Chapter 176 Making Things Difficult

During training breaks, the players would always get together to find some fun.

Like this time, Nuri Şahin, who had recovered from his injury and was in good shape and mood, found his midfield partner Zhou Yi.

"Hey, Zhou Yi, how about we play a game?"

"What game?" Zhou Yi asked.

"See that goal over there?" Şahin pointed to the goal in the distance.

Zhou Yi nodded.

"We'll play a game where we try to hit the goalposts with the soccer ball," Şahin said.

"That's it?"

Zhou Yi's question surprised Şahin and piqued the interest of the surrounding teammates. "Simple? Zhou Yi, do you know what you're saying?"

"It's just hitting the goalposts," Zhou Yi shrugged.

"Alright, let's have a competition then..." Şahin hadn't finished speaking when Klopp squeezed in.

"What's going on? What's going on?"

Klopp was the kind of coach who was very serious and strict during training, with high demands on the players. If you weren't focused, were distracted, or couldn't meet his requirements during training, then you could expect to be scolded by him.

Klopp could be quite intimidating when he got angry.

No one on the team hadn't been scolded by him. Hadn't Zhou Yi been scolded by him during the first team training camp?

But outside of training, Klopp was actually a very interesting and easygoing coach.

Seeing the head coach approaching, Hummels repeated the conversation between Zhou Yi and Şahin just now.

"Interesting," Klopp said with a smile after hearing this, and then said to the two of them, "How about this, I'll be the referee for you. The loser will have to accept a penalty."

"What penalty?" Şahin asked.

"Twenty push-ups," Klopp held up two fingers.

"No problem," Zhou Yi nodded.

"Alright, everyone gets five chances, whoever uses the fewest attempts wins," Klopp simply announced the rules.

Zhou Yi said to Şahin, "You go first." Şahin wasn't polite and started trying after setting up the soccer ball.

He was just past the center circle, using his left foot to kick the soccer ball towards the goal.

The first kick, the soccer ball went directly out of the goal range.

For the second kick, Şahin observed a little and kicked again. This time the soccer ball flew directly into the goal.

"Good shot, the ball went in!" Zhou Yi cheered for Şahin from the side. But everyone could hear that Zhou Yi was actually heckling him.

Şahin was not disturbed by Zhou Yi and tried for the third time.

This time he used a little less force, and the soccer ball landed in front of the goal and then bounced towards the goalpost, but unfortunately… it still brushed past the goalpost!

"Aiya!" The surrounding teammates sighed with regret.

For the fourth time, Şahin prepared for a little longer. He rearranged the soccer ball, making sure that the soccer ball would not roll after he let go, so that the valve stem would be facing him.

Then he stepped back, took a running start, and kicked!

With a bang, the soccer ball flew towards the goal.

After drawing a parabola in the air, the soccer ball accurately hit the crossbar!

"Yeah!" Şahin couldn't help but clenched his fist and shouted excitedly.

The teammates next to him also cheered.

It was indeed not easy to hit that thin goalpost from such a long distance. Even Şahin, who was excellent at long passes, tried four times before succeeding.

Next, everyone turned their attention to Zhou Yi, who had boasted before that it was easy.

So now everyone wanted to see how many kicks he would need.

"It's your turn, Zhou Yi," Şahin reminded him.

"Okay, watch me!" Saying that, Zhou Yi ran straight towards... the goal!

Everyone didn't understand what Zhou Yi was doing.

"No need to pick up the ball, Zhou Yi. There are some here..." Großkreutz reminded Zhou Yi.

But Zhou Yi seemed to have not heard at all, and ran all the way to the goal, picked up one of the soccer balls that Şahin had kicked over.

Then he placed the soccer ball next to the goalpost, swung his leg, and kicked the soccer ball towards the goalpost!

The soccer ball accurately hit the goalpost!

"One shot, one soul!" Zhou Yi raised his arms and shouted. "I won!"

A group of people stared blankly at Zhou Yi cheering and celebrating, never expecting Zhou Yi to be so shameless!

