~~~~~~
As the whistle blew, the referee pointed both hands toward the center circle kickoff spot.
"The match is over!"
"Wolfsburg, thanks to Caligiuri's goal, secures a narrow one-goal victory over Hannover, taking—"
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"This is their thirteenth victory of the season!"
"With a full rotation in effect, these are three economical and practical points!"
Along with the announcement, Mark, who had been sitting on the bench, stood up and walked onto the pitch to high-five his teammates in celebration: "Great job!"
"Well done!"
"That shot was top-class!"
To prepare for the upcoming tough Champions League battle against Maribor, Hecking also implemented extensive rotations for this away League match against Hannover 96.
Mark, along with key players like De Bruyne, Gustavo, and Naldo, all sat on the bench.
Even so, Wolfsburg still defeated Hannover away, taking all three points!
It's worth mentioning that Mark's Bundesliga debut took place in a home match against Hannover 96 last season!
In that match, with the team trailing, Mark came on as a substitute for Diego.
He then used his flashy footwork to toy with the Japanese international Hiroki Sakai, leading to the latter being sent off with a red card.
And that red card became the turning point of the match.
In the remaining time, the team utilized their numerical advantage to eventually claw back two goals and secure a valuable point.
Since then, Mark officially stepped onto the Bundesliga stage!
Times have changed... Nowadays, even without Mark and with a full rotation, Wolfsburg can still secure a 1-0 away win against Hannover!
This shows that Wolfsburg's strength has seen a visible improvement compared to eleven months ago!
A few days after defeating Hannover, Mark followed the team on a private plane to Maribor, the second-largest city in Slovenia.
Maribor's home ground, Ljudski Vrt, is situated on the banks of the Drava River, with a very beautiful and pleasant environment.
However, the stadium's total capacity is quite small, holding only 13,000 people.
The two thousand Wolfsburg fans who traveled for the away game used their jerseys and flags to dye the stadium's west stand in a sea of green and white.
Although there were only nearly ten thousand fans, the cheers of ten thousand people were enough to shake the entire stadium.
This match was not only crucial for Wolfsburg but also for Maribor.
Because if they could defeat Wolfsburg at home, their group ranking would overtake Wolfsburg's, allowing them to enter the Europa League Round of 32 as the third-placed team in the group!
This way, they could continue to earn prize money through the Europa League.
Therefore, Maribor, playing at home, fielded their full starting lineup, attempting a desperate last stand.
Unfortunately, there was already a huge gap in the squad strength of the two teams.
The main reason Maribor was able to hold Wolfsburg to a draw at the Volkswagen Arena last time was that Wolfsburg had implemented a major squad rotation.
For this match, to secure third place in the group, Wolfsburg went all out!
Key players like Mark, De Bruyne, and Gustavo, who were rested in the previous match, all took to the field!
The immense disparity in strength allowed Wolfsburg to firmly control the tempo of the game from the very first second.
Facing Maribor's counter-attacking tactics, Wolfsburg unhesitatingly raised the banner of offense, tearing through Maribor's defense with sharp central penetrations and wing breakthroughs time and again.
In the 17th minute, Mark cut diagonally into the rib area from the left, received De Bruyne's through ball, and curled a first-time shot into the far corner to open the scoring!
In the 33rd minute, Wolfsburg executed a classic wing-to-center combination tactic, with Vieirinha reaching the byline and delivering a cutback cross.
De Bruyne followed up with a clinical finish, sending the ball into the net!
The score was extended to 2-0!
After the first half, De Bruyne had a goal and an assist, and Mark also had a goal to his name.
In the second half, Wolfsburg continued to pin Maribor in their own half, dominating them relentlessly.
Maribor's players and fans finally witnessed the power of the Bundesliga leaders.
It turned out that the reason they could pull off an upset draw last time was that the opponent hadn't given their all!
And a Wolfsburg going all out was truly terrifying!
Ultimately, with Mark's brace and De Bruyne's goal and assist, Wolfsburg secured a crushing 4-0 away victory over Maribor.
Throughout the match, Wolfsburg's possession reached 65%!
And their shot count reached twelve!
Meanwhile, Maribor only had one shot the entire game, and it wasn't even on target.
