On June 27, the final round of the 2018 World Cup Group F officially kicked off.
The last two games are naturally played at the same time, Germany VS Mexico, Italy VS Dragon Kingdom, and they are all at 22:00 BJ time.
The World Cup has its own national team during such prime time, and coupled with Pan Yi's elements, the ratings of the match between Italy VS Dragon Country directly exploded in Dragon Country.
Almost every household is watching the live broadcast of this game!
Before the final round of Group F begins, the previous groups have completed their group stage schedule.
Group A is Uruguay and Russia qualifying, Group B is Portugal and Spain, Group C is France and Denmark, and Group D is Croatia and Argentina. It can be said that there are basically no big surprises.
In Group E, which Pan Yi is most concerned about, Brazil defeated Serbia 2:0 in the final round, while Switzerland tied with Costa Rica 2:2.
In this way, Brazil indeed won the first place in the group with 7 points, while Switzerland ranked second with 5 points. The two teams joined hands to qualify.
So in today's game, Italy must win to ensure first place in the group, so as to avoid premature encounters with favorites like Brazil.
After all, the German team currently has 3 points. If they can defeat Mexico, the Germans' points will reach 6 points.
Of course, the fate of the Mexicans is also in their own hands. As long as they defeat Germany, they can also ensure a qualifying spot.
The worst situation in Group F is the Dragon Country team. They only have 1 point. Their opponent in the last round is Pan Yi's Italy, and the goal difference is negative three...
Even if they can win by chance, it will be difficult to surpass Italy in the rankings. At the same time, it will also depend on the outcome of the battle between Germany and Mexico to determine whether they can qualify.
However, for domestic fans of Dragon Kingdom, Dragon Kingdom's performance in the World Cup this time has already satisfied them!
After all, when they first appeared in the World Cup in 2002, they lost all three games and failed to score a single goal.
But this time, not only did he score a goal, but he also gained points. There was even a theoretical hope of qualifying before the end of the final round, and he was not eliminated early!
Therefore, before the start of the game against Italy, Longguo mainly focused on encouragement and just hoped that the team could play its own style in the final battle.
However, Pan Yi still reminded his players in the locker room not to underestimate the enemy!
"Although we can qualify if we draw this game...but we must not have such thoughts, otherwise, we will most likely be the unlucky ones in the end."
Pan Yi said sternly: "I am from the Dragon Kingdom. The Dragon Kingdom team has often encountered such situations in the past history, but the final results are mostly bad. We don't want to learn from this."
"Besides, a draw is not what I want. I want to win to ensure I get first place in the group!"
"Our first potential opponent in the knockout rounds is either Brazil or Switzerland. Between the two I would choose Switzerland."
"This does not mean that we are afraid of Brazil, but because in such a tournament system, the less consumption in the previous games, the more beneficial it is to the team that aims to win the championship."
"If we want to win the championship, we have to play seven games in a month. Even if we play in the Premier League and the Championship, it is a very intensive schedule. To complete such a schedule, we often need to make rotations."
"But if every game is a tough match, it will be too taxing on the team, and it may lose interest in the semifinals and finals."
"Do you understand now? No matter what angle it is from, I need to defeat my opponent!"
Compared with its two previous opponents, Germany and Mexico, the Dragon Country team is undoubtedly much weaker.
In their formation, the only three frontcourt players who can gain a foothold in the European League are Wu Lei, Zhang Yuning and Lin Liangming.
This also shows that only the forward line of the Long Guo team can compete with the world's top teams, but the strength of the midfield and backfield is really average.
Take the back line for example. This line composed of Zhang Linpeng, Feng Xiaoting, Mei Fang, and Jiang Zhipeng can barely stand out in Asia, but it is vulnerable to an offensive line like the German team.
For example, Zhang Linpeng is already the best among the national football defenders. His body is indeed very strong, but his defensive awareness is average, and his passing accuracy when assisting is even more eye-catching.
The only reason is that when Pan Yi wanted to take him to Europe, he was stopped and missed the best opportunity to improve.
Therefore, in this game, Pan Yi will certainly not play any defensive counterattack against Long Guo. He will use offense to tear apart Long Guo's poor defense line.
Although Long Guo's forward combination is still very good, especially Wu Lei and Lin Liangming are both Pan Yi's direct disciples, but Pan Yi believes that before his offensive line can tear apart Long Guo's flawless defense line, he A solid back line will definitely be able to withstand the opponent's attack!
In the lineup for this game, Pan Yi, who aspires to the championship, still rotated some players. The midfielder started with Parolo, Barrera and Tonali, while the center back was the combination of Bastoni + Barzagli, and the fullback was It’s DiMarco + Candreva.
