Chapter Ninety-One: Attention from Public Opinion

Aziguli was overflowing with happiness when she put down the phone, because her beloved younger brother had finally made a real mark for himself. This was what she and her family had longed to see.

After the Frontier Youth Team won its first match, Aziguli received a call from her brother once the game was over. Since no television station broadcast contests at this level, she could only wait in anxious suspense for news.

She feared that her brother might play badly and suffer a setback; she feared, too, that he might meet some player with evil intentions and be hurt; and she also worried a little about whether Wang Lei’s newly launched career might run into difficulties.

After the victory over the Lingbei Youth Team in the opening game, what remained foremost in Aziguli’s mind was concern for her brother’s health and a faint, concealed worry for Wang Lei. Yet even Aziguli herself did not realize that she also had some concern for the somewhat impulsive but exceedingly warm-hearted Hule.

It is often said that even the fiercest woman can be worn down by a persistent man, and there is truth in that. Women are, in general, rather passive, especially a Uyghur girl like Aziguli, whose beauty was striking yet whose life was hard. In her heart, she thought more about others than about herself, and seldom considered her own affairs.

Such is life, in truth. Those who can clearly decide for themselves what they want are usually either the protagonists of television dramas or people of extraordinary inner strength. Regrettably, most people do not possess such a nature.

Ordinary people can see only the glamour of athletes, yet how many ever think about how those athletes themselves, and their families, actually live? It is true that in today’s society athletes count as a high-income group, but they are also among those most afflicted by occupational illness and injury. Their families spend most game days in anxiety and fear; no one wants to see their son or daughter trapped in pain and physical ruin.

Once the Frontier Province Youth Team had strung together two straight wins, some media outlets and public opinion finally began to take notice of this otherwise obscure squad.

Although Wang Lei himself was already highly talked about, and after the Spring Festival Gala his popularity had surged, with some independent media and mainstream outlets both following him, most of the attention centered on whether he had written any new songs, or on the true state of his relationship with Ma Dongmei. These were, in fact, the dominant views on the internet at present. As for Wang Lei’s position as a coach, most people believed he would not last long at it. Even his most devoted fans thought that for Wang Lei to do coaching work instead of seriously writing songs and composing was a tremendous waste.

Naturally, the first to report on the Frontier Province Youth Team were the local media of Frontier Province itself. For a region with relatively backward economic development and weak conditions in terms of infrastructure and all other aspects, winning two consecutive games at the youth-team level was already an excellent achievement.

With media attention came a gradual exposure of this team’s qualities one by one.

A purely student-based team, with no professional game experience at all, and in fact most of its players were benchwarmers unwanted by major universities. Add to that the fact that the team had been formed less than half a year ago, and that its tallest player was only just over two meters, yet this team had managed to defeat a youth team from a major sports province in consecutive games.

Once the news was released by the Frontier media, it immediately caused a stir within the province, and many local fans began to take notice of their own unremarkable youth team.

At first, most of the media paying attention to the Frontier Province Youth Team focused entirely on Wang Lei and the team itself. After all, Wang Lei was one of the most talked-about figures of the year so far. His identity, his talent, and his tragic background were all highly compelling.

But as some sharp-eyed media outlets began digging deeper, public opinion also started paying attention to the team itself and to certain players within it.

A sixteen-year-old high school student, with no formal training whatsoever, afflicted by albinism, which others regarded as an oddity; his parents were both plain frontier herdsmen; he lived in Urimqi with his sister, dependent on one another; he had been rejected by many schools when seeking admission. Such a pitiful child in the eyes of others somehow scored an astonishing forty-four points against a Ningliao Province team made up mainly of professional youth players. Turgun Mamet drew the attention of several media outlets with complete success.

In this ever-accelerating society, if one wants to capture the public’s attention, one naturally needs something relatively unconventional to report on. Novelty and curiosity are, in truth, a common point of interest for most people.

What was happening with Turgun Mamet fit that appetite for novelty perfectly. Compared with a young prodigy who had received professional training since childhood and competed at every level as he grew up, which would be more attention-grabbing? Surely everyone could make their own judgment.

As Wang Lei’s players drew more and more attention, the Frontier Province Sports Administration Center also realized that perhaps they could no longer ignore Wang Lei and his team.

After the match with the Ningliao Youth Team and the return to Urimqi, someone from the provincial sports administration center came to ask whether Wang Lei needed more support. The team’s treatment at the training base also began to improve. The administration center specially sent a liaison officer to stay with the team and coordinate with Wang Lei, to see whether they needed logistical assistance. In addition, someone asked whether Wang Lei would like more members added to the coaching staff. Clearly, more than one person was hoping to ride the wave.

Wang Lei, for his part, was not at all polite. First he asked for money, then he sent the bunch of would-be beneficiaries packing.

He had never worried about offending people. With Li Weihong’s name behind him, it was always others who had to swallow their anger. From the outset, Wang Lei’s situation had already been troublesome enough; if he were still thinking of compromising, there would have been no reason to come here at all. With the connections he had had before, he could have found a rather decent coaching position anywhere with little effort.

Wang Lei had also noticed some of the outside attention, but he did not worry about it. At present, the team had not yet attracted widespread notice, and even if it did, Wang Lei felt that was simply one of the trials the team would have to face. From the beginning, he had his own grand objective. Such a team would inevitably draw enormous attention in the future, after all, because they were a team swimming against the current. Wang Lei therefore believed that learning how to deal with media and public scrutiny was itself part of being on the team. Wanting good results while also expecting the press not to pester them—that was the sort of thing that existed only in novels. No, even in novels, such things would no longer be written. Anyone who had lived through the internet age knew just how formidable today’s reporters could be; as a celebrity, even the underwear one wore might be secretly photographed.