Chu Zhongtian and Delfen. Mathilde's first meeting was after dinner that day. Because at noon, Merry felt Chu Zhongtian's urgent need to learn the language, so he agreed with Mathilde in the afternoon to start teaching directly from the evening, and as long as Mathilde was free, he could come to the hotel to teach in the evening, and the remuneration also made Mathilde satisfied.

When Chu Zhongtian returned to the hotel from training in the afternoon, he once again told his agent, Mr. Merry, about the language problem. In the afternoon, he practiced his technique with Coach Tadio, but it was difficult to communicate due to the language barrier. He was very unhappy with his learning, so he could only draw a scoop from the gourd, and if he did something wrong, Tadio kept saying something, but he didn't know what was wrong...... An afternoon passed, and Chu Zhongtian felt that he had not made any progress in technology.

If this is the case every day, he finds it unbearable. Whatever you say, you have to learn French quickly, even if it's a little football jargon first.

Merry told him not to worry, that a teacher would come to teach him in the evening.

When Mathilde came to the hotel on time to teach, Chu Zhongtian glanced at this dirty girl and turned his attention to the French textbooks she was holding. In his eyes, Emily is a noble white swan, and Mathilde is an out-and-out ugly duckling, and he really has no interest.

It's more important to learn French well.

After a brief introduction, Chu Zhongtian couldn't wait to sit down: "Let's start!" ”

Mathilde was a little surprised, she didn't expect her student to be a ...... Chinese. Mr. Merry hadn't told her that she hadn't studied Chinese. Later, she realized that her worries were unnecessary, and this Chinese named "Chu Zhongtian" had a very high level of English, and communication was not a problem at all.

That's easy to do, Delphin. Mathilde can speak English and French, Chu Zhongtian can speak English, the communication between the two is very smooth, if Chu Zhongtian does not understand something when studying, he can ask questions in English, and Mathilde answers in English.

Mathilde also intends to gradually increase the amount of French in her daily conversation and learning. From the beginning, 80 out of half of the last class was spoken in English, and then it gradually increased to half English and half French.

And Chu Zhongtian didn't feel any inconvenience with this increase.

In the first week of coming to Metz, Chu Zhongtian's life was very simple, in addition to going to the club every day to participate in training, he was learning French with Mr. Mathilde. In order to be able to understand what Coach Tadio said more during daily training as soon as possible, Chu Zhongtian first wrote down those football terms in English, and then handed them to Mathilde, who then translated them into French and taught Chu Zhongtian to read them.

Then, on the way to training every day and at the end of training, Chu Zhongtian memorized those French words silently while running.

After just one week, he was able to barely understand most of what his coach was saying in training.

In addition, he can also have some simple conversations with his teammates, such as "the weather is nice today, the wind is beautiful", "your clothes are beautiful", "you are amazing". Of course, he still couldn't understand what the "Scarface" said, no matter how carefully Chu Zhongtian listened to it, he couldn't hear what the "Scarface" was saying, and he even suspected that the "Scarface" was not French at all, maybe German?

In order to understand the problem, he also secretly recorded a recording of "Scarface" speaking to him on his mobile phone, and brought it back to his French teacher, Miss Mathilde.

After listening to this, Mathilde told Chu Zhongtian that this was also French, but it was a dialect, a northern French dialect called "ch'ti". A mix of French and Flemish. Flandre is the name of the old region, formerly issued, located in the northwest of France, bordering the Strait of Calais. The famous "Hundred Years' War" between Britain and France was fought over Fmerdes.

Due to the vast size of Flanders and for various historical reasons, the area near the North Sea is now Flemish spoken in many places. For example, the official languages of Belgium are French and Flemish, and the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and northern France all speak this language, with a total of about 6 million people.

"That 'Scarface' teammate of yours should be from Calais." After explaining, Miss Mathilde said.

"So what exactly did he say?"

"He said...... 'My name is Frank. Ribery (franck_ribéry), nice to meet you'. ”

Chu Zhongtian was stunned for a moment, thinking that there was something to follow, but Mathilde did not continue to speak.

"Finished?" Chu Zhongtian asked in surprise. What does he think of that self-proclaimed "Frank. How much does the guy from "Ribery" ramble a lot? How come these two sentences are left when they get to Miss Mathilde?

"That's to the effect, there's some nonsense in it, and I don't have a translation."

