Football giants

Chapter 381 Counted!
FA Cup Final, Wembley Stadium.

Dalglish sat in the coach's bench as if sitting on pins and needles, with his chin in his hands, staring at the court with a mountainous brow.

Counted!
The assistant coach on the side, Steve Clark, couldn't sit still for a long time. He stood on the sidelines and watched, shouting a few words towards the court from time to time, reminding the players to pay attention.

This is a very experienced assistant coach, and even has the ability to stand on his own.

At the beginning, Liverpool saw that Dalglish had not coached for many years and was a bit out of touch with modern football, so they invited the former Mourinho assistant to Liverpool to assist Dalglish.

Therefore, the assistant coach's prestige in the team is not small.

But even so, it still cannot change Liverpool's disadvantage on the court.

Southampton launched a fierce attack on Liverpool almost from the beginning of the game, hitting the Red Army's midfield and defense again and again.

In this game, Liverpool also made a big problem in the formation.

The goalkeeper is Reina, and the defense is Jose Enrique, Skrtel, Agger and Glenn Johnson.

The midfield is a three midfield combination of Gerrard, Spilling and Henderson, and the frontcourt is Downing, Suarez and Bellamy.

The reason why Dalglish and Clark made such a lineup is more because they want to control the initiative in the game.

But what they didn't expect was that Southampton would press hard from the beginning.

Goalkeeper Neuer, the defense is David Alaba, Harvey Martinez, Gary Cahill and Carvajal, the midfielder is Strowman, Matic and Vidal, and the front trident is Neymar, Drogba and Sturridge.

Toni Kroos didn't make it!

This completely disrupted Dalglish's pre-match arrangement!
In the two targeted training sessions yesterday, Liverpool practiced around how to encircle Toni Kroos and suppress Southampton's midfielder.

But yesterday evening, at the Southampton press conference, Bielsa announced that Toni Kroos was out due to injury.

This disrupted Liverpool's deployment.

Today, in the last pre-match training session, Liverpool has no way to conduct tactical drills out of secrecy.

What Dalglish and Clark can do is to remind the players to be careful as much as possible.

How do you say a word?

The game is the result of training, if the training is not good enough, it will be difficult to play well in the game.

With Southampton's strength, even if Liverpool is a tactical opponent, they may not be able to win the opponent.

Not to mention that the tactics are completely wrong now!
The simplest point is that Southampton kept playing with Spearing, and Vidal and Strowman boldly pressed on.

Liverpool has nothing to do but return Gerrard and Henderson.

This results in passive across the board.

Steve Clark, who was standing in the coach's bench, looked at the time and then at the situation, and sighed helplessly.

"Kenny, we have to adjust!"

Dalgliesh still looked straight ahead, and asked casually, "Substitution?"

Clark was speechless for a moment.

Only 10 minutes to change?

In professional leagues, unless there is a major injury, otherwise, the head coach will not make substitutions in the first half.

Even midfield substitutions are relatively rare.

On the one hand, this is an acknowledgment that the team's starting tactics have failed, which affects the morale of the team and the fighting spirit of the players.

Secondly, the player who is replaced must be upset, because he will feel that the head coach has pulled him to be a substitute.

If the substitution is really made now, the players will definitely be popular, and the fans in the stands will definitely not do it either.

"But the situation is terrible now!" Clark said worriedly.

"Southampton's midfielder pressed heavily and used Spearing to hit the midfielder. The effect did not come out, but the weakness was exposed. Gerrard and Henderson retreated across the board. The defensive investment of the three frontcourt players is not high. Our defense pressure is too great!"

How could Dalglish not know?
However, Liverpool does not have a trustworthy defensive midfielder at all now!
Since Mascherano switched to Barcelona, ​​Meireles switched to Chelsea. Although Liverpool has cultivated a Lucas, but the Brazilian midfielder suffered frequent injuries and missed this game due to injury.

Now he is also a clever woman who can't cook without rice!

Under the alternate impact of Vidal and Strowman, Spearing made frequent mistakes after the start and became very nervous.

Henderson is basically a soy sauce role, without decent passing and performance.

The only one who is quite satisfactory is Gerrard.

The captain of the Red Army is hard-working, and his skills and awareness are also very good, but the key is that he is old and no longer the courage of the past!

"Let's take a gamble, maybe there is a chance to fight back!" That's all Dalglish could say.

Needless to say, within two or three minutes, Southampton's offensive seemed to relax a bit. Liverpool seized an opportunity and played a counterattack.

Henderson, who had no performance throughout the first half, even gave a diagonal long pass to transfer.

Bellamy quickly ran along the right, chasing the ball and rushing forward.

This move immediately made the Red Army fans in the stands of the entire Wembley Stadium burst into enthusiasm.

For a time, the entire Wembley Stadium was filled with the voices of Red Army fans.

Bellamy finally caught up with the ball on the right side of the Southampton box.

After stopping, he raised his head, only to see a flash of a figure in front of him.

David Alaba is back!

This kid is really fast!
Bellamy has forgotten, in fact, he will soon be 33 years old.

I saw the Welshman skillfully dribbling the ball, and suddenly made a fake move, trying to get rid of David Alaba.

