Chapter 216: Confederations Cup Draw
Borussia Dortmund's win over Bayern Munich brought the opening fifteenth straight win to 45 points.
Bayern Munich's points are still at 37 points, 8 points behind Dortmund.
Although it is not that there is no chance at all, according to the form of Dortmund and Cheng Hai, it is almost impossible for Bayern Munich to overtake Dortmund's points and perform a big miracle this season.
Bayern Munich, who spent the third-most transfer fee in Europe in the summer transfer window, could face a situation of four empty transfers this season.
If Bayern Munich wants to win the championship, perhaps they can only pray that Cheng Hai will leave the Bundesliga soon.
After the game, the world's major media published articles optimistic about Dortmund's victory:
"In the 15th round of the Bundesliga, Dortmund defeated Bayern Munich 5-3 away, and Cheng Hai scored a goal and assisted to score two goals and two braces to capture the Allianz Arena! 》
"Borussia Dortmund defeated Bayern Munich 5-3 away, fifteen consecutive wins at the beginning of the season, setting a new record for the start of the new season in the five major leagues! 》
"Cheng Hai scored two goals and assists to help Dortmund defeat Bayern Munich 5-3 away, and the Hornets won 15 consecutive victories to refer to the Bundesliga for three consecutive championships! 》
"Even Bayern Munich can't stop Dortmund, a new Bundesliga dynasty is about to be born!" 》
……
Being able to beat Bayern Munich head-on at the Allianz Arena, indeed, as the media said, Dortmund's Bundesliga title this season is basically stable.
Cheng Hai is also in a good mood to watch the draw for the 2013 Brazilian Confederations Cup later.
The Confederations Cup, also known as the FIFA Confederations Cup, is held every four years and is contested by the host country and the World Cup winner and the winner of the football cup on all continents.
Brazil, the host of the 2014 World Cup, automatically became the host of the 2013 Confederations Cup, and the Brazilian team was automatically selected because of the hosts.
Then, because Spain was both the 2010 World Cup winner and the Euro 2012 winner, Italy filled the spot.
The final eight teams to participate in the draw for the 2013 Confederations Cup are hosts Brazil, 2010 World Cup winners and Euro 2012 champions Spain, Euro 2012 runners-up Italy, 2011 Asian Cup winners Hua Guo, 2011 CONCACAF Gold Cup winners Mexico, 2011 Copa America winners Uruguay, 2012 Oceania Nations Cup winners Tahiti, and the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations winners yet to be announced.
On the evening of December 1, local time in Brazil, the draw ceremony for the 2013 Confederations Cup was held in Sao Paulo.
According to the draw rules, the host Brazil and the World Cup champion Spain are seeded into the A1 and B1 positions, respectively.
In addition, due to the principle of circumvention in the group stage by teams from the same continent, European Cup runners-up Italy avoided Spain and entered Group A, where Brazil is located, and Uruguay avoided Brazil and automatically entered Group B.
Italy and Brazil are in Group A, which became a group that the teams that drew later did not want to go to.
But it backfired, and the Chinese team had bad luck in the next draw ceremony and was drawn into Group A, the other team drawn was Mexico.
In this way, Group A is made up of Brazil, Italy, Huaguo, and Mexico, and it is very, very difficult for the Chinese team to qualify for Group A.
Even with Cheng Hai, the gap in the overall strength of the national team may be difficult to make up.
Group B features Spain, Uruguay, Tahiti and the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations winners. For Spain, Group B is much more relaxed.
After the draw ceremony, the Chinese media and fans wailed.
Although Cheng Hai's personal strength is super strong, even his compatriots can't believe that the Chinese team can qualify from the group from Brazil and Italy, let alone others?
Therefore, after the draw ceremony, the Huaguo team basically announced that they were out of the group.
"The draw for the Confederations Cup group, Brazil and Italy are in the same group, and the Chinese team has little hope of qualifying! 》
"In the draw for the Confederations Cup group, Cheng Hai's Huaguo team is in the same group as Brazil, Italy, and Mexico, and the hope of qualifying is almost zero! 》
In this group draw, almost no one is optimistic about the Huaguo team.