In fact, the original meaning of the words is "My name is Frank. Ribery, you'd better remember my name, don't call me wrong, I won't bother you if you call it wrong. Don't you still know how to speak? It's miserable, tsk. I'll tell you every day to see when you can react! Mathilde didn't think it made much sense, it was just a joke.

Chu Zhongtian didn't know what these omitted words were, he just thought to himself, the other party showed friendship to him, fortunately, every time he faced this fierce and vicious teammate, he was smiling. Otherwise, there may be some misunderstanding.

In the case of a language barrier, there is nothing more appropriate than a smile to replace words.

When Chu Zhongtian was training in peacetime, he would occasionally observe the training of the large army, and he found that "Scarface" - oh, it should be called Frank now. Franck Ribery is fast, nimble on his feet, looks like a good player, and the manager Jean Lee. Fernandez also took good care of him.

As for your training life...... He has been practicing his technique for a week, and Chu Zhongtian doesn't know how long he will have to practice, because of the language barrier, he hardly communicates with Coach Tadio and Fernandez, and just buries himself in hard practice. But where is the end of this practice? The new Ligue 1 competition starts early, starting in August, when will I be able to play for Metz?

He knew he was an amateur and shouldn't have been in a hurry. But now he is full of longing for high-level competitions, and he can't wait to play in the league the next day. Regardless of whether you can do it or not, let's play the game first, if you don't play, how do you know if you can't do it? If you kick it, you'll at least know what's wrong...... Actual combat is the only way to test true knowledge...... It's wrong, it's practice, it's all the same anyway.

Chu Zhongtian wants to fight with real knives and guns now.

There are also confrontation games in team training, but even such a game is not Chu Zhongtian's share. He could only watch from the sidelines, and Fernandes told him that watching the game was also a kind of training, and asked him to pay attention to the performance of the players on the field.

Speaking of head coach Jean. Fernandez, in fact, is also a very well-known figure. Chu Zhongtian didn't know it at first, but later he slowly learned about the experience of this head coach from Mr. Merry's mouth.

He was a former professional footballer, with his last stop at Cannes in Ligue 1. After retiring as a player, he became a coach and his first stop in charge was Cannes in Ligue 1.

He started coaching the team in 1985 and from 1985 to 1990 he was an Academy coach and then a first-team manager at Cannes.

Today's football world-famous midfield master Zinedin. Zinedine Zidane was given a scout by the Cannes team in 1986 during the Ligue 1 rookie selection training camp. Vallaude (jean_varraud) took a fancy to him, and the man who finally decided to sign him was the somewhat bald Jean. Fernandez.

Later, when he was promoted to first-team manager, he gave Zidane, who was only 17 at the time, his first chance to play in Ligue 1, a match against Nantes and Zidane's opponent against Desailly (marcel_desailly).

Fernandez went on to coach a number of teams, even in leagues in Saudi Arabia and Tunisia.

He came to Metz in 2002 to help Metz win the second division as champions of the second division. With a lack of reinforcements, almost entirely on the original squad of the second division and the addition of some young players in the youth team, he led Metz to relegation last season.

However, his most successful masterpiece is clearly the dedication of Zinedine to French football and even world football. A superstar of great genius like Zinedine Zidane. Zidane was not cultivated by him alone, but he discovered and dedicated it to the world. The first coach Zidane came into contact with when he was in Cannes was Gilles, the head of the club's training center at the time and the head coach of the third-tier team. Lambillon (gilles_rampillon), Lambillon was followed by Guy. Laconbu. In addition, Fernández's successor, Polo. Primorac (boro_primorac) has also been a great help to Zidane, who is now Arsene Wenger's left arm at Arsenal, and if you look at Arsenal's style of play today, you can see what Zidane has learned from him...... One of Fernandes' biggest contributions was giving young Zidane the chance to play for the first team, which is quite important for a young man. Zidane was a little shy and lacked self-confidence as a teenager, and it was Fernandes who gave him that confidence.

When Fernandes is optimistic about a player, he will always find ways to create opportunities for him, set up the stage for him to go up and perform to his heart's content.

After Chu Zhongtian learned about their head coach's experience, he sometimes wondered - would the other party also give him such a chance?

A week after arriving in Metz to start training, Chu finally moved out of the hotel and into his new home, a two-bedroom apartment in a four-story apartment, but this time a little far from the club. It takes 15 minutes by car, and if you run...... It takes more than half an hour. Equivalent to the distance from Wimbledon to King's Ranch.

