Top of the big era

On this day, Zhou Buqi watched Manchester United’s reserve team and U18 youth team with David Gill, and also met the young players in the 13-16, 11-12, and 9-10 age groups , and had some conversations with Youth Academy Dean Brian McClair and Youth Football Director Jimmy Ryan.

Pretty much the same as David Gill.

For young players, it should not be playing football, but playing and enjoying football. It should not be too professional or taught too much.

Talented children can shine without guidance.

Children without talent must shine through acquired guidance and unremitting efforts.

But here comes the problem, the competition in football is too fierce, it is impossible to become a professional player by hard work alone. For the youth training echelon, it is a process of constant "pinching".

From the 500,000 youth training children, 10,000 people are selected, that is, the 7-8 age group, covering youth training centers at various levels in the entire Manchester region; when it comes to the 9-10 age group, 2,000 people are selected ; When the age group of 11-12 is reached, 400 people will be pinched out, which will reach the level of professional club youth training, and community clubs and amateur clubs have been marginalized.

Then, it was Manchester United and Manchester City, the two Premier League teams who chose the best of the best.

When it comes to the 13-16 age group, the two clubs will absorb talents from various channels and pinch out about 50 people. At this time, when the children reach adolescence, they have a deep understanding of football, and also understand the relationship between people and people, teamwork, etc., and they can truly receive the substantial technical and tactical guidance from professional coaches.

Then pinch out about 20 people to enter the U18 echelon.

The general logic of "pinching" is to screen out those children who are not talented or not talented enough as much as possible. Let children stand out through talent.

For a batch of seedlings, the talented seedlings grow very quickly. A seedling without talent can grow as fast as a gifted child if it is counterproductive.

This is a disaster for seedlings and systems.

The seedlings that overwhelm the seedlings will not have a future, and their appearance will greatly increase the difficulty of coach selection. Once they are selected, it is not only a waste of football teaching resources, but also a detour to their growth in life.

Players who are counterproductive seem to be of a high level, but they are not good enough to play football, and they are bound to be eliminated, which will cause great involution.

Instead of waiting for the children to grow up and then eliminate them, it is better to eliminate the untalented children early, so that they can have other choices when they are very young, and find their own fields, such as football, basketball, running , Piano, ballet, singing, triathlon, skiing... If you eliminate them as soon as possible, you can change careers as soon as possible and find the right direction as soon as possible.

If you want to do this, you should not teach too much when you are very young, and it will be difficult to turn around when the boat is big. Try a few more directions, look for talents, and then attack at a fixed point.

England even has laws that make it a crime to teach a child too much. Because you can never be sure whether the knowledge you teach is conducive to realizing his talent, whether it will lead the child astray and stifle innovation. It is obvious that a child has no talent for mathematics, but instills him with too much mathematics knowledge and helps him keep taking the first place in the exam, which will easily lead to misjudgments in the selection of talents.

In a daze, Zhou Buqi discovered that football training in Europe has the same logic as basic education.

Academy director Jimmy Ryan also shared an example he was proud of.

He trained an excellent youth player named Welbeck, who played as a right back at the beginning. Later, I often found that he would cry after the game, which was very strange, because his game performance was very good. I asked in the past, and only then did I know that he was suffering because he failed to score in the game.

This made Jimmy Ryan excited, thinking that this kid has an obsession and talent far beyond ordinary people, and then adjusted his position and asked him to play forward instead. It doesn't matter if your shooting skills are not good, it can be improved through guidance and training, but 1% talent is more important than 99% sweat.

After the adjustment, it was a great success. Welbeck was able to represent Manchester United's first team at the age of 17.

Professional players have experienced countless "pinch points" in their lives, they are survivors in countless competitions, and they are the last heroes.

If young players have not experienced cruel "pinch-pinching" during their growth process, and every time they rely on giving money or taking connections to advance to the next level, the competition in their bones will not be strong enough, and it will be difficult to become a steel fighter on the court. .

Zhou Buqi looked at the group of children playing football happily in the youth training team, and was deeply moved. However, you can't just listen to the one-sided words of these British guys.

Facts speak louder than words.

To do an experiment, let the domestic youth training team compete with them.

Zhu Jun is the big boss of Shenhua.

In the evening, Zhou Buqi had dinner with Zhu Jun and invited him to bring Shenhua's youth training team over to compete with Manchester United's youth training team.

"Forget it, I can't afford to lose that person!" Zhu Jun waved his hand, a little annoyed.

Zhou Buqi laughed and said, "What a shame, you can only improve by playing more games."

