After hanging up the phone, Theo fell into deep thought.
The current First Team was a massive vortex; he really didn’t want to go, and he had no idea what the head coach was thinking.
With his actual ability, fighting for a starting position in the First Team was a bit of a stretch.
At this critical moment in the U18 competition, to transfer him to the First Team to be cannon fodder?
His various skills would simply not trigger during training.
Relatively speaking, he still wanted to gain experience within the U18 squad.
Regardless, he would go over and take a look on Monday.
Resting on Sunday, he still got up early to exercise.
Then, he grabbed a backpack and headed out.
He had been here for about 20 days, and apart from the training base, his home, and the park where he did his morning exercises, he hadn’t seemed to go anywhere else.
Switching from train to subway, it took Theo nearly an hour to reach what was called the “High Street” for electronics on Tottenham Court Road.
He spent two hours wandering through dozens of computer and mobile phone stores, but didn’t find anything suitable.
The computer and mobile phone configurations of this period were far behind those of more than a decade later.
Finally, he decided to go to an Apple store to buy a computer, a new phone, a data SIM card, and other such things.
After buying his computer, Theo headed back to his apartment.
He spent the afternoon frantically buying Bitcoin online.
Bitcoin had just started the year before last, and now each Bitcoin was only $0.15 USD, with a maximum not exceeding $0.50.
It wasn’t like 15 years later, in 2025, when the peak price of each Bitcoin exceeded $100,000.
Currently, there were probably fewer than 3 million in the entire market, and the number currently in circulation was far smaller than that.
He swept the goods on the Bitcoin acquisition website until all the Bitcoin in circulation on the market disappeared, and only then did he stop.
Looking at the quantity he possessed: 15,116.
It only cost him less than $3,000 USD in total.
This stash of Bitcoin, which might be worth as much as $1.5 billion USD in more than a decade, was now obtained at bargain prices.
He saved the private keys for those Bitcoin on a hard drive; he probably wouldn’t use them for a long time.
As for stock investments, Tesla hadn’t gone public yet, so he would wait until the end of the season to consider that matter.
After finishing his investment tasks, Theo began his daily training again.
Even with the system, he still had to go through day-after-day training to rapidly improve himself.
He couldn’t passively wait for match day to arrive.
On Monday, Theo took his equipment and headed to the training base.
The First Team, the Reserve Team, and the U18 squad all trained at the same training base.
He didn’t have to change locations.
Of course, the match locations were definitely different; the First Team’s home stadium was at The Valley, 14 kilometers away.
Currently, the First Team had three goalkeepers: Rob Elliot, Darren Randolph, and Willie Garet.
The starting goalkeeper was Rob Elliot, 190cm tall, born in 1986, currently 24 years old, but he was currently injured and expected to be out for at least a month.
The substitute, Darren Randolph, was 23 years old and 188cm tall.
Both of them were Irish.
Theo hadn’t really heard of these two people.
He didn’t actually know that both of them would become Irish national team goalkeepers in the future, especially the latter, who later played in the Premier League consistently and represented the Irish national team over 50 times.
And Willie Garet was an experienced veteran.
Theo’s arrival did, however, bolster the First Team’s goalkeeper lineup.
The First Team goalkeeper coach at Charlton Athletic was Freddie Woodman.
In his playing career, he was a goalkeeper with 400 league appearances.
After retiring, he became a goalkeeper coach and was a coach with rich practical experience.
His son, Freddie Woodman, later also became a goalkeeper, playing for Premier League teams and even joining Liverpool as a backup goalkeeper.
On March 22nd at 3:00 PM, after some warm-up activities, Freddie Woodman had Theo perform various goalkeeper testing tasks.
Physical condition, stamina, save success rate, rushing out success rate, reaction speed, positioning and anticipation, one-on-one ability, handling high balls, passing success rate, and long/short passing accuracy.
After the entire one-hour test, Freddie Woodman carefully looked at the test sheet, his brows furrowed.
He looked at Theo, somewhat puzzled: “Your physical innate conditions are quite good.
For EFL League One, your basic abilities can barely be considered qualified.
It’s just…” Hearing the word “just,” Theo’s heart sank.