Großkreutz roared at him: "Win what! Who said you could kick from such a close distance?!"

Zhou Yi ran back with an innocent look: "But the rules didn't specify the distance of the kick."

Everyone thought about it carefully, and that was indeed the case...

Neither Şahin nor Klopp said that they had to kick from a certain distance from the goal.

But everyone defaulted to a long distance, otherwise, if everyone understood it like Zhou Yi, what was the point of the competition? Because anyone could easily hit the goalpost, just like Zhou Yi said "simple".

But now Zhou Yi had actually exploited the loophole in the rules...

"Too shameless!" Şahin protested, he couldn't accept that he had lost the competition like this.

"This is called rationally using the rules, Nuri!" Zhou Yi even turned around to educate Şahin.

"Hey!" Şahin rolled his eyes, and then turned his attention to Klopp, "Coach, you say!"

The others also looked at Klopp.

Klopp was the referee of this competition, and when there was a dispute, they indeed had to listen to his opinion.

Klopp pointed at Zhou Yi: "You lost, Zhou Yi!"

Zhou Yi widened his eyes: "The rules didn't say..."

"I'm the referee, I am the rule, what I say goes!" Klopp poked himself with his thumb, looking domineering.

"Despicable!" Zhou Yi protested.

"Hey, Zhou Yi, you're not qualified to say that!" Hummels also stood up to speak fairly.

"That's right, that's right, accept your bet and do it!" The other teammates echoed.

Zhou Yi's rogue behavior had aroused "public outrage", and everyone stood on the side of reason and justice.

Zhou Yi was helpless, he couldn't twist his arm against his thigh. He tried to be a rogue, but he didn't expect to meet an even more rogue referee, Klopp, so he had to honestly lie down and do push-ups.

The teammates were still counting for him, afraid that he would be rogue again while doing push-ups and do a few less – everyone believed that Zhou Yi was completely capable of doing it!

※※※

This competition during the training break, like any other game in the past, would not leave a deep impression on people. And to be honest, everyone had seen Zhou Yi's "shamelessness" more than once. Zhou Yi would always break the lower limit that everyone had set for him, so the teammates didn't think this breakthrough was anything too special.

The competition was over.

But Zhou Yi was "preoccupied" with losing this game.

In the evening, after entering the virtual system, he did not immediately start training or competing, but found a soccer ball.

Then he fixed it in a position just past the center circle, almost exactly where Şahin kicked off during the day.

Then he took a running start, kicked, and kicked the soccer ball towards the goal.

The soccer ball was ridiculously off...

Zhou Yi found another soccer ball and tried again.

Still off.

After two consecutive large deviations, Zhou Yi didn't believe it.

Even if my long pass is a little worse, it shouldn't be that much worse than Şahin, right?

Thinking about it, Zhou Yi refreshed ten soccer balls in front of him, lined up in a row.

Then he kicked the soccer balls towards the goal one after another.

The ten soccer balls were quickly kicked out.

They were scattered all over the place around the goal, some were even inside the goal, but none of them had hit the goalpost.

A goalpost with a diameter of twelve centimeters looked about the thickness of a toothpick from this distance.

To hit it, in addition to luck, requires precise control of the soccer ball.

Zhou Yi knew that his long passes were far less accurate than his short passes. After all, he had practiced short passes in the system for more than a year, and one day in the system was equal to one hour in the real world. Sleeping eight hours every night was equal to eight days. His training volume in the virtual world was equivalent to eight years. The effect of practicing a short pass for eight years was naturally amazing.

But he didn't expect his long pass to be so unbearable...

In the game, he also consciously used fewer long passes, but now he felt that he should make some changes.

So he summoned Chu Ling.

"Is there anything I can do for you, Zhou Yi?" Chu Ling asked after coming out.

"I want to do long pass training," Zhou Yi made his request.

"No problem," Chu Ling snapped her fingers, and a circular target appeared out of thin air in front of Zhou Yi. Behind the target was a bracket that could support the target, with the target surface facing Zhou Yi.

