Now let’s talk about the two hosts’ teams. In Group H, the host team Japan and Belgium tied 22 in 90 minutes, and one point was satisfactory. The South Korean team in Group D was the last one in all groups to end the first round of the game. Like the previous groups, there was also a game in Group D in which Figo and Rui Costa, the first Portuguese golden generation, accidentally missed their World Cup premiere against the United States!
Portugal’s defeat once again caused an uproar among fans and the media. With top stars such as Figo and Rui Costa in charge and excellent performances in the European Cup two years ago, Portugal has also become a favourite to win the World Cup. However, people didn’t expect that Portugal, like Italy and France, was also planted and lost to the United States, a football desert country!
Although the United States once held the World Cup in the United States years ago and achieved good results in the top 16, fans should know what position football is in the United States, and there is a huge gap between the two teams in book strength.
In this way, after the first round of the World Cup group stage, the fans were surprised to find that this time, there were quite a few unpopular teams, from Italy, the double champion of the World Cup and the European Cup, to France, the runnerup of the European Cup, to England, the European Red Devil, Belgium and Portugal, the leader of the golden generation, which really surprised experts and fans.
This is the end of the first round of the World Cup in Korea and Japan, when people commented on this round of group matches.
Of course, many experts believe that there will be so many upsets behind the World Cup, largely because most players have not recovered from the fatigue of a season in the World Cup. For example, Zida, the midfielder, played a Champions League final with Real Madrid half a month before the World Cup curtain, and he was so tired that France lost the most important core and leader in the team before the game.
Although these experts’ analysis sounds reasonable, it’s actually nowherenow it’s almost a week since the curtain of the World Cup, can you let the organizers temporarily suspend the game and wait for the stars to regain their strength and play again? Such a thing is obviously impossible to happen.
After Portugal unexpectedly lost to the United States, the second round of the group match was officially started, and Italy finally ushered in their second World Cup in Korea and Japan. This time, Zoff and his players will face Ecuador, a mysterious teacher from South America, at the Sapporo Dome Stadium in Sapporo, Japan!
Chapter 115 Unpopular World Cup (3)
Due to Zhuang Ge’s matchmaking, the Italian Football Association and the Japanese Football Association have long exhibited their positions in all fields of football and merged to establish a fairly stable relationship.
For example, in terms of player exchange, the Italian Football Association will give Japan 30 trial places every year, which can be distributed to those players aged 16 who are selected from China, while the Italian Football Association will send these young players to Florence and Milan, the top giants of Italy, for a oneyear professional training to improve their football skills, so that Japanese football can learn advanced techniques and tactics from Europe at close range. Up to now, this combination has lasted for two years.
In return for the generous action of the Italian Football Association, which doesn’t take a lira from it, the Japanese Football Association has spared no effort to provide all kinds of support to the Italian Football Association over the years, from competing for official sponsors of Serie A to sponsors of Italian leagues at all levels to helping the Italian Football Association to expand its strategic partners in the East Asian football market. This mutually beneficial and winwin model has benefited both sides, and the Japanese side has taken this opportunity to further strengthen their future development of football on the football reserve talent training day. On the other hand, Italy has received a lot of sponsorship from Japanese companies and enterprises, and by the way, it has further expanded the Asian market, making the overseas market of Italian football a big step forward.
Here, by the way, Zhuang Ge didn’t think about his great influence in Italian football. By the way, he also trained a number of hope stars for China football. Unfortunately, the Chinese Football Association was shortsighted and let Zhuang Ge painstakingly create this opportunity. In the face of the Italian Football Association’s initiative to extend an olive branch, a vicechairman suggested at the head of a current national team delegation that he refused the Italian Football Association agreement without hesitation without even calling a discussion meeting! (Note that for some wellknown reasons, we can avoid the threat of the crab god in this way.) The reason for refusing is only that the Italian Football Association has not promised to give them a player training request and is willing to give young players from China a trial training in Italy to get in touch with advanced European football.
Therefore, in the absence of benefits and political achievements, the Italian Football Association’s collegial meeting was undoubtedly firmly rejected by the Chinese Football Association!
