The God of Football Starts With Passive Skills-Chapter 124 - 48: Swing Pass! Ronaldo’s Successor! The Entire Bundesliga Wants to Sign Him
Just as he was about to charge right up to Tashche, Wang Shuo suddenly took a large step with his left foot, his entire body leaning to the left.
It was an extremely obvious sign that he was going to use his speed to burst past on the left.
Tashche immediately moved to block him.
But in that very instant, after planting his left foot, Wang Shuo used the outside of his right foot to flick the ball sideways. His body executed an incredibly exaggerated and frankly absurdly sharp change of direction.
When this scene unfolded before everyone’s eyes, it was a spectacular sight to behold!
Everyone loves to see these kinds of magical displays that turn the impossible into the possible.
In that moment, all 55,000 fans in the Mercedes-Benz Arena let out a collective gasp of amazement!
"A Swing Pass!!"
"My God, Wang Shuo just used a brilliant Swing Pass to completely shake off Tashche!"
"A classic dribbling move as always. Tashche even replicated the classic fall to the ground, complete with that panicked expression of watching an opponent break past him."
After getting past Tashche, Wang Shuo suddenly chopped the ball back with his right foot, executing a La Croqueta to once again get past the other French center-back, Matthieu Delpeyrat.
After breaking into the penalty area, he fired a shot from near the penalty spot that pierced through Stuttgart’s goal.
"GOALLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!"
"Wang Shuo scores!!"
"Just three minutes into the first half, Mainz takes the lead with a goal inside the box, all thanks to a brilliant piece of dribbling from Wang Shuo."
"1-0!"
Wang Shuo ran straight off the pitch, sprinting all the way to the sideline to celebrate.
Hainauer, Foyelner, and the others chased after him, mobbing him in a group hug.
Further away, in front of the home team’s coaching bench, Stuttgart’s head coach, Armin Fei, wore an expression of utter shock and disbelief.
’How did he do that?’
The same question arose for Tashche, who had lost his balance and slipped onto the pitch.
The German center-back felt it more deeply than anyone else.
Wang Shuo was incredibly fast, not even slowing down, so the time Tashche had to react was extremely short.
He had been completely fooled.
You have to understand, Tashche wasn’t some newly famous young player.
Quite the opposite, he was a starting center-back who had helped Stuttgart win the Bundesliga title and had played for the team in the Champions League.
He had faced off against Barça’s Ronaldinho, Henry, Eto’o, and Messi, and he’d had many battles with Bayern’s Ribery.
But never before had he been in a one-on-one defensive situation and just fallen flat in front of his opponent like today.
Wang Shuo felt like a contradiction: a player with a 1.8-meter frame who was as agile as shorter players like Ribery and Messi.
But that was simply impossible. It shouldn’t exist.
Anyone who’s studied physics knows that, right?
But it was precisely because it was impossible, precisely because it was so exaggerated it was absurd, that it garnered such admiration from the world. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺
Even a small portion of the Stuttgart fans couldn’t help but applaud for Wang Shuo.
...
The so-called Swing Pass, literally, means a person moving like a pendulum.
It uses body feints to deceive the defending player.
Just as the opponent reacts, you suddenly change direction.
In essence, it’s not much different from other dribbling moves.
So why is it so famous?
Because it was Ronaldo’s signature move!
Is it good to watch?
It’s absolutely spectacular!
Is it cool?
It’s unbelievably cool!
Then why don’t other players use it?
Because it destroys your knees.
The nickname "the death pendulum" is by no means an empty boast.
Ronaldo’s Swing Pass was successful and so spectacular because his body swayed with the same wide arc as a pendulum. It was also incredibly realistic and extremely deceptive.
The price was that such a sharp change of direction at high speed is a nightmare for a player’s knees.
Another player who was skilled at this was the Dutch Little Flying Hero, Robben.
Humans, living on Earth, cannot escape gravity.
Under the effect of gravity, one’s center of gravity is like a hanging pendulum.
When Ronaldo feinted his entire body to one side, his whole center of gravity shifted with him.
The wider the feint, the more his center of gravity would tilt.
At that point, his entire body weight would shift to that side, and his plant foot would have to bear immense pressure.
Not only did it have to bear the weight, but it also had to support the subsequent change of direction.
What’s even more absurd is that if you watch the slow-motion replay carefully, you’ll see that in the instant of the dribble, both the plant foot and the player’s body are severely angled.
This is no longer a simple case of 1+1 being greater than 2.
All players who are good at these kinds of sharp directional changes are difficult to defend against.
When facing a Swing Pass, defenders are often deceived. After committing their center of gravity and realizing their mistake, they try to adjust back, only to lose their balance and slip.
That’s why the Swing Pass is often accompanied by the defender falling to the ground.
Previously, Wang Shuo was completely unable to execute a Swing Pass while breaking through at high speed during a match.
For one, he was afraid of getting injured. For another, his body’s balance wasn’t strong enough.
But now?
With the buff from the Passive Skill [Coordination], Wang Shuo’s sense of balance, especially his control over his center of gravity, had improved.
If fans were to repeatedly watch the slow-motion replay of Wang Shuo getting past Tashche, they would easily discover that although he took a large step with his left foot, his center of gravity didn’t shift as dramatically as Ronaldo’s.
Because he also had the Regional Level [Swift].
By using [First Move] to predict his opponent’s next action, he could leverage the advantage from [Swift] to feint first, baiting them into committing their center of gravity, before capitalizing on [Swift]’s high action frequency and [Coordination]’s control to rapidly adjust his own center of gravity for the sudden change of direction.
