Lynn suppressed the anger in his heart and closed his eyes, listening as Ornstein vividly described to Wenger the "fantasy" story of how he had recomnded himself to Sir Alex at Old Trafford the previous week.
Wenger knew that a supporter had invaded the pitch at Old Trafford last week, but he had not paid attention to the details.
After hearing Ornstein's account, the way he looked at Lynn imdiately changed, as if he too felt that seriously chatting with soone who seed ntally unstable was pure madness.
Lynn had no choice but to force himself to calm down.
He said to Wenger, "Sir, what I'm talking to you about is the grand blueprint for the future construction of the Gunners. If you think about it seriously, you'll understand whether I'm wrong or not. I believe Arsenal's list of transfer targets and watched players contains a long string of nas."
"Right now, those nas are all considered talents with the potential to beco top players. But among them, there must be many who will never truly amount to anything. The players I'm recomnding to you, however, are genuine talents who will dominate European football in the future.
"All right. The fact in front of you is very simple. If you think I'm crazy, then consider my words wasted. But if you think I'm worth one gamble, even if I don't take a salary for one year or two years, that's fine. Let work for Arsenal. Let beco part of the coaching staff. Then, one year from now, two years from now, I will repay Arsenal with far more than you can imagine."
Wenger's gaze beca extrely strange.
Ornstein, anwhile, burst into even louder laughter. His laughter was painfully grating.
A worker who did not want a salary?
Was this man really so obsessed with realizing his fantasy that he had completely abandoned reality?
It was only after Wenger walked down from the stands toward the technical area to prepare for the match that Lynn realized he had made a mistake.
When he said he did not want a salary, he had only made himself look even more like a lunatic.
But as a hidden tycoon with a net worth already exceeding seventy million pounds, did he care about that bit of salary?
He only wanted to realize his dream.
It was not simply about getting a job.
Disheartened, he left without looking back.
...
Lynn beca famous overnight.
BBC reporter Ornstein did exactly the sa thing, writing about Lynn's attempt to recomnd himself to Wenger in his column.
He even called on English clubs to give Lynn a way to earn a living, as an act of rcy toward a "vulnerable group."
After failing to find work at Manchester United and Arsenal, Lynn went door to door, recomnding himself to the other top clubs in English football.
But every single one shut him out.
Newcastle United, Sunderland, Wigan Athletic, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester City, Stoke City, West Bromwich Albion, Aston Villa, Norwich City, Reading, Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham United, Crystal Palace, Fulham, Charlton Athletic, Chelsea.
Even clubs such as Sheffield United, Oldham Athletic, Swindon Town, Leicester City, Ipswich Town, Queens Park Rangers, Coventry City, Nottingham Forest, Barnsley, Sheffield Wednesday, Watford, Bradford City, Bristol City, Derby County, and so on—Lynn had personally gone to apply for work at all of them.
But without exception, no club was willing to sincerely give him a chance.
Of course, so clubs were willing to offer Lynn a "helping hand."
For example, Sheffield United offered Lynn a job as a gatekeeper.
Leicester City were willing to hire him as a cleaner.
Queens Park Rangers could let him manage the pitch.
Lynn knew he was being rejected, mocked, and humiliated by nearly every club in England.
But all he needed was a platform.
Yet as an asian man, wanting to enter English football was practically a fantasy.
He had no professional experience.
What use was a coaching licence alone?
Traditional, closed-off English football trusted battle-hardened brutes who might not even be able to read a word far more than it would ever hire a black-haired, yellow-skinned intellectual.
In their eyes, Lynn's résumé had two words written clearly across it: too soft.
No club would leave a place in its coaching staff for Lynn.
That would be more like keeping so bizarre pet for outsiders to laugh at and mock.
From the northeast of England to the southwest, then from the south to the east, Lynn walked across the map of England.
After suffering repeated setbacks, with his dignity seemingly crushed beneath people's feet, Lynn finally stood once again on London soil.
He stood before the railings beside the River Thas.
The moon was bright, and the stars were few.
He watched the water of the Thas flow slowly toward the North Sea.
Under the moonlight, the glittering yet calm river made Lynn feel an icy chill in the early sumr air.
Over the past period of ti, he had beco a laughingstock among English football supporters, a topic of conversation after als and over drinks.
And because he had invaded the pitch a second ti and stood in front of Liverpool's French manager Gérard Houllier, he had been punished by The FA: a lifeti ban.
The FA had even directly ignored his coaching licence and instead classified him as a supporter banned for life.
In other words, if Lynn wanted to buy a ticket to watch a match involving any of the seventy-two professional league clubs in England, he would be blocked from entering the stadium.
He was not allowed to enter a ground to watch a match.
Lynn lit a cigarette and leaned against the railing, looking sowhat exhausted.
He flicked the ash away and exhaled smoke.
The smoke scattered into the wind, carrying with it an endless sorrow he could not put into words.
He had burned with ambition for four years, worked hard for four years, and persevered for four years.
Yet when he finally arrived at the gates of English football, English football swallowed him whole, then dragged him back out, threw him into the Thas, and let the current carry him into the North Sea, where he would be swept into an endless whirlpool.
Just as he was about to finish the cigarette, a dazzling red Ferrari stopped on the road behind him.