Even Cheng Hai himself shook his head secretly.
Under his leadership, there is no problem for the Chinese team to dominate Asia. But to face world-class giants such as Brazil and Italy, I'm afraid he can't catch it!
It's not the same as the Olympics, which are Under-23 competitions and a lot of the biggest stars don't participate.
But in the Confederations Cup, they are the real main players of the senior national team, and it is really difficult for the Chinese team to defeat Brazil and Italy!
Even if Cheng Hai can score the opponent's goal, the defense line of the Huaguo team will not be able to withstand the opponent's attack.
Not to mention Brazil and Italy, it is a question whether the Chinese team can beat Mexico.
Anyway, it's still early anyway, and I should still get some new skills by then, and see if I can help improve my strength.
Three days later, on 4 December, Borussia Dortmund hosted Manchester City in the sixth round of the Champions League group stage.
While City had lost any chance of progressing to the last 16 of the Champions League ahead of this game, third-placed Ajax are only two points ahead of City and still have the possibility of qualifying for the Europa League beyond their rivals.
And Dortmund, in the case of having locked the first place in the group and qualified ahead of schedule, will naturally not fight to the death with Manchester City.
As a result, Jurgen Klopp rotated extensively to rest his main players.
Of course, Cheng Hai continues to start. Not only because Cheng Hai's physical fitness is strong enough, but also because of Cheng Hai's own requirements and persistence.
Cheng Hai wants to play more games and brush up on experience, and try to accumulate more capital before the start of the Confederations Cup.
In addition, for the media, although the importance of this match is not as high as the Real Madrid vs Ajax match, there are still some highlights.
The most important thing to watch is whether Cheng Hai can score again.
Once Cheng Hai scores in this game, he will become the first player to score in all six games in the Champions League group stage, setting a new record like no other.
At 20:45 on the evening of December 4, with the referee's whistle, the sixth round of the 2012/2013 Champions League group stage Dortmund vs Manchester City match officially kicked off at the Westfaren Stadium.
Borussia Dortmund rotated most of their main players, so City did not play conservatively this game and will be hoping to win this game against Borussia Dortmund, who are playing mostly on the bench, and retain their desire to overtake Ajax and finish third in the group to play in the Europa League.
Manchester City, which is the main force, does put a lot of pressure on Dortmund, even if Cheng Hai retreats to participate in the defense, it is useless, because the players who started Dortmund in this game did not cooperate tacitly.
In the 12th minute of the opening game, because the starting central defender Santana and Sobiech did not cooperate enough, Manchester City broke through the defense and almost scored.
It's just that Balotelli, who shot at the end, moved a step slower as he thought about life at the European Championships, and then was shoveled away by the chasing midfielder Bender.
Although Bender took Balotelli down in the box after tackling the ball, the City players excitedly signaled for a foul on Bender and asked for a penalty.
But the referee ignored it and signaled for the game to continue, with Bender's tackle being a perfect defence.
Although the goal was not scored, Manchester City seemed to have found a way and got a lot of chances in the following period
As mentioned earlier, the starting substitutes were not well coordinated and were often exploited by Manchester City's players.
In the 18th minute, Aguero ran out of space in the penalty area, received Dzeko's pass and hit the goal, but fortunately the goalkeeper was not rotated, and Weidenfeller was already vigilant and struggled to save the ball.
Manchester City's offensive wave after wave, but they always lacked luck and strength in the final kick.
If Cheng Hailai had won these opportunities, he would have scored at least two goals.
But not every player can match Cheng Hai's shooting skills, so after the opening half hour, Manchester City still did not score.
On the other hand, on Dortmund's side, although most of them are substitutes, they are all professional players after all, and there are several main substitutes who are often rotated, and it is no problem to cooperate with Cheng Hai in some passing and cutting runs.
When Manchester City had been unable to score for a long time and everyone was a little impatient, in the 33rd minute, they made a passing error.
City's attack was cut off and Dortmund launched a quick counter-attack.
Of course, Dortmund has not counterattacked before, but because of the lack of coordination, they failed to form a threat to attack and score, and they didn't even shoot a few times.