Suarez and Downing had already stepped up in the middle, and Gerrard and Henderson also rushed into the 30-meter zone.

As long as you get rid of David Alaba, there will be a lot of opportunities, and maybe you can even create a threat!
But at the moment when Bellamy threw away David Alaba, Harvey Martinez, who had been helping to defend behind David Alaba, suddenly stepped forward and stabbed Bellamy's ball.

The Spaniard defended very decisively and calmly this time!
After the ball was poked off, it fell behind Bellamy. David Alaba quickly caught up and made a big kick to make a clearance before the Liverpool players.

The ball was not far from the siege, and it landed in Southampton's half, near the top of the arc in the middle circle.

Drogba blocked Agger with his body, facing the ball's landing point, and headed forward.

The ball is knocked back to Strowman.

The Dutchman was facing the attacking direction, raised his head, looked at Neymar on the left, and then at Sturridge on the right.

The ball crossed a low, flat and fast arc, barely over the head of Liverpool left-back Jose Enrique, and fell behind the defense.

Sturridge was like a cheetah ready to go, waiting for the opportunity to stare at the prey. When the ball came, it immediately started like a bolt of lightning, sprinted forward, and left Jose Enrique behind in an instant.

This time, the audience cheered and became Southampton fans!
All Saints fans are chanting Sturridge's name, cheering for the England teenager!

After Sturridge got rid of Jose Enrique, there were no defensive players in front.

Another Liverpool central defender, Skrtel, is still a little far away. Even if he runs to defend, Sturridge can already rush into the penalty area.

It can be said that at this time Sturridge's opponent is no longer someone else, but himself.

Stop the ball well, take the ball well, and hit this single shot well!

Sturridge sprints very fast but also keeps an eye on the ball.

To avoid being caught by Jose Enrique, he didn't turn around to stop the ball because it was that slow.

He directly faced the landing point of the ball, raised his foot and picked it lightly.

When he felt contact with the ball on the instep, he knew that he had picked it.

The ball rebounded, the body caught up, and the chest took advantage of the opportunity to push the ball forward.

Although Jose Enrique caught up, Sturridge blocked him with his body.

The Spanish left-back stretched out his hand, trying to pull Sturridge down behind him.

But the Englishman just staggered, but did not fall to the ground, but took advantage of the trend to start accelerating again.

Facing the ball, both the man and the ball entered the penalty area.

Skrtel came and Jose Enrique was behind him, but Sturridge didn't even look at them.

He looked at Reina in front of the goal.

This is his only opponent now!
Renner didn't dare to attack, and his eyes were fixed on Sturridge, constantly making judgments.

The angle is too big, where will he hit?
left?right?Far corner?Or near corner?
Reina was a little confused, he couldn't figure out Sturridge's choice at all, he could only watch his movements and react instinctively.

far corner!

The Spanish goalkeeper rushed to the far corner!

But Sturridge hit a close corner with his left foot!
The ball almost rubbed against the right post and got into the lower right corner of the goal!

"GOALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!"

The whole Wembley Stadium suddenly boiled up!
In the stands, all the Southampton fans rushed out of their seats frantically, raised their arms frantically, and shouted Sturridge's name frantically!
"No.13 minutes, Southampton finally broke Liverpool's goal!"

"It was England's native teenager, Daniel Sturridge, who opened the scoring for the Saints!"

"This saint's striker has performed well this season and has represented the team many times. He has scored [-] goals so far, among which he has scored goals in the Europa League, FA Cup, League Cup and the English Championship!"

Sturridge excitedly rushed to the sidelines, doing his unique dancing celebration to the Saints fans in the stands.

Behind them, the Southampton players rushed forward one after another, directly throwing Sturridge to the ground.

"fantastic!"

"Southampton played very resolutely after the start, and with a wave of offense, they completely suppressed Liverpool!"

"The Red Army seems very passive, and now they are one goal behind. This game will become very difficult for them!"

"This is the manager of Liverpool, Kenny Dalglish, he should start thinking about it!"

When the Southampton players celebrated from the sidelines and walked into the stadium, the head coach Bielsa on the sidelines was also shouting loudly and waving at the players.

Anyone familiar with Southampton must know that Bielsa's action is telling the players.

Don't relax, it's only one goal, continue to attack me, press up, attack like crazy!

When you meet a team like Liverpool, you have to be reasonable.

Grab a weakness, attack desperately, and strive for more goals.

Once you relax, wait until this tenacious team adjusts and stabilizes the situation, then you have no chance.

In the Miracle of Istanbul, AC Milan led by three goals. In the second half, after the team adjusted, they also scored three goals. In the end, they defeated AC Milan in a penalty shootout and won the Champions League.

It can be seen from this that if you fight Liverpool, if you don't take advantage of the situation and beat them to death, the centipedes are dead but not stiff, and sooner or later they will counterattack!

Therefore, after the re-kick-off, Liverpool took the lead in sounding the horn of counterattack.

But Southampton, which was leading by one goal, did not have the slightest fear, and started a round of confrontation with Liverpool head-on.

In the football field, you come and go against each other, exciting scenes appear frequently

In the stands, in front of the TV, the fans were also hooked.

Let's see who wins!

(End of this chapter)