Moneyball
Big Spender
Moneyball
This was better than Christmas morning. It was better than anything I’d ever experienced, actually.
It turns out that Chairman Guo Kang is rich. Rich as in billionaire rich. Rich as in endless transfer budget rich.
And he had just put me in charge of his new hobby: trying to get this club to the top.
The transfer budget technically wasn’t endless. The numbers weren’t entirely clear, but I gathered that it was somewhere around 360 million renminbi, which is probably about $60 million USD. Our wage budget was a cool 12 million renminbi per week, or about $2 million USD.
It was a dream come true.
I pinched myself several times that first day to make sure it wasn’t a dream. I was there, all right, as present and as real as I had ever been at any point in my life. I ate lunch, I drank, I used the bathroom, I stubbed my toe on the corner of my desk, and I spoke to everybody around me. It was real, and I was really there.
The problem, of course, is that I had no idea how in the world I’d arrived. It just, well, it just happened, I guess.
Another problem soon made itself manifest. It wasn’t October 2022 anymore. We were back to early July, as if nothing had ever happened.
Almost like somebody pushed a reset button.
Europe
Waking up to find yourself on the other side of the globe is one thing. Time travel is another. But that was nothing compared to the next surprise.
I looked at the memos that were laid out on my desk. One explained new changes to the Chinese football structure. And it simply didn’t make sense to me.
The document was written in a very bureaucratic tone, like something that had gone through multiple hands and clearance levels to obfuscate as much as possible.
The gist of it was clear enough, however.
Due to some sort of political negotiation — perhaps some kind of international incident? — UEFA had come to a sudden and unexpected agreement with the Chinese Football Association.
From now on, there would be a path to European competition for the best teams in China’s top flight. In the current season, the Chinese Super League winners would advance to the Champions League First Qualifying Round. The second, third, and possibly fourth place teams would have the chance to enter the Conference League through the Second Qualifying Round.
In a messy cursive style at the bottom of that memo was a note to me. “We win!” is what I made out after looking closely for a few minutes, followed by the traditional Chinese “加油” (“let’s go!”) underneath. And it was signed “Chairman Guo.”
I learned as I thumbed through the other documents that China had made a number of concessions to open that door. Chinese teams could now field a number of foreign players; we could register up to 20 in the first team in our division. No more than 8 foreign players could be on the pitch at once, which was a little less than ideal — but still struck me as more liberal than any of the other Asian football associations. The restriction against non-Chinese goalies remained, but I figured we could work within those parameters.
This was going to be an adventure like no other.
New Home
I spent most of my first day getting to know the squad.
It was a messy squad at best. Most of the players were unambitious. We had a great looking 15-year-old goalkeeper, Wu Ping, who seemed clinically depressed to me.
And so I went to work, trying to figure out how to spend all of this money, and hoping not to disappoint Chairman Guo.
It was no easy task, by the way. If you think you’re good at negotiations, you try convincing an up-and-coming young superstar that he should leave the clubs of Europe for a Chinese third tier club that nobody’s ever heard of. I heard more laughter from agents on the phone than I’ve heard at comedy clubs.
When 5 o’clock hit, I suddenly realized that I didn’t know where home was, or how to get there.
You can imagine my shock when my staff assistant told me that my car was ready.
Chairman Guo had thought of everything — including the fact that I didn’t know how to get home. And so I found myself in the back of a black Audi with special license plates, being whisked through the busy streets of Yanji.
Yanji
Yanji is the sort of city that simply has to be real. No writer, no matter how drunk, would ever dare to concoct such a ridiculously multicultural town in such a sensitive part of the world.
The city of Yanji is only 45 kilometers away from North Hamgyong Province, the northernmost province in North Korea. As such, Yanji, and the surrounding Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of Jilin Province, has been the site of countless international incidents over the years.
Yanji and the surrounding area itself is also home to the majority of China’s Korean minority group (朝鲜族). Far from North Korean defectors, these are Chinese citizens of Korean ethnic origin, most of whom descended from families that crossed into Chinese territory during the Japanese occupation of Korea, back when the border wasn’t quite as clear as it is today.
As such, Yanji has a real Korean flare for a Chinese city. South Korean shops abound, and it’s easy to find North Korean restaurants all around town.
It’s also a pretty crazy place to raise a family.
The drive wasn’t long, of course. We lived in a high rise apartment building in Renping, a small residential section of town very close to the stadium and the team offices.
We were also close to the airport, which I soon learned offered daily flights to Beijing, Shenyang, and Pyongyang, with occasional flights to Seoul and Hokkaido. And that was it — a far cry from taking those Bavarian trains to Munich!
Magic?
Charlotte wasn’t surprised to see me ride up at all. “How was your first day?” she muttered matter-of-factly, as if nothing had changed at all.
“Why are we here?” I asked her. “What happened?”
“Oh, that,” she said, as if I were bothering her about some silly triviality. “You wanted a new beginning, right? Here’s your new beginning.”
“Yes, but… how?”
“Oh, wait,” she exclaimed, and handed me a manilla envelope. “Take this with you to work tomorrow. I’m sorry — I forgot.”
There was something written on the outside in some language I didn’t quite know — Danish, or perhaps Norwegian? I could make out the letters “Knap” etched on the seal.
“And one more thing,” she said. “I kind of… I might have exaggerated your resume a little bit. Just act the part — they won’t know the difference.”
And that was the last we spoke about any of it.
The Season Begins
More transpired during the offseason than I can cover here. Instead of boring you with our numerous transfers, I’ll just cut to the chase. We can go over that later, of course.
After a month and a half of cajoling and making false promises, I managed to piece together a side that will hopefully be a bit less embarrassing than what we had before. And so we find ourselves in mid-August, ready for the newly resurrected Yanbian FC to play its first match against Wuxi Wugou.
Everybody expects us to win, of course. The press thinks that we’re shoe-ins to win the entire Chinese National Second Division Northern Group (that just rolls off your tongue, doesn’t it?). Chairman Guo demands victory right from the get-go.
And I think we might be able to make it happen. That envelope Charlotte gave me just might be the dose of medicine that I needed.
I don’t understand exactly how this happened, and I don’t know what to expect next. All I know is that it’s time for us to show what we’re made of. It’s time for football.