On the front line, Chiesa is still used who is faster and in better condition, plus Balotelli and Insigne. The tactics are to press the attack and use speed to break down the Dragon Kingdom's defense!
As for this Dragon Country team, there may really be no one who knows it better than Pan Yi - even Lippi, the current head coach of the Dragon Country national team, may not be as good as him.
Therefore, after Pan Yi explained in detail the flaws in the opponent's defense, every Italian player was full of confidence in winning at this moment.
Your own team is inherently stronger than the other team, and now that the other team has everything under the control of your head coach, how can you not win? ——
The weather today is not very good, it rains moderately in the sky.
Although it won't make the game difficult, it will have a certain impact.
This is one of the reasons why Pan Yi will attack aggressively in this game.
The slippery field certainly has an impact on Italy's offense, but it also has a great impact on Long Guo, who wants to use defense to slow down Italy's pace.
The players on Longguo's back line all have certain deficiencies in ability. Coupled with the impact of the field, it is even more difficult to keep up with the opponent's rhythm.
Compared to the weather, the biggest focus of this game is of course still on Pan Yi.
Before the game started, fans all over the world saw in front of the TV what "eyes on" and "harmony" are.
First, Lippi, the head coach of the Dragon Country, appeared on the field, and then the fans in the entire stadium cheered and applauded him, whether they were Italian fans or Dragon Country fans.
After all, for fans in these two countries, Lippi will always be a meritorious coach!
Leading the Italian team to win the World Cup and leading the Italian team to enter the World Cup, for the people of the two countries, the difficulty and credit may be similar.
And when the Italian team's head coach Pan Yi also appeared on the field and began to greet Lippi with a smile, the cheering decibels in the stadium increased to another level!
For Italian and Dragon Country fans, this man is also their favorite and has made outstanding contributions to football in his country!
And Pan Yi's magical resume in professional football, coupled with his handsome appearance, made him more popular than the old coach Lippi. The fans made a noise that almost brought down the ceiling of the entire stadium. Overturned!
Then, there is a more harmonious scene.
Pan Yi walked to the Dragon Country team and shook hands, chatted, and hugged every coach and player...
And every member of the Dragon Kingdom team talked cordially with Pan Yi like seeing an old friend.
This is really a harmonious scene rarely seen in the World Cup!
Of course, there were also exchanges between the players of the two teams, especially Lin Liangming and York City teammates such as Tonali, Barrera, Bastoni, etc., who chatted happily.
This is not a match related to qualifying for the World Cup group. It is simply a class reunion!
When the national anthem of the Dragon Kingdom began to be played in the venue, the live camera footage also captured Pan Yi singing the national anthem solemnly along with him...
Yes, his profession is a football coach, and he needs to lead his team to defeat his opponents, but he is also a Dragon Country man!
But when the game really started, Pan Yi quickly returned to his role and began to direct the Italian players to attack the Dragon Kingdom!
But the Long Guo team, which kicked off first, created an opportunity first.
Wu Lei's breakthrough with the ball was blocked, and then he immediately passed the ball to Lin Liangming who was on the wing. After receiving the ball, the latter forced a cross and then immediately took a shot from outside the penalty area. Candreva flew to block the ball with his body. Bottom line, corner kick.
But it was just this one attack.
After the corner kick was easily cleared by the Italian defenders, Long Guo's offense began to run into trouble.
Several of their frontcourt players have excellent speed and personal skills, but they are also the kind of players who need to control the ball at their feet. The slippery court seriously affected their technical performance, coupled with the fierceness of the Italian players The close pressing made it difficult for their organized offense to be used.
Especially after the connection between Wu Lei, Lin Liangming, Zhang Yuning and others was cut off by the Italian defenders, there was no cooperation between these few people, and they often had to fight alone.
After several opening attacks, Dragon Kingdom's advance immediately began to reach a stalemate, and was suppressed by Italy in turn, and then began a fierce attack.
As for why the Dragon Kingdom wants to attack instead of defending?
Although the public opinion environment of the domestic media and fans in Dragon Kingdom is very relaxed, Lippi does not come to the game with a mentality of defeat.
He also wanted to lead the team to attack the seemingly empty chance of qualifying!
To do this, the Dragon Kingdom must first defeat Italy, even if this is very difficult.
But this is Lippi, a stubborn old man who refuses to admit defeat.
Even when he led Changzhou Hengtai to meet Bayern Munich, the then Cosmos team, in the Club World Cup, he even thought about defeating his opponent...
Nowadays, the hope of scoring in Italy's goal is pinned on Longguo's most powerful striker, especially the two wingers Wu Lei and Lin Liangming.
Their speed is their greatest weapon!