However, when the referee blew the final whistle, the Wolfsburg players, despite having completely suppressed their opponents and secured a massive win, did not show any signs of joy or excitement.
Because they had already learned the result of the other match happening at the same time from their coach:
In the other Group G match, Chelsea defeated Sporting CP 3-1 at home!
As a result, after six rounds of group stage matches, both Sporting CP and Wolfsburg ended with two wins, two draws, and two losses, totaling eight points each!
However, Sporting CP edged out Wolfsburg with a superior goal difference of just one goal, qualifying as the group runner-up!
Meanwhile, Wolfsburg, with a goal difference trailing by one, finished third in the group stage and was relegated to the Europa League.
As for Maribor, they finished at the bottom of the group, ending their first—and only—Champions League campaign in club history.
Strictly speaking, neither side in this match was a winner.
"Is my first Champions League journey over just like that..."
While shaking hands with his opponents, Mark sighed inwardly.
As a professional player, he was lucky.
Because by reaching the pinnacle of club football, the Champions League, in his very first professional year, he had already surpassed the vast majority of players.
Not to mention, his brilliant performances and goals in this season's Champions League group stage saw him surpass Draxler to become the youngest German goalscorer in Champions League history!
Of course, for an ambitious player like Mark, such a performance was still far from enough!
Having finally gotten a second chance at life, he naturally wanted to become the best in the football world!
He not only wanted to test his skills against the superstars on the pitch but also wanted to reach the summit of football and experience the feeling of "standing atop the highest peak and seeing all other mountains as small."
Thinking of this, Mark immediately made a silent vow: "Next season, I will return even stronger!"
..
With the conclusion of the sixth round of matches in each group, the Champions League group stage officially came to an end.
At the last moment, Manchester City squeezed past Roma away to qualify, while Barça secured top spot in their group after a comprehensive win over Paris Saint-Germain at the Camp Nou.
With that, all sixteen teams for the Champions League knockout stage were decided!
Among them, the three Bundesliga teams other than Wolfsburg advanced strongly, the Premier League and La Liga each had three teams qualify, Ligue 1 had two, and Serie A was left with only Juventus as its lone representative.
Additionally, four teams from outside the top five leagues—Porto, Sporting CP, Shakhtar Donetsk, and Basel—also made it into the Round of 16.
Round of 16 Group A: Atlético Madrid (La Liga), Juventus (Serie A)
Group B: Real Madrid (La Liga), Basel (Swiss Super League)
Group C: Monaco (Ligue 1), Leverkusen (Bundesliga)
Group D: Borussia Dortmund (Bundesliga), Arsenal (Premier League)
Group E: Bayern Munich (Bundesliga), Manchester City (Premier League)
Group F: Barcelona (La Liga), Paris Saint-Germain (Ligue 1)
Group G: Chelsea (Premier League), Sporting CP (Primeira Liga)
Group H: Porto (Primeira Liga), Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukrainian Premier League)
Immediately after the group stage ended, various betting companies released their latest title odds.
Real Madrid and Bayern were the favorites, tied for first on the odds list.
Following closely behind were Barcelona and Chelsea; even Manchester City, who struggled to qualify as group runners-up, were still generally favored by bookmakers, ranking fifth with odds of 13/1.
The odds for Atlético, PSG, Dortmund, Arsenal, and Juve were all close.
Meanwhile, the Swiss team Basel, who qualified ahead of Liverpool, and Ukraine's Shakhtar Donetsk, featuring the lethal striker Luiz Adriano, were the two least favored teams.
Their title odds were as high as 251/1, making them likely candidates to just make up the numbers.
Of course, the Champions League no longer had anything to do with Wolfsburg.
Following their group stage exit and relegation to the Europa League, Wolfsburg, the team that had been flying high at the top of the Bundesliga this season, became the focus of German media reports.
Of the four Bundesliga teams in the Champions League, only Wolfsburg failed to advance from the group stage.
This led many media outlets to launch a verbal onslaught against Wolfsburg.
Some media outlets called Wolfsburg "Timid in the Champions League, heavy-hitting in the Bundesliga!"
Others labeled them a "civil war" team, only capable of bullying their own in the League while embarrassing themselves in the Champions League.
And the post Mark made on social media after the match was flooded with haters.
