Sports Medicine Master System
Chapter 830: Chapter 748: The China Team Is Actually This Strong
That night, after clearing layers of security checks at the base hospital, Chen Yu met with the France Team head coach, Domenech, and Cisse, who had suffered a broken leg.
Accompanying them were officials from the French Football Federation. The entire group looked as though they were attending a funeral.
Following the incident, Chen Yu also received a call from Wenger. Cisse, just two months shy of his twenty-fifth birthday, was brimming with talent, and Wenger valued him highly.
After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Chen Yu followed standard procedure and sent Cisse for X-rays. Upon first glance, the situation was blatantly obvious. Both his right tibia and fibula were fractured.
The fractures themselves were not a massive issue. For professional players, broken bones were actually considered straightforward physical injuries. Torn tendons and snapped ligaments were where the real trouble lay.
"Raymond, I know what you are hoping for, but I must tell you it is practically impossible."
Looking at Domenech, whose brows were tightly furrowed and whose expression was unprecedentedly serious, Chen Yu did not mince his words. Having the player rushed over to him just hours after the injury, Chen Yu knew exactly what the coach was expecting. But the problem was that Cisse had suffered the injury on the seventh, and the World Cup was set to open three days later.
The World Cup final was on July tenth. That left a total of only thirty-two days.
Expecting a comeback in such a short window was absurd; he would be better off finding a Mage to cast a Magic spell on Cisse. Chen Yu did possess a system, but if he could heal a double bone fracture in thirty days, he could march straight out and claim a Nobel Prize in Medicine. Not to mention, it remained entirely uncertain whether the France Team would even make it to the finals.
Domenech’s gaze flickered. "Practically?"
Chen Yu remained silent. That was just an adjective!
"Raymond, this was an accident," Chen Yu reminded him. "Although none of us wanted this to happen, it already did. You need to make preparations early."
According to FIFA rules, the France Team had until the eighth—which was the following day—to make roster replacements. Rather than pinning his hopes on when Cisse could return, Domenech would be better off figuring out who could replace him. Furthermore, Chen Yu genuinely felt that instead of worrying about Cisse’s injury, Domenech ought to worry about the France Team itself.
After receiving the coach’s call, Chen Yu specifically found a recording of the match to watch. He originally only intended to watch a few video clips to see exactly how Cisse got injured. Ultimately, however, he ended up watching the entire game.
The match took place at France’s famous Giscard Stadium. It garnered significant attention; even the French president attended the match in person.
First was the sequence of Cisse’s injury. It looked like a normal physical confrontation. Zheng Zhi did make a move from behind. It appeared he lost the positional battle to Cisse and opted for a tactical foul. On the football pitch, choosing to stick a foot out and bring down an opponent when outmuscled or about to be bypassed was a fairly common move.
Watching it in frame-by-frame slow motion, however, Chen Yu felt that Cisse was simply unlucky. After being clipped, he did not go down with the momentum. Instead, he chose to stop abruptly and cut the ball back, attempting to shield it. It was this very motion that caused the tragedy.
At the end of the day, it was a relatively standard foul. No one could have expected Cisse to sustain such a severe injury from it.
The guy was honestly quite fragile. The year before last, right after joining Liverpool, someone kicked and snapped his left tibia. This year, it was his right leg. There were definitely issues with his physical durability and how he exerted force. But discussing this now was meaningless. An accident was an accident; once it happened, they just had to accept it.
Mainly, Chen Yu found it unbelievable that the warm-up match had unfolded the way it did, even though France ultimately won with a final score of three to one. Just by watching the segment where Cisse was injured, Chen Yu noticed that the France Team did not dominate the pitch. Consequently, Chen Yu simply decided to watch the entire match.
After finishing it, his very first thought was, "Is the China Team actually this strong?"
One could not simply argue that it was a warm-up match and that no one was playing seriously. The selection of opponents for pre-World Cup warm-up matches was always done with the utmost caution. It was impossible for them not to take it seriously.
Yet the Chinese Men’s National Football Team—a squad ranked in the eighties by FIFA, a team so foolish that they missed out on the World Cup because they could not calculate basic addition and subtraction within twenty—actually went back and forth against this France Team. This was an all-star France Team featuring Zidane, Vieira, Henry, and Trezeget!
Right from the start, the China Team did not cower in defense. Instead, they launched a massive offensive, nearly scoring from a corner kick just eight minutes into the game. Thirteen minutes later, Zidane showed off his footwork in the penalty area and earned a penalty kick. Absurdly, he slipped and sent the ball flying off target.
The France Team’s attack was toothless, and their midfield was problematic. They repeatedly allowed the China Team to intercept the ball and string together consecutive short passes. This alone left Chen Yu utterly baffled. Since when did the France Team’s midfield control become so weak?
After thirty minutes of a stalemate, the France Team finally broke the deadlock. Zidane provided the assist with a pass, Henry brought the ball down and crossed it in front of the goal, and Trezeget followed up to score effortlessly. However, upon playing it in slow motion, Chen Yu noticed that Henry’s run looked slightly offside. Zhang Yaokun, who was defending him, seemed to have been trying to set an offside trap.
Following that, the France Team did not press their advantage to secure the victory. It was not for a lack of desire, but rather because their offense could not get going at all. Their midfield control was impotent, and their forwards were entirely unable to tear through the China Team’s defensive line. Seeing this, Chen Yu found it incredible; he didn’t know whether to lament the France Team being too weak or praise the China Team for being too strong. During the stoppage time of the first half, the China Team unleashed a screamer that had even Chen Yu so excited he almost stood up to cheer. The shot was struck with incredible precision. The power and angle were absolutely perfect. In that instant, Chen Yu remembered the name of this twenty-one-year-old player: Zhao Xuri.
In the second half, the France Team adjusted their midfield and launched relentless waves of attacks, yet they continuously failed to breach the China Team’s goal. It was not until the sixty-eighth minute that the China Team instead earned a penalty in the box, converting it in one go to equalize the score.
Following that goal, the France Team was visibly rattled. In the seventy-fifth minute, even Domenech sensed the midfield issues and subbed in Ribery. Ribery’s presence made the France Team’s attack flow a bit smoother, but they still could not penetrate the China Team’s defense.
Given the situation, the two teams were highly likely to draw. To be completely honest, seeing the entire match play out this way, Chen Yu genuinely felt there was something wrong with the France Team.
That the France Team was able to win in the final moments was actually due to an own goal by China Team player Wang Yun in the eighty-ninth minute. This own goal was practically an inverse wonder goal, possessing a level of difficulty that defied all logic. Relying on this goal, along with the icing on the cake during stoppage time, the France Team finally defeated the China Team three to one, supposedly doing so "effortlessly."
However, one only had to carefully watch the full match to realize just how massive the France Team’s problems were. Their midfield was a mess, their forward line lacked punch, and their pacing was outrageously slow. They could not execute ground penetration at all; they only knew how to resort to long balls and high crosses without any semblance of a tactical plan.
Therefore, Chen Yu truly believed that instead of wasting time fretting over whether Cisse could return quickly, Domenech should be thinking hard about how to fix the current France Team. If they kept up the form they displayed in this warm-up match, they were in for a brutal reality check at this year’s World Cup.

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