Wu Lei was playing on the left today. When he dribbled the ball forward from the left, he happened to run into Candreva.
Wu Lei has always been quite confident in his own speed. In addition, Candreva seemed to have failed to keep up with his previous charge, which made Wu Lei feel that his opponent was nothing more than that.
Candreva currently plays for Inter Milan in Serie A. Wu Lei has basically no record of playing against him, and Candreva mainly serves as De Sciglio's substitute in the Italian team, so he doesn't know much about him.
In addition, Candreva is actually a player whose attributes are stronger as a winger than as a full-back. Fans sometimes call him "Cache", so his defensive ability is often overlooked.
So now, when Wu Lei breaks through along the wing and sees Candreva approaching, he has no intention of cooperating with his teammates. Instead, he is preparing to forcefully get rid of his opponent alone, and then pass the ball to his teammates in the penalty area.
Well, if we can get rid of him completely and cross from the wing to the center to disrupt their defense, the possibility of scoring will be greater...
Wu Lei thought like this, and then he first made a cross-cutting fake move, then suddenly moved the ball near the baseline, and began to forcefully accelerate the breakthrough!
The slippery surface caused the ball to roll forward faster.
Wu Lei has taken this into consideration. The long spikes prevent him from being greatly affected when running. He believes that in such a pure competition for speed, there is really no defender who can catch up with him. several.
However, what he doesn't know is that although Candreva does not give people the impression of being super fast on the court, and he does not often use his speed to pass people when he plays as a winger, in fact, his sprint speed is Very fast.
In other words, his absolute speed is not fast, but his acceleration is very high.
If presented in data, his sprint speed is approximately 33.64 kilometers per hour.
What is this concept? The fastest full-back in the world today should be Achraf. His sprint can reach 36.49 kilometers per hour.
Although Candreva is not as good as Achraf, he is already very strong.
When facing Wu Lei, Candreva's excellent explosive power can also prevent him from being left too far.
This time, Candreva was not fooled by Wu Lei's cross-cutting fake move.
The wind whistled in his ears and the rain hit Wu Lei's face. Wu Lei enjoyed this feeling very much. Often when he was galloping on the wing, the full-backs were always struggling to catch up behind him, but they Always can't catch up.
When he was in Hamburg, he often relied on this move to clear a bloody path and then pass good balls to his teammates in the middle.
When Candreva turned around, Wu Lei was roaring past him. Then Candreva instantly raised his speed to the highest level. Then, a blue figure and a red figure appeared in the Italian half. The right wing started a speed competition.
Wu Lei was a little unconcerned at first, thinking that it was impossible for the other party to catch up with him.
However, after sprinting for more than ten meters, Wu Lei was horrified to find that the opponent not only was not left behind by his sprint, but also had a faint tendency to surpass him by half a body!
Wu Lei unbelievingly accelerated to get rid of the opponent, but still failed to do so.
At this time, Wu Lei realized that he seemed to have underestimated this opponent, but he was not worried. It seemed that Candreva would not be faster than him in the follow-up, and in a one-on-one match on the wing, the faster one may not necessarily have the upper hand. .
As long as he can get the ball first, whether he stops suddenly or accelerates again, the opponent will be in a passive state and can still ravage the opponent.
Just when Wu Lei was about to catch up with the ball, Candreva suddenly disappeared next to him.
After he reacted, he realized that Candreva suddenly fell to the ground while rushing forward, then stretched out his foot to hook the ball that had stopped on the lawn, and then moved it inward...
Tackle! A standard Italian tackle!
Unable to hold back, Wu Lei was directly tackled to the ground by Candreva with the ball. Although he stood up immediately after a somersault, his clothes were already covered with muddy water and grass clippings.
Moreover, Candreva's tackle was very clean. Not only was there no foul, but after finishing the tackle, he hooked the ball into his control, then stood up and took the ball in the opposite direction.
Wu Lei ran up unconvinced, intending to interfere with Candreva's dribbling, but Candreva had already passed the ball directly to Chiesa in front, and then ran over to respond.
After receiving the ball, Chiesa did not intend to break through Zhang Linpeng's defense. After seeing Insigne and Balotelli rushing into the opponent's penalty area, he immediately raised his foot and passed the ball to the frontcourt.
The ball flew toward the edge of the Long Guo team's penalty area. Feng Xiaoting planned to take off and push the ball out. However, when he took off, his foot slipped and he failed to jump up!
Bad mistake!
Another mistake! ——Hey, why do you say again?
However, it seemed that luck was still on the side of the Dragon Country team. After the ball flew over Feng Xiaoting's head, it fell at the feet of Balotelli who was sprinting into the opponent's penalty area.
