Chapter 926: The Group Draw for the Final Series

Gareth Bale finished all the qualifiers with the conviction to go to Spain as Wales resisted the comeback pressure in the last two matches to earn its right to qualify for the European matches as the second seed.

The result had a huge response at home in Wales, who finally reached the European Cup matches again after 1976. They finished in the top eight at the then European Cup as the Welsh media hoped that this time, under the leadership of Bale and Ramsey, would at least match its best results back in history.

On the night when they were leaving, Bale called Twain. Although it was extremely noisy on his side, but Twain could still hear Bale’s hissing roar, “Coach! We are going to Spain! We are going to Spain!”

Next to it, there seemed to be someone echoing loudly, “Spain! Spain!”

Twain knew that they were celebrating this rare victory, hence he did not bother Bale much. That, coupled with Bale’s current condition, meant that he probably would not listen to anything Twain said. Thus, he just gave a simple congratulations and hung up.

Although Wales reaching the series this time round, was thanks to the European Cup expansion from 16 slots to 24, the Welsh still had their reasons to celebrate.

Unlike Wales’ national revelry, England were calmer on being able to leave the group stage. After all, they were regulars at the European Cup and should only be on the headlines if they could not go to Spain. Twain being able to lead the team out of the group stage should count as his first duty accomplished.

The actual European Cup elimination series was the real test.

At the end of November, the last three qualifying teams were awarded a two-round home-and-away play between the top six teams, to decide the last three teams which was going to qualify for the European Cup.

Then in Nyon, Switzerland, the head coaches of the twenty-four teams gathered for a group draw ceremony organized by Union of European Football Associations.

Twain participated in several group draw ceremonies. Even if it was for a country team, there was not much difference. At most, he would just need to meet more head coaches for the country teams. However, he himself was still the focal point for the media.

Two days before the draw, a list of The European Cup groups was reportedly leaked from within Union of European Football Associations. Regardless of the authenticity of the list, it quickly caught and attracted the attention of the media, so the internet and the social media news immediately became the main voice of the mainstream media.

Reporters who came to interview also took this question to ask Twain, because England’s grouping on the list was not fortunate – they were allocated into an extremely strong group.

The group ingress in the final stages of the European Cup would first identify the seeded teams and divide all the teams into the ABCD four tiers according to the total points of their last World Cup qualifiers, the previous and the current European Cup qualifiers. The hosts and defending champions would qualify directly for the seeded team, with the rest of the seeded teams coming from the first-tier teams.

In the group list, which is rumoured to be an “internal leaked version”, England was placed in Group D as a seeded team, along with Sweden, Germany and Denmark.

Germany being the second tier team was not surprising as they did not perform well in last year’s European Cup qualifiers between Poland and Ukraine, so they were only able to qualify for the finals in the final round through extra time. However, as it was rare that there would be strong teams at the second seed like Germany, it was England’s misfortune that they would still meet Germany.

Reporters were keen to hear what Twain thought about the leaked version of the group list. Before this, they had previously interviewed Germany’s head coach, Sammer, who thought that the list was made up by journalists and was not worth evaluating. Then they went to interview Sweden coach Roland Anderson, whose answer was the same as Sammer.

But it was common sense that they thought this way.

The group draw was an important thing and now that there was a “leaked version” even before the start of the group draw, which head coach would dare to evaluate it? They did not even know if the version was real, how would they even form an opinion about it?

But the reporters knew what kind of person Twain was — his talkative mouth had been dormant for more than a year and it was time it would light up again.

Twain did not disappoint them either.

He did not seem to doubt the authenticity of the list as he followed it with some opinions on his “group opponents”.

“Germany is a strong team, I know all about England and Germany’s feud … There is nothing worthy to praise about the matchup results between England and Sweden either, so we need to be careful in handling that … Denmark is a very tough team and I played against them during the selection matches but I didn’t know we would meet again this time. They are a tough team, and you will realize this when you analyze our matchup results during the selection matches, as those ended in a victory and a draw, we need to be careful…”

A reporter finally could not hold back, as he asked bluntly, “Mr Twain, why are you prepared to express your opinions on this group draw list?”

Twain purposefully acted surprised, “Is there any issue with this list?”

