Rebirth Football Simulator

Chapter 176 The So-Called Targeting

Manchester City lost the top game and gave up the No.1 throne in the Premier League. Now the English media has a new topic.

Because the time for Manchester City to give up the top spot is not very good, just as December is coming.

Soon the end of December will be the famous Premier League Christmas schedule.

This is exactly the difference between the Premier League and other leagues. There is no winter break. Even during the Christmas period, which is highly valued by Western society, games will still be arranged, and the schedule is very dense.

As the Christmas schedule is approaching, Manchester City has fallen into a state of decline. Although this downward trend is not large, it is just not as vigorous as it was at the beginning of the season.

However, there will still be a lot of media hype, thinking that Manchester City may encounter huge challenges in the Christmas schedule.

Another point is that the two core figures currently recognized by Manchester City, Zhang Chaoqiang and Guardiola, are both newcomers to the Premier League and have not experienced the baptism of the Premier League Christmas schedule.

Therefore, the English media has more hype topics, constantly analyzing the possibility of Manchester City encountering difficulties in the Christmas schedule.

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The English media kept hyping, but Manchester City's game continued.

On December 12, the final round of the UEFA Champions League group stage, Manchester City played against Celtic at home.

For Manchester City, as long as they win this game steadily, they will be able to qualify as the first in the group.

For the Celtics, this is just their honor battle, because after the last round of the group stage, the Celtics have locked in the bottom position of the group and have no chance to qualify for the Europa League knockout round.

So Manchester City won relatively easily.

Less than 10 minutes into the game, Zhang Chaoqiang broke through from the side and then crossed, assisted Sterling to push and score, and Manchester City took the lead.

In the second half, Ishinacho came off the bench to replace the out-of-form Aguero, and then seized the opportunity to score a header from a corner kick to completely kill the game.

In this way, Manchester City won the Celtics 2:0 at home.

In another game at the same time, Barcelona beat Borussia 5-0 at home.

Therefore, both Manchester City and Barcelona have achieved 5 wins, 1 loss and 15 points in the group, which is quite excellent.

Manchester City, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid, the three teams with the highest points in the Champions League group this season, all scored 15 points.

However, according to the mutual win-loss relationship between Manchester City and Barcelona, ​​Manchester City lost 2:3 away to Barcelona and 4:0 at home to Barcelona. He has won the first place in the Champions League group every season.

Barcelona failed to win the Champions League group first for the first time in ten years since the 06/07 season.

There were basically no big upsets in the games of other groups.

Leicester City lost 0:5 to Porto in the away game, but due to the early locking of the group's first place, the overall impact is not great.

Although Fox City played in the Champions League as the Premier League champions, everyone did not have high expectations for them, as long as they can enter the knockout rounds.

On the contrary, Arsenal won the away game against Basel and got the first place in the group by a little surprise.

Originally, the Gunners were not as good as Paris in the same group in terms of victory and defeat, so the chance of a counterattack in the final round was not great, so Wenger only sent a rotation lineup to challenge Basel away.

Unexpectedly, Paris had a problem of its own. At the Parc des Princes, all the main players could not beat the Bulgarian team Ludogorets, and gave the Gunners a group first.

Therefore, among the four teams playing in the Champions League in the Premier League this season, Tottenham fell third in the group to participate in the Europa League knockout round. Manchester City, Arsenal and Leicester City all advanced to the top [-] of the Champions League with the first group.

Among the other teams that have successfully advanced, there are four teams in La Liga, three teams in Bundesliga, two teams in Serie A, Ligue [-] and Portuguese Super League.

By the way, Zhang Chaoqiang's old club Lyon failed to compete against Sevilla in the group stage, and ended up finishing third in a group, and also fell to participate in the Europa League knockout round.

In addition, in the UEFA Champions League scorer list, Zhang Chaoqiang has not scored in the last two rounds, and the total number of goals is still 5.

For the time being, there are only two people who have scored more goals than Zhang Chaoqiang, Messi and Cavani.

Messi scored twice in the last two rounds of the group stage and greatly strengthened his top scorer position with 10 total goals. At the same time, he also tied Ronaldo's scoring record in the Champions League group stage created by Ronaldo last season.

Cavani scored 6 goals, just one more than Zhang Chaoqiang.

After Ibrahimovic left, Cavani quickly upgraded to the core of Paris' striker, and his scoring data skyrocketed.

By the way, Ronaldo's Champions League goals this season are still only 2 goals, ranking very low in the scorer list.

Many Spanish media have begun to wonder whether Ronaldo is quite old?

The Catalan media was very happy, saying that without the competition of Ronaldo, Messi has a good chance of winning the Champions League Golden Boot this season.

After all, Messi's lead is very large, reaching 10 goals in the group stage alone.

Many media also said that Messi's real competitor should be Zhang Chaoqiang.

Because Manchester City's overall strength is strong and it is expected to make a difference in the knockout rounds, Zhang Chaoqiang has every chance to catch up to or even catch up with Messi's goals.

Although there is still a gap of 5 goals between the two.

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The UEFA Champions League group is over, and what fans are most concerned about is naturally the subsequent UEFA Champions League round of [-] draw.

This year's UEFA Champions League round of [-] draw is quite special, because there are so many strong teams in second place in the group.

Real Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Bayern, and Paris, there are four strong teams that were beaten into second place in the group.

Therefore, this year's round of [-] draw may not be so friendly to the first place in the group.

But if you avoid the four strong teams, you also have a chance to draw non-five major league teams such as Benfica and Porto.

That is the treatment that the second team in the group cannot enjoy.

Soon at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland, the draw ceremony for the 2016/17 UEFA Champions League round of sixteen was officially held.

The signing luck of the three Premier League teams is not good. Leicester City drew Barcelona, ​​Arsenal drew Bayern, and Manchester City drew Paris.

As soon as the result of the draw came out, the English media immediately became clamorous, thinking that this was the rhythm of destroying the Premier League.

The three Premier League teams all qualified first in the group, but they all drew strong teams?
"Manchester Evening News" issued an article saying: "It's better to draw Real Madrid to Manchester City and directly let the three Premier League teams play against Huang Saren. Wouldn't that be more gimmick?"

The English media once again launched a conspiracy theory, thinking that the Premier League is too rich, and this summer's transfer made two billionaires, which can be said to be in the limelight, so it was targeted by UEFA.

Of course, UEFA denied the three consecutive matches, saying that all the draw results were fair, just and open, and there was absolutely no targeting.

In any case, the result of the draw is a foregone conclusion and will not be changed.

Leicester City's match against Barcelona, ​​and Arsenal's match against Bayern are basically bad luck.

Only Manchester City is slightly better against Paris, but it is not easy.

After all, Paris is a super local team, with strong strength on paper, and Manchester City may be overthrown if they are not careful.

By the way, the results of the other draws for the UEFA Champions League round of [-] are as follows:

Atletico Madrid vs Leverkusen,
Monaco vs Sevilla,

Juventus vs Porto,

Dortmund vs Benfica,

Napoli v Real Madrid.

In addition, in the UEFA Europa League round of 32 draws, Manchester United drew to Ligue [-] Saint-Etienne, and Tottenham drew to Gent.

This season, the Premier League has Manchester United, West Ham United and Southampton three teams participating in the Europa League, but West Ham United was eliminated in the qualifying round, Southampton was eliminated in the group stage, and only Manchester United successfully advanced to the knockout round.

However, Tottenham, who participated in the Champions League, couldn't bear the loneliness of the Red Devils, and deliberately fell from the Champions League to accompany them.

(End of this chapter)