i want to be king

Chapter 760 Inheritance of Number Four
Guardiola is really a perfectionist.

He is obviously a Capricorn, but why is he more picky than Su Dong, a Virgo?
From the team's overall tactical framework, to specific execution details, and then subdivided into daily training programs, Guardiola not only crushed his own tactical thinking and instilled them in the players, but even pursued perfection in every detail.

Do you think that's all there is to it?

Wrong, terribly wrong!

This guy even has high requirements for the training ground.

After coming to the training base in the United States, he found that although the surrounding area was isolated by barbed wire, fans could still see the team's training outside the barbed wire. In order to avoid being watched by others, especially by competitors, he directly applied for advertising curtains from the team to cover the barbed wire around the training ground.

After doing all this, he was still worried, and arranged for people to patrol around to check for anyone acting suspiciously.

This gave the players in the sealed training ground an illusion that it seemed to be guarding against James Bond.

But there is one thing to say, Guardiola's preparations are really meticulous to the extreme.

Before daily training, he requires players to come to the locker room an hour in advance. He and the coaching staff will post different tactical drawings on the wall every day, and then use the hour before training to explain the contents of the tactical drawings to the players.

Before the players go to the training ground, he and the coaching staff will re-emphasize each player the details they need to pay attention to in training, what to do, what not to do, will have a very clear understanding.

Su Dong was also very surprised by this, but at the same time he began to understand why Guardiola needed so many assistants.

At present, the coaching staff of Manchester City's first team has nearly 30 people engaged in various tasks, even more than the players of the first team. Compared with the coaching staff of other teams, the number of people is much larger.

Why does Guardiola need so many assistants?
The reason is that his preparations are too detailed, and all the content is subdivided to the extreme, so naturally more manpower is needed, and he also adds many items that other teams do not have.

For example, he will take a video of each training session and conduct targeted analysis on the video.

For this item alone, no three or five people can't handle it at all.

Not only that, but for such a large team to operate in an orderly manner, especially the division of labor and collaboration, Guardiola needs to have a clear enough understanding and a mature tactical framework so that everyone can be assigned tasks.

After doing this, coupled with a huge coaching team, each player can clearly know what he needs to do and how to do it.

At this point, Su Dong had to admit that Guardiola was very efficient, unprecedentedly efficient.

Of course, knowing it is one thing, but whether it can be implemented in place is another matter.

Guardiola also has a very special quirk, that is, he looks very elegant and calm, and even under his difficult appearance, there is a rock and roll heart hidden.

Every time the team took the bus, or before practice in the locker room, he would play some rock songs.

To use the player's private jokes, his cold and arrogant appearance can't suppress his restless heart!

……

At the tactical level, Guardiola adopted the most original fourth-position tactics.

In order to better explain what the No. [-] tactic is, Guardiola even spent an hour making some PPTs to introduce the evolution of the entire tactic in detail.

From Brazil's [-] ancient formation to Michels' [-] total defense, but the tactics of the fourth position were not clear at the time, and Michels' total defense tactics were also defeated by Beckenbauer's free man tactics.

The advantage is that the defense of Total Attack and Total Defense is too weak when switching from offense to defense.

Does it feel familiar?

Yes, this is where Guardiola's Manchester City has been criticized.

It can be said that this weakness has been inherited in one continuous line.

Because of the natural weakness of Total Defense, in the later era of the Three Musketeers, the Netherlands' Total Defense was obviously much more conservative, and its position was even a bit like the [-] at the beginning of this century.

The fourth player at the time was Rijkaard, but his position was in the central defender.

When Cruyff coached Barcelona, ​​he actually often adopted the four-four-two tactic. At that time, the core of the organization was Guardiola, who was lagging behind in the midfield, but what he used at that time was not the current No. [-] tactic.

It was Van Gaal's Ajax that really matured the tactics of the fourth position.

Rijkaard, who returned to Ajax, was unable to take care of both defenses, so he was placed in the midfielder by Van Gaal. The team also adopted three-four-three, or three-three-one-three tactics. Rijkaard shined in the fourth position.

In [-], Van Gaal was invited to coach Barcelona. At that time, his plan was to continue to promote his fourth-position tactics in Barcelona, ​​and he believed that Barcelona captain Guardiola was a natural fourth-position player.

What caught Van Gaal by surprise was that Guardiola was seriously injured and missed most of the games this season. Although Barcelona won the La Liga championship with an overwhelming advantage, the Champions League stopped in the first round of the group stage.