“It is alleged that this is a leaked version …”

Twain’s laughter interrupted the reporter, “Whether it’s the European Champions Cup or the European Cup, when is there not a ‘leaked version’ out before the game? And we would always find out after the draw that the leaked version will be always a bit similar to the final official version…”

“Mr. Twain, do you mean that the results of the draw have long been determined by Union of European Football Associations?”

The reporters roared with excitement, and at last they heard the voice they wanted to hear most.

Twain’s face was immediately darkened, as he stared at the reporter while asking, “I didn’t say that, if you reported that I said that on the news, I’ll insist on my right to accuse you of slandering me, Mr. Reporter.”

The atmosphere at the scene immediately cooled down.

Twain took the opportunity to get out of the reporters’ circle and walk into the conference.

In there, he met with his boss, the FA’s chief executive, Shaun Barclays.

“There are so many reporters surrounding you outside, what are they asking?” He glanced a little warily at the excited reporters outside. He was worried Twain said the wrong things again.

“What else other than the leaked version of the lottery result?” Twain asked as if it was not very important.

“You didn’t say anything, did you? Mr. Twain.” Mr. Barclays was clearly nervous.

Twain grinned, “What are you worried about, Mr. Barclays?”

Barclays could not easily said what he was thinking as he frowned and patted Twain on his shoulders, “Let’s go, Mr Twain. The group draw ceremony is about to start.”

※※※

Unlike the leaked version, England was not placed in Group D but instead they were placed in Group C. This made several people more convinced that the leaked version of the team lottery results were fabricated, because as there would always be several similar rumors before every match, everyone was accustomed to this.”

After the seeding team was done, it was time to draw for the second-tier teams.

When it was the turn of Group C, the draw guest, former Madrid flag bearer Raul Gonzalez from Spain, held up the ping-pong ball in his hand. As he pulled out the note from within the ball and read out the name on it, the note appeared on the big screen behind him.

“Germany.”

There was a burst of jeers at the scene.

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The camera swept through the positions the coaches were sitting and found Tony Twain, only to find that he had put his finger in his mouth and was happily jeering at the results too.

If it were not for the image everyone already had for Tony Twain, they would think that he was a passerby who only wanted to join in the crowd, and not one of the parties involved…

“Mr. Twain!” Barclays, who was sitting beside Twain, was glaring at him.

Twain glanced back at him and booed a few times. His sharp boos were clearly heard on the television.

Having done this, he then took his hand out of his mouth and wiped it on his suit without any regard on his image. “What’s the matter, Mr. Barclays?”

“Watch your image…” said Barclays weakly.

Twain smiled, “Okay, Mr. Barclays. ”

The uproar over the draw lasted a long while before it went away, and when someone looked back at the England manager’s indication of the result, he was always seen booing. Who knew if he was actually booing because he was excited or unhappy… but that was alright, the media would always arrange a speech for him to say out.

I believe the senior Union of European Football Associations officials sitting on the podium must have seen this. There was no choice, who wanted Tony Twain to be the main focal point during the ceremony?

The German, Sammer was discontent about this result as he frowned with a heavy face. Maybe he was unhappy about Twain’s attitude — this Englishman was too flippant!

The snobbish Englishman sat in his seat and smiled as he looked at Beckenbauer, the German football legend who was walking up to the draw.

He was going to draw the third-tier team for Group C.

The result he drew was somewhat disappointing for the excited media, as it was not the predicted Sweden but it was Portugal instead.

Twain smiled for a while from below, as Portugal was stronger than Sweden was. If not for their poor performance during the selection matches and not being able to enter the Brazil World Cup, how would they even be allocated as the third tier team…

The team that appeared in the fourth tier gave Twain a somewhat surprised look for the first time.

“Wales,” The host read this somewhat boring name.

But Twain’s eyebrows jumped up.

He did not expect himself to be reunited with the little monkey so soon.

As a result of the expansion of the European Cup, the group stage has been increased from four groups to six, making it much less likely that the “strong teams would go against each other”. Hence, the group that England was in would be labelled as the “group of death”.

It was a far cry from the previous “leaked version.” But at the very least, England and Germany were indeed drawn into the same group.