The home stadium and training base of the Metz club are on the island of Grande Solsi, and the famous Moselle River flows quietly on both sides of the island, and the hotel where Chu Zhongtian used to stay is on the west bank of the river, which can be reached within a ten-minute walk. Now it's moved to the city center and needs to be further afield.

However, life here is very convenient, unlike the previous hotel, which was still a bit desolate.

The house has two bedrooms and a living room, mainly with James in mind. Merry came here a lot and needed a place to stay. The rent is not high, and Chu Zhongtian can afford it.

In fact, after coming to Mace, he rented a house, looked for a teacher, and had three meals a day, Chu Zhongtian's expenses were not small, his salary was just enough, and it was impossible to save up.

That's the situation for newcomers. If he wants to improve his financial situation, he will have to work hard to play for Metz and then attract more attention to him, get more appearance fees and goals and assists awards, which will be the bargaining chips for him and Chelsea FC to demand contract improvements.

The current income, whether it is Chu Zhongtian or James. Merry was not satisfied.

※※※ In July, the Metz team had some friendly matches, but Chu Zhongtian did not play a game, and he still continued his training plan, which seemed to be incompatible with the team. Sometimes Chu Zhongnaïve wondered if he was just temporarily borrowing Metz's training base to train, but in fact he was not a member of Mez, because it had been almost a month, and he had not played together with this team. And his teammates have been playing several warm-up games, and that Frank has been playing several games. Ribery played in every warm-up game, but his performance was not as good as Chu Zhongtian thought - he was too lonely on the field, too many personal dribbles, too few passes, and teammates did not cooperate tacitly, and many times he liked to fight alone, but as a result, two or three players on the other side were sandwiched, and his ball was lost.

Let. Coach Fernandez often yelled at Ribery in training and games, Chu Zhongtian didn't understand what it meant, but he could see that Ribery's attitude was quite good, and he continued to go his own way when he went on the field - personal breakthroughs, no passing. It's one to be able to pass one, it's two to be able to pass two, three or four is not too much, and when it comes to the fifth, you lose the ball.

Coach Fernandes continued to yell at him, waving his arms incessantly. Looks angry. And in front of the angry manager, Ribery continued to shrink his neck, bow his head, and look very obedient.

Every time Chu Zhongtian saw Ribery's appearance, he wanted to laugh - this image was too much like a pet dog who was scolded by his owner...... After Chu Zhongtian knew that "Scarface" was Ribery, he also knew that the previous Fernandez coach said that the club had signed a player from the lower leagues this summer, which turned out to be what he was referring to. Although he is an amateur player, his skills are still very good, but his awareness is not good, especially the coordination and passing awareness are not up to standard. Coach Fernandes values him very much, even if he usually scolds him badly, he keeps Ribery on the game, and can tolerate him again and again when he plays alone on the field, makes mistakes and concedes goals, and also gives the "10" shirt, which symbolizes the core, to this new player who plays amateur football.

Although Ribery only transferred to the team this summer, he quickly got along with the team's players, and the speed at which he integrated into the team was beyond Chu Zhongtian's expectations.

He does his own thing on the pitch, likes to go it alone, but off the pitch he has a very good relationship with his teammates, and no one accuses him of being a selfish man. He's not tall, but he has broad shoulders, he looks like a boss, he's helpful off the pitch, he's willing to help anyone with any difficulties, and he's a bit of a deterrent among a group of well-behaved students who have been trained in the academy, and his temperament is completely different. If he is not happy, a look can let the other party know. His complicated experiences have also given him some admirers. Chu Zhongtian noticed that no matter where Ribery went, some "followers" began to appear behind him - when he went to the restaurant for a meal, Ribery's appearance must be accompanied by several companions, and they must have followed Ribery's "boss" buttocks.

As for himself, he is still like a marginal person, and he hasn't even recognized all his teammates in the team. I don't know when I'll be able to integrate into the team and actually play. He doesn't want to be on the bench for a season or watch a season of games from the stands after he comes on loan. That would be a failure.

