Look! This is football.

Peninsula/text The first time I met football was the 1998 World Cup. Before that, I couldn’t understand how charming this little ball can be, and it can make hundreds of millions of people crazy, cry, beat their chests and feet, and stay awake …

That summer of 1998, my first impression of football was colorful. In the stadium, there are Nigeria’s green, Brazil’s yellow, Italy’s blue, Holland’s orange, Spain’s red, Argentina’s blue and white, Croatia’s red and white plaid … Football is really beautiful! In the stands, there are flags and banners flying everywhere, and all kinds of graffiti on the faces of the audience. From a distance from the TV, there are uniform and consistent colors, and there are also mixed and competing … Football is really beautiful!

I love the World Cup because it is everywhere. Teams from different civilization backgrounds meet and confront each other in the same venue to show their skills, tactics and team features. Moreover, the story of football is not just 90 minutes on the court. Why are Italian and Spanish players depressed and sunny, while German players are introverted? The answer may be found on the map. Brazil and Argentina like dancing when celebrating goals? Think about the story of samba and tango! They say Americans don’t know football? They have more favorite sports! How is the core of the French team descended from Algerians? Read the history of the Middle East!

This is football, which is not only a physical confrontation on the court, but also a conflict between civilizations. This is football, which is not only the subtle cooperation between teammates, but also the integration and coexistence of different cultural styles. I love football, I love it, I love football, I love it. I love football, love it makes people passionate, I love football, love it makes people calm as ice. Just like in the game, everyone is fighting for every inch of land, even blocking each other with rude fouls. After the game, they shake hands, hug and exchange jerseys and appreciate each other. It is the fire and ice of the modern world.

In the football match, the winner is king, and the loser is never a coach. Next to every champion, there are many respectable opponents. Behind the carnival of every winner are the tears of countless losers. In the world of football, the ultimate victory is the jewel in the crown, and failure is the main theme. But this is the greatest charm of this sport: real fighters will not bow their heads because of failure, and real fans will not quit because of failure. Instead, they still choose to love and fight after setbacks. This is football. Never give up hope until the last moment, so countless stadium miracles will be born. No matter how ingenious the director and screenwriter are, they can’t create a script about football.

Don’t judge heroes by success or failure, and create a belief that belongs exclusively to football. There are too many stories about "one person, one city" in football, and more people will always have ideals in order to support the team, and they will not hesitate to get from youth to old age. If you understand football, you can understand why under the same roof, there will be hardcore rivals; Why the same city, the same country, and even the same world, will give birth to enemies who are at odds and incompatible with each other. Because of the belief in football, it can penetrate the gains and losses of victory and defeat and carve it into the blood.

I like a friend’s words very much. He said that football is still classical today when capital erodes everything. Capital can buy players, but it can’t take away victory; Capital can determine strength, but it can’t replace faith; Capital can create a giant team, but it can’t stop grassroots from springing up like mushrooms after rain. It is true that there are high salaries, luxury cars and feasts in the football world, but if we trace the past of the stars and review the experiences in slums and mud pits, what made them choose football? It is love and hope.

This is football. Even though I’m a poor player, even though I’m no longer young, even though I’m from hopeful to disappointed again and again, I’ll still cheer for it, applaud it and stay awake at night for it.

Image source: the idea of the worm

Don’t leave without you, farewell to firmino at Anfield Stadium: players lined up & fans applauded constantly.

Live on May 21st-In a game that ended in the current Premier League, Liverpool drew 1-1 with Aston Villa, and firmino scored an equalizer.

This game is Liverpool’s last home game of the season. After the game, the whole Liverpool team lined up to say goodbye to firmino, who was about to leave the team, and the fans applauded constantly.

Two news: Shougang team is about to fall apart, and Du Feng has already torn his face.

Text/writing on the world of mortals

In recent seasons, Shougang team’s record is getting worse and worse. Last season, it stopped in the quarter-finals, and this season it stopped in the quarter-finals.

Head coach Leiden

Shougang team is about to fall apart.

The input of each season is inversely proportional to the results of the season. In the CBA league, there are three local tyrants, namely Shougang, Xinjiang and Shanghai. Shougang executives always want to realize the dream of championship, but the championship is always farther and farther away from Shougang team.

Changing coaches has become a common practice of Shougang team. If it is not satisfactory, it will change coaches, and it will change people’s hearts and make the team’s performance decline. Stop the semi-finals this season, and this summer is another wave of coaching changes. Change players!

Song Xiang Weibo Content

According to Song Xiang, a famous basketball reporter, many players in the team have expired contracts, including Fang Shuo, Fan Ziming, Zhang Cairen, Tian Yuxiang, Raymond, Fan Yiming and Yang Ali.

