He didn’t know whether this kid truly had talent, but he was willing to give him a chance.

Chapter Six: Physical Test

Vladimir Borovicka, assistant coach of Zenit St. Petersburg, carefully sized up Ethan Brooks standing before him.

At first glance, he was quite satisfied—his body was exceptionally strong, muscles bulging all over, as if power could burst out from them at any moment.

Ruslan Panchenko had already told him about what happened at the CSKA Moscow training base.

But he wasn’t particularly interested in that story. Scoring a goal over the heads of defenders from the Moscow youth team wasn’t all that surprising, especially since this kid in front of him was over 1.9 meters tall. He preferred to “see it to believe it,” so no matter what Panchenko said, he needed to see Ethan Brooks’s performance with his own eyes before making a decision.

“Hello, Yingxiong,” he greeted Ethan Brooks in English.

“Hello, Coach,” Ethan Brooks replied calmly and confidently.

Borovicka was quite pleased—the kid’s attitude was good, but he still didn’t know if his inner strength was enough. A professional player’s mentality is extremely important. If he has a strong body, but that body is supported by a fragile heart, then he won’t last long on the road to professional football.

Owen Brooks stood to the side, both excited and a little nervous as he watched the two of them.

Early this morning, they had taken Panchenko’s car to St. Petersburg. Originally, Panchenko wanted to rest for a day before going to the club, but Ethan Brooks told him he wasn’t tired at all and suggested they go straight to the training base. Panchenko checked the time—it was a little after four in the afternoon, and the team was training. That was good; if they went now, everyone would be there. So they drove straight to the Udelny Park training base (named after the nearby park), which is where Zenit St. Petersburg’s training base is located.

They quickly met assistant coach Borovicka.

Owen Brooks was very satisfied with the attitude shown by this club. It was completely different from CSKA; the coaches at Zenit seemed friendlier and easier to get along with.

He thought that if his son could stay here in the end, it would indeed be much better than staying in Moscow...

“I’ve heard from Ruslan about what happened yesterday.”

Ethan Brooks grinned.

“I’m very curious about your physical condition. How about we start with a physical test?”

“No problem, Coach.”

Borovicka nodded and signaled for the fitness coach, Valery Kerzhakov, to come over.

※※※

The physical test was actually quite simple: first, they measured Ethan Brooks’s height and weight, then had him do five sets of 100-meter sprints, five sets of 30-meter shuttle runs, and a twelve-minute long-distance run.

Unlike a formal fitness test, this was just to give Zenit’s coaches a basic understanding of the big guy’s physical qualities—he looked tall and strong, but how was his speed? How was his endurance? The coaches didn’t know any of that.

Owen Brooks stood on the sidelines, watching his son being tested on the field.

He wasn’t worried at all about his son’s physical condition.

He himself wasn’t very tall, and his wife Emily Thompson wasn’t as tall as Lang Ping either, but their son seemed to have undergone some kind of genetic mutation, shooting up in height and startling both parents.

Ethan Brooks grew fast and loved football, so Owen Brooks sent him to play. At first, he really didn’t intend to train his son to become a professional player—he just thought that since his son liked it, he’d let him play. Later, he discovered that his son did show some football talent, so he began to seriously consider developing him into a professional player. At that time, China’s professional league had just started and was in full swing. The passion of Chinese fans, pent up for years, was ignited by our own professional league. The media ran endless reports on the lives of professional players and the league itself, and those stars frequently appeared in the news. Owen Brooks thought that letting his son become a professional footballer, pursuing a career in football, didn’t seem like a bad idea at all.

Since childhood, Ethan Brooks had always eaten the best and most nutritious food. Their family hardly ever ate pork, mainly beef, chicken, and fish. There was milk and eggs every day, never interrupted. In the mid-1990s, not many families could manage that—it was all thanks to Owen Brooks going into business that they had the financial means.

Ethan Brooks didn’t let down his father’s hopes or all that beef, milk, and eggs. From fourth grade, he was already a head taller than all his peers, his body kept growing rapidly, and only slowed down in high school. Now, he stood at 1.92 meters and weighed 93 kilograms, and his body hadn’t finished developing—there was still room to grow.

In 1994, China’s first professional football league kicked off in Owen Brooks’s hometown, and the football craze quickly swept across the country. Many youngsters were sent by their parents to various football schools for training, and Ethan Brooks was one of those thousands of kids.