Beast King Costa

Chapter 343 The Great Wall of Flesh of the Czechs!

In the 2006-2007 season, the second round of the Europa League is also Benfica's first home game in the Europa League this season!

For Diego, it was also his first start at the Stadium of Light at Benfica's home stadium after joining Benfica!
Although the influence of the Europa League is far less than that of the Champions League, and the opponent Liberec is not a strong team, the appeal of this game to the Benfica fans in Lisbon is still quite strong.

Benfica's first home game of the new Europa League season, the Stadium of Light continues to be packed!
More than [-] spectators flocked to the Stadium of Light, just to appreciate the home team sitting at the Stadium of Light and slaughtering Liberec, the Czech League One champion team, with a big score at home.

Although in the third round of the Portuguese Super League in the new season, Diego also appeared in the team's squad.

But in that game, Diego was not the starting player. In addition, after Rui Costa returned to Benfica, he served as the team's starter and captain for the first time. "The attention of new aid is not high.

this game!

Benfica's famous hero Rui Costa is sitting on the bench, and Diego, a super center who can score goals and even assists can be said to be crazier than the midfielder, returns to the starting position. The audience at the Stadium of Light Ladies and gentlemen, the diehard fans of Benfica naturally focused on Diego alone.

When he came out of the player tunnel, Diego felt the fanatical attitude of the diehard Benfica fans towards him.

"Diego!!! Hero Diego!!!"

"The new king of the Stadium of Light, the future of Benfica! Diego! We support you!"

"Diego! Goals in this game! We want to see you score six goals in a single game!!!"

"Diego! We want to watch the assist show! How about being the assist master Diego in this game?!"

"No! We want to see assists and goals! Come on Diego! Show us more talents!"

"Diego!!! Diego!!! Benfica will win!!! Come on, Diego!!!"

……

"call……"

More than [-] spectators were shouting their names, and Diego was immediately shocked by the scene.

Benfica fans are so fanatical and crazy!
This made Diego suddenly feel that his blood was boiling, and all the cells in his body were full of fighting spirit!

Most importantly, Diego firmly believes that this game will definitely not disappoint the fans of Benfica - he is still behind Sevilla striker Luis Fabiano on the current Europa League scorer list As for one goal, no matter how you say it in this game, you have to score four or five goals like crazy!

Anyway, Diego doesn't believe that Luis Fabiano can score 6 goals in every game!

That's right, Diego felt that Luis Fabiano's feet were smooth in the last game, so he shot and scored.

Besides, since Luis Fabiano was able to score as many as 6 goals in the game against Liberec, it means that the defense of Liberec's team must be very poor!
So as long as you want to score, it shouldn't be a problem to score at least 5 goals on Liberec, a big team in the Europa League, right?
However, the upcoming game proved that there is a problem with Diego's thinking, very, very problematic!

The fighting spirit of the Czechs is far beyond the expectations of the Benfica players!
"Beep..."

With the sound of the referee's long whistle, the game officially begins!
The home team Benfica kicks off!
After the opening, Benfica played as active as ever.

After all, with Benfica's current situation, they don't need to play passively at all, not to mention that the opponent is a team whose strength is far different from theirs.

Liberec, who was a guest, did not play too aggressively. After the Benfica team pressed up, Liberec took the initiative to shrink his defense.

The two centers took the initiative to retreat to the midfield, and the frontcourt attack basically chose to give up, turning the formation into a 5-5-0 iron barrel formation.

On the sidelines, Liberec's head coach Vitezslav Ravika did not dare to go back to the bench and sit on the bench. He stood on the sidelines and directed the team to stabilize the defensive formation.

After all, Liberec is a passive side. They need to stop their defensive formation earlier and withstand Benfica's three-point attack at the beginning. Only then can they achieve a draw in this game.

Anyway!For the matter of three points, Vijeslav Lavica dare not think about it, but one point for a draw can still be imagined infinitely.

However, today's Benfica started very slowly.

In the first 3 minutes, Benfica did not complete a shot.

The reason for this is that Liberec's midfield defense is really airtight. Everyone actively seeks physical contact with Benfica's midfielders, even when running without the ball. The players are still running closely, using their innate physical advantages to oppress the Benfica players to find it difficult to catch the ball.

This makes it very difficult for the Benfica midfielder to get the ball.

In just 3 minutes, Petit was knocked to the ground four times by Liberec's defenders!
However, Liberec's players are still quite smart in terms of physical confrontation-intense, high-intensity, head-to-head, but not rough!

It is entirely due to the upper hand of physical talent.

A technical midfielder like Pettit, at the beginning of the game, was still slowly looking for the state of the game, and was collided again and again by the players of Liberec. Pettit was almost directly beaten. Steal all.

Fortunately, Pettit is a veteran midfielder who has experienced many battles. When his body fights and falls to the ground, he will deliberately stretch his body when he falls to the ground. After the referee notices, The whistle will follow.

However, because Liberec’s players did not make any hand movements or injure small movements, all confrontations fell within the scope of reasonable physical confrontation, so the referee did not show any yellow cards to Liberec’s players. .

"call……"

After falling to the ground and standing up again and again, Pettit shook his head helplessly: "These guys are too crazy! Such a level of physical confrontation is going to knock my bones apart?"

In response, Carter Solanis suggested in a low voice: "Otherwise, let me get the ball more in the midfield! After all, I won't be too disadvantaged in terms of physical confrontation."

Pettit nodded without thinking and agreed: "That's okay! Let's try our best to catch the ball in the midfield first, and then think about how to bring the rhythm back! In short, we can't be beaten by Liberecs." They played a defensive counterattack at the beginning, and they stole the goal. Otherwise, they will definitely stick to the end as one, and then we will be in even more trouble."

