pay more attention to.
The first is Zhu Bin, a 15-year-old kid from the remote city of Jiamusi up in eastern Heilongjiang Province. It’s so far to the east that it’s practically in Russia, and it’s several hundred kilometers north of Vladivostok. Needless to say, Zhu Bin isn’t going to be scared of the Yanji winter!
Zhu Bin is quick, is training quite well, and looks like he might be a great attacking left winger for us.
He’s so good, in fact, that I’m starting to wonder whether I should bring him up to the first team squad in January to give him a try. Han Songfeng thinks that Zhu Bin isn’t quite as good as the 28-year-old Han Jin at the moment, but noted that he’s close. Given how poor our competition has been this season, it might be worth it to give him some game time and see how he develops.
The second youngster is Yan Kun, and there’s an interesting story behind him.
Our scouts told me about Yan Kun at Jiangsu FC right after we beat them. You’ll remember that game — that was that narrow 3-2 win we had at the start of the season, the one and only game in the league that we almost lost.
Anyway, it turns out that I bought their star 20-year-old central defender for 4 million RMB after that match, and promptly put him in the under-21s team and forgot about him.
Yan Kun isn’t as good as our star central defenders. However, he is big. I mean, he’s a giant: 196 centimeters and 93 kilograms, by far the biggest player on our squad. Now, he is slow with all that weight — but does that really matter for a center back?
He’s also got a great personality and a really good attitude. With all the improvement he’s been showing in training, it might be time to pull him up to the first team when January rolls around.
In other words, we may have already found a replacement for Ye Jie, just in case he gets upset again.
Dalian Shide
We host 4th place Dalian Shide next.
This is match that we might lose, even though everybody thinks we will win. Dalian has a good team and has been in good form lately.
We’re scheduled to face a number of good sides in the coming weeks. I think a lot of our recent success has been due to having poor competition, and not really because we are an overwhelmingly dominant team. Only time will tell, of course.