Chapter 230: The First Battle of Colomba
On Sunday, April 10, Parma will take on fifth-placed Lazio away from home, with a difference of 11 places between the two teams. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info
Lazio's team in Rome, the capital of Italy, shares the same football pitch as Roma, the Stadio Olimpico. Lazio have won the Serie A title three times in their history, most recently in the 1999/2000 season, exactly 100 years since Lazio was founded, and the players also gave a big gift to the club's centenary with a league title and a Coppa Italia title.
However, in the following decade, Lazio's results became extremely erratic, sometimes even failing to make it to the UEFA Cup, but this year's Lazio have done well, and as long as they work harder, they are likely to qualify for next season's European Cup.
Since the inception of Lazio, there have been many top stars, and the most famous is Silvio Piola, who played for Lazio for nine years and scored a total of 143 goals. And his number of goals in Serie A is even more staggering, reaching 274! He is the leading scorer in Serie A history so far! This record is estimated to be difficult for anyone to break for a long time to come.
There are four of Lazio's most famous stars in the last two decades, Nesta counts one, the most elegant defender of the 21st century now plays for AC Milan, Mihajlovic counts as one, the free-kick king announced his retirement in the summer of 2006, he is the person who has scored the most free-kicks in Serie A, he once scored a hat-trick of free-kicks, and Nedved, who joined Juventus after Lazio's great success and won in 2002\/ In 2003, he led the Old Lady to the league title and Champions League runners-up, and in the same year he was elected European Footballer of the Year.
The last was Hernan Crespo, who scored 26 goals in 32 appearances for Lazio in the 2000/2001 season and was named the top scorer in Serie A. Now at the age of 36, Crespo has arrived at Parma, and he has already passed his prime, and he has reached the twilight of his career, and many times he can only sit on the bench and watch the young Zhang Shujie and Li Mu gallop on the field.
Crespo was full of emotion against his old club who had made a name for himself today, and he wished he could play, but unfortunately the new boss Colomba did not put him in the starting eleven, only put him on the bench.
But Crespo is very clear that this so-called "standby" may not be able to get the opportunity to play.
Colomba also has its own problems, and although Crespo is famous, he is also very old. On the front line, Zhang Shujie and Li Mu are younger and more energetic, and the two are in good shape, so Colomba will not replace them at will. Besides, Colomba has been in charge for less than a week, and he doesn't have that much time to make a big adjustment to the main lineup, so he can only make a change on the original basis. And this change will obviously not be the forward line.
In the past few days, Colomba has observed from some game videos that Parma's Achilles' heel is at the back, and he also began to transform it from the backline, he took Patsi from the main position and replaced it with Paletta, so that the young Italian and the veteran Lucarelli partnered, and the left and right wings remained the same, still Gobi and Zaccardo.
There are no changes in other positions, and Colomba wants to continue to reinvent the back, but there are too few defenders in the team, and there are only six defenders in total!
Colomba has no other choice, so let's fight the opponent like this, and wait until the summer, and propose to buy a few defenders at the club.
There are not necessarily any big stars in this Lazio team these days, and no one in the Blue Eagles has scored in double figures, and the top scorer in the team is a midfielder, Hernanes from Brazil, with seven goals, less than Parma's Zhang Shujie (11 goals) and Li Mu (nine goals).
However, after 32 rounds of the league, Lazio, who have scored few goals, can be ranked fifth in the standings, but it can also show that their defense is doing a good job, unlike Parma, who need strikers to wipe the defenders' butts. Therefore, the two sides of this game can also be called a battle of spear and shield.
After the start of the game, Lazio was mainly defensive, even at home, even if tens of thousands of fans cheered for them, the players still did not take the initiative to attack, but to lure Parma to attack, and then wait for the opportunity to counterattack.
Now that Lazio let go of Parma's attack, Zhang Shujie and his teammates were naturally not polite, and he completed the first shot of the game in the seventh minute, but the ball was saved by goalkeeper Muslera, followed by defender Dias to the front.
It was a seemingly unmistakable clearance, but it invisibly allowed Lazio to play a quick counter-attack, and fortunately Zarate's shot went wide of the post, otherwise Parma would have conceded less than ten minutes into the game. Although Zarate didn't score the ball, Lazio also sent a faint warning to Parma: as long as you fail to attack, then your backline will take all the blame!
Zhang Shujie is very active in the front court, and Li Mu is also very active. The two were paired with two strikers, one in front and one in the back, and then Giovinco, a three-man front trident that frequently posed a threat to Lazio. But no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't find the Blue Eagles' goal.
Chen Hui sighed in the press box: "Lazio's defense is really solid, especially their goalkeeper, Zhang Shujie's two threatening shots were saved by him. ”
Shen Hao echoed and said: "Yes, there was also a shot from Li Mu, which was also rejected by him." ”
Zhang Shujie was dribbling the ball and Lazio defender Biava was in charge, and he knew that the Chinese striker was Parma's top scorer, so he was doubly careful. Zhang Shujie wanted to try to break through, but saw that Qiao Wenke had already stepped forward, so he divided the ball.
Giovinco took a step after winning the ball, overtook Dias by a position, and then burst into the box, where he was now one-on-one with the goalkeeper and the goal was just a stone's throw away.
