By the next day.
It wasn't just French media reporting anymore: Tottenham drawing Bastia made headlines across all major English newspapers.
Most British journalists and fans had very limited knowledge of Bastia. What they knew most about was Julien.
Even understanding Bastia's recent miraculous season, the English media, especially the tabloids, still generally displayed a sense of superiority that "the Premier League is stronger than Ligue 1."
They believed that even though Bastia was top of Ligue 1, their overall strength and match intensity couldn't compare with Tottenham, a top Premier League side.
"Tottenham drew well. Though they got the Ligue 1 leaders, it's only Bastia, a team that was still in Ligue 2 last season."
When reporting on Bastia, the English media also introduced Julien in passing.
And they linked Julien with Premier League clubs, spreading rumors that seemed credible.
Three clubs were mainly connected with Julien, first was Chelsea.
Chelsea had now reportedly informed Frank Lampard that he wouldn't be offered a new contract.
According to Lampard's agent Kutner: "Chelsea's executives informed Frank during the Club World Cup in Japan, and emphasized again after the Everton match that no matter what happens, Frank won't get a new contract after the season ends.
Since then, Chelsea's position hasn't changed at all. Frank must accept this fact. He now only hopes to continue playing for Chelsea in the remaining season, finish the season as successfully as possible, and bid farewell to the club he loves."
Chelsea had allowed Lampard to begin contact with other clubs after January 1st.
With the impending loss of 34-year-old Lampard, Chelsea signed Newcastle striker Demba Ba during the winter window.
Subsequently, media rumors suggested Chelsea would continue strengthening by signing Julien back.
The Daily Mail stated: "There's significant internal pressure at Chelsea pushing for De Rocca's return. He hit rock bottom at Chelsea, but the current De Rocca has earned the right to be seen by Chelsea again, not for the youth team, but for the first team.
However, the biggest obstacle to this plan comes from owner Abramovich. De Rocca was kicked out of Chelsea because he brutally beat up a Russian teammate during training."
Second was Manchester City.
According to The Sun, City's new management, Soriano and Begiristain had made multiple trips to France to scout Julien, and The Sun even contacted City insiders.
According to internal sources, City not only wanted to sign Julien but wanted to build the team around him as the core, because he had already shown extreme talent and potential with both the French national team and Bastia.
City hoped that by building around Julien, they could create a team capable of competing for the Champions League, not just remaining at the level of Premier League title contenders.
City wanted to become the best team in all of Europe.
Julien was their core plan.
Finally, there was Manchester United.
Ferguson's evasive response was interpreted by journalists as Ferguson hoping to build another championship squad for United, with Julien becoming Ferguson's second Cristiano Ronaldo, the absolute cornerstone of United for many years to come.
The English media reported these transfer rumors between the three clubs and Julien as if they were facts.
Bastia.
Before the match against Reims, Julien had already informed Chataigner and Ghisolfi that he would leave in the summer window, but would definitely notify them in advance of his specific transfer target, giving the club time to negotiate transfer fee matters.
Neither was surprised by this decision.
Ghisolfi even joked self-deprecatingly, "I'm sorry, Julien. We really want to keep you. Any Bastia fan would never want you to leave.
But we truly have no money. To assemble this season's squad, as you know, the club is already nearly 20 million euros in debt."
Julien had once thought that, if possible, he'd like to lead Bastia in challenging for the Champions League, something the club had never achieved in its history.
But the club's current financial situation couldn't support such ambitions.
If Julien insisted on staying, all loaned players would have to leave, Mané and Kanté would need to be sold, even Sidibé and Clauss might have to be sold to raise funds. What would be left for Julien would be a team with no competitive strength at all.
This was the tragedy of small clubs.
It wasn't that they didn't want to keep their city hero, they simply lacked the strength to support him.
So, it was better to let him go.
It was that simple.
Julien felt reluctant about leaving Bastia. He had originally viewed it as a stepping stone, but over these one or two seasons, he had become deeply marked with Bastia's imprint.
Perhaps one day he would return to Bastia, though by then, it might no longer be as a player.
After clarifying the transfer issue, Chataigner patted Julien on the shoulder, "For the Europa League, don't feel pressure. Our main focus this season is securing our Ligue 1 position."
Now the various voices from outside were spreading just as wildly in Bastia. Whether fans or players, everyone was actually holding their breath.
The more they were underestimated, the more they wanted to prove themselves!
On the way to Reims.
De Bruyne quietly told Julien, "Elion told me that next season I'll have a chance at Chelsea. The first team needs me."
Julien understood what De Bruyne meant by saying this. He didn't respond directly but said, "That's good. Lampard is leaving, so you'll have a chance to compete for a rotation starter position."
Though he knew De Bruyne wouldn't get a chance at Chelsea, just like Lukaku and Salah.
Hearing Julien's words, De Bruyne cut straight to the point. "I want to ask you—is there any possibility you'll join Chelsea next season? Perhaps we could be teammates."
Julien was silent for a second, then finally shook his head, "It's very difficult. As long as Chelsea's owner is still Abramovich, I have no chance of joining Chelsea."
De Bruyne also knew about what had happened to Julien at Chelsea. The outside world only knew that Julien had beaten up that Russian youth player.
In fact, Julien had also cursed out Abramovich.
The Julien of those days truly exemplified what it meant to be arrogantly proud of one's talent.
At the pre-match press conference for the Reims game, Hadzibegic responded to journalists' questions about Bastia's "worst possible draw" in the Europa League.
"Honestly, when I saw the draw result, especially seeing 'Tottenham' followed immediately by 'Inter Milan vs. Cluj,' my first reaction was probably the same as all of yours: 'Wow, this is really a "special" gift from UEFA to our little Corsican island.'"