They mocked Mark for failing to lead Wolfsburg to the knockout stages of the Champions League.
"Wait, after all that, the Bundesliga leaders can't even get out of a Champions League group?"
"What 'Magician'? He's just a kid who likes flashy dribbling..."
However, in the face of mockery and doubt, many of Mark's fans and Wolfsburg supporters immediately stepped up to support their idol: "Mark, this isn't on you!"
"In the two games the team lost, if you had been there, we definitely wouldn't have lost!"
"Keep your head up, we'll be back next season!"
"Haha, it's not bad to go for the Europa League title either!"
Mark faced the external criticism and discussions calmly.
This was the harsh reality.
In the world of competitive sports, the winner takes all, and the loser is always in the wrong.
As long as you win, the media and the public offer nothing but praise and admiration.
But once you lose, it's nothing but criticism and mockery.
The media were just a bunch of opportunistic sycophants!
Although he had debuted less than a year ago, over the past six months, he had gradually learned how to block out this negative information and noise.
In his view, engaging in wars of words with the media and haters on social media was meaningless.
All he could do was use his performance on the pitch to shut the mouths of these traffic-chasing hacks!
Of course, compared to those irrelevant people who didn't matter in his life, he and the team were more concerned about their opponents in the Europa League.
With the Champions League group stage over, the eight teams dropping into the Europa League and the top two teams from the twelve Europa League groups were freshly determined:
Group A: Mönchengladbach (Bundesliga), Villarreal (La Liga)
Group B: Club Brugge (Belgian Pro League), Torino (Serie A)
Group C: Beşiktaş (Süper Lig), Tottenham Hotspur (Premier League)
Group D: Red Bull Salzburg (Austrian Bundesliga), Celtic (Scottish Premiership)
Group E: Dynamo Moscow (Russian Premier League), PSV Eindhoven (Eredivisie)
Group F: Inter Milan (Serie A), Dnipro (Ukrainian Premier League)
Group G: Feyenoord (Eredivisie), Sevilla (La Liga)
Group H: Everton (Premier League), Schalke 04 (Bundesliga)
Group I: Napoli (Serie A), BSC Young Boys (Swiss Super League)
Group J: Dynamo Kyiv (Ukrainian Premier League), AaB (Danish Superliga)
Group K: Fiorentina (Serie A), Guingamp (Ligue 1)
Group L: Legia Warsaw (Ekstraklasa), Trabzonspor (Süper Lig)
Additionally, the eight teams dropping down from the Champions League were Olympiacos (Super League Greece), Liverpool (Premier League), Zenit Saint Petersburg (Russian Premier League), Anderlecht (Belgian Pro League), Roma (Serie A),
Ajax (Eredivisie), Athletic Bilbao (La Liga), and Wolfsburg (Bundesliga).
Compared to the Champions League, which is packed with strong teams and giants, the strength of the Europa League Round of 32 teams was varied.
As the Round of 32 was finalized, betting companies also announced the title odds:
Bundesliga leaders Wolfsburg, with the lowest odds of 10/1, were considered the top favorites for this Europa League!
Meanwhile, Premier League giants Liverpool were ranked fourth with odds of 13/1, also being seen as title contenders.
Besides Wolfsburg and the Reds, several other teams from the Premier League and Serie A, including Roma, Everton, Inter Milan,
Napoli, and Tottenham Hotspur, were also ranked highly as strong contenders for the title.
Interestingly, the defending champions Sevilla were not favored, ranking ninth with odds of 17/1.
Except for Zenit, all the teams in the top ten came from the big five Leagues!
A few days later, returning home, Wolfsburg welcomed the challenge of the newly promoted SC Paderborn.
Paderborn finished as runners-up in the 2. Bundesliga last season, earning promotion to the Bundesliga for the first time in club history.
After fourteen rounds of the League, they had a record of four wins, five draws, and five losses, placing them twelfth in the League table.
This record and ranking were very impressive for a newcomer that had never participated in the Bundesliga before.
As a newly promoted side, they had secured several victories because opponents were unfamiliar with them.
They had even pulled off upsets at home, holding Leverkusen and Borussia Dortmund to draws!
Coming to the Volkswagen Arena for this match, they also wanted to see just how strong the current League leaders were!
.......
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