109. A lively break

At the beginning of the break, various media began to break a lot of news about the transfer of the club. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info

Because of the league break, the club's actions in the transfer market will directly affect the team's results in the second half of the year. It is reported that Evergrande FC has made up its mind to bring in Gilardino, and R&F FC has terminated Larsson's contract, which means that the club is still looking for an attacker in the transfer market. The most interesting is the Luneng club, Kuka has previously said that he wants to bring back two players from Brazil, which means that two of the three foreign players Montillo, Aloisio and Lowe must leave. Originally, these three people were considered comparable to the "Evergrande Trident", but after 14 rounds of the league, these three did not form a whole. The theme of this summer is to change strikers, with at least one of Gelon and Utaka leaving, and foreign strikers may come from La Liga, and it is more likely that they will replace Utaka.

Basically, from the results of the second transfer window, we can judge how determined the Evergrande team is to defend the AFC Champions League, whether the Guoan team wants to compete for the Chinese Super League championship, whether the Luneng team still wants to make a difference this season, and whether the R&F team is really eager to play in the AFC Champions League.

Of course, some of these news are true and some are fake, and some are blockbuster transfers that the media can't dig up.

For example, at the beginning of the intermission, a blockbuster transfer began to circulate, that is, Guangzhou Evergrande once again stretched out its magic hand, this time to Dalian Albin. The transfer of Yu Hanchao and Li Xuepeng to pack 4800w has been confirmed, in the face of a shortage of funds, the team's poor performance of Dalian Albin, this poaching can be said to be a trick to draw salaries from the bottom of the kettle, and the capsizing of a prominent Chinese Super League aircraft carrier is just around the corner.

Just when Zhang Sheng was about to sit and watch the wind and wait for the clouds to roll, his own team also came to a surprise attack, and some Premier League teams wanted to buy their own players.

That team is none other than Leicester City, who have just been promoted from the Championship to the Premier League this season.

In the face of Leicester City's purchase, Zhang Sheng can only sigh that the inertia of history is so strong, because the players they are buying are Mahrez and Kante, and the two of them have also shined in Leicester City in history, although they snatched them a few years in advance, but they were still favored by the "original owner" now.

In fact, the process is very tortuous.

The initial reason starts with the owner of Leicester City.

In 2009, Thailand's billionaire Vichai began investing in football, and according to Forbes, the Thai was worth $2.9 billion at the time, ranking 612th on the list of the world's richest people.

In 2010, Vichai led his own King Power Group and a number of other Thai consortia to form an Asian football investment consortium to buy Leicester City FC for £3,900w.

In 2011, Vichai acquired the remaining 20% stake in Kronos Sports Management and became a single shareholder. And his son Atwa served as the team's vice president and personally managed the team.

Of course, the £3,900w is a small fraction of all Vichai's investment in Leicester City FC. From 2010 to 2015, Vichai spent more than £70 million on club signings, and after deducting the income from the sale of players, Vichai's net investment was still more than £60 million. In addition, Vichai also bought Leicester City's home stadium for £17 million and renamed it King Power Stadium, which added a large amount of revenue from the operation of the stadium to the club. He also helped Leicester clear a £130 million debt in the form of a debt-for-equity swap, waiving the club's annual interest payments on the debt.

These expenditures are necessary. The spending on reinforcements is to strengthen the club itself, after all, it is the players themselves who play football, not Wichai and his Asian football investment consortium.

The purchase of the stadium is also intended to provide the club with a more stable financial foundation, which not only eliminates the club's fees for renting the stadium and other related training venues, but also provides a new source of income for the club, and the advertising revenue of the stadium itself is quite substantial.

As for the debt itself, it can help Leicester City avoid the large annual interest payment, thereby easing the financial pressure on the club.

These capital investments are very important for Leicester City themselves. Although he did not directly improve Leicester City, he gave the club some room to play in the recruitment.

In the past, Leicester City had to be careful when it came to recruitment, and the players they bought and the players they sold needed to break even, so that the club would not go bankrupt as a result. Therefore, Leicester City's annual cost of reinforcements is not high, which is about one or two million pounds.

But now, with Wichai's financial backing, Leicester City are able to get some hands on the player. Since the start of the 2010/11 season, Leicester City's net investment in reinforcements has also increased, from £2.8 million when they first took over to £29.1 million in the most recent season.

It can be said that Vichai is a very good football investor.

As an Asian, Wichai has always wanted to expand his team's influence in Asia, so after the success of the Premier League this year, he first set his sights on Japan, which has produced a large number of excellent players in recent years.

It was Steve Walsh, the team's assistant coach and head of recruitment, who was tasked with completing Vichai's quest for a Japanese player.

Steve Walsh, who was a Chelsea scout for 16 years, is known for his keen eye and ability to spot good players, with the famous "Monster" Drogba and Essien both coming to Chelsea under Steve Walsh's scouting.

On top of that, Leicester City also has a high-tech platform for discovering players, the Wyscout platform, which was developed by an Italian football data company of the same name, with a team of 200 technical analysts who monitor more than 1,300 matches in more than 80 countries around the world every week, and analyze thousands of players for them. Ultimately, this data will be an important basis for the club to select players. On this platform, they can access the match footage and data of players from all over the world, and learn about the on-field performance of young talents at home and abroad.

