Godfather Of Champions

Even though the fastest news media had not published the contents about the press conference yet, the England players heard about what their manager said very quickly.

That was because Gerrard told his roommate, Rooney, about what Boss said. Even though one of them was a Liverpool player and the other, a Manchester United player, and Rooney even used to be a player of Liverpool’s city rival, Everton, this did not affect the friendship between the players.

Rooney was shocked by the Boss’ attitude. He could not understand the reasoning behind it, and he decided to tell another teammate, Chelsea’s John Terry.

Very soon, news regarding this press conference spread amongst the players and naturally, the Nottingham Forest players would know about it too. However, none of them could understand why the reason why their Boss would say that. The Nottingham Forest players were more familiar with Twain and they thought that there must be a reason for such an abnormal behavior. They just did not know what the reason was exactly.

The players who were not from Nottingham Forest felt aggrieved that their Boss would look down on them——They also made it to the quarterfinals, why did their Boss think so highly of the French team and had so little confidence in them?

While they felt that they were being looked down upon by their manager, they could not possibly vent it out on Twain directly. But they had their way of proving that their Boss was wrong. That was to defeat France in the match and show their Boss which team had a high probability of becoming champions!

The England players who were angered gave their all during training. Twain watched everything and was secretly happy.

Assistant manager Kerslake might be the only one who knew about Twain’s plans. He was a little concerned and asked, “Aren’t you afraid that you would lose your popularity in the changing room? Or that it might backfire and make them lose their will to fight instead?”

“This is a proud bunch of people, they won’t lose their fighting spirit just like this. And popularity? When they defeat France, my status in the changing room will only be even stronger,” Twain said with conviction, “This is a goading tactic. Furthermore, I can numb the French team by saying that. The French are a bunch of arrogant people. I like it when they are arrogant.”

※※※

Twain was right. The French were indeed arrogant. Twain’s humble words appeared on all the French media very quickly and the reports spread like wildfire. The readers felt extremely good reading them——The Englishmen are saying good things about us now, and it’s that arrogant Tony Twain! Looks like our football team has really conquered the other side of the pacific.

Twain was not interested in the views of the French fans though, he was only interested in the opinions of the French players.

Benzema did not disappoint him with his reaction. This prideful striker appeared to welcome Twain’s words, “…I’m very thankful for Tony Twain’s praises. I believe we deserve praises like these… What’s better than the praises from your opponent?”

Ben Arfa did not really get along with Benzema, but he agreed with him, nonetheless. He felt very good to receive praises from an opponent.

The other players thought the same. They did not take into consideration whether the opposing manager had any other intentions as they really did perform very admirably recently, and it did not surprise them that they would receive praises.

What Twain said during the press conference filled the French with utmost confidence in their national team. The feeling of optimism filled their hearts. There were even media writing this as their headline, “Thank you very much, Tony, but we’ll definitely be the ones going to the Bernabeu in the end!”

Ribery was the only one who thought there was something wrong. The Tony Twain that he knew would never praise his opponent for no reason, even if they really deserved it. The moment he started to praise someone, it meant that that person would be in for a bad time soon…

Therefore, he continued to “boost the enemy’s morale while reducing their own” and kept reminding France to be wary of England, be wary of Tony Twain. However, it all fell on deaf ears.

The manager of France, Claude Puel, was also worried that Tony Twain was playing mind games initially. However, he paid some attention to the English media for the past couple of days and realized that they were all criticizing Twain, so much so that the insults almost escalated to include his ancestors.

Puel did not think that Twain was someone who would deliberately do something for the media to criticize him, therefore, he must have meant it when he praised the French team. That arrogant man did not care that the media was criticizing him, and it was also Twain’s favorite pastime to go against the English media.

Besides, according to the resourceful English media, there were many players within the England camp that were unhappy with Twain’s words. They believed that they were looked down upon by their own manager and Tony Twain was losing his changing room.

If this was all part of Twain’s plans, then the price of it would be too steep. If it backfired and he lost the trust of his players, then he would not be able to execute any of his plans. Nobody in his right mind would risk angering his own players.

After that analysis, he concluded that there was no possibility of any plotting by England. He believed that the revolutionary tactics that he brought to the French team had indeed gotten the recognition from the world. France could lift their heads up high and accept any praise without feeling the need to be ashamed.

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“Claude Puel is a very thoughtful manager, but his experience managing a national team is only about the same as me. In terms of results, his club management career could not be considered as a success. Before he joined Lyon, they were the dominant team of the French Ligue 1. After he became Lyon’s manager in 2009, Lyon was never in the title race anymore. Even though his team played some beautiful football and received a lot of praises from the media for it, what use is beautiful football without winning?”

Twain was analyzing the French manager for his coaching staff during the staff meeting.

“He started off with Monaco in 1999 as their coach and a year and a half later, he became a scout. A year later, he became the manager of Lille and he stayed there for seven years. In the summer of 2009, he became the manager of Lyon. After the 2014 World Cup, he replaced Deschamps as the manager of the France national team. They performed very well during the qualifying stage, however, ever since Mr Puel started to manage Lyon, he had never won any championship before.”

Twain sounded condescending, totally different from the admiration that he showed during the press conference.

