Xu Zhu's Successor's Football Journey

Chapter 350 Three League Games in February
In February, Chelsea has a total of six games to play. In addition to the three league games, there are also one each in the FA Cup, League Cup, and Champions League. For Chelsea, apart from the league games, the other three games are all related. The championship trophy can be said to be very important, and the League Cup match against Liverpool is the final of the League Cup. This game will also directly determine the ownership of the League Cup champion. Therefore, for Chelsea, who have not won the championship for a long time Said that the game in February is extremely important.

Soon to February 2, this day is the 3th round of the Premier League, Chelsea challenged Blackburn away.

This season, Blackburn's performance at the beginning of the season was a bit unsatisfactory, but as the league progressed, their results gradually increased, and after getting rid of the quagmire of relegation, they rose slightly. Now they rank 13th in the league. The team is not in danger of relegation, nor is it eligible to compete for European competitions. Therefore, it does not matter whether Blackburn wins or loses in the current league.

The same is true for Chelsea, ranked No.2. Arsenal is now 20 points behind Chelsea. In this case, the league championship has basically been won, and the players are also focusing on other competitions, so for the league They don't pay much attention to it. The two teams fighting under such conditions really can't arouse the excitement of the media, because they know that the game will definitely not be too intense.

In this game, Wang Li did not enter the starting squad. In fact, the current Premier League has been used by Mourinho as a training ground. If he can, he will even choose to give up some games and shift his focus to other games. In the game, Chelsea used more than half of the substitute lineup. Many rookies, substitutes and other players who are usually difficult to play on the field got a chance, such as Graeme, Glenn Johnson and Oliveira. Wayne Bridge, who had just been freed from the torment of injuries, was also sent on the field by Mourinho, which made him feel very excited.

Contrary to Chelsea, Blackburn has all the main lineup. In fact, this team has already been eliminated in other competitions. Therefore, they don't need to consider physical fitness and other issues. There will be no one-week league. Too big an injury problem, even though it is still in the injury-intensive winter.

Under such circumstances, Chelsea did not play smoothly. In the absence of Wang Li, Blackburn actually played against Chelsea at home.

At the beginning of the first half, Blackburn's forward Jonathan Douglas scored the first goal for the team.Only 20 minutes later, a header from the starter Scott Parker equalized for Chelsea.

The following game fell into a state of anxiety. It was not until the 73rd minute of the game that Chelsea took advantage of a penalty kick and Lampard overtook the score for the team. This was also the last goal of the game. , the game came to an end in a peaceful situation.

.........

After returning to London from Spain, except for the daily necessary training, Wang Li accompanied Angela every day. The relationship between the two of them was like glue, and the relationship was extremely warming up. Wang Li was even thinking about whether he should get married now.

Before, he still felt unbelievable about this topic, maybe he didn't talk about it with some avoidance, but now, he is already thinking about it.

As a princess of the English royal family, even though the royal family is more of a symbol now, getting married is by no means an easy matter. Whenever the two of them talk about this topic, Wang Li still feels a little headache. They have been dating for so long. He hadn't even met Duke Edward yet, which made him feel very guilty.

But fortunately, at least he doesn't have to worry about this matter recently, because Angela is going to study in the United States.

Wang Li is in his villa near Stamford Bridge.

"Annie, are you all packed?" Wang Li half-knelt next to a trolley case, carefully folded the clothes and put them into the case, then turned his head and asked.

Angela wore a close-fitting black fleece and held a comb in her hand. She came over with a smile and lay down behind Wang Li, wrapped her arms around his neck and said, "It's all ready, Cole." Uncle's car is outside, we should hurry up."

"Okay, okay, if you don't let go, I think it will waste more time."

Angela chuckled, turned her head and kissed Wang Li's face, and said, "You miss me, don't you!?"

"kindness."

"I believe it." Angela said with a smile, let go of her arms around Wang Li, half sat on the edge of the bed, picked up a few clothes on her back, stuffed them into the suitcase, and then directly pulled them up. Zipper, said: "That's it, it's useless to fold it so neatly, anyway, I have to take it to wash when the time comes."

Wang Li smiled, spread his hands helplessly, and said, "You are always like this."

"What? Dislike me?"

Wang Li didn't say anything, put his arm around Angela's shoulder, kissed her hard, and after Angela's face flushed a little, he said: "I will go to America to see you when I have time."

Angela stared at Wang Li's face, and said softly, "I'll wait for you."

On the evening of February 2, a passenger plane bound for Los Angeles departed from London International Airport...

After sending Angela away, Wang Li's mind returned to the team's game.