This result made Zhuang Ge very angry. He didn’t expect that this organization, which had made several jokes in previous lives, could still ask for money in this kind of thing, regardless of the longterm benefits this kind of exchange can bring to the development of football in China. Holy cow, how greedy these people really are! Even sending national players to Italy for training can have the cheek to ask for a socalled’ player training’. We are not trying to introduce their players. Where can we get this training! This is Zhuang Ge’s evaluation of this amateur and greedy football association when he told Karin and Rebecca about it through some private sources.
After this incident, Zhuang Ge no longer intends to help China develop football through official channels, because he has realized that there is such an amateur conductor who is arrogant and complacent. The Football Association’s theory on what he intends to do is for nothing, because these official organizations will never agree with him to do so because they can’t get enough benefits and achievements.
Now let’s move on to Italy and Japan.
Due to the close communication between the football associations of the two sides at the official level, the organizers of the World Cup have given many unknown benefits to Italy on the one hand. For example, in the last World Cup, Italy was arranged to hold all the accommodation in Japan, and the sponsors of the Italian Football Association paid the bill in Japan, so they didn’t need to worry about anything.
Moreover, Italy is very particular about the location of these group matches. Croatia’s first match was held in Ibaraki, the satellite city of Osaka, while Italy chose Osaka as the training venue for preparing for the World Cup. This arrangement can make vieri reduce the fatigue caused by traveling as much as possible and give them a better mental outlook to meet the challenges of the Croats. Unfortunately, Zoff’s poor prematch arrangement and onthespot command ruined the Japanese Football Association’s good heart.
Let’s take a look at the upcoming second round of the group match with Ecuador. Although it is scheduled to be held in Sapporo, a city located in Hokkaido, this arrangement is obviously more difficult for Ecuadorian playerslet alone the huge seasonal difference between the northern and southern hemispheres, which is enough for these Ecuadorian players who are used to their own plateau home environment to drink a pot.
On the contrary, Italian players are much less affected, mainly because the local climate in Sapporo is still refreshing and pleasant at this time in June, so Italians are obviously more adapted to the climate here than Ecuadorian players who are still trying to adapt to the northern hemisphere summer.
In addition, considering that Italy has accumulated a high popularity and a large number of loyal fans in Japan for many years, it has almost become half of Italy’s home, so the game has already occupied a huge advantage in terms of time and place before Italy!
In Ecuador, which is in the wind in these two events, I’m afraid they can make more efforts in terms of people and people, or pray to the emperor that Zoff, a rookie, can continue to make mistakes in this game. After all, Croatia was able to reverse the defeat of Italy in the opener because of Zoff’s mistakes in arranging troops and the overall tactics adhered to by the Jokichi people.
However, after learning enough lessons from playing against Croatia, Zoff naturally won’t foolishly fall in the same place twice and win the game against Ecuador. This Italian coach just gave up. In the past two years, he has been insisting on the fivethreetwo formation and changing the array fourfourtwo. In this way, he intends to strengthen the team’s control in midfield, thus firmly grasping the initiative of the game and finally winning the overall strength to beat their second opponent in the World Cup and get these extremely valuable three points!
Chapter 116 Unpopular World Cup (4)
With Zoff changing, the Italian starting list in the field match has naturally changed a lot compared with the opening war. For example, filippo inzaghi in the front line returned to the starting line after sitting on the bench and partnered with his good friend vieri in the front line; While Roman k Totti was rearranged by Zoff in his familiar front waist position to share albertini’s burden, so that there would be another dilemma against Croatia.
With his excellent performance in the national team training period, Pirlo finally overcame tommasi, the biggest competitor, and became a member of Italy’s starting lineup. He will form the Azzurri midfield iron triangle with albertini and Totti, but in this way, one of Italy’s four starting midfielders will be Dibiagio, a fulltime defensive midfielder. Although the other three can’t say that they contribute to the defensive end, they will give people a sense of attacking the strong and defending the weak.
Albertini and Pirlo, for example, although they are both midfielders like Dibiagio in Zoff’s starting list, these two are more about combing the rhythm of the team’s game and looking for opportunities to tear the opponent’s defense line. On the defensive end, they rely more on their prejudgment to intercept the opponent’s offensive line to defend, rather than like Dibiagio and tommasi, the midfield sweeper is like holding a dynamite bag and knowing that they are dead against the opponent’s offensive player.
It is precisely because of this style that albertini and Pirlo are not defensive black holes, but they can’t be regarded as defensive experts. After all, even Lei Dongduo’s defensive ability is stronger than theirs, and it is even more impossible for albertini and Pirlo to win this title.