Hadzibegic then lavished praise on Tottenham, praising their great history, their superstar Bale, and so on.
"So, the 'worst possible draw'? Maybe. This is our opportunity to face the greatest opponents. We'll walk onto the pitch with the greatest respect, and then..."
At this point, Hadzibegic smiled meaningfully, "Then we'll fight with everything we have, just like every Ligue 1 match.
Who knows what will happen on the football pitch?
After all, we're just little Bastia from Corsica, currently... coincidentally sitting top of Ligue 1, working hard to complete our season's relegation survival goal. Thank you all."
After Hadzibegic's "working hard on survival…" comment, Bastia immediately followed with a dominant away win over Reims.
Julien and Lukaku each scored twice, Mané scored once.
De Bruyne completed a hat-trick of assists.
Reims suffered a 1-5 home defeat to Bastia!
This kind of night made all of Bastia boil over:
"Beautiful! With tonight's attacking combinations, I think if we really face Tottenham, we won't be completely without chances!"
"Julien is still strong. Any full-back with even slightly weak defensive ability basically gets run past like he's on a highway.
This is also our advantage, because facing Julien forces them to strengthen defense on that flank, which naturally weakens their attacking threat down that wing.
And central defense has always been our strength. Tonight's new signing Van Dijk also showed good defensive ability. I think beating Tottenham isn't impossible!"
"Watch, Bale and Julien will definitely match up directly. After all, one's a right winger and one's a left winger. I'm already looking forward to Julien and Bale going head-to-head!"
"Both are wing speedsters, let's see who's faster!"
A single match against Reims completely ignited Bastia fans' confidence in the Europa League knockout stage.
And the next two matches in January made Bastia fans feel their team's unprecedented strength!
Round 21: Bastia won 2-0 at home, keeping a clean sheet against Rennes.
Round 22: Bastia won 3-0 away, keeping a clean sheet against Saint-Étienne.
Three consecutive league wins in the new year!
And all with dominant performances.
Among them, Van Dijk and Emiliano's performances especially delighted Bastia fans.
Particularly Van Dijk!
He displayed outstanding physical gifts, possessing elite physical attributes. His nearly 1.93m height and powerful build gave him natural aerial dominance and strength in duels.
For such a tall center-back, his recovery speed and explosiveness were extremely rare, allowing him to resolve dangerous situations with pace when the defensive line pushed up or opponents attacked behind.
In one-on-one confrontations, whether aerial or ground, his strength made it difficult for most forwards to gain any advantage.
He loved proactively pressing forward, using his physical advantages and anticipation to intercept passes or cleanly tackle opponents.
Though he still lacked in positional sense, experience, and distribution ability, these three matches alone showed his talent as a center-back.
Then there was Martinez.
Another physical genius!
He possessed elite physical gifts, height, wingspan, reactions—no wonder Arsenal viewed him as worthy of long-term development.
Of course, because he extremely lacked first-team match experience, this caused him to perform very immaturely and inconsistently in actual matches, accompanied by obvious technical detail errors and decision-making mistakes.
However, opponents hadn't yet found ways to punish him, so he was gradually integrating into Bastia's defensive system.
Throughout January, with three league wins, everything at Bastia was steadily improving.
This thrilled Chataigner.
These two winter window signings was another winning bet!
Chataigner immediately told Julien, "I think when you retire, you could totally work as a sporting director. Your eye for talent is fantastic!"
As January's matches all concluded, the winter window officially closed at midnight on February 1st. Across all of Ligue 1, only PSG made the biggest splash.
They signed Lucas Moura from São Paulo for €40 million. Though the agreement was reached in summer 2012, the official transfer occurred in January 2013, making him the winter window's global record signing.
Also, there was Beckham.
Beyond Paris, Ligue 1's overall spending was only about €10 million. Most clubs adopted contraction strategies to cope with economic pressure, basically only selling players, not buying.
Also, another matter greatly impacted Ligue 1 teams, the Africa Cup of Nations!
Ligue 1 had always been most affected by the Africa Cup, and this tournament was no exception.
According to French media statistics, this Africa Cup featured 39 players from Ligue 1 clubs.
Looking at players' club affiliations, mid-to-lower table teams were more affected than top teams, because Ligue 1's top three:
PSG, Bastia, and Marseille saw their called-up African internationals all non-starters.
Bastia only had Mané participating in the Africa Cup. But for lower-table teams dependent on African players, the Africa Cup's impact was devastating.
For instance, relegation-threatened Ajaccio and Évian each had 5 players called up, severely impacting their survival campaigns.
As Bastia's bitter rivals, Ajaccio had always liked signing African players because they were cheap and effective.
This time it backfired, as all 5 of Ajaccio's called-up players were starters.
Into February, the media's so-called collapse of Bastia in the second half of the season still hadn't materialized.
Instead, PSG's gap behind Bastia grew larger and larger.
During Bastia's three-match winning streak, PSG won two and lost one.
Having already trailed by four points, they now fell a full seven points behind.
Ancelotti remained composed. Facing journalist interviews, he only said everything was under control, with 16 league rounds remaining, it was far from over. Paris's current focus was on the Champions League.
Outside, various news and discussions swirled in complexity.
On February 4th, Julien walked into the tranquil Clairefontaine.
On February 6th, France had an A-level fixture, a friendly against Germany.
This was also France and Germany's next meeting after last year's concluded European Championship.
At the Euros, due to Julien's injury, France was demolished 3-0 by Germany.
This time, with a full-strength France squad, whether Deschamps or the French players, they had only one goal:
Revenge!
________________________________________________________
Check out my patreon where you can read more chapters:
patreon.com/LorianFiction
Thanks for your support!