As soon as the draw ceremony was over, the media surrounded Twain again.

Barclays saw that he was about to be crowded out by the reporters, he hurriedly reminded Twain in his ear, “Don’t speak foolishly, Mr Twain!”

“I’m not a child anymore…” Twain muttered disgruntledly as he welcomed the media.

Twain knew that England and Germany had always looked at each other badly in football, and that modesty would not get a good response.

“… We are not afraid of Germany, ‘The Group of Death’? I’m not worried. It’s the European Cup, there would be strong teams everywhere, I don’t think there’s anything wrong being drawn in the same group with teams like Germany, Portugal or Wales … Our goal is to win the championship, and there would be no champions who would get lucky consistently in their journey…”

He sounded really impressive, especially as he publicly stated that his team’s goal is to “win the championship”. There was a burst of discussions within the crowd of reporters.

He could already see tomorrow’s eye-catching headline: England aiming for the championships from the start, self-admitted by Tony Twain himself.

However, the reporters still had a lot to ask about the results of the draw. “Mr Twain, there were some similarities between the leaked version before the draw and the actual results, and England was also drawn into the same group as Germany, I would like to ask—”

Twain knew what the reporter was trying to ask, as he immediately hardened his face and said, “Isn’t that normal? There were only six groups so the probability of Germany being placed in Group C as a second-tier team is one in six, which I think is normal. There’s nothing wrong here. ”

The reporters were not impressed as they wanted to hear something groundbreaking from his mouth. Twain was not willing to be a scapegoat for others, hence for similar problems it was as if he was a Taiji master, he beat around the bush several times and was not willing to answer the question straight to the point.

Reporters blocked Twain for a long while, but as they were not able to get their desired answer, they could only give up and let him go.

But simply that phrase “Our goal is to win the championship” alone was enough to attract tons of attention. Yes, England had always been considered a strong European team, but there were several people who looked down on them, many thought that strong team had to referred to with inverted commas and should have only been called the pseudo-strong team. What’s more, the results of this group draw only just came out and there was still six months before the start of the European Cup. Twain so loudly shouted “our goal is to win the championship” slogan, did he not consider the possible changes in the next six months? What if the core players were not in form? What if the main players were unable to participate due to their injury? Doing this only created enemies for himself and himself only…

But those were only troubles for Twain himself, us as the media just need to create eye-catching content to attract attention.

※※※

On the next day, the major sports media really began to hype Twain’s talkative mouth, as his big framed photograph coupled with that line “our goal is to become the champions” was really groundbreaking.

“If it was someone else saying that line, people might have regarded it as a joke, but if it was him, people would not even have dared to laugh.”

People who were familiar with Tony Twain, would definitely have had the same thought upon reading this headline.

England’s fans were also delighted that they could have such a confident manager that perhaps it would no longer be a dream to lift the La Liga cup in the English capital at next year’s European Championships.

Twain was in the headlines, but Shaun Barclays was having a headache.

Just as Twain’s title-winning manifesto appeared in the headlines, Barclays also received a call from Union of European Football Associations president Michel Platini.

The call was simple, where Platini, as a personal friend, reminded Barclays to take care of Tony Twain’s talkative mouth. The things Twain said during the draw ceremony to the reporters was well-heard. The Union of European Football Associations was not deaf; they did know about this. He hoped that Twain would never speak things that would doubt the Union of European Football Associations’s fairness.

Unlike the previous presidents, the new Football Association chief executive was looking for ways to repair the relationship between the English Football Association and Union of European Football Associations, as the Union of European Football Associations was always targeting England, there were several incidents of sabotaging plots in the past few years.

He naturally did not want Twain’s talkative mouth to affect his “friendship” with Platini and damage the relationship between the Football Association and Union of European Football Associations.

A few months ago in Denmark, he was boasting how successful his control on Twain was, and now he has learned how a terrible headache it is to have such an unruly head coach that cannot be disciplined or tamed.

If someone could get Tony Twain extremely humble, make him listen to instructions, being meek like a sheep, then this person has to be God … (To be continued, if you want to know what happens later, please log in to www.qidian.com, where there would be more chapters, support the author, support genuine reading! )