Football: The immortal legend on the green field

Shen Bin involuntarily followed the little girl out of the room and onto the street.

Finding himself walking on an unfamiliar city street, Shen Bin never remembered having been to this place.

The streets were not like the familiar asphalt roads, but were paved with baked bricks. There were no modern high-rise buildings like those in Jinling on both sides of the narrow road, but only one or two-story low and very retro houses.

Pedestrians on both sides of the street were walking leisurely, and from time to time you could see a few drug addicts who looked like zombies, all of them with their heads down and their hands hanging naturally.

Coming to this strange place, for a 15-year-old boy, he did feel a little scared. Shen Bin could not help but follow the little girl along the road in one direction. There were people coming and going on the street, most of them were white, and a few were black.

Shen Bin followed the girl and walked forward. Along the way, Shen Bin found that more and more people were walking with him, but fewer and fewer people were walking in the same direction as him.

People were no longer wearing all kinds of summer clothes like at the beginning. Instead, most of them wore yellow No. 11 jerseys or yellow and white vertical striped jerseys, and everyone had a sad face.

The two came to a tall building, and Shen Bin discovered that he actually recognized the Latin words on the lintel of the building.

“Hospital Saint Mary of Rio de Janeiro.”

The square in front of St. Mary's Hospital was crowded with people, and the hospital gate was surrounded by crowds.

More and more people gathered here. The little girl saw Shen Bin standing in the square in a daze in surprise, turned around, smiled, and took Shen Bin's hand.

Shen Bin was involuntarily led by the little girl towards the hospital gate, and like a ghost in a Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, he walked straight through the crowd.

Shen Bin followed the girl to a ward. His body floated up and slowly overlapped with the white man on the bed.

The man on the hospital bed was about 50 years old, and he had one of the most typical looks of white people in the 70s.

Curly hair, thick sideburns, a big nose and a horse face. At this moment, this face fell deeply into Shen Bin's sight.

There were people crowded around the bed.

"Little Bird! Garrincha! My brother..." The rough voice could be heard through several doors. A bald black man rushed in and shouted loudly...

Everyone in the ward bowed their heads in silence, and some of them were awakened by the sound and raised their heads to look at the person who came.

Shen Bin was in a state of panic, but was startled by the man's loud shout and flew up again.

Legend has it that people go to heaven after death, but Shen Bin is not sure if this is what he is experiencing. Is he dead?

He didn't know or know for sure, he just felt his body flying high into the sky in an uncontrollable way.

He was horrified to discover that he had no control over the dream!

He had the horrible thought that perhaps this was not a dream at all, and he was really dead.

Just as he was about to burst into tears and wail about his meaningless death.

He just kept watching the people in the ward busying themselves with the dead.

At noon, he saw from the sky that his body, which was left on the bed, was carried by several people onto a medical stretcher, and then carried out of the ward by eight men in their 8s. Behind the stretcher were three white women in their 50s and 3s, and 13 young girls in their 20s, and behind them were men and women...

Shen Bin was surprised to find that one of the eight people carrying his body looked very familiar. It was the psychopath who had just shouted. Because he was so scared just now, he didn't look closely at the face of the black old man. Now that he looked carefully, he realized that he looked so familiar! It seemed like he had seen him somewhere before.

Shen Bin suddenly remembered, isn't this the crow's mouth that appeared on the sports channel, the Brazilian football king Pele!

The vehicle carrying the body was driving slowly on the street, and people were standing on both sides of the road.

The body was escorted all the way to the Maracanã Stadium.

At this time, the stadium stands were already full. The people in the stadium did not cheer like they usually did when they came to watch the game, nor did they sing and dance like they usually did at large gatherings, showing the nature of Latin people.

People were all wearing formal attire, mostly black, and many were holding flowers in their hands, all looking silently towards the center of the court.

The hearse drove to the center of the stadium, and a huge billboard read, "Farewell ceremony for the body of Brazilian football hero Garrincha!"

The body was carried down, and for some reason, two of the three middle-aged women suddenly started quarreling. A fan representative wearing a yellow and white striped jersey of Botafogo wanted to cover the coffin with the flag of Botafogo team, but was rejected by a young man who looked very similar to the deceased. The scene was in chaos.

"Nilton Santos, what should we do? You make the decision! We will all listen to you..." Bailey said to a white old man next to him.

Santos didn't say anything either. He walked forward silently, replaced Botafogo's team flag with the Brazilian flag, and covered the coffin with it.

The body lay in the coffin. After the farewell ceremony, the coffin was tied to a fire truck, which pulled the coffin all the way from Rio back to Quezon City.

Along the way, both sides of the road were lined with fans who had been waiting early to bid farewell to their idols.

They stood on the overpass and next to the road signs, waving the clothes or scarves in their hands, bidding farewell to their former football heroes.

Shen Bin was unable to think and just kept floating in the air, watching all this.

Until the coffin is buried.

Shen Bin seemed to be awake, but it was difficult for him to open his eyes. It was too fast, perhaps reaching the speed of light in less than a few seconds. Shen Bin found that his world had stopped.

Or that his body no longer floated or flew quickly.

He's not dead.

He lives.

He can still think, such as "Where am I?", "Was this all a dream?", "Am I awake?" and so on.

He opened his eyes with difficulty and found himself still lying on the bed in the hotel.

Shen Bin got up from the bed and opened the window. It was already bright outside. He checked the time on his phone. It was 5 o'clock in the morning.

Shen Bin stood in front of the window for a while, quickly revisited his dream in his mind, and went to the bathroom to wash up.

This morning is the day for the group draw for the U17 echelon of the first division team.

A total of 12 teams, 12 A-A teams and 24 A-B teams, are divided into 6 groups, with 4 teams in each group. The rules are the same as the World Cup, but the only difference is that the game density is more intensive, with each team having a game every two days on average.

The main venue of the competition is Jinling Wutaishan Gymnasium, which will host 12 group matches of Groups A and B, 4 quarter-finals, two quarter-finals, and the final.

Shen Bin's Liaoning Tianlun U17 team was placed in Group C. In addition to Liaoning Tianlun, there were Sichuan Sanniu, Yanjing Guards and Jilin Aoxi in Group C. Yanjing Guards was the runner-up of the A-League last year, and Jilin Aoxi was the seventh place in the A-League last year.

Liaoning Tianlun is the third-tier team in this group, and the weakest team in this group is Sichuan Sanniu, the bottom team of the A-B League.

Their Group C and Group D were arranged to play at the Jinling Longjiang Stadium where Shen Bin's family lived.

There will be two matches in the stadium every day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

The first match between Liaoning Tianlun and Jilin Aoxi is scheduled for 7 pm on July 14.

Because of the draw, the team gave the players half a day off.

After breakfast, Shen Bin said goodbye to the team leader and coach, then he left the hotel carrying his bag, said hello to his friends who were still in the lobby, and walked slowly on the sidewalk pushing his second-hand bicycle.

There were a few light white clouds like fish scales hanging in the clear blue sky, which were dyed golden red by the red sun in the east. People were coming and going on the streets. There was a lot of traffic on the road.

Shen Bin was pushing his bicycle slowly.

Shen Bin rode his bicycle until he reached the overpass where West Straight Line and the First Ring Road intersected. He then quickly disappeared from everyone's sight.