Mister Legend

Chapter 511 Consummation and Regret

The reason why the Russian team did not fall into a disadvantage in the first half hour of the game is that, in addition to the good results of their defensive strategy, it is also because the team can also create enough threats to the opponent on the offensive end. .

England's three-back system requires timely support from teammates on the defensive end, otherwise too much space will allow the opponent's striker to gain a lot of room to move.But Henderson, who served as a single midfielder, was not a full-time engineer with dirty work, otherwise his template when he was young would not be Gerrard, so the captain of the Three Lions actually protected the defense behind him. In fact, it is still lacking.

Southgate's idea is still to hope that the two wide midfielders can retreat to become full-backs when the defense line is a little tight. This is also a general change method of the three-back formation.Only in this way, it will inevitably put a great test on the physical fitness of Terpil and Danny Rose, because they also need to run hard to support the frontcourt, otherwise Kane is focused on marking and unable to perform. Under such circumstances, only relying on Sterling, who is sometimes superb and sometimes extremely unreliable, the team simply cannot create any threats in the Russian penalty area.

And it was precisely by using the open space left by the front assists on the two sides that Cheryshev and Golovin each received a pass from their teammates in the backcourt and played two quick counterattacks.

For the first time, Kyle Walker, who was born as a full-back, took advantage of his fast speed and agility to intercept Cheryshev's direct attack on Huanglong, forcing the latter to cut to the side and send a cross .As a result, Smolov, who was not dominant in height and strength, failed to win the spot under Stones' marking. Although the ball was picked up by Golovin who followed up from the right, at that time, other England players had basically The defense was in place, and the Russian team did not take the opportunity to threaten the goal guarded by Pickford.

As for the second time, it was even more dangerous. Zagoyev, who returned to the front of the penalty area to participate in the siege, received the ball from Sterling's feet, and immediately transferred a long pass to the right.The current number one star in Russia, Golovin, immediately showed his excellent rapid dribbling skills. First, he used a simple change of direction to sway past Danny Rose, who came to intercept him, and then evaded the attempt with a big stride. The left central defender Harry Maguire, who used a sliding shovel to end the counterattack, faced a large empty field in front of him.

Fortunately, Stones did not press his position too high during the siege just now, which gave him a chance to make up for his teammates' mistakes.However, the disadvantage in speed can only make the Premier League star central defender temporarily barely block the opponent's intention to cut inside, but it cannot completely resolve this danger.

In the end, after taking a step into the penalty area, Golovin completed a set of small combos with great speed, that is, pretending to slow down and adjust his footsteps, but suddenly used the outer instep of his right foot to slant the ball in a wave. The defender's momentary pause and the space to get out of the way directly shot furiously.The ball passed through Stones' crotch and flew straight to the far corner like a cannonball.

It's a pity that the shot had a slight inward rotation. Although it avoided Pickford's right hand, which quickly made a side attack, it also flew out of the range of the goal frame, and finally hit the billboard on the outside of the field. On the ground, there was a dull and powerful impact sound.

If the attacker who played for Monaco in Ligue [-] could have been calmer at the time, or took a step forward to lure the opponent's defender to steal the ball, so as to get a better shot vision, or choose to control the ball, Waiting for teammate Smolov, who is already struggling to advance in the middle, to outflank, seems to be able to pose a greater threat.

However, Li Moody will not be too demanding that the players must pursue absolute perfection. In addition to that being impossible, it is also related to the abilities of these players.Even if you are the most powerful player in Russia, a superpower, there is still a huge gap between the 24-year-old Golovin and those top players in the world. In addition, he has always played as a midfielder or left winger in the club. Yes, he is not very used to playing on the right side, and being able to perform like this is enough to satisfy the head coach.

After the England team encountered these two counterattack threats in the defense line, they did not dare to invest too much on the offensive end as before. The assists of the two full-backs dropped sharply, and they always maintained the attention of quickly returning to defense after losing the ball. .This change prevented the two teams from getting too good scoring opportunities on the offensive end before the end of the first half, and the situation of a boring battle has begun to emerge.

Not long after the start of the second half, Southgate began to take the initiative to seek changes. Seeing that his side's weaknesses in the positional battle were severely targeted by the opponent, he ordered the team's three lines to retreat collectively, hoping to attract the Russian team's support. The premise of the defense line, so as to gain the advantages of the fast speed and strong impact of England players.