Of course, it's been almost a month, and it's not just bad news. The good news is that his French is improving very quickly, so his French teacher Delphi. Mathilde and the people around her were surprised. James. Mei Li was not surprised, because he had always thought that Chu Zhongtian's learning ability was very strong, and as long as he studied seriously, there was nothing that he couldn't learn. You must know that in order to master this complex language as soon as possible, Chu Zhongtian spent all his time except Lianqiu on learning the language, and even held the French textbook to memorize words when he ate. He also labeled all the things in his house in French, and whenever he used them, he would be able to see them and know how they were spoken in French. For a while, he didn't even feel like he was playing in Metz, but coping with the gaokao in China – even in England, where he wasn't so desperate to learn English. So it took him a year to become proficient in English, and now he hopes to be fluent in French in a month...... Miss Mathilde's eyes widened and she shook her head again and again after hearing Chu Zhongtian's goal—for her, this was simply impossible.

He can now chat with his coach Tadio with some simple vocabulary, and although there are sometimes some inconsistencies and grammatical errors, the general meaning is still understood in context.

He was able to barely understand what was being said to him by hearing, provided he didn't speak too quickly – after all, he lived in a French-speaking environment, and his ears were full of French. Of course, Ribery's French dialect with a strong accent, full of grammatical errors, and a preface that does not match the afterword, Chu Zhongtian still can't understand it.

So every time Ribery came to train, he would change his clothes and say a lot to Chu Zhongtian, and Chu Zhongtian could only respond with a smile.

Chu Zhongtian regarded trying to understand Ribery's French as a challenge, a goal other than football, so he quietly recorded Ribery's words on his mobile phone every day, and when he ran, he put on headphones and played them on a loop.

Delphin. When Miss Mathilde saw Chu Zhongtian's energy to learn French, she sighed again and again, "This is crazy." She even felt that although a month would definitely not work, maybe in three months, he would really be able to speak like a Frenchman.

When Chu Zhongtian slowly became proficient in French, he also ended the stage of pure technical training on the training ground. Coach Tadio returned to the team after his solo coaching, and he was allowed to train with the team.

If he had understood his team-mates' French earlier, he would have known that he had been at the heart of the conversation from the start.

There are doubts about the manager paying half of his salary to loan a player, but only letting him do technical training and nothing else.

If you want to work on the basics, you should obviously go to a lower team and not do it in the first team. But looking at the age of their new teammate, it is unrealistic to go to the youth team, the youth team or something to receive training.

They didn't even know how this teammate, who didn't see any advantage other than being able to run, would help the team. Could it be that the club suddenly became interested in the Chinese market after cooperating with the football training center in Chengdu?

"That Chinese kid can't do it at all...... Sure enough, the level of playing amateur football is poor......" Some of the players are talking about the teammate of the new team.

Ribery glared at him: "I'm also an amateur, boy, are you going to let me pass you ten times in training?" ”

The person who said that just now did not dare to say anything.

Ribery turned his head to look at Chu Zhongtian in the distance, and didn't continue to say anything.

In fact, the players are very gossipy, and in private they will exchange a lot of news related to themselves and others. According to a well-informed source, the decision to take Chu on loan is said to have been made by Fernandes manager. This is strange, Fernandez coaches have a very high level, especially the eye for people is very accurate, and there is quite a set of training players, Zidane, Pedretti and other stars are from him, he is undoubtedly a famous coach in France, and once led the Marseille team to win the European Champions Cup, but later because the president of the Marseille club bribed the opponent to play match-fixing, this championship was very dishonorable. Of course, these have nothing to do with the current Fernandes, and everyone doesn't understand why an old coach who is famous in French football is on loan to Chu Zhongtian.

The players of Metz couldn't understand it, and neither did the Chinese media who were looking forward to Chu Zhongtian's rise again.

It's been almost a month, and Chu Zhongtian has been training alone on the training ground every day, except for the warm-up stage before training, he has never trained with his teammates. Xu Xiaodi once interviewed Chu Zhongtian and asked him how his relationship was with his teammates. Chu Zhongtian's answer is not bad, but it can't be considered good, because they don't understand it at all, and they haven't communicated much, and they usually can't say a word a day.

The Chinese media, which was originally full of interest, saw that Chu Zhongtian had never integrated into the team, and he had not even entered the squad in the warm-up games, and gradually lost his enthusiasm. The Chinese reporters who flocked to sign the contract left one after another, and in the end, only Xu Xiaodi remained.

Xu Xiaodi chose to stay out of his understanding and confidence in Chu Zhongtian, but he was still worried. There are a lot of players who change teams and then can't play anymore, and a loan spell can be a turning point in their careers – going downhill. Will Chu Zhongtian be unaccustomed to the soil and water, and finally leave Mace gloomily?

(To be continued)