Black Foot

Black Foot is a football fiction web novel by the web author Dubu Qianjun, first published on its serialization platform on November 8, 2013. It runs about 1.36 million Chinese characters and was completed on September 20, 2014. At the start, the protagonist Wang Tiezhu is a "holding midfielder" on China's U19 youth team known for his tough style—a "fighting spirit" more evident in his willingness to fight hard and tackle fiercely. During a team training session, standing up for his fellow northeasterner Shao Jie, a defender, he breaks the right foot of the team's star striker Li Qiming with a tackle. Li Qiming says, "Do you know who my father is?" and passes out, and Wang Tiezhu is then beaten unconscious in the ensuing brawl. When he wakes, he finds he has been reborn as Zak Thompson, an eighteen-year-old reserve player for Leeds United in England in 2011. The body once had a promising future but is on the verge of retirement due to a serious ankle injury: teammate Nathan Turner tackled him in a training match, tearing his ankle ligaments, and academy director Chris Sully had visited him in the hospital. Just as he despairs, a mysterious system called "Black Foot" binds itself to his soul, heals his injury, and gives this youth carrying Chinese football memories the means to play again. Zak Thompson then rises from the Leeds United youth team to the first team, establishes himself in English football, and goes on to play for clubs including Manchester United. The novel proceeds by volumes, including "Reviving the Red Devils," "The Bearing of a Football King," and "The Ageless Legend"; its main line is how a young man cast by fate onto a foreign pitch grows, through ability and system boosts, from an unknown substitute into a football legend of an entire era.