But his wishful thinking did not work out. The reason why Li Mudi's team was able to not lose in the dialogue with a strong opponent today is that Zagoyev, who played the role of central midfielder in the 4-3-3 formation, can be said to be played a big role.The core of the Russian men's football team, who has just passed the age of 30, can actively participate in the interception on the defensive end and act as the starting point in the counterattack. His precise long pass and broad vision enable the team to quickly complete the offense and defense The most critical part of conversion.

And when the Three Lions made a proper recovery gesture and gave up part of the ball, it was Zagoyev who organized all the Russian players on the field into a whole, showing a team possession ability that was no weaker than that of the opponent. The hope of making the English press high-intensity and create a quick counterattack was directly shattered.

There has always been a joke about false appearances in football before, and everyone should be familiar with it, that is, the stalk of "England is strong, Italy is weak", which is used to ridicule the two teams in the big game. very different performance.

Here we don't mention the situation in Italy, just take a look at how the three lions became three cats.

Before almost every World Cup or European Cup starts, the England team will be touted by the outside world, especially the domestic media, as the favorite to win the championship. The title of "the strongest England team since X years" should be very familiar to fans with older qualifications.

However, since they participated in the World Cup for the first time in 1950 as the originator of modern football, they made the biggest joke in the history of world football by an 11-0 bloodbath of the US team, officially imprinting the illusion of "England is strong" on the in the minds of the world.

After that, although they successfully won the 1966 local World Cup by taking advantage of the host's advantage, they were suspected of taking advantage of the home game to change the venue arbitrarily in the knockout stage so that they could always play at Wembley Stadium. In terms of physical fitness and fan support effect It took a lot of money.Coupled with the controversial goal of the century in the final against West Germany, the only summit of the Three Lions seems to be somewhat tainted.

I won’t mention the subsequent results here, otherwise England fans will be unhappy. Let’s just take the 2018 World Cup in Russia as an example.Although this team finally achieved a good result of No.4, from the analysis of the strength of the opponents in the seven games, their performance is actually not convincing.

The victory against Tunisia in the first game of the group was due to Kane's lucky lore at the last moment; the defeat of Panama in this battle seemed to be domineering, but in fact it was bullying the inexperienced World Cup newcomers, and was scored by the opponent , the performance was far from as good as the score showed; in the last game, although Belgium hid most of the main players because they wanted to enter the relatively weaker half of the competition, it was still a small goal when the opponent also sent substitutes. Negative, it is barely considered as a strategic consideration here, so it is ignored.

After entering the knockout round, the England team was lucky. First, it ushered in Colombia, which lacked an absolute core and its offensive firepower was reduced by at least [-]%, but it could only win through a penalty shootout; Played the best game in this tournament, but the opponent's defensive core Lustig was suspended, which also had a big impact; the semi-finals faced two consecutive penalty shootouts, and the physical condition In Croatia, which was already on the verge of exhaustion, the three lions finally turned into three cats. They were dragged to death by the opponent in the environment that all parties have been optimistic about. Unfortunately, they missed the excellent opportunity to enter the final.

As for the third and fourth finals, because Southgate once again used a lot of substitutes, the result of the crisp defeat to Belgium does not seem to explain too much.But anyone with a discerning eye knows that even if the main force is used, the result of the game will not change.

To sum up, the England team played a total of seven games in the World Cup in Russia and achieved a record of 4 wins and 3 losses (if the penalty shootout is not included in the result, it would be 3 wins, 1 draw and 3 losses). How excellent it is.Moreover, leaving aside the victories in the first two group games that were obviously insufficient in gold content, their performance was actually quite poor when facing a team that was not much worse than them, or even slightly stronger, which just fit the above-mentioned illusion. statement.

So when Li Mudi faced this so-called favorite to win the championship, he didn't feel any fear at all. He knew very well that as long as the Russian men's football team can stick to its own characteristics and limit the opponent's advantage, then this game will never be in the finals. Lose within 120 minutes.

Sure enough, when the game reached No. 60 two minutes, Southgate, who was unwilling to continue the game in such a tepid way, took the lead in choosing a change.He first replaced Lingard with Dell, liberating Henderson, who had been dragging behind the midfield, so that the Liverpool star could take advantage of passing and rhythm control.After that, Rashford was used to replace Sterling. In the case of Russia's concentrated forces besieging Harry Kane, the impact is stronger, and at the same time, it can play a role in running and pulling without the ball at its feet. Master La is obviously more suitable to play.