Perhaps this year is very unusual for Chelsea and Chelsea fans, because they are very likely to win many championships, which were unimaginable before.As far as Wang Li is concerned, this year is also the same. You must know that he did not have any championship trophies at all before that. As a football player, honor is even more important than money.

Therefore, in addition to club training, Wang Li used his free time to watch some game videos. In fact, he rarely watched these things before, which also shows how much he attaches importance to the next game.

The focus, of course, is Barcelona.

As far as the game in February is concerned, although the final of the League Cup is the most important, the game away to Spain to challenge Barcelona is definitely the top priority, because it is related to their second round match in March. Mentality problem, if you can play a draw or win in Barcelona, ​​Chelsea's qualifying situation is obviously much stronger, but if it is a failure, it will become difficult to win.

As for the Liverpool team, Wang Li is no stranger to it. He doesn't think that Gerrard's one-man team can beat Chelsea, so he doesn't pay much attention to this game. In his opinion, After the victory over Manchester United, the League Cup trophy has arrived.

As for the league?

Wang Li is just dealing with it now, because he himself does not know whether the head coach Mourinho will send him to play in the next two league games.

On February 2, Chelsea played against Manchester City at home.

In this game, Wang Li watched the whole game from the sidelines as a substitute player. Even though the team was in a stalemate, Mourinho did not send him on the field. In the end, Chelsea drew 0-0 with Manchester City at home. This is also the first draw that Chelsea has encountered since the beginning of the season.

As the team that ended Chelsea's winning streak, Manchester City is obviously very excited from top to bottom. Even if this "end" has a lot of moisture, they are inexplicably happy. After all, this kind of thing even many wealthy teams Couldn't do it.

In the post-match press conference, Manchester City coach Keegan became the protagonist. Many media reporters were interested in his mood at this time, but the former World Footballer and the legendary star of English football seemed interested Not high, he just talked lightly: "It's nothing, Chelsea is a strong team, they have won the league championship steadily, so in this game, they did not send a main lineup at all, Alan .Wang didn't play either."

"Such a draw is meaningless. It doesn't mean how strong we are. It's just a little bit better luck. If we met Chelsea in the previous rounds, I'm sure we will be the losers."

Keegan's low-key tone made the media reporters who wanted to get big news extremely dissatisfied. Since the beginning of this season, almost all reporters have expected a team to end Chelsea's winning streak, but it really ended. In the future, the protagonist will be less interested, and even throw out the argument of 'we are just lucky'. This extreme contrast between before and after really makes these people feel very depressed.

However, this won Mourinho's favor. When a reporter asked him what he thought of the game, these Portuguese rarely complimented their opponents: "Manchester City's performance is much better than last time, although I did not send a full set of main lineup, but the performance of the players on the field is not bad, the result has already explained everything, Manchester City's current results are closely related to their strength."

In fact, the performance of Manchester City this season is indeed very good. They are now ranked 8th in the league, and they are very hopeful to compete for a place in the UEFA Cup next season. Points are of great help to the Manchester City team, because almost all the teams that come to Stamford Bridge do not get any points at all.

After the game, Wang Li returned to the two-point-one life of the club and the residence. Since Angela left, he has been like this recently. This may seem incomprehensible to others, but Wang Li, who has been a man for three generations, has I really enjoy this kind of ordinary life.

In fact, it's not that he has done nothing even though he hasn't participated in the league these days. He has been insisting on exercising his free kick ability recently.

Since a while ago, the team was training 'Zone Offensive Tactics' in the afternoon, and Angela came back from the United States to accompany him, Wang Li's free kick did not make much progress for a long time, so , Now that he has time to exercise, he spends almost all his time training free kick skills.

For free kicks, Wang Li still has a great advantage, especially in terms of strength, which is very important. For a simple shot, strength is very important. For example, a free kick 30 meters away, the average player When kicking the ball to the ball, the flight of the football has no speed. This kind of ball will not pose any threat no matter how tricky the angle is, but Wang Li is different. At least he can hit the goal within 40 meters. To ensure that the flying speed of the football is fast enough, that is to say, what he needs to train is only the angle.

Although it is easy to say, but at a position 30 meters away, if you want the kicked ball to go around the wall, you have to fly out of a good angle. This requires the football to draw a beautiful arc in the air, control It was extremely difficult to get up.

However, Wang Li has always believed that as long as he works hard, there will be success, so in addition to daily training, he also practiced free kicks for 2 hours a day to ensure that he is ready to kick free kicks at any time and improve his free kick level. Slowly improve.

In this kind of life, a lot of time has come to February 2th, when Chelsea collectively went to Liverpool to challenge Everton away.