Zhou Yi was no stranger to this target. When he was doing short pass training, he also had to kick the soccer ball towards such a circular target. So Zhou Yi knew that long pass training should also be kicking the soccer ball towards these targets.

But were the targets for short pass training this big? Zhou Yi glanced at the huge target in front of him and estimated that it was about five meters in diameter! This was much bigger than the goalpost!

"Isn't this very simple?" Zhou Yi said when he saw such a huge target.

"Simple?" Chu Ling asked back, and then said, "Then you try."

As soon as she finished speaking, Zhou Yi was placed in a square area ten meters long and ten meters wide, which was located in the small penalty area in front of the goal. In front of Zhou Yi was the entire soccer field.

In his front left, there were circular targets with a diameter of five meters at distances of fifteen meters, twenty-five meters, thirty meters, forty meters, and fifty meters. There were also five identical targets at the same distance on his front right. In his front, there was one more target than on both sides, sixty meters away from him.

Although these targets were in one direction, they were not in a straight line, but staggered, so as not to have multiple stars in a row, causing the targets behind to be blocked by the ones in front.

"You pass the ball in this square area, you are not allowed to go out. If you go out, you will fail, and you will be forcibly refreshed back to the correct area to start again," Chu Ling said, standing outside the area. "Then kick the soccer ball out and hit those targets."

Zhou Yi stood in the area, looking around. The targets in the three directions fifteen meters away from him were quite large, and Zhou Yi was confident that he could hit them.

But the further ones...

The further away they were, the smaller they looked. The one sixty meters away was no bigger than the circular bullseye area of ​​the target fifteen meters away in Zhou Yi's eyes...

"Is it still simple?" Chu Ling asked.

"Uh..."

"Come, let's start training," Chu Ling said, and then disappeared. Then virtual assistant coach Buvac appeared on the training ground.

Buvac appeared outside the square area and said to Zhou Yi: "Twenty kicks as a group. Hitting different parts of the target gives different points, with the bullseye being the highest and the edge being the lowest. You can upgrade the training content if you have enough points."

Zhou Yi knew this very well. The rules were the same as those for short pass training.

He started training. For the first kick, he chose the target fifteen meters to the right. One kick went over, not hitting the bullseye, but it hit the target and he got points.

Then he turned to the middle and still hit the target fifteen meters away, hitting it as well. The fifteen-meter target on the left was also the same.

All three targets were hit, which seemed like a good omen.

But when Zhou Yi set his sights on the target twenty meters away from him, the effect was not so good.

The first attempt went off course. Although it was not far off, it didn't hit.

Later, Zhou Yi felt that twenty meters might not be a close or far distance, and it was difficult to control the force, and the accuracy was reduced.

So he aimed at a farther target.

But the further away it was, the lower the accuracy was. Even if he occasionally hit it, it was just a guess, and Zhou Yi had no way to successfully repeat it.

After twenty kicks, he only hit five times, and three of them were the three fifteen-meter targets in the first three kicks.

This was still a fixed target. Zhou Yi knew that if the training was upgraded in the future, these targets would definitely move, because the short pass training also had moving targets, and there were no fixed targets. It was impossible for long pass training to not have moving targets. Players are constantly running on the field and cannot stand still.

In the future, there may even be an ultimate mode, which is pass training with defensive confrontation and pressing.

That was a hellish training mode!

"You only hit five out of twenty kicks. You only hit five out of sixteen targets, not even a third! With this kind of performance, you still want to start? Dream on!"

Virtual coach Buvac shouted at Zhou Yi.

This was also what Zhou Yi requested. If he trained well, the coach would praise him. If he didn't train well, the coach would criticize him. It could increase some pressure and motivation.

"Again." After Buvac finished criticizing, Zhou Yi turned his head and said to him, his tone calm, with no dissatisfaction or unwillingness.

It was normal for training to be difficult, and it was normal to play badly. If he could play well, why would he need training? If there was no difficulty in training, what was the meaning and value of training?

Originally, it was just a game during the training break, and Zhou Yi didn't take it seriously at the time, and was just being cheap.

But now, he was extremely serious, because he was not just trying to win a game.