The boos in the Astana Arena have disappeared at some point, and the home fans just behind the Astana goal have put their heads in their hands and watched in disbelief.

They really didn't expect that less than five minutes into the second half, the gap would be widened after the Astana players showed them the courage and awareness to fight against the water......

Also stunned are the players from Astana.

Including goalkeeper Eric, they all looked at the football in the goal, how they wished it was their illusion, that the football was actually behind the net, not inside the net......

Especially the foul Anisi, his eyes widened as if he had seen a ghost.

No, it shouldn't be like this!

He screamed in his heart.

Shouldn't it be us to fight back and let the proud Atletico Madrid taste the bitter fruit?

We were so tenacious, why did we concede in the end?

It was the manager who said he wanted us to be more aggressive in the second half, wasn't I aggressive enough?

But why......

Why......

Why did we do everything and still concede the goal?

The weather, the home, the 30,000 of our fans...... Doesn't it all add up enough to close the gap between us and Atletico Madrid?

There are Astana players with their hands on their hips and their heads looking up at the sky, as if they want to find answers in the night sky, or hear revelations from heaven.

But there was nothing in the night sky but stars.

Stojlov sat in the dugout of the home team, and by this time he knew that his team could not make history with Atletico Madrid.

They can hold Galatasaray to a last-minute draw at home, but that doesn't mean they can do it again against Atletico Madrid.

He sighed.

There are many wonders in the world of football, but none of them belong to Astana.

In other words, if Astana can reach the Champions League, it can already be regarded as a miracle, and it is really a luxury to want to create a miracle......

※※※

After Gao Zheng's goal, the fans in Astana were much quieter, and the singing that had been almost non-stop before was quiet. What underpinned them was the prospect of a draw or a win over Atletico Madrid at home.

But now, Atletico Madrid has shown them a huge difference in quality between the two teams.

And this Atletico Madrid team is not at their best.

The wind also seemed to be a little lighter than at the beginning, and the corner flag hung low and stuck to the flagpole, not moving.

Simeone replaced Gao Zheng in the 67th minute - he was really afraid that Gao Zheng would be injured.

He certainly knows that Astana's last home game was a draw with Galatasaray in the 89th minute. But compared with the team's results, he is more afraid of Gao Zheng's injury.

If Astana really has the ability to chase two goals in a row in the last 20 minutes, then he will admit it, as long as Gao Zheng is not injured.

Although Gao Zheng's free kick was beautiful, he was still very worried about Gao Zheng's calf.

Sure enough, as soon as he got off the field, the team doctor wrapped Gao Zheng's left calf with an ice pack.

You must know that today is actually very cold, and many players have to pay attention to heat preservation, but Gao Zheng has to do the opposite. His calves were already slightly swollen.

"It's okay, it's just a hard injury." The team doctor said, comforting Simeone.

"I know, but it's still a little scary to watch...... Simone nodded. I mean the moment you got kicked. ”

Gao Zheng smiled at the head coach: "It looks scary, it's because I jumped too high when I was hiding, right?" ”

※※※

The game after Gao Zheng left the game was not shocked. Although in the last ten minutes, Astana still wanted to score a goal.

But they seem to have forgotten that Atletico Madrid's defense is also very good, don't think that they are the only ones who will swing the bus.

In the end, when the referee blew the whistle at the end of the game, the score was fixed at 2:0, and Atletico Madrid won three points away from home.

This will help them consolidate their position at the top of the group.

Next up they will face Galatasaray and Benfica, and as long as they don't make mistakes themselves, their opponents won't be able to catch them.

In the other game, the ten-man Benfica beat Galatasaray 2-1 at home to move up to seven points. But Atletico Madrid have 10 points and are still three points ahead of them. As long as they beat Galatasaray at home in the next round of the group stage, they will qualify from the group ahead of schedule.

In the next round, Benfica will travel to Astana.

It's November 25th, and it's believed that the temperature will be lower than now, and the game will be more difficult.

If Atletico Madrid hadn't had Gao Zheng's outstanding performance, it might have been difficult to get out of the way. And Benfica, without the main core Gaitan, may not be able to bargain for Astana......

If Benfica can't win against Astana, even a draw would make their final round of direct talks against Atletico Madrid meaningless, as Atletico Madrid will not only qualify for the first round of the group, but also secure the top spot in the group.

This will make it much easier for Atletico Madrid to play Benfica away in the final round. Maybe Simeone will be able to rotate the lineup a lot at that time, so that the main players who have been spinning for so long will have a chance to rest, and they don't have to go away at all.

※※※

The Atletico Madrid players returning from Astana will endure another seven-hour flight across two continents. But this time their mood was completely different from before.

The return plane was filled with laughter.

And Gao Zheng didn't continue to watch the football called "The Hero of the Forbidden Zone", the big bear in it never gets hurt, it seems that only he hurts others, and there is no possibility that he will be injured by others.

This made Gao Zheng feel unrealistic.

Look at the price he paid for the head-on swelling of his calf for the victory of this match. It is not yet known if the next league game against Sporting Gijón will be able to catch up.

How easy is it to win a game......

So he changed the book, called "The Godfather of Champions", which tells the story of a Chinese fan who traveled from 2007 to Nottingham, England in 2001, a young acting head coach named "Tony Towne", from a rookie coach who was not favored by others, to a world-famous champion coach step by step.

This book is not as YY as the previous one, but Gao Zheng read it with relish.

In the body of Tony Donn, the protagonist of the book, he vaguely sees the shadow of his head coach Diego Simeone.

All for the sake of victory.

Simeone sometimes tells them how to delay time in the game, how to make small moves when defending to avoid the attention of the referee, and how to pretend to be innocent......

To be honest, before joining Atletico Madrid, he really didn't expect a team's manager to openly promote such a view within the team.

However, as a player with excellent skills but a thin body, Gao Zheng has been kicked since he was a child, so he has also learned how to protect himself. I have to say that many of the things that Simeone emphasized are habits he has developed from playing football since he was a child. So he thinks this manager has a lot of appetite for himself.

Perhaps for this reason, he had a sense of substitution when he watched "The Godfather of Champions", and he also had a sense of identity, and he was very involved in watching it.

The seven-hour flight seemed to have quickened, too, and before he could see enough, the plane had already arrived at Madrid's Barajas airport.

Although the Atletico Madrid players felt that Madrid had begun to cool down when they set off, after experiencing the weather in Astana of more than ten degrees below zero, every Atletico Madrid player who stepped out of the cabin felt warm.

After fourteen hours of flying back and forth, and a tough race, they finally made their way back from hell to earth......