If it comes to dark horses, the dark horses of the Premier League this season are undoubtedly Everton and Middlesbrough. These two teams were not favored before the game, but their results are indeed outstanding. Now Everton has stabilized. Securely qualified for the UEFA Cup, and even hopes to compete for a seat in the UEFA Champions League next season.

As an ambitious head coach, Moyes' goal for Everton is to keep the UEFA Cup seat and compete for the Champions League qualification, so for Everton, every point in the league is very important.

Although Chelsea's strength is very strong, Moyes knows that Mourinho will never send all the main lineup in the league, so he feels that the team's victory is still very promising.

It is a pity that Chelsea's lineup made him deeply disappointed. Among the 11 players who started the game, 10 players are the absolute main players of the team. The only thing that is worthy of controversy is the position of the goalkeeper—even if it is not the main player. , but Thomas Clark's strength is beyond doubt.

In fact, Mourinho didn't pay too much attention to the result of this game. He only let the team's main players not forget the feeling of playing football, so they played, especially Wang Li. What's more, Mourinho is very afraid that if he doesn't play in two games, if he can't find the feeling of playing football, then the gain will outweigh the loss.

However, what Mourinho did not expect was that Moyes had already done "any means" for league points.

Wang Li, who has not been able to play for 10 consecutive days, was very active in the game. In the opening 7 minutes, he used his personal ability to sway past 3 Everton defensive players and created a one-handed goal. Afterwards, Chelsea opened the scoring with a random lob shot, allowing all Chelsea supporters to see that Wang Li's condition did not decline because he did not play, which made everyone heave a sigh of relief.

However, as the game progressed slowly, the Everton players moved more and more, and the game once fell into a standstill. When it was almost halftime, the game almost turned into a hand-to-hand battle.

At this time, the referee Riley became the busiest person in the audience. He kept running back and forth, his whistle kept ticking, and Chelsea could no longer play any decent offense.Obviously, Everton just wants to use this tactic to interfere with Chelsea's offense, so that in the chaos, it is possible to fight for a point or even win.

Moyes knows very well that Chelsea, who aim to win the 'quadruple crown', can't afford it! ! !
In fact, it is the same. Faced with this situation, Mourinho immediately replaced the easily injured Alkin Robben and Scott Parker, and ordered the players to shrink the defensive line to reduce the chance of fouls by the opponent, and constantly Going on and on with the [-]th official about 'they're unsportsmanlike' and 'this kind of game will get more players out of the game' etc, sadly everyone knows the [-]th official is the FA faction It's normal for the 'punching bag' to just nod his head and do nothing. In fact, even if he wants to do something, he doesn't have the right.

As a result, the game fell into a stalemate for a while, but at the beginning of the second half, Chelsea got a free kick in a good position in a foul by an Everton defender. Wang Li personally rewritten the score to 2:0 , This goal also made Everton coach Moyes a little desperate. Although he knew from the beginning that even if he used foul tactics, the chance of winning was not high, but when he really faced the result, he watched and scored another goal. The black-haired boy with the ball still felt a kind of powerlessness from the bottom of his heart.

It's not that we don't work hard, the gap is too big! !

In the end, Chelsea defeated Everton 0:3 in the away game with Lampard's buzzer header. After the game, Mourinho did not shake hands with Moyes at all, but walked away angrily.

The Portuguese's approach obviously embarrassed Moyes, which aroused great dissatisfaction. In the post-match press conference, he kept emphasizing that Mourinho was "uncultivated" and "rude and reckless". etc.

However, Mourinho's dissatisfaction is obviously justified. The headline of London's "Evening Standard" is "Mourinho's gladiators fight off dirty local snakes". To the championship, but we showed that we have the quality to win the championship, last night we confirmed that we can meet the challenges ahead, we showed our team spirit, tenacious defense and the fighting spirit of unity."

Mourinho was extremely dissatisfied with Blackburn's rough foul tactics, "I hate this kind of game. The opponent is always looking for opportunities to hurt our players. I was worried about that yesterday. Fortunately, they didn't succeed. They didn't think they could beat us in football so they hit us in other ways, trying to force us to give up with brutal moves. The guy in their midfield (Gilbani) fouled at least 20 times and didn't get a single Yellow card, it's hard to control emotions."

Regarding Moyes' accusation that he did not shake hands after the game, Mourinho smiled disdainfully and said: "I have shaken hands with him several times before the game, so I went back to the locker room with the players, what he said It's ridiculous, the game is over, I'm happy, I want to be with my players, I don't want to be with anyone else. If I saw David Moyes when I left, I would shake his hand."

(End of this chapter)