Under the night sky, it looked especially seductive.
A young woman with short golden hair stepped out of the car.
She was tall, and her expression carried a cold arrogance.
But when she saw Lynn's back, her gaze softened, filled with a trace of pained hesitation.
She did not understand why this man had chosen this path.
But she never asked.
Wearing a black dress and high heels, she took two steps forward and said gently to Lynn's back, "Co back with ."
Lynn straightened, raised his head, and sighed toward the sky.
In a weak voice, he said, "Back where?"
"Back to Wales. Back to Swansea. Back to Brynmill. Back to your ho. Uncle and Auntie are very worried about you."
Lynn turned around in confusion and asked, "Worried?"
The girl raised her eyebrows and a playful smile appeared on her face.
"To be precise, they're furious."
The corner of Lynn's mouth lifted.
"That sounds more like it. Let's go, Erin."
Erin turned and got back into the car.
After Lynn also climbed in, the Ferrari sped away, leaving dust behind.
...
The United Kingdom is made up of England, Scotland, and Wales on the island of Great Britain, as well as Northern Ireland in the northeast of the island of Ireland and a series of dependent islands.
To the southwest of England lies Wales, whose capital is Cardiff.
To the south of Wales is the Bristol Channel, while to the northwest it faces the Irish Sea.
Wales has the lowest cri rate in the United Kingdom and can be called its safest region.
Compared with England, which is famous throughout the world for football, Wales's "national sport" is rugby union.
In that field, Wales possesses the kind of strength that allows it to look down on England the sa way England might look down on Wales in football.
Although Wales has its own local language, Welsh, over ti, by the twenty-first century, fewer than twenty percent of people there still used Welsh regularly.
Eighty percent used English as their everyday language.
Swansea is the second-largest city in Wales.
A port city on the northern shore of the Bristol Channel, it has a population of only around two hundred thousand.
With pleasant scenery and simple, honest people, it is a very suitable city to live in.
Lynn's ho was here.
Ever since the early 1990s, when his father, Lin Jiajie, beca the manager of the Swansea branch of a British investnt group, Lynn's family had settled in Swansea.
His mother, Tang Yue, taught at Swansea University.
The family of three lived a very stable life there.
Before Lynn returned to 1996, in the experiences of his "previous life," before his parents died in a car accident, he had always lived in a middle-class family—happy, fortunate, and carefree.
But ever since he had returned to 1996, his family had beco even wealthier.
Or, to be more precise, wealthier and wealthier.
They had already reached the level of true millionaires—indeed, billionaires by asset value.
In Lynn's "previous life," because his father was a middle manager at a British investnt group, Lynn had been exposed to investnt from a young age.
He could not exactly be called an expert, but he still rembered so major financial information clearly.
Starting in 1996, Lynn studied while investing.
At first, it was only small-scale dabbling.
Later, when his parents saw that his investnts were producing abundant returns, they gave him their full support.
The Lin family was now already a genuine family of billionaires.
Lynn himself possessed the strongest capital, with more than seventy million pounds under his control.
He had only two ways of making his fortune.
The first was betting.
The 1996 UEFA Champions League final: Juventus 1–1 Ajax.
The 1997 UEFA Champions League final: Borussia Dortmund 3–1 Juventus.
The 1998 UEFA Champions League final: Real Madrid 1–0 Juventus.
The 1996 European Championship final: Germany 2–1 Czech Republic.
The 1998 FIFA World Cup final: France 3–0 Brazil.
Lynn had placed heavy bets on the exact scores of all these finals and made a huge profit.
But after 1998, he was blacklisted by the bookmakers and was no longer allowed to place bets.
Because in three years, he had only bet on five matches, yet had taken nearly ten million pounds from major bookmakers.
That was already enough to shake the betting industry.
The second was investing in stocks.
He began investing in U.S. stocks in 1996.
Ho Depot, which he bought in 1996, was priced at ten dollars.
By 2000, when he had recently prepared to sell it, the share price had already reached sixty dollars.
Cisco, which he bought in 1996, had a share price of five dollars at the ti.
Now?
Eighty-two dollars!
Ti Warner, which he bought in 1996, had been six dollars.
What was it now?
One hundred and ninety-five dollars.
In his mory, he rembered that the second half of 2000 would be the period when U.S. stocks slid into an economic crisis.
Because of that, Lynn had recently sold off all his stocks.
These three stocks had even greater investnt potential than famous stocks such as Microsoft, and they were among the stocks with the largest gains over the twenty years before and after.
Lynn only needed to sell his stocks during the stage before the economic crisis caused prices to fall, then buy low and sell high.
Overall, by holding for the long term, his net worth rose steadily every year.
With seventy million pounds in his own hands, plus at least fifty million pounds in assets on his parents' side, it was no exaggeration to say that Lynn's family of three had assets exceeding one hundred million.
Last year, after achieving outstanding results at the company, Lin Jiajie resigned from the British investnt group.
Even though the company had prepared an extrely generous contract for him—including company shares and a major clause that would allow him to enter the board of directors in the future—Lin Jiajie still refused to go to London to beco the group CEO.
Instead, he struck out on his own and founded Lin Investnts.
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