Zhu Jun said with a headache: "You don't know how hateful those football people are. I made up my mind to disband the youth training team. Later, someone reminded me that it might cause social criticism, so I kept it."

Zhou Buqi twitched the corner of his mouth, "Disband the youth training? Do you want to be a sinner?"

Zhu Jun sighed, "If I were a bad guy, I wouldn't disband. They do whatever they like. I want to disband just because I'm a good guy."

"Well……"

Zhou Buqi vaguely guessed something, and there must be many problems in it.

Zhu Jun gritted his teeth and said: "You don't know, those people... are too much. As far as what happened last year, they all came to me. I have to come to someone to apologize. I paid 800,000 yuan to settle it."

"how?"

"There is a young player who likes to play football and wants to enter the echelon. Our youth training coach..."

"Have you received the money?"

"Collecting money?" Zhu Jun snorted coldly, "If it's just collecting money, how about I come forward and apologize and lose money?"

Zhou Buqi stopped talking.

Zhu Jun lowered his voice and said annoyedly: "The young player's mother is very beautiful, an intellectual beauty, and our coach wanted to sleep with her. In order to let the child play football, he had to do so. Later, when the incident happened, the child Dad found out, found the boss of their company, and contacted me."

Zhou Buqi was silent for a long time, shaking his head again and again, "So, even if I love football very much, it's impossible for me to do it in China."

Zhu Jun sighed, "Many clubs in China don't do youth training, you know? Many people say that they are afraid of spending money, and doing youth training can only make money. Tens of thousands of people have invested in it, and they are afraid of the investment in the youth training? It is because I don’t want to earn this kind of money, and I don’t want to tolerate such disgusting things. I almost disbanded the youth training echelon at that time.”

Zhou Buqi asked: "Then will you send an echelon team? As for the exchange opportunities with Manchester United, all expenses will be borne by Manchester United."

Zhu Jun was amused, "You are not the owner of Manchester United!"

Zhou Buqi said: "San Dezi has already gone to Florida to have a detailed discussion with the Glazer family. It is estimated that the results will be available within three days, it is all right!"

"Really?" Zhu Jun's eyes lit up, excited, "Can you go to Yokohama to watch the Club World Cup final?"

"Sure!" Zhou Buqi waved his hand, "Don't interrupt, are you coming to the youth training team? I'm going to do an experiment, one is for the 10-12 age group, the other is for the 13-16 age group, Bibi look."

Zhu Jun waved his hand, "Farewell, I know the level of my team in my heart, so don't come here to embarrass people. How about... I can help you contact the Chongming Island training base? Xu Genbao plays football there, and he does it very purely. I've seen it, and it's pretty good."

Zhou Buqi was very happy, and said with a smile: "Yes, I'm looking for Chongming Island! I've invited them, as soon as possible, and they can bring their children to Manchester for training this winter!"

...

In the evening, Zhou Buqi talked with Lu Qi on the phone.

Luqi has basically set up the organizational framework of the US branch, and recruited 5 vice presidents, 3 of whom are Asian. In addition, the technical system has also been improved.

What Zhou Buqi wanted to tell him was project investment.

Prior to this, Zhou Buqi personally came forward to secure the investment in Yammer, invested 3 million US dollars, and got 20% of the shares.

Some time ago, the two sides had another "Internet + movie" exchange.

Lu Qi has already come up with a plan for this.

To acquire 4 major websites——

Movie review site Rotten Tomatoes, movie review site Metacritic, online ticket buying site Fandango, movie social networking site Flixster.

Coupled with the strategic cooperation of Netflix, a complete film and television ecosystem will be built.

Both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are backed by giants, but both are in a state of loss, and the price will not be too high. The difficulty is negotiating with big companies, they may not necessarily sell.

Both Fandango and Flixster are independent companies, but both are profitable. The negotiation process will not be too difficult, but the price may be higher.

This plan has been passed.

Zhou Buqi put forward a new request to acquire two companies, one is GitHub, an open source code library, and the other is evernote, a start-up company of network notebooks, that is, Evernote.

It will be very difficult for Ziweixing's overseas business to become a giant like Google and Amazon. The largest core tracks have already been seized.

Without the core track, no matter how jubilant the small track is, it is difficult to become a giant.

Zhou Buqi's strategic planning for overseas business is looking for the film and television Internet with Netflix as the core, the social track in the mobile Internet era, and the promising cloud computing business.

Two companies, GitHub and Evernote, one is for open source code and the other is for web notebooks. They look completely different, but they have the same gene - cloud computing.

All revolve around the application of cloud computing, which can be planned in advance.

If the acquisition fails, at least an in-depth strategic cooperation must be completed.