The God of Football Starts With Passive Skills

Chapter 453 - 95: Frenzied Signings! The Bundesliga’s Salary Ceiling! Football’s Top Price! New Season’s Goal: Break Records

The biggest challenge ahead for Klopp and his coaching staff remained injuries.

Especially the Klopp Syndrome.

The situation had certainly improved compared to last season, but there were still plenty of injuries.

How to put it?

The players’ relative youth was a crucial factor.

During this summer’s Bundesliga transfer window, while Bayern did spend heavily to sign Gustavo, Schalke 04 was still the club that invested the most.

Schalke 04 was taking a very strange path.

As early as last season, Wang Shuo had heard that Schalke 04 was deeply in debt.

Their previous high spending hadn’t produced outstanding results—they hadn’t even qualified for the Champions League. This left Schalke 04’s finances in a dire state, and their first-team squad was extremely bloated.

After spending a fortune to bring in Magat, Schalke 04 finished third in the Bundesliga last season and qualified for the Champions League.

However, the club had also spent a considerable sum and remained in debt.

Come this summer, Schalke 04 was once again the highest-spending club in the entire Bundesliga.

While Raul arrived on a free transfer, his annual salary of 7.5 million euros was absurd.

They spent 14 million euros to sign Huntelaar from AC Milan and 13 million euros for Jurado from Atletico Madrid.

Those two transfers alone cost 27 million euros.

With other miscellaneous transfers added in, their spending increased by another ten million-plus euros.

Although they sold Raphinha to Serie A club Genoa for 9 million euros, their net spending was still close to 30 million euros.

With debts piling high on one side and continuous heavy spending on the other, everyone could see that Magat was making a massive gamble at Schalke 04.

A reckless gamble, at that.

The decision to let several key veterans, including Kuranyi, leave on free transfers was particularly baffling.

After all, Kuranyi was only 28 years old.

The professional football scene is a brutally realistic stage.

With great power comes great responsibility.

You, Magat, simultaneously hold the positions of board member, general manager, sporting director, and head coach. Season after season, you invest huge sums, even more than the juggernaut Bayern.

So you’d better deliver results to match!

Whether Magat’s frenzied signing spree at Schalke 04 will usher in a great revival or end in a total fiasco, in the end, the results will have to do the talking!

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When Wang Shuo traveled from Hu City to the Capital, he took some time away from his family vacation to give an exclusive interview to a major newspaper.

He also appeared on a primetime talk show on Capital Television’s main channel.

This was the first time Wang Shuo had received such high-profile media attention back home in China, and he used the opportunity to speak in depth about his experiences in Germany for the first time.

During the interviews, Wang Shuo didn’t forget to plug Gao Huairen and his football academy.

Incidentally, Wang Shuo hadn’t been able to meet Gao Huairen and Ma Yongcheng in Hu City.

The two had joined some kind of project for the sports bureau, traveling across the country to research school football programs.

When Wang Shuo called, he was surprised to learn they were in Quanjiang City, so they ended up missing each other.

Jiang Pengju was with them as well.

Jiang Pengju’s school football project in Quanjiang City was doing well and had gained official recognition.

Wang Shuo had a faint feeling that Gao Huairen was already actively planning his comeback.

During his time in China, Wang Shuo participated in two commercial events, one for Porsche and one for Adidas.

Furthermore, with Shen Qinghe directing from afar and Chen Jialin personally handling the screening process, Wang Shuo signed three major sponsorship deals in China in one fell swoop.

One was with the country’s largest insurance company, another with the largest telecommunications company, and a third with a state-owned express delivery company.

These three sponsorship deals had one thing in common: the companies behind them were all state-owned or centrally-owned enterprises. Moreover, they were all household names in China, making them very safe and stable choices for Wang Shuo.

Most importantly, Wang Shuo’s endorsement fees were also extremely high.

All three were top-tier endorsement deals, each worth as much as 15 million RMB, putting him in the same league as Flying Liu back in ’08.

In other words, these three contracts alone brought Wang Shuo 45 million RMB.

This also propelled Wang Shuo past Giant Yao and Flying Liu, making him the most influential sports superstar in China.

Chen Jialin, however, told Wang Shuo that signing these three deals was just the beginning.

She explained that as long as Wang Shuo continued to perform well in the European football scene—and especially if he were to join a more influential powerhouse club in the future, like in the Premier League or La Liga—his commercial value would rise even further.

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「Germany. Heizogen Orlach.」

It was rare for Adidas Chairman Herbert Hainer to personally attend a meeting of the football division.

But his presence also highlighted the importance the Adidas board of directors placed on the meeting’s agenda.

The strategic plan for Asia—especially the Greater China Region—over the next few years!

For years, the Asian market had been a key focus for all the international sporting goods giants.

As the fastest-growing market, the Greater China Region was a particularly crucial battleground for Adidas and Nike.

For any sports brand, star athletes are undoubtedly the cornerstone of marketing.

In recent years, the two most dazzling superstars in Chinese sports had been Giant Yao and Flying Liu.

Coincidentally, both of these superstars were sponsored by Nike.

Giant Yao, however, switched to Reebok in 2003.

It was right after this that Flying Liu burst onto the scene and became the most dazzling superstar in sports.

In this regard, Adidas had no star of comparable stature. However, after acquiring Reebok in 2005, they conveniently took over Giant Yao’s contract and brought him under the Adidas brand.