Chapter 648: Community Shield
Firmino came to Liverpool with the mentality of making contributions, of course he knows who is the boss of Liverpool's acre and three points, he must find a way to integrate into this team, Zhang Yuan must be pleased.
He doesn't have a special sense of Zhang Yuan, after all, as Brazilians, there are many idols worth worshipping in their history, Zhang Yuan is really not worthy of his worship, but he can't stand this time He also knows that this Zhang Yuan is the existence of a boss, no wonder fellow countryman Coutinho said to him: "It's good to have a good relationship with Zhang Yuan, he is the small boss of the team!"
Firmino naturally remembered it, when he first came to the team, Klopp always put him in the winger position, but he was not very comfortable with it, in fact, he can play on the wing, Klopp finally wanted to change his position I have to say that there are also reasons for this, Firmino is not good enough.
Firmino was very happy to return to the center forward position, and always looked at Zhang Yuan's attitude cautiously in training matches, because he knew that this position was originally Zhang Yuan's, and he also frequently showed favor to Zhang Yuan through passes on the court!
Everyone is not stupid, Zhang Yuan also felt a little dumbfounded when he saw it, am I so dark?!
However, he didn't say anything, but often reciprocated at training matches, showing his kindness and telling Firmino that I won't target you!
In fact, Firmino did interpret Coutinho's words a little excessively, Zhang Yuan is obviously very easy to get along with on the training ground, some young players of the team's youth team dare to joke with Zhang Yuan, and Zhang Yuan himself is also giggling with everyone, where is it so like a brutal tiger!
The Premier League tends to be the oldest of the major leagues, and with Liverpool winning the FA Cup last season, they will be in contention for the Charity Shield against the Premier League's new champions, Chelsea.
The Charity Shield is now not called that name to be precise, but the Community Shield, which is a friendly match in nature, and its actual significance is not very large, and there was a curse about it earlier, who won the cup and missed the Premier League title in the new season.
But in reality, the teams participating in this competition did not particularly care, and this cup happened to be the new rivals Jose Mourinho's Chelsea and Klopp's Liverpool, so there were still a lot of gimmicks added before the game.
Liverpool and Chelsea are not very much in the transfer market this summer, although Klopp on Liverpool's side knows that the new season is destined to be difficult, but he is not the kind of manager who has to spend a lot of money, in fact, he also pays attention to some players with higher prices, such as Vidal such as Villa's Benteke, Vidal is not coming by himself, Benteke is Klopp has a skeptical attitude, he still hopes that Lukaku, Benteke is just a replacement, and now he does not have to introduce Benteke.
Klopp was also very interested in Pogba, but thinking about the high price is already prohibitive, the pressure to buy such a player is very high, once he can't play under his own tactical system, it is not only Pogba but also Klopp who are unlucky.
Klopp's approach now is more of a step-by-step approach to transforming Liverpool!
On 2 August, when the Community Shield was played at Wembley Stadium, Zhang Yuan did not appear in the starting line-up, and Klopp put new signing Roberto Firmino up front, with Sturridge on one side and Lallana on the other.
Zhang Yuan was not put in the starting line-up because Klopp really didn't pay much attention to this game, mainly training-oriented, midfielders N'Golo Kante, Emrejan, Ali, defenders Klein, Skrtel, Lovren and Moreno.
This set of lineups is basically all new signings, the purpose is very simple is to see how the new signings play in official matches, and the opposite Mourinho also does not pay much attention to such a game, and the striker Diego Costa did not start, using the loan striker Falcao.
Falcao was not in his first year in the Premier League, he was loaned to Manchester United by Monaco last season, but his performance under Louis van Gaal was disastrous, but Falcao was very keen to make his way in the Premier League, nothing more than to prove himself, and this season he was favored by Chelsea and loaned to Chelsea again.
After the start of the game, Falcao worked hard and desperately to make a deep impact on Mourinho in such a game, after all, who doesn't want to play a little more minutes, even if he knows in his heart that he is nothing more than a substitute for Diego Costa.
The head coach didn't really attach much importance to the result of this game, but he did attach great importance to the degree of run-in of the team after the summer training during the game, but it is a pity that they seem to forget that the two teams are often beaten after meeting.
From the first second of the opening game, the battle between the two sides was very fierce, and the new signings on Liverpool's side naturally hoped to show Klopp that he was good in practice, while Chelsea's side met in the second leg last season, Liverpool unceremoniously disrupted their championship celebrations, and Mourinho's lack of revenge does not mean that they did not.
This is a hand-to-hand fight, Anthony Taylor's whistle can't be helped, it keeps ringing, everyone played 0:0 in the first half, and the battle was still fierce in the second half, Zhang Yuan's deepest impression of this game is two people, one is Firmino, the other is Kante, Firmino is not tacit enough to cooperate with his teammates, it seems very rusty, but the attitude on the court is really nothing to say, he is very active in the counter-robbery, and his anti-robbery covers a very large area.
N'Golo Kante combined his good fitness, speed, and tackling ability to build a very strong defensive wall with Emre Can in midfield.
It is precisely because of their presence that Liverpool has a certain advantage on the field, but Firmino's worse is the ability to solve problems, he has often scored some wonderful goals in the past, and there are times when he has scored more than 20 goals in a single season, but overall the ability to seize opportunities is not very strong.
The partnership between him and Sturridge in this game was relatively unfamiliar, and neither of them was able to help Liverpool turn that advantage into goals.
With 70 minutes to go, the two sides almost clashed again, with Falcao and Skrtel in the dispute, and it was only after Taylor's strong pressure that the two sides calmed down.
On 75 minutes, Klopp finally made a substitution, this time with Zhang Yuan and Sturridge, and midfielder Ali was replaced by Gerrard.
Jose Mourinho has a bit of a defensive sense in the face of disadvantaged situations, and Liverpool have been given the advantage of positional warfare on a number of occasions.
I have to say that Klopp's considerations are not unfounded, Zhang Yuan receives the ball on the side than the pressure he faces in the middle, which is actually very helpful to Zhang Yuan's play, in the past, in Italy, defenders are used to keeping a little distance from the striker, but this is not the case in the Premier League, they are more accustomed to sticking to you directly like a dog skin plaster, the referee scale in the Premier League is relatively larger, and the collision and pulling are often judged to be normal physical contact, which is very unfavorable for technical strikers.
Therefore, many strikers come to the Premier League and do not adapt to this, here it is more necessary for strikers to have super confrontation ability or good running ability, you can look at the small forwards who are better adapted to the Premier League, technical forwards, there is no non-ripping, only continuous retreat and continuous pulling, they may be easier to get the ball.
Klopp's change is that Zhang Yuan can get the ball and be able to dominate Liverpool's attack, plus Firmino's running position, Ali's forward insertion, Liverpool can achieve three-dimensional in the positional attack, and Zhang Yuan plays the center, and the ability to contain is also very strong, but the rest of Liverpool does not have Zhang Yuan's strong ability, maybe Zhang Yuan can run a good position, but his teammates' passes may not be able to reach, what is the use of a good running position in time.
This Zhang Yuan was almost the same when he was in the national team, and the previous coaches of the national team rarely let Zhang Yuan play a single striker, because there was no such good pass to him, on the contrary, let Zhang Yuan play as a second striker and another person helped him contain, but Zhang Yuan still had space and could play more powerful.