Football: Salary System - Chapter 154: The Treasure Trove (Patreon)

Back home, Zayn took a quick shower and went to bed early.

Tomorrow would be December.

As the final month of matches before the Bundesliga winter break, Dortmund had six games to play before the break began on the 22nd.

The first was tomorrow.

With the schedule so packed, getting proper rest was essential.

But as Zayn tossed and turned in bed, he couldn't shake the feeling that he'd forgotten something.

After thinking for a while, it suddenly hit him. He'd been so focused on the Fragmented Hazard Template that he'd forgotten to check the new Main Quest.

His consciousness sank into the system space.

[Main Quest (8): Treasure Trove]

[Quest Objective: Earn a cumulative total of £10 million through football-related income.]

[Quest Reward: 5% Realization Rate, Random S-rank Skill Draw ×1]

[Current Progress: 0]

The objective surprised Zayn.

Until now, his Main Quests had revolved around two categories: his position on the Squad Weekly Wage Ranking and commercial contracts.

This time, however, the system had simply thrown a naked number at him.

Given the system's usual quirks, it probably meant after-tax income again.

And the glaring "0" on the progress bar clearly showed that only income earned after receiving the quest would count. Everything he'd made before that was excluded.

Zayn gave up on sleeping for the moment, sat up, and turned on his computer.

With Achraf's situation serving as an example, Zayn had also kept his money in an account under his mother Anna's name.

Aside from exceptionally large expenses that required discussing things with his parents first, he was free to use the money however he wanted. His parents wouldn't touch a penny of it.

Ever since he left Birmingham and moved to Dortmund on his own, Anna had emailed him a financial statement every month.

After years of working as an accountant, Anna took the matter very seriously. Every source of income and every tax deduction was listed clearly.

Zayn planned to use those statements to estimate how long it would take him, at his current level of income, to earn the required £10 million.

Although wages in English football and many other parts of Europe were usually quoted weekly, players were still actually paid monthly.

The Bundesliga was no different.

Before signing his new contract today, Zayn had been earning €10 million a year before tax at Dortmund, which worked out to around €830,000 a month.

Over four months, his salary income totaled roughly €3.33 million.

Germany used a progressive tax system, along with the solidarity surcharge, church tax, and various other deductions.

Zayn was also a foreign resident and had lived in Germany for less than six months, which brought double-taxation treaties into the equation.

Once everything was calculated and deducted, his effective tax rate came to nearly 47%.

The taxes were withheld automatically before his salary was deposited into his account each month.

That left him with roughly €1.76 million in actual take-home pay.

At the current exchange rate, that was about £1.57 million.

Barely a tenth of the Quest Objective.

Compared with his wages, commercial contracts and signing bonuses were where the real money was.

Excluding the amount he'd already calculated before taking his family out and spending money earlier, Zayn had signed four contracts since the World Cup, with Nike, Burberry, Jaguar Land Rover, and LV.

Together, they were worth £4.75 million before tax.

Thanks to Raiola's tax-avoidance arrangements, Zayn had actually received around £2.9 million.

Then there was the €7 million signing bonus from his move to Dortmund. After tax, he'd received €3.7 million, which came to roughly £3.2 million.

Adding his wages, commercial contracts, and signing bonus together gave him around £7.87 million.

That was his entire fortune from the less than six months since he'd left Villa.

Several of those major commercial deals were multi-year contracts, so more endorsement payments would arrive later.

By that measure, he was already earning more than ten times what he had back at Villa.

But he was still a fair distance from the £10 million Quest Objective.

At this pace, even after his raise, Zayn estimated that it would still take him about half a year to complete the quest.

The main problem was that they were currently in the middle of the season, while most commercial activity was concentrated around the end of the campaign.

There was another source of income as well.

Zayn had made a move with the Tesla shares he'd invested in earlier.

In August, Musk had posted the same tweet Zayn remembered from his previous life, announcing plans to take Tesla private.

The share price surged.

Zayn sold near the peak, turning his original £200,000 investment into £300,000.