Ramon

According to the well-known blogger "Inspector Zhao of Ball Circle", Raymond will calm down and consider renewing the contract after the contract with Shougang team expires this summer. From Raymond’s words, the possibility of leaving Shougang team is not ruled out. Why should Raymond consider renewing the contract? Is to see if Shougang executives will give him a top salary contract. If they give him a top salary contract, they will renew it. If they don’t, they will pat their ass and leave. Raymond is a very good striker, and he may get a top salary contract in other teams.

Raymond’s performance this season is quite satisfactory, averaging 21.8 minutes, averaging 8 points, 3 rebounds, 0.8 assists and 0.8 steals.

Fan Ziming

There are also players Fan Ziming. In fact, Fan Ziming has some abilities, at least better than Zou Yuchen, Changdong Yu and Sun Tonglin of Beijing Control Team. Fan Ziming’s contract also expires this summer. If Shougang doesn’t renew his contract with the highest salary, Fan Ziming may also leave Shougang.

Fan Ziming’s performance this season is remarkable, averaging 22.3 minutes and 12.8 points per game, ranking 13th in the league, averaging 5 rebounds, 2.5 assists, 1 steal and 0.5 blocks per game, with comprehensive data. He is a very good inside player.

From Fan Ziming’s words, we can vaguely find the following information.

Fan Ziming said: "I hope that in the future, I can impact the achievements like Zhai Xiaochuan, Fang Shuo and Zhu Yanxi!"

Zhai Xiaochuan averaged 26.8 points per game and 10.5 points per game; Fang Shuo averaged 30.8 minutes per game and 14 points per game; Zhu Yan played 16 minutes per game, averaging 5 points.

Judging from these data, they are not as efficient as Fan Ziming! What are you studying? In fact, I am complimenting these "ball tyrants"!

From this sentence, we can find at least two pieces of information: First, Fan Ziming is obviously suspected of flattery, holding the thick legs of Zhai Xiaochuan, Fang Shuo and Zhu Yanxi. Secondly, Fan Ziming’s own performance was excellent enough, and in turn flattering these three players is enough to prove that these three players play an important role in the team.

Happened in Fang Shuo and Zhai Xiaochuan.

From Fan Ziming’s words, it means that Zhai Xiaochuan, Fang Shuo and Zhu Yanxi are "ball tyrants".

If Shougang’s top management lets the "ball bully" run roughshod over, then the "ball bully" is the accelerator for Shougang’s team to fall apart.

It is no wonder that many basketball reporters have predicted that Shougang’s summer is doomed to be unsettled, and it is also very likely that it will fall apart.

Du Feng, the head coach of Guangdong Province, was furious and tore his face with "Big Brother".

On April 20th, after the Guangdong team lost in the away game against Guangsha team, the big score between the two teams became 1: 1. Guangsha team will play at the home of Guangdong team in the next game. If Guangsha team wins Guangdong team at one go and Du Feng loses the "Battle of Tianwangshan" at home, the joke will be big! It’s no wonder that Du Feng was very angry and furious in this game, and he was torn with the head coach "Big Brother".

When the game went to 5 minutes and 33 seconds in the third quarter, Yi Jianlian made a three-point long-range throw and came out of the basket without anyone defending. Later, Jeff ran to the sidelines to save the ball. Jeff jumped high and grabbed the rebound in the frontcourt. After that, Jeff passed the ball to Yi Jianlian. After Yi Jianlian grabbed the ball, he directly pushed it to Jeff with his hand, while Jeff was still outside the court and had not returned to the court. As a result, a ball that he had originally got was out of bounds, and Yi Jianlian made a mistake.

Du Feng angered Yi Jianlian.

When the Guangdong team paused, Du Feng spat lotus flowers with a tactical board, which was a wave of output to Yi Jianlian, which was obviously rude to Yi Jianlian. In the face of this situation, Yi Jianlian is also trying to wipe his sweat with towels one after another to cover up the embarrassing situation of being scolded. As the "big brother" of the team, Yi Jianlian is indeed older, unable to keep up with his pace and his physical strength has also declined. This game was also fouled five times by the opponent. At ordinary times, Du Feng rarely accused Yi Jianlian, and this time it was Du Feng’s fast break.

In the past, Du Feng always regarded Yi Jianlian as a "buddy". This time, maybe Du Feng was also in a hurry, and he was torn with Yi Jianlian. For the first time, he put himself in the position of head coach and relegated his former "buddy" to the role of a player.

Actually, Yi Jianlian should really retire and leave his position and top salary to young people to exercise. It may also be that Yi Jianlian, out of his love for basketball, is unwilling to leave the court and has deep feelings for the Guangdong team.

