"How did it come to this?"
Athletic Club B head coach Neil still hadn't fully come to his senses by the time the final whistle blew.
The scoreline on the board was burning into his nerves.
1-0!
Leoia had won the match.
Athletic Club B had finished the match with 67% possession.
Twenty-three shots, nineteen on target.
And they had still lost?
What made it even harder to stomach was that all that relentless attacking pressure had failed to find a way past Leoia's goal.
Neil watched Leon Feng walking back towards the dressing room and couldn't help but narrow his eyes.
Just what kind of monster was this goalkeeper from the East?
"Your side put in a tremendous performance!"
Burke Abel's grating voice sounded in Neil's ear.
"Yours was better."
The corner of Neil's mouth twitched involuntarily.
"Just luck."
Burke Abel was beaming from ear to ear, unable to conceal the trace of satisfaction in his expression.
His gamble had paid off, and in competitive sport, the winner takes everything while the loser takes nothing, and that was the brutal reality of it.
"Who do you reckon will end up with more goals by the end of the season?"
"Ronaldo for me!"
"I say Messi!"
"My money's on the great Ibrahimovic!"
"Come off it, Ibra has no chance!"
Back in the East, football fans online were entirely absorbed in the performances of Ronaldo and Messi.
Both players had reached extraordinary heights this season, with their goal tallies chasing each other all the way, neither able to pull clear.
In the most recent run of fixtures, a brief injury layoff for Ronaldo had allowed Messi to open up a lead of three goals.
"Doesn't matter, Ronaldo is back next match!"
"Right, back to pad his tally in the Copa del Rey, more like!"
"Hang on, isn't the Copa del Rey still a proper competition?"
Online, the rivalry between Ronaldo fans and Messi fans was beginning to heat up into a full argument, but at that very moment, a post caught the attention of fans across the East.
"A Player from the East Who Refuses to Give Up! The Goalkeeper Who Has Never Been Beaten in a One-on-One!"
"Hang on, this doesn't look like a league from the East, do we actually have players out there playing abroad?"
"Blimey, and a goalkeeper of all positions! Spain? Don't tell me it's La Liga? How has there been absolutely no news about this back home? That makes no sense!"
"It makes perfect sense, because it's the Segunda División B! The semi-professional side Leoia!"
"Ha! Semi-professional! That's probably worse than the league back home! This is just someone farming clicks!"
"We want our players going abroad, sure, but not to play for some village club!"
"Is this really what players from the East have come to, putting out videos like this for attention? Never conceded a one-on-one! I could say the same playing for my local village team, because their one-on-ones never hit the frame anyway!"
"The person above has spoken the truth!"
Su Jing had edited together footage of Leon playing for Leoia and posted it online, but the response was the complete opposite of what she had expected.
At the end of the video, Su Jing had also highlighted just how hard Leon trained, because she felt a player who worked this hard deserved to be seen by fans back in the East, and perhaps even by the football authorities there.
What Su Jing hadn't anticipated was that fans from the East would see right at the start that Leon was playing in the Segunda División B and close the video immediately without watching any further.
On top of that, Leon was met with widespread ridicule from Eastern fans, who in the process dragged out a number of players from the East's national team to pile on as well.
"How did it come to this?"
Su Jing was completely stunned.
Then she realised something.
This wasn't ten years ago, and the internet was everywhere now, which meant Leon could get online just as easily and see all the posts and forums back home, and if he did, he would know she was the one responsible for this.
After all, she was the only person from the East who had shown up in Sarria recently.
'How am I supposed to explain this?'
Su Jing was in a real fix.
What a mess she had created.
Leon had indeed seen the various messages and news coming in from back home.
The truth was that reading those comments from Eastern fans had made Leon angry.
He understood it came from the fact that football back home had fallen so far that he was simply caught in the crossfire, but when those baseless words were directed specifically at him, they still stung.
Fortunately, a chance to prove himself in front of those fans was not far away.
The day after the match against Athletic Club B, the Copa del Rey draw was officially completed, and one unremarkable fixture managed to generate a wave of interest across the Spanish football world, and sparked an even bigger storm among fans back in the East.
One of the Copa del Rey last thirty-two ties read as follows.
Leoia vs Real Madrid.
The real Real Madrid.
Not a B team this time.
Leon would have his first chance to go up against a top-level club and top-level forwards.
"Hang on, didn't Leoia beat Real Madrid B not long ago? This just got interesting!"
"It's a bit absurd if you think about it, but this really is the parent club coming to avenge the reserve side!"
"I heard Leoia's goalkeeper from the East is supposed to be pretty good, well let Real Madrid expose him for what he really is!"
If the reaction from Spanish fans was one of mild curiosity, the moment fans from the East picked up on this detail, the buzz online only kept growing.
"Leoia? Why does that name ring a bell?"
"Hold on, wasn't there a video going around a while back about a goalkeeper from the East playing for some club, was that Leoia?"
One fan from the East had stumbled across something remarkable, and when they dug out Su Jing's edited video and watched it again, it turned out to be exactly the same Leoia.
The very same Leoia that had recently beaten Barcelona B, Real Madrid B, and Athletic Club B in succession, earning the nickname of B-team slayer.
"Hang on, I think we all completely underestimated Leoia! Our village team certainly couldn't manage what they've been doing!"
"Could this player called Leon Feng actually be that good?"
Quite a few Eastern fans started watching the video properly from beginning to end, and the compilation of Leon's one-on-one saves left them genuinely shaken.
"That's actually, well, pretty impressive."
"Could be just average though, any goalkeeper can put together a one-on-one saves compilation."
"Except Leon Feng's entire professional career appears to consist of three matches..."
"Blimey."
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