Then events unfolded just as he remembered. The SEC sued, the privatization plan collapsed, and the share price plunged.

Zayn put the £300,000 straight back in and waited for the Shanghai Gigafactory to be established.

When that happened, the profits would be on a completely different scale.

But investment income clearly wouldn't count toward the quest.

Zayn wasn't in any hurry.

He still needed time to digest the new Template anyway.

And as long as Dortmund went deep enough in the Champions League and Bundesliga, his market value and commercial value would rise another level.

Things would work themselves out.

Zayn closed his laptop and crawled back under the covers.

...

December 1, Westfalenstadion.

Bundesliga Matchday 13.

Dortmund hosted Freiburg.

Earlier in the season, Freiburg had held Bayern to a 1-1 draw at the Allianz Arena and had briefly been hailed by the media as "giant killers."

In reality, however, their away form wasn't particularly good.

They had managed only one win, two draws, and two losses in their previous five away matches. And with defensive leader Söyüncü having been poached by Leicester City, their goals conceded per game remained high, leaving them among the weaker defensive sides in the league.

Arriving at the home of the in-form Black and Yellows, Freiburg coach Streich immediately set his team up in an ultra-defensive 5-4-1.

It still wasn't enough to escape unscathed.

Dortmund took the lead less than ten minutes after kickoff.

Reus received a square pass from Sancho just left of the top of the penalty arc and immediately fired from distance.

The Freiburg goalkeeper spilled the shot.

Chaos erupted inside the box, and Zayn burst through the crowd, reaching the loose ball before anyone else and poking it into the net with the tip of his boot.

1-0.

Even after conceding so early, Streich showed no intention of pushing his team forward and gambling everything.

He clearly seemed content with the idea that losing narrowly at Westfalenstadion would be good enough.

From that point on, the match fell completely into Dortmund's rhythm.

To Freiburg's credit, they didn't lose concentration and kept their defensive shape compact.

Over the next half hour, Dortmund took nearly ten shots, but eight of them came from outside the penalty area.

The Freiburg goalkeeper became the busiest player on the pitch, making save after save and producing at least three genuinely important stops.

Freiburg occasionally tried to counter after winning possession, but leaving only one forward up front gave them far too few outlets.

Witsel and Dahoud barely had to exert themselves to win the ball back.

Dortmund controlled the tempo throughout.

The only real disturbance came in the 43rd minute.

Without any pressure or physical contact, Dortmund's young center back Zagadou unexpectedly twisted his left ankle.

After a brief examination, he was unable to continue and had to be replaced by Toprak.

Favre on the touchline and Zorc in the stands both shook their heads repeatedly.

Strengthening the center back position had suddenly become even more urgent.

Zagadou's injury did nothing to change the flow of the match.

Dortmund kept attacking in waves, forcing Freiburg's defensive line deeper and deeper.

In the 49th minute, Zayn received a through ball from Reus in the left half-space of the penalty area.

With his back to goal, he held off the Freiburg center back, half-turned, and drilled a low right-footed shot toward goal.

The penalty area was packed with bodies, completely blocking the goalkeeper's view.

By the time he reacted, the ball was already in the net.

2-0.

Zayn had his brace, taking his Bundesliga tally to sixteen goals.

Freiburg still couldn't put together any meaningful attack for the rest of the match.

Favre therefore instructed his players to slow the game down.

He used his remaining two substitutions to take off Zayn and Reus for a rest, calmly seeing out the three points.

Meanwhile, second-placed Borussia Mönchengladbach lost away to Leipzig.

Although the rest of the round had yet to finish, Dortmund had now collected 37 points from thirteen matches and stretched their lead over second place to eleven points.

They remained firmly on top of the Bundesliga.

And with sixteen goals in thirteen league matches, Zayn wasn't merely running away with the Bundesliga scoring charts.

He also sat alone at the top of the European Golden Shoe standings.

Behind him were Mbappé, with twelve goals from fifteen Ligue 1 matches, and Neymar with eleven.

Every other established superstar striker had been left trailing behind him.