The final result was that Maniero and Sotu, who had taken painkiller injections, lay in despair before the De Laurant Cup, forced to watch their opponents lift the trophy while they exited the scene in regret.
Maniero also suffered worsening injuries from repeated painkiller injections, ultimately suffering greatly as a result.
"Some things, you’ll have to go through eventually. Some failures will come sooner or later. Regrets will always exist. That’s football, that’s life," Maniero said. "So... I strongly advise you not to play injured because even if you do, you won’t get the result you want. Some outcomes are destined and can’t be changed by human effort."
"This is God’s will, you have to learn to accept it, Lu!"
A few seconds later, Lu Yang spoke: "In my hometown, there’s a lot of motivational ’chicken soup for the soul.’ There’s a story that goes like this: During a flood, a man was trapped on his rooftop. As the waters rose to submerge the roof, he began to pray to God for rescue."
"During this time, a small boat, a speedboat, and a helicopter came to rescue him, but he refused to leave, believing God would save him."
Maniero laughed, "What an idiot! If I’m not mistaken, after he died, he’d question God why he wasn’t saved, and God would tell him, those small boats, speedboats, and helicopters were sent by me to save you, right?"
Bam!
The locker room door was flung open, signaling the end of halftime.
"Maybe God once saved you?" Lu Yang looked at Maniero.
Maniero furrowed his brows, seeming a bit self-doubtful. He shook his head, "I’m not like that guy waiting to be rescued. I trust myself and believe that man can conquer nature. I tried to save myself; I put everything on the line! But everything I went through told me that God didn’t save me; he even cruelly overturned my little wooden boat!"
"I gave everything and all I got was a runner-up medal and a body full of injuries!"
As Lu Yang followed his teammates out, he waved at Maniero, who was still bitterly railing against God, and said, "God won’t be absent, but he might be late... and if your God really didn’t save you, then I’m willing to let you see the light of this world!"
Lu Yang’s voice faded into the distance.
Directly after, the team doctor, in the hallway, urgently pulled Sotu and exclaimed, "It’s bad, my medical system colleague told me that Lu Yang had an injection this afternoon!"
Sotu was stunned, no wonder the kid wasn’t limping much in the evening.
Damn it!
The painkiller injection, with many side effects, acts like an anesthetic for professional players due to their strong physical fitness and modern technological advancements.
Pain is the body’s self-protective mechanism.
When muscles, ligaments, or bones around your knee are injured, pain prevents you from using them.
The primary function of the injection is to shut off this alarm.
Simply put, you no longer feel pain.
This allows players to perform any action with ease, uninterrupted by sudden pain.
Lu Yang had tried it during a practice match before and knew he couldn’t go all out because the pain would subconsciously stop him from taking risks.
That’s a physiological response, an instinctive reaction beyond mental control.
Even if he endured the pain, he could at most manage one shot.
But a football game involves far more than one shot.
So Lu Yang chose to take the injection.
Since side effects like weight gain or infection mean little to professional players, why do people still shy away from it?
Because of secondary injury!
Your body has issues because your activities exceeded its maximum load capacity.
Once injected, you completely lose control over your body’s capacity limits.
You can perform larger shifts and relentlessly squeeze every drop of energy from your body.
In return, your body accumulates ever more severe internal injuries.
Repeated tearing, rupturing can utterly destroy your muscles and ligaments, worsening an already serious injury.
"This bastard!" Sotu cursed angrily; he wanted to chase after Lu Yang to argue, but Maniero held him back.
"What we couldn’t do, perhaps... he can?" Maniero said, looking at Sotu.
The two were teleported back to their younger days.
"But this will affect his career! It’s a lifelong matter, not just one match!" Sotu was still struggling to accept it.
"I don’t regret it!" Maniero said.
Sotu was instantly speechless.
Even though Sotu was worried about Lu Yang, when Maniero said, "I don’t regret it," he couldn’t hold it together.
The two old men hugged and cried silently.
These four words were what Sotu and Maniero longed for all their lives.
If it weren’t for Lu Yang, they would never have come to terms with being forever denied the European Cup.
Not because it was the only honor they lacked.
But because only the European Cup was the one they had given their all for, gambled everything, but never achieved matching success.
The hardest thing to let go of isn’t "what belonged to me," but "what should have belonged to me."
The deepest regret isn’t brushing against success and missing it. It’s the absence of response despite pouring everything out, asking but not receiving, loving but not attaining; it’s like the tree wishes to be still but the wind won’t stop, children want to care but the parent is no longer there...