"London."
Gilbert echoed, his eyes filled with longing. Counting the days, they had been out adventuring for five months already.
Even though it wasn't their true hometown, they still felt homesick, always feeling like they belonged there.
On one hand, they came from there and benefited from the platform there to get where they were today.
On the other hand, it was a truly large club, with the best players, the best coaches, the highest attention, and a magnificent stadium in European football.
Longing for it and wanting to stay there to play football was only natural.
"I miss the food at Colney Base."
Gilbert became sentimental, reminiscing from a culinary perspective, "The youth team's cafeteria was the best. The professional team eats too healthy, it's bland."
"Why so many emotions every day?"
Maël slapped him, looking down on him, "Be content with living the life of a football star in the EFL Championship, playing professional league games every week."
"I am content."
Gilbert suddenly laughed again, startled, "Like before, I just feel like everything is too fast, too fast to give people time to react and accept."
He picked up a football and threw it out, imitating the action of throwing a sideline ball, "I already have 3 goals and 1 assist! I wouldn't have dared to imagine that before coming here."
"Not to mention you, 9 goals and 10 assists! Every time I see your stats, I feel a sense of Trance (hTrance), sometimes Lost (miwang), sometimes Bewildered (kunhuo), and I really want to ask, is this the Maël I know?"
"Maël," Gilbert calmed down, feeling a lot, "We came with nothing, at most you had a few more pairs of shoes."
"We still have nothing now."
Maël sat up, picking up the conversation, "People will only remember the champions, remember the miracles, they won't remember someone in the 10-11 season EFL Championship who scored 9 goals and had 10 assists."
"The road is still long, just keep walking, you and I are still far from enough."
The two rarely had a heartfelt chat for a few sentences and went to the cafeteria together. On the way, Maël was thinking about future training plans.
After all these skills reach lv3, his extra training plan will only have Cross left, which is definitely not enough.
"Curved Shot needs to continue to be practiced." He first determined this idea in his heart. Now, he can't limit his vision to the EFL Championship anymore, he needs to look to the future.
A lv3 Curved Shot is no problem for breaking through the EFL Championship, but it may be difficult to break through the Premier League.
Since he has free time, he shouldn't let it go, continue to grind, and grind it to lv4, to the same level as Long Shot! As for the others... he can consider them based on Arsenal's tactical system, and practice a skill that can be used in the future.
And speaking of Arsenal, the first thing anyone thinks of is the beautiful passing and cutting coordination, beautiful football, which requires very high passing ability.
"Short Pass."
Maël knew what he should practice. He currently only has one passing ability. Practicing Short Pass will make the overall more balanced.
This ability should not be underestimated. Passing is the foundation of a team's operation, and Short Pass is undoubtedly the most frequently used passing technique! From a three-to-five-meter one-touch pass to a surgical knife through ball across two defensive lines, this ability can be used! After eating, Maël took a walk nearby to rest for a while, and came to the training ground to continuously kick short passes against the wall with his Instep.
"Bang, bang, bang!"
This was a training that every player had done many times since childhood, so it was somewhat basic and not very unfamiliar.
However, the skill panel did not appear for a long time.
Maël became more and more puzzled as he practiced. Fortunately, passing training was not tiring, just endure the boredom and keep kicking.
Finally, before dark, after passing the ball until he was numb, he finally saw a few lines of deep black words appear in front of him.
[Skill: Instep Pass lv2]
[Proficiency: (151/300)]
[Effect: You have basically mastered the essentials of short passing. The quality of the pass is not bad, but there is still a distance to go before you can make a short pass with extremely fast ball speed and extremely high accuracy.]
Maël paused slightly, confirming several times that he had not misread, "lv2?"
The base level is directly lv2 after Short Pass came out because of the improvement of his basic qualities? "That's not right."
He immediately understood, and the doubts gradually dissipated, "It's because this body itself has lv2 passing, which can also explain why the panel came out so slowly."
Yes, as a basic ability, if the original owner didn't have any Short Pass ability, then he wouldn't have to play football.
Thinking of this, he also remembered the stamina panel that had never appeared.
Stamina, like strength, could be improved more or less through daily training. He had been doing extra training every day, but it still hadn't appeared.
He occasionally thought about this, assuming that the stamina judged by the proficiency panel was only cardiorespiratory function, not the muscle endurance he was slowly increasing.
Now that he thought about it, it should be because he already possessed lv2, so the panel was slower to appear! "No rush."
Maël calmed down. Since stamina could be improved imperceptibly, he would wait for the panel to appear naturally.
Now, it was important to train crosses, curved shots, and short passes to lv4 first, to be fully prepared for landing in the Premier League! On November 21st, the 18th round of the EFL Championship was played at Bramall Lane Stadium, with Sheffield United hosting Crystal Palace.
In this round of the league, Gareth Speed sent out the full main lineup, determined to take back all the frustration of the two consecutive draws at home.
The main lineup, which had been rested for one game, also showed extremely strong aggressiveness from the start, pressing in Crystal Palace's half and constantly launching threatening attacks.