Balotelli didn't seem to expect that such a single opportunity would appear in front of him. He did a good job of removing the ball and rushing into the penalty area, but the next shot went too far.
He immediately started to volley when he was still twenty meters away from the goal. No one was even guarding him at that time!
The ball hit the billboard hard, and the Italian fans in the stands sighed.
Balotelli glanced down at his feet. It seemed that the turf under his feet caused his supporting foot to slip, which allowed him to shoot such an outrageous shot.
Pan Yi and the assistant coaches looked at each other, and the coaches all had wry smiles on their faces.
"You won't have luck on our side today, will you?" Evani was even a little nervous. He remembered the fear of being dominated by Ochoa in the last game against Mexico.
"They had Ochoa at that time, but Long Guo didn't." Pan Yi smiled, reassuring the assistant coaches, "After adapting to the venue, our forwards should know how to shoot."
The main goalkeeper standing in front of Longguo today is Zeng Cheng.
It's not that Zeng Cheng's level is not good. In fact, he is already the best goalkeeper in Dragon Kingdom.
but……
If compared with world-class goalkeepers, Zeng Cheng does still have a relatively large gap.
It can even be said that if you compare every position in Dragon Kingdom with the corresponding position in the world, the goalkeeper may be the biggest difference.
As far as the current national teams are concerned, the one closest to the European level is actually the young Wang Dalei.
However, he was also politely rejected from the club after a trial training in Serie A. Although Da Lei's physical fitness was acceptable, he was considered to have not even crossed the threshold of an ordinary goalkeeper.
The gap is reflected in many aspects.
First, physical fitness.
World-class goalkeepers such as Neuer, Buffon and Cech are generally over 190cm tall and possess both speed and skill.
But if yellow people want to reach the same level, their body height may need to be around 170-180, unless they are extremely talented, but so far no such person has appeared.
Second, compete with reading ability.
A mature goalkeeper will have a comprehensive understanding and understanding of his own and his opponent's performance on and off the field in each game, so that he can make adequate responses and judgments whether he is in an advantage or a headwind.
Third, the ability to withstand stress.
When the team is in a headwind, the team's gate may be frantically attacked by opponents. At this time, the goalkeeper is required to have a higher game concentration, a better game mentality, and just the right ability to withstand pressure.
Fourth, stable technical performance.
Reasonable attacks, clearances, and against-the-wind saves require goalkeepers to have more stable and better technical performance regardless of whether the game is going against the wind or against the wind.
World-class goalkeepers generally have the above factors, but the national football goalkeepers seem a bit clumsy in comparison. This is one of the reasons why the national football team has not been able to produce world-class goalkeepers so far.
Of course, there is another piece of evidence that can prove this.
That is, in Chinese Super League games, there are basically no restrictions on the position of foreign players, but only goalkeepers are not allowed to have foreign players.
One of the big reasons for this is that when they were still in the A-A era, Sasha Petrovic, the substitute goalkeeper of the Yugoslavia national team in 1999, joined Shandong Luneng and set a league record of conceding only 13 goals in 26 games.
Among them, five goals were conceded due to team running-in problems in the first three games, so in fact, only 8 goals were conceded in the remaining 23 games, an average of only one goal in three games!
He also helped Shandong Luneng win the league championship and FA Cup championship, becoming the first double champion in the Dragon Kingdom.
Sasha's outstanding performance caused many clubs in the A to find foreign goalkeepers in 2000. The local goalkeepers were greatly affected and could no longer play - in fact, except for a few international goalkeepers, all other clubs basically used them. Foreign goalkeeper.
So the Dragon Country Football Association immediately issued a "foreign goalkeeper ban" and it was officially implemented in the 2001 season. Foreign goalkeepers disappeared from the Chinese Super League.
If it weren't for the particularity of the goalkeeper position, if it weren't for the huge gap between the Dragon Kingdom goalkeepers and the world-class goalkeepers, how could this situation have happened?
"A good goalkeeper is worth half the team" is not nonsense, and Ochoa's performance in the World Cup also proved this.
So now, although Pan Yi saw that his team members missed a good opportunity, he was not very anxious.
The superb Ochoa is not something you can see every time, and the Italian team is not really that bad!
Moreover, although the goal was not scored, Feng Xiaoting's equally inexplicable mistake also boosted the confidence of Italy's offensive players.
Most of the Italian players have never dealt with players from the Dragon Country, especially defenders.
But looking at it today, it seems that their stability is not high and their turnover rate is high.
This means that as long as you follow the coach's arrangements and put pressure on both sides and the middle of the Dragon Kingdom, there will definitely be holes in the Dragon Kingdom's defense.
By that time, Italy's goal will come quickly, and victory will come naturally!
(End of chapter)