[Original works, no handling, infringement will be investigated]

Historical income top50, 13 basketball players and 4 football players are on the list. Who is the first sport?

Sportico, a sports commercial media, released top50, the historical income of sports. There are 4 football players and 13 basketball players on the list. Through this list, many people are surprised why football and basketball players earn so much. Who is the first sport after all?

First of all, we need to see what sports are on this list. This list covers all sports, such as boxing, tennis, golf, etc., and among the athletes he counts, there are active athletes and retired athletes. Beckham has been retired for many years and still appears on this list. Of course, this is related to his shrewd business mind after retirement.

Secondly, the more people there are, the fewer people are on the list, such as tennis, golf, boxing and so on. I am a "team" by myself, and I can maximize my benefits in commercial packaging and participating projects. If you only look at this list, you can’t exactly define which sport is the first in the world.

Sports such as football, rugby and basketball cannot be done by one person, and the daily expenses of professional football clubs in Europe are also very high. The echelon of all ages, venue maintenance, etc., the more people, the more daily staff and coaches are needed. The financial pressure of clubs is not small, and only a few clubs can achieve profitability.

In addition, the development of commercial value, football project is not done well. Like the American NBA, teams have stars, and there is almost a strong dialogue in every round, so the level difference between teams will not be great. In addition, because the NBA level is unique in the World Cup, it has attracted the attention of all outstanding basketball players all over the world, and playing in the NBA is the dream of many players. The NBA is more beautiful than other basketball games in the world.

Football is different. There are five recognized top leagues. Every league has 18-20 teams. This is equivalent to having five NBA’s, plus for various reasons. There is a big gap between top teams and other teams, which also makes many games less beautiful. This is also the reason why some people are promoting the European Super League. It is the original intention of the European Super League to make teams and players get more income and let fans see more exciting games.

It is one-sided to judge who is the world’s number one sport only from income. Judging from the attention of sports events, the participation of the people, the income of teams and players, football is still the first sport in the world.

Another giant followed suit, and one shot was five "Wang Huiwen"

Recently, SaaS giant Salesforce announced the launch of a $250 million fund, which is by far the largest AIGC venture capital fund.

In this regard, CEO Clara Shih said that the fund will focus on "cultivating the next generation of artificial intelligence startups".

Some analysts also said that although the generative AI like ChatGPT itself amazed the public. However, their greatest role in the enterprise lies in their combination with the company’s business, which is obviously the goal of Salesforce.

However, judging from today’s stock price performance, the heavy AI did not make this old SaaS manufacturer dead.

250 million US dollars, which has exceeded the net profit of last year.

Different from VC’s pursuit of high returns, as a typical CVC, Salesforce chose to set up the fund at this time more likely because of industry competition and stock price considerations.

We saw that the foundation of the fund was announced at its annual conference TrailblazerDX. At that time, the company announced three major initiatives in generating artificial intelligence:

First, Salesforce is integrating generative artificial intelligence into customer relationship management products under Einstein GPT. These new features are designed to combine the data in Salesforce with a series of generative AI engines (including engines from OpenAI and Cohere), so that customers can seize the initiative in making marketing emails, writing supporting articles and even making computer code.

Second, Salesforce announced its cooperation with OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT available directly from Slack. This function is currently in the testing stage and will be launched on a large scale later this year.

Third, Salesforce Ventures is launching a $250 million investment fund to support generative AI startups.

There are several backgrounds that have to be mentioned behind these three measures.

First of all, on the eve of releasing its new AI product, Salesforce released a survey result, which showed that although some IT leaders expressed concern about AI, most people thought it could help them better support customers and improve data insight. Even 67% of the respondents said that they would give priority to this technology in the next 18 months, and one-third of the respondents thought it would be their top priority.

At the same time, Salesforce believes that it has identified several areas where artificial intelligence is reshaping the sales pattern: artificial intelligence insight of sales, natural language chat robots for service requests, targeted marketing content and personalized e-commerce experience.

Secondly, at the end of last year, after OpenAI’s ChatGPT broadened the imagination of the technology industry, many large companies rushed to announce the function of using artificial intelligence to generate content. Last month alone, Microsoft integrated OpenAI technology into Bing, Google announced the launch of ChatGPT competitor Bard, Meta released one of its large language models under the open source license, and Snapchat launched a social generation tool.

In addition, Microsoft recently launched Dynamic 365 Copilot, a functional assistant tool for customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) based on artificial intelligence, which directly extended its hand to the territory of traditional enterprise software platforms such as Zoho, Salesforce and IBM.

A consensus in the field of science and technology is that it is often fatal to miss the first advantage of technology, so we have seen Salesforce’s heavy investment in AI.