“I think Mr Puel lacks the heart of a champion. It has been so long that he has forgotten how to be a champion. Besides, France has had a very easy path here, ever since the qualifying stage. They are like a flower growing in a greenhouse. A team like this won’t be able to react when they are faced with a crisis. Puel also lacks the experience of handling such pressure. This is something that we have to take advantage of.”

“The team is in high morale now and they can’t wait to get on the pitch. This is something that will shock the French. Once they fall into chaos, that’s when we’ll have the opportunity to win the game,” Twain clenched and waved his fist as he said that.

“We have to be invasive in the match! But I’m not concerned about that…” Twain wanted to laugh when he thought about the angry looks he got from his players during training, “We cannot be afraid of committing fouls. Against a team like France, the rougher we are, the worse their performance will be. I have lots of experience dealing with beautiful football.” Twain laughed.

His coaches laughed with him as they knew him very well. When he was still managing Nottingham Forest, he faced off with teams playing beautiful football numerous times. Whether it was Barcelona, Real Madrid or Arsenal, he defeated them a few times each. Meeting France in the quarterfinals was an opportunity given by the Gods.

If they were facing Italy, Twain would seriously consider the chances of them making it to the semi-finals.

※※※

On the day before the match, Twain heaped praises upon France again when interviewed by reporters, saying that the football that they were playing were “revolutionary football, beautiful football”. At the same time, he praised their manager, Claude Puel, for bringing such revolution to France and claimed that he brought a breath of fresh air to the footballing world and that he was becoming a fan of Puel himself. The English media were very unhappy with what he said of course, while the French were understandably very happy with it.

During the team meeting at night, Twain could still feel the unfriendly looks coming from the players. To them, he must have already been labelled as a “traitor”.

However, he still wanted to add fuel to the flame.

“We’ll be facing a very, very strong team tomorrow,” He paused deliberately after saying that. The meeting room was silent, but Twain knew that the players were surely booing him in their minds.

“We’re facing a team which has won all their previous games. The football that they are playing can both excite the fans and bring them victory. Even though this is a match that determines whether we make it into the semi-finals, I don’t want to put too much pressure on you.”

Twain sounded very serious and nobody could tell whether he was joking.

“I wish all of you good luck. We do need a little bit of luck against a team like France…”

Twain stopped saying things to piss the players off after that. He knew not to overdo it. If he kept mentioning about the strength of France, he might just really drop the morale of his team.

After he stopped talking about the strengths of France, Twain started to explain the tactics they would be using for the match tomorrow. England’s tactics were very simple, and they were similar to the ones used before. Twain merely emphasized the need to be bolder and more open when defending.

The players were not thinking about this. They were all feeling pissed off and could hardly wait to start the match and defeat the proud and arrogant French players to make them beg on all fours!

After the team meeting ended, the players left the meeting room one by one. Only George Wood was asked to stay by Twain.

“You don’t look like you’re angry about being looked down by me George,” Twain sat on the meeting room table casually as he looked at Wood opposite him.

“I know what you’re doing,” Wood said.

“Ha!” Twain laughed, “I asked you to stay back to tell you not to tell the rest about this. Looks like I was worried over nothing.”

Wood stood up and prepared to leave. If it was just this matter, there was no need to waste time, he needed to go back and rest. Before he left, he stopped at the door and asked Twain, “The match tomorrow, will we win?”

Twain shrugged, “Of course. We’ll win for sure!”

Wood opened the door and walked out without asking anything else.

Twain stayed back in the empty meeting room in a daze for a while before leaving.

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At almost the same time, during the team meeting for France, Puel was asking his players to use the same tactics for the match tomorrow.

The tactical deployment for France was very simple and there was no urgency on the faces of the players. There were smiles on everyone’s faces and there were even people chatting about things that had nothing to do with the team meeting.

Of course, Puel saw everything, but he did not think that it was a bad thing. He was proud that his team could remain calm on the day before the quarterfinal match with England. He became even more confident about the match tomorrow.

“As long as we maintain our form and performances from the previous matches, it won’t be a problem to defeat England,” Puel added after he finished explaining the tactics, “Remember, our target is to become champions!”

※※※

On that night, the England players slept with anticipation of the match against France the next day as well as their anger for Boss. The France players slept with an carefree mind leading up to the game on the next day.

Twain, who was full of praises for France, stayed up until three-thirty in the morning. He watched the games of France again and again in his room, going through the notes he made again and again to ensure that he did not miss anything, to look for new weaknesses in their team.

Actually, he should not be staying up so late with his current health status. However, Shania was not with him and there was nobody else who could watch over him. He was going all out to be champions.

Twain did not know whether he could continue doing this for another four years and wait for the next European Championship and he did not have a habit of giving up on the chance now to consider about what would happen four years later.

Football is a game that involves luck. Nobody would be able to tell him that his luck would be better next time. It would be stupid for him to pin his hopes on what was going to happen four years later. He believed that George Wood would perform to his best abilities in the final and for that, he had to ensure that he could provide Wood with the stage to do so.

Besides, as the manager of a football club, he had already achieved all the club glories there were. He had not achieved anything as the manager of a national team yet. He did not want to go for the worthless Olympics gold medal. As a national team manager, there were only the European Championship and the World Cup.

The England team then was the strongest England team ever, there was no need to set their target as runners-up.

This time, they would not return until the battle was won!