[Football] Bad Boy Batty

In mid-October, the weather turned cooler and rainfall increased, and the topic of Messi and Ronaldo's arrival in the Premier League gradually returned to normal.

联赛7轮战罢, 曼联以全胜之姿高居榜首，而曼城则以1负1平（3-3战平利物浦）的成绩暂居第三。

It was an ordinary day.

On the training day, Manchester City players arrived at the club at 8:30 in the morning as usual, warmed up first, then had breakfast, had a meeting, and then went to the gym for different personal training. After that, they went to a new meeting, had lunch (they could go home), rested for 2 hours, and had ball training in the afternoon.

In the gym, they had just finished a set of physical training, and most of them stayed on the yoga mat to rest and wait for the next set. Usually they would talk about something interesting at this time.

Certainly not the game or football.

In the eyes of many football fans, football clubs are mysterious and distant entities where players and coaches spend their days training and discussing tactics and football situations.

But they were wrong.

The real topics are often much smaller and cuter.

Football is work for professional players, so they should try to avoid discussing it during their rest time. Who likes to be busy at work 24 hours a day? Even a workaholic like Guardiola often joins the players' discussions, and often goes to play golf.

Most of the topics that can appear in the mouths of the players are some things that seem childish to ordinary people, such as what flavor of ice cream is delicious, whether there are more doors or wheels in the world, who will win in a fight between elephants, marching ants, and mercenaries, or like this -

"Hey, Batistuta." Rodri touched the sleepy captain with a bungee cord. "My girlfriend and I had a quarrel until midnight yesterday over a question. Tell me, would you rather swim with a hippo or a crocodile?"

"——Oh?" Batty shook his hair and stood up straight. This question made him sober up a lot.

Hippopotamus or crocodiles?

And swimming together in the water?
"Crocodiles, of course," he said.

"Why?!" Rodri seemed very surprised, as if he didn't expect Batistuta to say that about crocodiles. "Do you think it's safer to be with crocodiles than hippos?"

"No, I didn't mean to—"

"Bati is right because hippos are more dangerous," Stones joined the discussion. "Those creatures can swim and they can swim very fast."

“But they’re not aggressive,” Rodri countered. “If you swim in a river with crocodiles, they’ll attack you, grab your body and do a death spin, like this.” He demonstrated what a crocodile spin is before sitting on a yoga mat. “So hippos are safer because they’re not aggressive.”

“No, no, hippos are very territorial animals,” Aguero interjected. “I’ve seen videos of them fighting on YouTube, and it was pretty bad. What do you think, Leo?”

Messi had no intention of joining the discussion because he didn't understand either animal and his English was not very good, but since Aguero called him, he had to show some expression.

“A hippopotamus,” he said. “I was in a zoo in Catalonia once and there was a hippopotamus trying to bang its head against the glass. It was scary.”

"But crocodiles are more dangerous." Neymar agreed with Rodri's point of view. "I have never seen a hippopotamus, but when I was a child, my mother always warned me not to swim in the river because there were crocodiles and poisonous snakes that would eat children."

"Hey, everyone!" Seat B waved his hand. "This question is very simple. If a hippopotamus fights a crocodile, who will win?"

"Thank you, Bernardo, that's very useful." De Bruyne gave the Portuguese midfielder a thumbs up. "Don't think of hippos as gentle teddy bears. They run very fast."

"On land?"

"Correct."

"But what if it's in the water?"

"That depends..."

"I don't understand why all of you start with the danger?" Barty, who had been silent for a long time, suddenly spoke up, and his fresh point of view immediately attracted the attention of the entire gym. "I don't want to swim with hippos because they poop a lot and then swing their tails everywhere."

Ah this.

Everyone:...

"But you don't have to worry about that when swimming with crocodiles, and from the crocodiles' perspective, humans are almost as big as them. Think about it, would you rather choose an opponent of the same size as you or one that is smaller?" Batty shrugged.

When he finished stating his point, the lively discussion in the gym disappeared.

"Why are you all stopping?" Batty looked around and asked, "Am I wrong?"

"No, you're right." Stones was the first to speak up. "After hearing what you said about these two creatures, I don't want to come into contact with them again."

"Because no one has ever considered the issue of excretion when discussing who is better. What is this? A killer move! Absolutely, a killer move!" B席 habitually praised with sarcasm, "This is why you are the king, Batistuta. You can think of things that normal people can't think of. I pay the highest respect to the great King Batistuta!"

Batistuta narrowed his eyes and looked at B Silva who was doing an exaggerated hat-off salute to him. It was hard to tell whether it was a compliment or sarcasm.

"Everyone, I have another question." Walker hammered his palm and asked, "Do you usually put on your pants or socks first?"

"Do you mean during normal times or during competitions?" Ruben Dias took over.