More importantly, the deployment of AI and the launch of Slack’s new ChatGPT application are at a critical moment when the board members of Salesforce are replaced, and investors have been pushing for new changes. Even at the beginning of this year, the company cut 10% of its employees.

As we all know, affected by the macro-environment, the market value of American SaaS companies suffered a decline in different degrees in 2022, and Salesforce was not spared. Salesforce is also under pressure from investors. Using the white-hot trend of generating artificial intelligence can help companies resist concerns about their growth prospects.

It is worth mentioning that at the beginning of this month, Salesforce released the latest financial report data. According to the financial report, the revenue of Salesforce in fiscal year 2023 was $31.4 billion, an increase of 18% year-on-year. However, the income growth rate has slowed down this fiscal year. Its revenue in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2023 was $8.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of 14%, which was lower than the annual growth rate.

In terms of profit, salesforce’s operating profit in fiscal year 2023 was $1 billion, compared with $500 million in the previous fiscal year, which was significantly improved this fiscal year. This fiscal year, the company’s net profit was $200 million, compared with $1.4 billion in the same period of the previous fiscal year, and the net profit in the latest fiscal year decreased by 86%.

It can be seen that the scale of the AIGC fund has exceeded the net profit of Salesforce last year, which can be seen from the investment.

According to public data, Wall Street analysts agreed that earnings per share (EPS) in the fourth quarter was $1.36. However, the company reported earnings per share of $1.68, far exceeding expectations. In addition, the average income of analysts is estimated to be about $8 billion, while the company’s revenue in the fourth quarter was $8.4 billion.

But despite the amazing revenue growth of Salesforce in recent years, it is expected to achieve the goal of reaching $50 billion in sales in fiscal year 2026. But its share price trend has been developing in the opposite direction. Since December 2020, the company’s share price has plummeted by nearly 30%.

It is not difficult to see that Salesforce is eager for the growth prospects of its performance.

The first four companies to be selected.

Back to Salesforce, the new fund itself. Although the fund is the largest fund of Salesforce Ventures, it is not the first dedicated AI fund. As early as 2017, it raised $50 million for the artificial intelligence innovation fund to support its Einstein artificial intelligence toolset.

According to PitchBook, Salesforce Ventures has participated in 140 venture capital transactions of artificial intelligence and machine learning startups, accounting for about 19% of its total investment so far.

John Somorjai, executive vice president of Salesforce enterprise development and Salesforce Ventures, said: "for more than ten years, Salesforce Ventures has been investing in high-potential enterprise technology business, and these initial investments of the fund to generate artificial intelligence companies are fully in line with this strategy."

In fact, in the past decade, Salesforce Ventures has raised more than a dozen funds, ranging in size from $50 million to $125 million, and has also launched a series of vertically specific investment funds, including funds targeting specific regions such as Japan or Canada.

But before, Salesforce Ventures usually invested in enterprise cloud startups. After all, such investments may become more important for this software company because of the restrictions on large-scale acquisitions. For example, it has invested in star companies such as Zoom and DocuSign, and invested heavily in Snowflake IPO.

It is precisely because of its huge transaction scale and strategic value that Salesforce Ventures has always been regarded as the king of SaaS unicorns. At the same time, some people think that it may continue this myth in the AI field.

It is reported that the fund has invested in four start-up companies: You.com, a upstart search engine, just launched the generation of artificial intelligence a few months ago; Anthropic, an AI startup founded by former employees of OpenAI and highly sought after by VC, developed ChatGPT;; Cohere, a natural language processing (NLP) startup that recently cooperated with Google; And a secret startup called Hearth.AI

Specifically, Richard Socher, the founder of You.com, is the former chief scientist of Salesforce. The company was founded in 2020, and launched the AI chat function YouChat in search engines before Google and Microsoft at the end of last year. In terms of financing, at the end of 2021, You.com completed a $20 million seed round of financing led by Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, and then completed a $25 million series of financing in the middle of last year.

Anthropic was founded in January, 2021. The latest report shows that shortly after accepting hundreds of millions of dollars from Google, it recently completed a new round of financing of 300 million dollars. After this financing, the value of Anthropic reached 4.1 billion dollars. Earlier, Anthropic raised $704 million through Series A and Series B financing in 2022.

Similarly, Cohere was founded in 2019, mainly providing access to large-scale language models and natural language processing (NLP) tools through APIs. Cohere has raised $170 million so far, including $125 million in Series B financing last year and $40 million in Series A financing in 2021. Earlier this year, it was reported in Reuters that Cohere was in talks to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in a round of financing, and the valuation of this startup may exceed 6 billion dollars after the completion of financing.

As for Hearth.AI, it should have been established in May, 2022. Except that it is the next generation management system (CRM) shown on its official website, we have not found any more public information. (Text/Zhang Xue, source/investment network)