Therefore, when Zoff put the three men together in the starting list, his practice still caused many Italian fans to worry. After all, if the defensive hardness of the midfield is not enough, it will still have a great impact on the overall defense of the team. It is really hard to say whether this change is a blessing or a curse for Italy, which started as a defensive country.
It can be said that sending such a set of midfield combination with slightly weak defensive ability is obviously an attempt that needs great courage for the team that attaches great importance to defense and desperately needs a victory to qualify for the qualifying.
Since Zoff has adjusted Italy’s player configuration in the center and frontcourt, it is natural that the starting central defender has changed from a central defender configuration of Martini, Starr and Materazzi to a combination of Starr and Cannavaro. The team captain Paolo Maldini returned to the leftback position, making the temporary guest appearance on the left and Zambrotta back to the right he is familiar with. At the same time, panucci, a junior who worked with him in AC Milan, was squeezed into the bench to sit on the sidelines and watch the game gloomily.
I have to say that after a good lesson by Croats, Zoff’s series of adjustments effectively solved most of the problems exposed by Italy in the opening match. For example, albertini’s singlecore play led to the lack of midfield control, and Totti pushed the front line and let Inzaghi and Montera fire from the display, etc. However, in Zhuang Ge’s view, letting Maldini, who is 34 years old, replace Zambrotta as the leftback is likely to be a failure. After all, the Milan captain is old and athletic. The former world’s No.1 leftback can hardly persist in the fierce confrontation for 90 minutes if he continues to play as a leftback four years ago.
In Zhuang Ge’s previous life, the AC Milan club led by Ancelotti was defeated by La Coruna and Liverpool in the Champions League. The main reason is that the first batch of veterans of Maldini lacked the physical strength to last the whole game, and they were dragged down by better physical strength, super Laco and Red Army, which eventually led to the reversal tragedy.
However, Ecuadoreans are not good for Italy. At this point, they dashed towards Maldini. Facing Zoff’s sudden change of array, the combination of vieri and Inzaghi brought them great pressure. Ecuadorian players have exhausted their efforts just to deal with these two super strikers, let alone find out the shortcomings in Italy. After all, even if they find each other’s weaknesses, they must have enough strength to implement tactics aimed at this weakness. Otherwise, everything is just talk.
Maybe some people will wonder why Ecuador, like Croatia, has been killed step by step from the World Cup qualifiers and even stepped on the feet of Uruguay and Chile, the strong South American teams. Why are the two teams so different in strength that one can seize the opportunity to complete the reversal and the other can’t even implement the basic tactics?
In fact, Ecuador can push Uruguay, Chile and other South American teams into the World Cup finals not because they are better than these teams, but because of their huge home court advantage. After all, whoever suddenly goes to a place as high as 2 meters above sea level to play a game will be at its best because of the huge climate difference on the plateau. It is because of the home court advantage that Ecuador can beat those opponents who are much stronger than it and qualify for the World Cup.
So in the face of this team, the fighting capacity was directly returned to the prototype after going to the plateau. Ecuador has not yet got rid of the fatigue caused by a season’s campaign. The Italian players have finally recovered their state. Totti, albertini and Pirlo have continuously supported the striker vieri and Inzaghi to get a lot of shooting opportunities. The former’s superior physical fitness and the latter’s agility have made Ecuadorian defenders miserable and have to shrink their defense lines to resist the threat they pose.
With vieri’s super personal ability penetrating Ecuador twice, Italy finally defeated Ecuador 20 cleanly in this second round of group match, gained three valuable points in this opponent’s body, and tied a small loss in the group standings, giving Mexico and Croatia a goal difference and a slight advantage to stay in the second place in Group G!
Zoff and his Italian internationals finally won a chance by their own actions.
Chapter 117 Unpopular World Cup (5)
With Italy beating Ecuador in the second group match and their competitor Croatia losing to Mexico, the qualifying situation of Azzurri in Group G has become more chaotic at this moment!
For example, Mexico, which ranks first at present, has won six points and three points over Italy and Croatia, two world cup champions and third place winners. But if they lose to Italy in the final round and Croatia wins on the other side, they have already lost two consecutive qualifying matches and hope Ecuador to get enough goal difference, then they are still likely to be blocked by Croatia and Italy.