Perfect Season?
Can we do it?
Please note that you can find the latest standings and selected statistics on this splash page.
Yantai Yintai
I wish I could tell you that this was a close, dramatic game. It wasn’t.
We didn’t just beat Yantai. We pulverized them. We won every single way we could. We dominated this match, playing as if the other team weren’t even there.
Zhu Bin wound up with 4 goals in this match, the last of which was an emphatic shot from range that I doubt anybody could stop. He’s only 16, and yet he looks like an absolute machine. What a player!
We won this one 8-0 in the end. Mueanta had two goals, Andrija Kolundzic piped in with one, and Lee Jin-Yong, who has been the talk of Yanji all season, scored an early goal as well.
Yantai didn’t have a single shot on goal.
This wasn’t our largest margin of victory all season long, but it was certainly our most impressive win. These boys want to win. You can feel it.
Awards
With the end of the season comes the conferring of awards.
Luciano Parra wound up just 3 goals short of the top goalscorer award. Jing Wenbo of Beijing University won that with 36, with Xiao Jinqing came in second place with 35. Parra only had 33. I actually haven’t started him lately because of his sudden scoring drought; hopefully he’ll remember how to score during the summer.
As we predicted, Paul Wade wound up winning Young Player of the Year. It wasn’t even close. He was arguably the best player on our squad, with an amazing 83% pass completion percentage.
Oh yeah — and I wound up with the Best Manager award.
Now, that’s not Best Manager for all of China, mind you. It only includes all managers in the Chinese National Second Division North. However, it’s a good start.
Foul Play?
Jacob Dicko Eng has apparently been upset.
If you’ve been following along, you know that I’ve been starting Zhu Bin on the left wing. Dicko Eng was purchased to play in that position. Jacob is only 18 years old, and should be on the club for years to come.
Zhu Bin is a better player, though. He’s Chinese, and he’s only 16. I simply couldn’t find a way to get Dicko Eng back on the squad.
Anyway, Jacob threw a fit, as you would expect. I had a hard time trying to talk him down. His agent was in a huff, and I was worried that he was going to start getting the rest of the squad riled up.
That didn’t quite happen, though. We were able to calm him down eventually. And then Charlotte got the brilliant idea of having him over for dinner.
I didn’t see anything wrong with the meal. We had “Cherry Shaped Pork” (櫻桃肉), a famous Suzhou dish with quite a history. Everybody seemed fine afterwards, and I certainly felt fine the next day.
I don’t know what Charlotte did, but whatever she did worked well. Dicko Eng has food poisoning, and will wind up missing the Chinese FA Cup final after all.
You know, it would have been nice to have him as a substitute. But I should probably refrain from tempting fate.
The Cup Final
Well, here we are. Nobody expected us to get this far. We’re playing in the final of the Chinese FA Cup against Shenzhen FC.
The media have us picked as favorites to win, which is insane. We’re missing numerous players due to various ailments. George Hall and Jung In-Gyom are both away on international duty.
Plus, Shenzhen is in 4th place in the Chinese Super League. I mean, if we do pull this off, you’ve got to think that we should storm through our schedule next season as well.
We’ll see what happens. I’m nervous.
Please note that you can find the latest standings and selected statistics on this splash page.