After Pettit and Carter Solanis simply completed the communication, the division of labor between the two was quickly assigned—Pettit, who was originally the core of the ball, changed to support, and cooperated with Carter Solanis' scheduling, so that Carter Solanis Lannis held the ball more in the midfield to sort out.

Indeed, after Carter Solanis became the ball-holding core of Benfica's midfield, the scene has improved quite a bit.

The physical talent of the Greeks is much stronger than that of the Portuguese.

Perhaps the physical talent of the Czechs and Slovaks is still inferior, but at least, Kate Solanis will not be knocked to the ground by the opponent when he takes the ball in the midfield. Although he will be bumped and stumbled, But compared to Pettit, Carter Solanis was able to maintain his center of gravity a little bit.

However, Carter Solanis is only able to hold the ball under high-intensity physical confrontation, and he has no way to have extra energy to send the ball to Diego in the frontcourt.

And this is exactly the reason why Benfica didn't hit the three axes in the opening game, none of them!
Since there was no midfielder to deliver shells, Diego looked very quiet in the frontcourt.

However, Diego had no choice. The midfielder was even forced by Liberec's defensive players. He couldn't even separate the sides, let alone aim at his own position and send a long pass directly to his own area. over the area.

In the 8th minute of the game, Carter Solanis, under the siege of Liberec's defenders, tried a long pass and sent it directly to the frontcourt to see if he could hit the dead ball blindly. Like a mouse, it found the top of Diego's head.

however……

Carter Solanis's long pass was sent directly to the bottom line of Liberec's penalty area. Even though Diego smelled the opportunity to score a goal and had already chased the ball with all his strength, he could only look forward to it in the end. Watching the ball go over the bottom line of the penalty area, watching Liberec's Marek Cech prepare for a goal kick.

"Huh... how difficult it is!"

Diego's complaint was not just a complaint about the team's midfield being defended by Liberec's muscle friction. It was very difficult to force the ball. Even Diego himself ran very very fast in the frontcourt. uncomfortable.

Liberec's back line, the three muscular men, simply gave Diego the "24-hour uninterrupted care" of "meticulous, caring and caring"...

Three muscular men, Peter Singella, Thomas Zapotoccini, and Jiri Bilek, formed a triangular position, locking Diego tightly in the middle.

This kind of corner-to-corner defensive position makes it very difficult for Diego to jump forward or go left or right—wherever he goes, at least two people will follow Diego, and they will run close to him. , the remaining one will definitely stare at Mantolas who is going to the other side, and will not give the Benfica striker any chance to run out of space.

Karagonis and Simao on the wing are fine. Although they are also tightly entangled by Liberec's full-backs, at least, because the wing has basically no chance to get the ball and explode, Karagonis And Simao did not receive much "muscle friction care".

Under the high-intensity pressing of the Liberec team, which is "intimate and caring", unexpectedly!It has been 15 minutes since the start of the Benfica game, and there is no data for even a single shot!

This has never been such a dismal statistic in previous games.

Of course, in terms of ball possession ratio, that can completely blow Liberec.

In the first 15 minutes of the game, Benfica had a possession rate of 82%!You know, in the era when there was no so-called tiki-taka trend, such a high ball possession rate basically represented absolute control over the game.

However, there is no use for eggs.

There is no way for Benfica to convert such a terrifying ball possession advantage into a threatening offensive opportunity. For Benfica, such a high ball possession ratio is just a good-looking statistic, and the rest is useless at all——Fernando Santos' tactics On the board, the pursuit of ball possession rate is not high.

What the Portuguese coach wants to see more is that the team can have more threatening offenses and more efficient offenses. As for paper advantages such as possession rate, number of passes, and pass success rate, Fernando · Santos' attitude has always been: if you have it, you can do it, if you don't, it doesn't matter.

Benfica's first shot of the game actually didn't appear until the 21st minute of the game!
Passing the threatening ball still depends on Petit, the core midfielder of the Portuguese national team.

Petit took advantage of a rare opportunity when Liberec's defense was not keeping up, and decisively kicked the ball to the feet of Karagonis, who was quite empty on the left!

Karagonis did not dare to hesitate. After receiving the ball, he decisively sent it towards the [-]-yard point in Liberec's penalty area!

Diego followed up the first time, with a burst shot!
I thought that the goal had been aimed very accurately. As long as I grabbed the point and completed the shot, it should be able to smoothly transform into Benfica's deadlock-breaking goal in this game.

however!
Liberec's lagging central defender Thomas Zapotoccini immediately used his body to push up across the body, blocking Diego's powerful shot!
The body blocked the bullet hole! ! !
Diego's shot landed on Thomas Zappotoccini's stomach impartially. With Diego's domineering way of shooting, the strength of this shot is really not as powerful as a shell that has been unloaded. what a difference.

After Thomas Zappotoccini fell to the ground, he slapped the ground on the spot and said that he was in too much pain.

With the permission of the referee, Liberec's team doctor hurried into the field.

"call……"

At this moment, Diego still hadn't reacted a bit: "This shot was blocked!? What the hell!? Is it so difficult to score a goal?"

"Yes! This game is really not as simple as we imagined before!"

Captain Pettit shook his head bitterly and said: "It's too difficult for our midfielder to be forced by Liberec's defenders, it's too difficult!"

After that, Pettit patted Diego's arm helplessly: "In the first half of the game, the midfielder may not be able to provide much support to the frontcourt. Maybe you have to think of a way in the frontcourt, how to create something More chances are needed. If there is really no other way, just wait for coach Santos to make adjustments during the intermission."

(End of this chapter)