"Both." Walker shrugged. "Do you use the exact opposite order in your life and before the game?" "I usually put on my pants first." Ake replied, "But I think most people should agree with me."

"Bati doesn't," Walker said. "I've seen him put on his socks before his pants. Don't deny it. I remember you walking around the locker room twice in just socks."

"I put on the bandage first, so I had to put on my socks first." Barty rolled his eyes. "Your question is even more stupid than whether you should dip the toothbrush in water or squeeze the toothpaste first."

"Hey! I feel offended!" Walker grabbed someone's towel and threw it at Batty's head. "How stupid are these two questions? Everyone will encounter them in life, right?"

"Okay, I was wrong." Batty apologized with a fake smile, "I shouldn't have said your question was stupid, I should have just said you were stupid."

Walker was so angry that he dropped the elastic band and rushed to Batty to settle the score. Batty was of course not afraid of him, and the two of them fought on the many yoga mats.

So the gym once again became a fighting cage.

"Place your bets!" Aguero did what he always does (he always does), "Kyle or Batistuta, who will be the final winner!!"

Guardiola, who was outside the door, put down his hand that was pushing the door, and the assistant coach next to him patted his shoulder comfortingly.

"We're still training too little and too energetic," the assistant coach said. "We're using our precious rest time to argue about such strange issues. Maybe we should increase our training volume."

Guardiola nodded.

However, just as he agreed with this idea in his heart, he heard the assistant coach next to him asked: "Hey Pep, do you brush your teeth with water first or squeeze the toothpaste first?"

Guardiola: …

After a few seconds, he took a deep breath and said, "Squeeze the toothpaste first."

……

The interesting debate lasted throughout lunch and break time, and it was not until the afternoon meeting when the players started to compete in groups that they calmed down a little.

Batty was in a particularly good mood because he not only won the discussion of hippopotamus or crocodile, but also defeated Kyle Walker in the WWE free wrestling for the umpteenth time in Manchester, and Kevin gave him his pudding at lunch.

But soon his mood was no longer so good.

The third round of group confrontation ended. Although Group C led by Batistuta won the training match and he himself completed the most dribbles in the attack, when intercepting as a defensive player, he only stole the ball from the free man Messi twice.

"I'm a striker. Although I'm transforming into an all-around player, don't hold me to the standard of a defensive midfielder!" He kicked the ball hard towards the goal on the other side of the training ground. "If I could do Rodri's job, I wouldn't be in my current position. Is that even necessary?"

"Relax, no one will blame you." Messi said while stepping on a football. "You don't have to do the work of a defensive midfielder, but if you could have told your teammates about this earlier, and asked him (Bernardo) to make up for it when I got in front of you or earlier, the ball would not have gone in."

Batty frowned at him: "What do you mean?"

"You were unsure. In the last move just now, you were not sure whether you could intercept it, so you didn't say anything." Messi analyzed slowly in his usual gentle tone, and then he waved Batistuta to come over, and they reviewed the game facing the venue where the group match had just been held.

That's what Guardiola wishes he could tell Batistuta.

It's not about a specific technique or way to get out of the way, but a larger awareness of the positions and possibilities of teammates throughout the game.

Batistuta has a talent for reading it, and it occasionally shows up in games, but he doesn't know how to control his talent and use it to go further.

"What I don't understand is, I was here just now, Leo you were dribbling the ball to my left, and Cancelo was putting pressure on Bernardo behind me, so why didn't you pass the ball to the other side?"

"They were moving towards the ribs, leaving the outside open, but Walker was there. Without the numerical advantage, it was easy for the ball to be intercepted and counterattacked in such a small-scale pass. And you were -"

Just as Messi and Batistuta were discussing the review, an accident seemed to have occurred in Group D not far away. Batistuta looked up and heard Neymar calling Aguero's name nervously.

The two looked at each other, then quickly ran towards the scene.

On the way, they saw Aguero, who was surrounded in the middle, holding his chest and bending over, with an uncomfortable look on his face. When Batistuta and Messi rushed over, he was already sitting on the ground.

"Kun, kun?" Batty squatted in front of him, "How are you?"

Aguero didn't say anything, just kept shaking his head and waving his hands.

Messi shook his other hand, then leaned in and whispered something in what sounded to Batistuta like some kind of Argentine dialect (or slang). After a few seconds, Aguero looked a little better, but he was still frowning.

"What happened?" Batty asked.

"Just now I was running with the ball, and suddenly -" Aguero explained softly, "I felt something wrong, my chest, I don't know what it is, but I felt something was wrong."

Then a horrific scene happened. Batistuta watched Aguero fall into a coma in front of him. Or maybe it wasn't a coma, but it was certain that Aguero was no longer conscious.

"Jesus Christ—Team doctor! Alan! Alan!! Team doctor! Come quickly!!"

(End of this chapter)