This is the story of my love relationship with football.

I was born and raised in a small town in Jiangsu province, about 250KM from Shanghai.

I started got in touch with football when I was around 7 years old, I believe. Influenced by some ‘bad’ students (who prefer playing football than studying) but good friends, I got into school team. It were countless early moring running and training in the field when I could see the stars and moon in the sky. At that time I didn’t know I loved it but I already dit.

As the victim of over-education-competition, I didn’t have much time playing football in middle and high school, although I still made it to the school teams.

I majored in computer science in college but never made it to the school team in 4 years which is a pity in my life.

But my life took a turn after I graduated. I started working in IT industry and stumbled into a company called Fusion Systems and my then boss @CZ send me to Tokyo after one year in Shanghai.

I was not social person and I didn’t speak any Japanese, I‘ve never been abroad. I was lonely. So started looking for people to play football with. I even took an hour train to another city, just to play football. I felt happy and relaxed, especially after the games, we go to restautants or even 没my teammates homes to have meals together and I made so many friends.

4 years later, I came back to Shanghai. I joined an international team, I didn’t get get enough pitch time as I was skinny, but someone named chico (now a bloomberg financial news anchor who covers US and China market ) told me he went to a business school - CEIBS and he suggested me go there.

So I did, a few years later. Also my football journey went more serious from there. First I created our class team and designed the team jersey.

I was having so much fun gettting people from different backgrounds together by the same uniform! Talking about the uniform, I have a story of my life. One day an Indian classmate came to me: “Danny, can I buy one of your jerseys?” “Why, you don’t even play football!” “I just wanna wear it when I get back to India and tell my family, I went to the best business school in China and I wanna them see the name of the school right away!” Wow! BTW, on the picture, everyone looked so hyped but we actually went to the wrong field and missed the match! But a great team photo right?