Chapter 768 - 692: The Soaring Lakers (Part 2)

Chapter 768: Chapter 692: The Soaring Lakers (Part 2)

No one could have imagined that a soccer team’s annual revenue could exceed 100 million yuan!

Their entire worldview was practically turned upside down.

However, an internal accounting review revealed that despite this terrifying revenue, the Pioneer Club’s soccer division had almost zero profit.

The main expense was salaries.

To acquire Batty and the four other star players, Chen Yu had paid out 18 million US dollars in salaries.

This alone amounted to a full 140 million yuan in expenses.

Factoring in the salaries of other players, club operations, and various marketing and promotional costs, the expenses reached 170 million yuan.

So, the final profit was likely only a few million yuan.

Not even one million US dollars.

To go through all that for an entire season only to make such a small amount of money... Chen Yu could have earned more from just performing a few surgeries.

But that’s just how the sports industry is. Sometimes, just breaking even is considered a success.

Even in the Five Major Leagues, plenty of clubs operate at a loss.

The key is reputation and legacy.

The perfect strategy is to build up a club’s reputation, expand its market and valuation, and then cash out and exit.

So, the low profit wasn’t a major issue. While the National Team had been defeated in the World Cup, the Chinese Super League was experiencing an incredible boom in popularity.

At the season-end press conference, Yan Shiduo excitedly announced to the media that the Chinese Super League had already become the top soccer league in Asia. He also secretly revealed that investment would continue to expand next season, allowing more teams and capital to enter the market.

And this was precisely Chen Yu’s goal from the very beginning.

By making the market bigger and more vibrant, more money would flow in, and his own club would become more valuable.

Compared to soccer, the basketball side of things was much quieter.

Under Stevens’s leadership, Pioneer, with its five foreign players, had a decent record.

But the investment was small, just a minor affair, and it was unlikely to see any significant results in the short term.

「The year 2006 arrived.」

「The training center.」

Song Jun started his move near the baseline. With a simple fake, he got his defender, Zhang Peng, into the air. He then ducked low, blew past Zhang Peng, drove straight to the basket, hung in the air, and threw down a reverse dunk.

"Stop!"

Nelson, on the sideline, immediately blew his whistle. He raised a megaphone and yelled, "Song, I’ve told you many times! No dunking! No dunking, you understand? Go! Give me 50 suicides!"

He pointed menacingly off the court.

Song Jun, wearing a rebellious expression, obediently ran to another court to start his suicides.

"Continue!"

Nelson yelled again.

The two teams on the court started moving again, running their plays.

If D’Antoni were here, he would definitely be amazed.

Because Song Jun and this group of kids were practicing the run-and-gun offense.

However, Chen Yu’s goal wasn’t actually to have these kids play a run-and-gun style in the future.

Because the future Chinese Men’s Basketball Team still had Yao Ming as its core.

They might be giving up on the current National Team, but you couldn’t just let a top-tier center like Yao Ming go to waste.

Besides, under FIBA rules, Yao Ming was still a devastating weapon.

The reason he had them practice the run-and-gun offense was to make them understand and internalize its core principles: share the ball, keep moving, and find offensive opportunities in motion.

The old Chinese Men’s Basketball Team played a rigid, by-the-book style. Their ball movement was too slow, and they couldn’t get into a fast-paced game.

To develop the instinct for creating opportunities through movement... it was far too difficult to expect the established players on the National Team, whose skills were already set, to master it in a short period.

But these kids were different. They were still young. By being exposed to this basketball philosophy from an early age, they could slowly internalize it until it became second nature.

They had been in the United States for a year now, and their bodies were well-conditioned. So, this year’s plan was to focus on fundamentals.

"That was a pretty cool dunk, actually," Chen Yu said with a smile, standing next to Nelson.

A baseline drive into a hang-time reverse dunk—that was straight out of the NBA.

In the CBA, you rarely—if ever—see anyone who can pull off a dunk like that.

For no other reason than a lack of physical conditioning.

But after a year of training, Song Jun had developed that level of physicality.

Look at his physique.

When I met him in the Northeast last year, his body was well-proportioned and lanky, but his muscles were undeveloped. He almost looked malnourished.

But after this past year, his body wasn’t just lanky; it was filled with a sense of power.

His body fat percentage was very low. You could see the clear, shredded definition of the muscles in his arms.

So, it was only natural that he could complete a dunk like that. It also proved that Chen Yu’s work over the past year hadn’t been in vain.

On the court, the tactical drills continued.

This year’s training regimen was the same as last year’s: three, or even four, practice sessions a day.

But eighty percent of that time was dedicated to fundamentals.

The remaining twenty percent was for tactical drills to hone their strategic awareness.

Which was what this current training session was about.

They were split into two teams, focusing on running plays. Flashy moves like driving for a dunk were not what the drill called for.

Because when you’re thinking about how to make a spectacular play, you tend to ignore your teammates’ positioning and focus only on yourself.

That’s why Song Jun’s dunk had to be stopped and punished.

Nelson had just put down his megaphone when he snatched it back up again, shouting impatiently at the court, "Luo, your pass was too fast! Slow it down a bit!"

It was a boy with a short buzz cut on the court who had made a bad pass.

His name was Luo Mu, and his nickname was Nut.

Born in ’90.

He was from Su Province.

About to turn 16, he was 1.91 meters tall and the starting point guard for Team A.

He had a rather delicate and scholarly appearance, complete with glasses. Hearing Nelson’s criticism, he pointed at Zheng Zhun, who had just made a cut, and said with a serious face, "He was too slow. I wasn’t too fast."