But this time it was different, Dortmund succeeded in attacking this time, because Manchester City's delay in scoring and causing the formation to be too pressed, and Dortmund caught the hole.
The ball conceded by Manchester City first fell to the feet of full-back Owomoyela, who dribbled the ball on the side, and did not force a breakthrough when encountering an interception, but made a two-by-one cooperation with Cheng Hai, who was inserted at high speed in the middle.
Cheng Hai was the only two players in Manchester City's back, Kompany and Nastasic, who were the focus of the target, and when they saw him get the ball, they stopped Cheng Hai on his way together, trying to stop him from moving forward.
But Cheng Hai didn't entangle with them, because it was a counterattack against time, so he didn't have the energy to confront these two people, and then was defended by other Manchester City players.
Therefore, without even thinking about it, he passed the ball from Owomoyela back to the front of Owomoyela's run.
The pair made a collision with the wall, allowing Owomoyela to break through Manchester City full-back McCone, who intercepted him, and burst forward with the ball on the flank.
Cheng Hai ran without the ball in the middle and rushed towards Manchester City's penalty area.
The rest was simple, as Owomoela went down the flank and sent the ball into the box with a cross before McCone could catch up to block the angle of the pass.
Dortmund's previous counter-attacks were unsuccessful, but this time they did.
Owomoyela's passing, both height and speed, as well as the landing point, fit Cheng Hai together.
Cheng Hai shook off the defense of Kompany and Nastasic, rushed into the penalty area and made a beautiful leap to the top, accurately hitting the ball and heading it towards the Manchester City goal.
Although Joe Hart reacted to the save, his save was futile in the face of Cheng Hai's extremely stretched action and full value header technique to push the ball into the corner.
In the 33rd minute, Dortmund played a successful counterattack, and finally Owomoyela's low cross, Cheng Hai followed up in the middle, and the header was on goal, Joe Hart could not save Manchester City's goal, and the ball flew diagonally above his palm into the Manchester City goal.
Dortmund finally scored through Cheng Hai and the score became 1-0.
This time, Manchester City is even more anxious.
However, they failed to find the back of the net for the remainder of the first half.
After a 15-minute break, the two sides changed sides and the main Manchester City continued to bombard Dortmund at the Westfalen Stadium.
In the second half, Manchester City were still attacking aggressively, always looking to score goals to turn the score around, and retain a glimmer of dreams of finishing third in the group and playing in the Europa League.
On the Dortmund side, although the team has already appeared first in the group in advance, these substitutes still want to perform well and strive for more opportunities to play.
Therefore, they are still very hard, intercepting Manchester City's attacks again and again, and waiting for opportunities to counterattack.
In the 74th minute, Dortmund finally played another successful counterattack.
This time, it was also because of Manchester City's wanton pressure and was cut off, and then Cheng Hai successfully received a long pass from the original organization core of the substitute Nuri Shaheen, who started the substitute, and formed a single knife to the meeting.
In fact, Cheng Hai also had anti-offside times before, but unfortunately his teammates' passes were not passed in time, resulting in offside, or the ball was not passed well, and was intercepted by the opponent halfway.
But this time it didn't, whether it was Cheng Hai's anti-offside position or Shahin's straight stopper, they all played well and cooperated together.
The rest is simple.
Although Kompany chased desperately behind him, Cheng Hai's speed and dribbling, even with the ball, were not slower than Kompany's return speed, and even if he chased desperately, he couldn't catch up.
After dribbling to the top of the arc of the penalty area, facing the goalkeeper Joe Hart who attacked into the penalty area, Cheng Hai played a light hanging shot, hoisted the ball over Joe Hart's head, and then fell into the Manchester City goal under the desperate eyes of countless Manchester City players and fans.
Cheng Hai scored twice, and Dortmund led 2-0, almost sealing the victory.
Sure enough, in the next game, although Manchester City finally scored a point-grabbing shot in the penalty area by Aguero in the 86th minute, the score was 1-2, but it still lost in the end.
Borussia Dortmund beat Manchester City 2-1 at home to make it six wins in a row in the Champions League group stage.
Cheng Hai also set a new Champions League record of scoring in six games in the Champions League group stage.