This is not the final step, as Steve Walsh will be looking through the list of recommendations that have been submitted and will decide on those players in consultation with the manager and director of football affairs, Jon Raskin. And Raskin will act as an agent for specific transactions after getting in touch with the Thai boss.

This time they are targeting Shinji Okazaki, who plays for Mainz FC in the Bundesliga.

Shinji Okazaki, who moved to Mainz for €150 last season, made 33 appearances for Mainz in 2013-14, scoring 15 goals and providing one assist, and two appearances in the German Cup.

However, Leicester's bid to buy Shinji Okazaki failed, and Mainz did not want to let go of their absolute midfield so easily, and they offered a high price that made Steve Walsh abandon the signing.

However, Steve Walsh did not give up on his plans to continue bringing in Japanese players, and he sent chief scout David Mills to the Japanese J-League to scout those Japanese players who have performed well on the Wyscout platform.

David Mills is also a very good scout, having recommended Zola, Didier Drogba and Essien to Chelsea, and his first visit to Japan was when he watched Kawasaki Frontale take on the Dragons in the AFC Champions League.

In this game, David Mills did not have a good performance for the Japanese national team player Yu Kobayashi, but it was two players from their opponents Longteng who stunned him because the two players were none other than Riyad Mahrez and N'Golo Kante.

David Mills saw the two of them like ghosts, as both players had been scouted by him and had some impressions.

David Mills knows where Riyad Mahrez and N'Golo Kante came from.

A month later, when Mahrez and more than 20 other players participated in a trial with more than 20 other players at Quimper, a French fourth-tier side hundreds of miles from home, a club member told him: "We can't sign you yet because we can't be sure if you really deserve the contract." But we do want to keep you in the squad and tell you the result when we talk to the manager. ”

But the manager made his decision and asked the club to sign Mahrez, much to the delight of Mahrez, who had been crying and calling his mother.

After joining the team, Mahrez did not immediately train and play with the first team, but was first sent to the B team, which Quimper played in the seventh division of France. Clearly, the team is not yet fully convinced of Mahrez's quality.

He became a regular in the second half of the 2009/10 season, and although the team was eventually relegated, Mahrez was undoubtedly impressive, and it was Le Havre who signed him first, and the second team also played in the fourth division of France. He scored 13 goals in 32 games in his debut season at Le Havre II and 11 goals in 25 games in his second season, during which time he even played nine games in Ligue 2 with the team's first team, all as a substitute, of course, and the playing time was so short that he did not show his talent.

At this time, David Mills took a fancy to him, in fact, when David Mills came to Le Havre to investigate, his focus was actually Mahrez's teammate Ryan Mendes, but it was Mahrez who really caught his eye.

Just as David Mills was about to add him to his list of key scouts, the Dragons made a move, and the Dragons' €20w offer combined with a high salary brought Mahrez to his knees.

When David Mills came to France from England again after the winter break of the fourth season of the French league, he found that Mahrez actually went to China to play, and it was a Chinese team, David Mills was completely disappointed in Mahrez, a player who did not have much pursuit was not a player he liked, and he naturally gave up the pursuit of Mahrez.

Another player, N'Golo Kante, is also a player that David Mills has been following for a long time, in fact, Kante showed his talent as a player very early, as Kante's hometown, fellow Frenchman Arsene Wenger has known him for a long time: "You look at his career and you will be surprised, he was 9-10 years old in Sures Nino in Paris, and then went to Brun as an amateur, but they didn't want to sign him. He was discovered by my friend when he was 10 years old and mentioned it to me. We went to watch him play but I thought he would come back to play in the Premier League later. ”

In any case, although Wenger gave up on Kante, after all, it is a player that Wenger has followed, and even if he gives up, he may have lost his eyes, and David Mills is one of those who remains skeptical.

So when N'Golo Kante was dropped by most people, David Mills kept an eye on him, and when N'Golo Kante arrived at Bologne, David Mills felt that N'Golo Kante had a good chance of following the path of Bologne's all-time number one star, Franck Ribery, from unknown to blockbuster.

But David Mills was in the process of adjusting his work at the time, he was preparing to move from Chelsea to Leicester City with Steve Walsh, and by the time he had spent a lot of time making adjustments, when he went back to France in 2012, Kante had already left the team and had heard from his French informants that Kante had gone to a team in Asia.

When David Mills heard that N'Golo Kante had left the center of football and gone to Asia, he naturally gave up on continuing to observe, after all, Asian football is a completely wild place for David Mills.

In fact, if his informant had introduced it more specifically, saying that he had gone to China, maybe David Mills would have continued to investigate, because Mahrez also went to China, but the informant obviously did not know much about Asia, in their opinion, Asia is one country, and there is no need to distinguish at all, which is also the unified perception of Asia by ordinary people in Europe and the United States.

In fact, according to real history, David Mills values Kante more than Mahrez.

Historically, since Ranieri took over Leicester City, David Mills has watched N'Golo Kante play since his move from Bologne to Caen, and has analysed the midfielder's stats and highlights in detail.

Ranieri was eventually convinced by the Frenchman's excellence, and in his first month as manager, he kept going to Walsh to discuss a transfer for Kante, constantly nagging Walsh in his ear "Kante, Kante, Kante". In the end, Ranieri's request was fulfilled and Leicester City bought N'Golo Kante from Caen for more than £5.6 million.