After this adjustment, the frontcourt of the England team immediately became active. The speed and explosive ability of the double 19, combined with the experience accumulated in the world's top giants Manchester United for many years, made the 22-year-old Rashford As soon as he played, he put tremendous pressure on the Russian defense.In particular, he frequently launched attacks on the right side of his own side, which made the 33-year-old left back Kombarov extremely defensive. Li Mudi had no choice but to replace Schennikov, who was faster, but he could only Play some barely restrictive effect.

Kane, who had been stuck in the quagmire, seemed to see the hope of getting rid of the shackles after his companions attracted firepower from the side. Li Moody had to order the team to retreat again and return to the single tactic of defensive counterattack.

However, just when the Three Lions began to invest more in the offensive end, Zagoyev launched a classic multi-point blooming counterattack, which reversed the situation on the field in one fell swoop.

No. 70 minutes, Ali's forced breakthrough at the front of the penalty area was blocked. He then made a mistake when he wanted to poke the ball to his teammate behind him before falling to the ground, which happened to be caught by Cheryshev who returned to defend.The latter immediately passed the ball to Zagoyev, and then strode forward quickly.

Zagoyev used a one-stop stop belt to turn around and throw off Danny Rose, who was rushing over, and then raised his right foot and sent a fast and sharp through ball to the ground, which made Ge, who had started to accelerate early, Lowen dodged Harry Maguire's interception and flew straight to the opponent's hinterland.

After rushing to control the ball in front of Dell who was defending, Golovin did not choose to go it alone. Instead, he made a fake move of accelerating forward and sent the ball to the far side with a great arc. There is nothing wrong with it.There, Cheryshev, who had been advancing at a high speed, outflanked in place. After a step of adjustment, before Stones' flying shovel came to block, he took a strong shot with his left foot from [-] or [-] meters away from the goal.

Pickford, who moved to the best defensive position in time, tried his best to block the heavy bombardment, but he couldn't control the direction of the second point. As a result, Smolov, who followed up in the middle, made a supplementary shot. The bottom right corner succeeded and the score was rewritten to 1-0.

This goal broke the balance on the field, and the Englishman, who had no way out, had to continue to press down, hoping to regain 90% before the end of the [-] minutes of regular time.

However, Li Mudi unexpectedly replaced the scoring hero Smolov with high center Juba at this time, allowing the experienced veteran to use his still strong body to bully the fast, but defensive position selection and predictions are only enough. Kyle Walker, who has reached a passing level, prevents the latter from being distracted to defend.On the other side, Golovin and Cheryshev, whose physical fitness has almost bottomed out but are still gritting their teeth, began to attack the slowest Harry Maguire in turn, forcing Southgate to take the last That precious substitution was used at the back.

It's a pity that this trick didn't last until the last moment. First, midfielder Zobnin was expelled in the No.801 minute because of accumulating two yellow cards, so Russia could only cope with the remaining time with ten players.Then, in the second minute of stoppage time, Zagoyev, who has a glass body, fell on the grass again. Although the Englishman thought he was deliberately delaying the time, he was diagnosed by the doctor after the game as a knee ligament strain. The news of the injury still stunned all fans who followed the World Cup.

In the end, the Three Lions kept hoisting the ball into the opponent's penalty area like crazy, but still failed to cross Russia's tall and tough defense line. With a small defeat by one goal, they could only rank third in the group. Being out of the game has buried deep hidden dangers.

As for the winning Russian team, although they failed to overtake Sweden to win the first place in the group because of the goal difference, they showed amazing momentum in the first round of the knockout round against the No.29 Iceland team in Group E on the evening of the 2th. With a score of 3 to 1, they reached the quarterfinals.

However, in Baku, Azerbaijan four days later, the Russian men's football team, which was already at a disadvantage in overall strength and lacked the core Zagoyev, still terminated their progress in this cup. They lost 0 to 2 to the German chariot, which has reemerged after a painful experience. It is their 2008-2019 season with the second-best European Cup record (second only to the semi-finals in 20, not counting the results of the Soviet Union period). Draw a full stop with a little regret in the middle of consummation.

(End of this chapter)