Muslera attacked, Giovinco used his short stature to barely squeeze the defending Dias, and nudged the bottom left corner of the goal with his right foot, Muslera fell to the ground on his side, reached out and pounced, and flicked the ball with his fingertips to touch the ball out of the bottom line.
Giovinco sighed and shook his head slightly. It was the best chance Parma ever had, but he squandered it. Zhang Shujie, who sent him a wonderful pass, patted him on the head, comforted him a few words, and told him to hurry up and take a corner.
Giovinco drove the ball into the box, Muslera knocked the ball out with both fists, the ball flew out of the box, Gallopa and Zarate couldn't get past each other in the aerial battle, and the ball was pushed by Zarate to Gonzalez's side.
Zarate immediately ran forward, with Parlett following him closely and Lucarelli assisting on the side, but instead of passing the ball to Zarate, Gonzalez passed to Hernanes, who was cut in behind.
Parma's backline leaked, everyone only noticed Gonzalez with the ball and Zarate running, but ignored Hernanes, this time the leak was deadly, because Parma had no one at the back - except goalkeeper Mirante.
Colomba yelled that something was wrong, ran from the coach's bench to the sidelines and shouted: "Defend back!
Without him shouting, Parma would have defended as well, and Zaccardo struggled to run back, using all the strength he could eat. Lucarelli, Molrone and Gallopa were also desperately rushing towards their own box, but they were all a step slow and Hernanes had already shot.
Mirante blocked the angle, Hernanez kicked the ball on his toes, a slight change of direction, but the change of direction did not get the ball out of the frame of the goal, still rolling towards the goal.
Lucarelli arrived in front of goal, where he fell to the ground and slid towards the ball, which he scooped to the side. Colomba thought it was all right, but instead of scooping the ball out, Lucarelli tackled it to the post, again on the inside of the post.
The ball hit the post and there was a slight pause before it rolled into Parma's goal.
The Lazio fans cheered on from the Stadio Olimpico as Hernanes and his teammates embraced. Colomba walked back to the dugout with a blushing face and didn't say a word. Assistant Manzo glanced at him and sighed slightly.
It was the thirty-eighth minute of the first half, and Lazio led Parma 1-0 at home.
Colomba looked at his players, bowing his head and forking his waist. Prior to Lazio's goal, Parma had more shots on goal than Lazio, with six in total compared to three. But all three shots were made on the counter-attack, each one more threatening, and the third time he scored.
Colomba clearly understands that this is caused by the team's defense, a counterattack, three passes, to get a goal, not to say that Lazio counterattack played fast, this is not an excuse to concede a goal. It seems that the interception in midfield must be strengthened, which is the only way for Parma to solve the lack of defence at the moment.
Colomba called Morrone in front of him and told him to drop back and play in the midfield, so as to form a barrier in front of the defenders and reduce the pressure at the back.
This move can still bring some changes, but doing so will inevitably cause Morrone and Giovinco to be too far apart, in order to make up for this gap, Giovinco has to retreat deeper than before, but Giovinco has no physical advantage, he is only one meter six or five tall, if no one around him responds to him, he will suffer very much in the direct physical confrontation.
So Li Mu also had to retreat with him and keep an appropriate distance from him. Zhang Shujie also withdrew in order to ensure that the formation would not be disjointed, so that Parma's front court would face the embarrassment of no one.
In fact, the practice of strikers retreating to the midfield is very widespread in European football now, but the premise is that the team must have enough attacking players, and each attacking player must be particularly capable. Just like the two giants of Barcelona and Real Madrid, all the players in the entire midfield are top attackers, of course, except for Busquets, who is slightly less capable of attacking, but having Messi, Villa and Pedro is enough to be fearful, not to mention that they have a "double core" and defenders with knives like Alves behind them.
Parma can't do this, once Zhang Shujie retreats to get the ball, there are a lot of people who step forward, but the ones with attacking power are Qiao Wenke and Li Mu, and the others are too different. But now if all three of them are withdrawn, who will score?
Of course, Parma can also choose Zhang Shujie to stay in front forever, but this requires a high level of technical ability from the midfielders. I think that the two main formations of AC Milan at the beginning, 4321 and 4312, were so that a striker would never be half-played, but at that time, the Rossoneri had "four tens", and the mobilization of the back midfielder Pirlo echoed the front midfield, not to mention that Pirlo was protected by Gatuso by his side, and this attack and defense were perfectly coordinated, can Parma do it? The answer is no.
This is also why Marino has been giving Morrone more attacks during his tenure, even if it is at risk of losing the ball, to ensure the attacking power of the striker. However, the team's backline repeatedly conceded goals, which also made Marino carry this black cauldron.
For a team like Parma, you can't have it both ways. For the remainder of the first half, once Lazio's attack was on, Parma's three attackers all followed the formation and retreated to the half, leaving no one to answer in front.
Zhang Shujie will also face the situation of being caught because he retreats too deep when he gets the ball, and there are no teammates in front of him, so he can't go in or out. Colomba saw it in his eyes and was anxious in his heart, it was not a good way to go on like this, and it must be solved as soon as possible.