Guardiola did not return from injury until December of Van Gaal's second season in charge of Barcelona. This caused Barcelona to stop in the group stage for two consecutive seasons.

It should be noted that the intensity of the Champions League that year was higher than the current expanded UEFA Champions League.

Due to the lack of breakthroughs in the Champions League, although he has won the league championship, Van Gaal is still under suspicion. In addition, he and Barcelona's godfather Cruyff are rivals. Therefore, in the third season of coaching, Van Gaal's relationship with the media and fans has always been very bad. Finally, after failing to win the league championship, he resigned angrily.

From beginning to end, Van Gaal failed to get a complete four player.

He later promoted Harvey, in fact, hoping that Harvey could fill Guardiola's vacancy, but unfortunately, Harvey was too immature at that time to meet Van Gaal's expectations.

However, from the way Harvey praises Van Gaal every time he is interviewed now, it is not difficult to see that Van Gaal's cultivation of him during that time has benefited him endlessly.

……

After introducing this personal history, Guardiola is full of regrets.

Guardiola believes that that serious injury cost him a lot and affected many people, especially Van Gaal.

It is difficult to find a player in the fourth position. Van Gaal came from Ajax to Barcelona, ​​just wanting to push his coaching career one step forward, but he did not expect to encounter a serious injury to Guardiola.

And from Guardiola's tone, although he didn't say it clearly, it can be heard that he still has a very high evaluation of Van Gaal. Even in his heart, Van Gaal is the behind-the-scenes hero of Barcelona's rise in recent years.

Especially this wave of youth training reformed by Van Gaal.

This also explains why Guardiola brought Busquets, his direct descendant from Barcelona when he coached the second team of Barcelona.

This player is very similar to Guardiola back then. His defense is relatively average, but his passing organization, vision and overall situation are his strengths. This perfectly matches the fourth-position tactics in Barcelona's passing and possession style of play.

However, Guardiola also believes that after entering the new century, especially in recent years, tactical innovation has been very fast.

The position of the late midfielder requires a certain defensive ability. When the team is defending, it can protect the defense.

This is why Rijkaard's defense was always unstable after he had Deco and Harvey back then. It was not until the introduction of Marcos Senna that he stabilized the backcourt.

Unlike Rijkaard's Barcelona, ​​Guardiola emphasizes pressing and pressing in the midfield, so the requirements for the defensive ability of the four players are not particularly high. He thinks Busquets is the best four player that meets his requirements.

……

In just one hour, it is fleeting.

The content is very detailed, allowing Su Dong to basically understand the inheritance of Barcelona's passing and possession, especially the understanding of the tactics of the fourth position.

Most importantly, he raised Su Dong's evaluation of Van Gaal to a higher level.

Even Su Dong began to feel that Van Gaal was greater than Cruyff!
After clearing the development of the tactics of the fourth position, everyone will go to watch Guardiola's tactical drawings to understand Guardiola's intentions and ideas more clearly.

But don't underestimate this.

Only when players understand these things, execute them on the court, and cope with the ever-changing changes on the court, can they be more handy.

This is why Guardiola makes these tactical drawings and spends so much time explaining them every day.

However, don't think that Guardiola can only play tricks.

Quite the contrary, this guy was a monster during summer training.

Especially during physical reserve training, it was definitely the scariest devil training Su Dong had ever experienced.

After training in the Premier League last season, Guardiola and his team have a clearer understanding of the characteristics of the Premier League, especially the fact that there is no winter break. Therefore, during the summer training period of this season, his training volume has obviously increased a lot.

He even said bluntly that he wants to train a team that can run the most in the Premier League and even in European football.

Pass and control pass control, if you want to ensure the stability of passing and controlling the ball, you need to have enough receiving points, and each receiving point is created by running, so he needs all the players on the court to run.

This requires very good physical fitness.

Even the excellent physical fitness to cope with running 38 rounds of the league.

Because of this, he specially tailored physical reserve training for Manchester City.

This caused all the players who participated in the summer training camp to be trained to cry their fathers and mothers, and all of them were in pain.

Who would have thought that behind Guardiola's seemingly elegant appearance, there is such a "cruel and tyrannical" side.

It is precisely because all the strength was indeed exhausted in the physical reserve training that Manchester City performed very unsatisfactorily in the subsequent warm-up matches, which once again aroused doubts from the media and fans.

(End of this chapter)