"Bang."
In the 6th minute of the game, Maël received a pass in the open space on the left, ushering in an excellent opportunity to show himself.
"Come back! Zaha! Come back!"
The Crystal Palace coach stood on the sideline, gesturing and shouting. Now everyone knew the threat Maël posed when he had the ball, and he should have made targeted deployments.
For example, sending on an equally young 18-year-old winger, letting him use his youthful ability to run, retreating deeply every time he defended, and double-teaming Maël.
With a naive look on his face, Zaha gritted his teeth and swung his arms rapidly, using all his strength to chase back.
This was no longer about showing himself.
Originally, as an 18-year-old player playing in the EFL Championship, he lived in praise and expectation every day, priding himself on his talent and feeling that his future was bright.
Who knew that the appearance of Maël had raised people's evaluation of the talent of young EFL Championship players with his own strength.
The praise was gone, and the expectations for him were less. People only felt that Maël had created less than 19 goals in less than half a season, while you, Zaha, had less than 5 goals, so hurry up and stand aside.
Chase back!
Not only for the team, but also to fight for himself, Zaha's pace became faster and faster, and soon he came behind Maël.
However, as if he had expected it, Maël did not dribble the ball towards the encirclement at the baseline, but suddenly Cut Inside.
"Bang."
His right foot used the outside of his foot to push the ball towards the center, taking the ball out from the gap between the two, and he immediately followed.
Zaha avoided the first collision with Maël. He believed that with his Speed, he could keep up with Maël's pace in the second.
"Mine!"
He shouted to cheer himself up, stepped on the ground and accelerated to chase after Maël, only to find that he couldn't keep up! Maël's first few steps were particularly fast, let alone chasing up to steal the ball, it was not necessarily possible to reach out and pull him.
Embarrassing! Zaha's face instantly turned red, but ordinary people couldn't see it.
In the instant before Maël shot, based on the logic of seeing things through, he made up for the 'mine' he shouted, "Hi!!"
He tried to use his momentum to affect Maël's shot, and also explained that his 'mine' was not really wanting to grab the ball, just to scare people.
Quite cute.
"Bang!!"
Maël hit a smooth Curved Shot in the center of the penalty area. Fortunately, the Crystal Palace goalkeeper was focused, and he leaned out and used his fingertips to push the ball out of the baseline.
He shook his fist regretfully, waiting for the next opportunity to come.
During the retreat, he saw Zaha next to him with a dazed expression, walking pretentiously, which was quite comical.
London Zaha King? Childhood. This field must give you a good special training.
Time passed by minute by minute, and the first goal occurred in the 39th minute of the first half.
"Bang!"
Sheffield United launched the ball from the backcourt, and the football bypassed the head of the Crystal Palace center back and fell behind them.
Evans rushed out like a ghost, unloading the ball and dribbling the ball in one go, forming a One-on-One.
"Bang!" His One-on-One was very stable. After the goalkeeper approached him, the tip of his right foot rubbed the ball up, and the football crossed the goalkeeper's head and fell into the goal.
1-0!
Sheffield United takes the lead at home! "Yeah!" More than 20,000 home fans rose from the stands to cheer, and the endless applause resounded throughout Bramall Lane Stadium.
Evans hadn't figured out how to celebrate when he came to the sidelines, and in the end, he just gave a few high-fives to those who came up and congratulated each other.
After the restart, everyone entered their best state, and the game gradually fell into a white-hot battle.
In the 43rd minute, Maël once again had a one-on-one opportunity against Crystal Palace defender Klein. It was still the familiar scene and the familiar routine.
Klein kept retreating to delay time, while Zaha worked his ass off from the frontcourt to catch up.
As the first half wore on, they gradually felt Maël's speed advantage. While mentally raising his threat level, they also had a lot of complaints about the coach.
Why didn't he tell them before the game that this kid had Speed?
At this moment, Maël stepped out a dazzling array of Bicycle Kicks, and would occasionally connect with two step-overs, causing Klein to quickly lose his balance and surrender.
*"Bang!"*
The moment Klein made his move, Maël dribbled the ball back towards the center, creating an angle before swinging his arm and unleashing a Curved Shot.
This time, he had an air of determination!
The football drew a banana-shaped line, and just as it was about to fly out of the baseline, it suddenly turned back at the last moment and spun into the goal.
This time, the Crystal Palace goalkeeper was helpless. He looked at the ball with a sigh and closed his eyes in despair.
"Yeah!!" The fans at the scene erupted into an even more intense roar than before. Such a wonderful Cut Inside shot was of course worth cheering for at the top of their lungs.
What's more, after this goal, a new milestone moment had arrived! They all remembered that Maël had already completed 9 goals and 10 assists in the league, and after this, it would be Double-Double!
"Oh!" On the field, Maël cheered and rushed to the corner flag area. He didn't do any special celebration, just found a camera and stretched out his ten fingers, constantly waving them back and forth.
He was using this celebration to celebrate the first Double-Double achievement of his career!
If you could use one word to describe his EFL Championship journey, it would be high efficiency!
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