Free Web NovelChapter 509: Chapter 103: Bayern’s Infighting! Surpassing Ronaldo! Dortmund’s Strategic Opportunity
Now he had climbed right over Rummenigge’s head and even had the power to dismiss him.
Of course, the two had worked together for many years and had a good relationship, so no one believed Hennes would actually do it.
But it was still awkward, wasn’t it?
More importantly, Hennes was originally in charge of sporting affairs.
He may have been promoted, but he kept a tight grip on his old responsibilities and even started getting involved in more day-to-day affairs.
For example, any transfer contract exceeding 25 million euros required Hennes’s signature.
Moreover, Hennes’s prestige was immense, and he had excellent relationships with the players, especially the German ones.
For instance, the house Gomez lived in in Munich belonged to Hennes.
Hennes was also extremely wealthy. Leveraging Bayern’s influence, he ran his own companies on the side and made a fortune.
The two top executives were at odds with each other, locked in a struggle that hadn’t yet broken out into open war, and no clear winner had emerged.
And right at this moment, the clueless troublemaker Van Gaal managed to offend both of them at the same time.
The biggest problem was his heavy reliance on Olic last season while refusing to play Gomez.
There were also issues with how he used players like Tymoshchuk, Tony Kroos, and Schweinsteiger.
Right now, Bayern’s problems appeared to be on the pitch, but at their root, they were issues at the management level.
Van Gaal was already bad at managing the locker room, and when faced with Bayern’s current situation, things devolved into chaos.
As the president of Dortmund, as well as the vice president of the German Football Association and the president of the German Professional Football League, Laubal was more than familiar with Bayern’s current situation.
By contrast, Dortmund was currently very united internally.
This was a very good sign.
It was also a period of strategic opportunity for Dortmund.
"The club needs to give the team its full support. Whether we can achieve something great will depend on the next year or two," Laubal said with conviction.
As for the long term, competing with Bayern was out of the question!
Watzke, Zorc, and the others all nodded in agreement.
They all hoped to achieve something great, just as Hennes and Rummenigge had at Bayern.
...
Dortmund ended up defeating Bayern 3-0 at home, securing their seventh consecutive win to start the new season.
Wang Shuo, with one goal and one assist, was the most dangerous player on the pitch and once again received the highest rating from Bild after the match.
Coincidentally, Tuchel’s Mainz also secured a seven-game winning streak by defeating Hoffenheim 4-2 at home.
This sent shockwaves through the entire Bundesliga!
Of course, by now, no one thought Tuchel’s Mainz had any connection to Klopp.
After all, since Tuchel took over, Mainz had undergone a radical transformation.
But for both teams to achieve seven consecutive wins was surely no accident.
They must have been doing something right.
After losing this national derby, Bayern’s league ranking plummeted to 12th place, just three points above 16th place in the relegation zone.
This put immense pressure on Van Gaal.
After this match, Wang Shuo once again graced the front pages of major media outlets in Germany and across Europe.
So far this season, he had 16 Bundesliga goals and 7 assists, helping Dortmund unleash an offensive storm in the league.
Meanwhile, in the "Player of the Century" bet, Ronaldo also had an outstanding performance, scoring a brace to help Real Madrid thrash Deportivo La Coruña 6-1 at home.
Messi, on the other hand, scored one goal as Barça drew 1-1 with Real Mallorca at home.
As of now, the goal tallies for the "Player of the Century" bet stood at 16, 5, and 3.
Who would have thought that Messi would be the one doing the worst?
And Wang Shuo’s goal count was double the combined total of the peerless duo.
After the weekend’s league matches, a two-week international break for national team training began.
Meanwhile, European Sports Media (ESM) officially announced after the match that the winner of the 09/10 European Golden Boot Award was Dortmund’s Chinese player, Wang Shuo.
This made him only the second player in Bundesliga history to win the European Golden Boot Award.
After Gerd Müller won it once, no one from the Bundesliga had won it again in nearly 40 years.
At the same time, Wang Shuo was also the first Asian player in history to win the award.
Although it hadn’t been a secret for a while, the official announcement finally made it set in stone.
However, the media and fans quickly dug up another story.
Among the three players in the "Player of the Century" bet, the oldest, Ronaldo, had received his first European Golden Boot Award in his hometown on the Madeira Islands at the end of September 2008.
The youngest, Wang Shuo, also won the European Golden Boot Award this year.
In contrast, Messi, whose age was in the middle, had yet to get his hands on the award.
This once again sparked heated discussions among the media and netizens.
One witty netizen even posted a photo on Twitter of the three of them posing together in Monaco.
A picture of the Golden Boot Award was photoshopped onto both Wang Shuo and Ronaldo.
Only Messi had a giant goose egg photoshopped onto him.
When Wang Shuo saw the picture, he found it hilarious and, out of habit, gave it the like-and-retweet combo.
As a result, the comment section exploded again.
"So classless! How could you mock our Messi like that?"
"So what if you won the Golden Boot Award? Is it that big a deal?"
"You’ll only have the right to stand in Messi’s presence when you’ve won the Golden Ball Award and been named World Footballer of the Year."
