Chapter 39: The Winter Break Approaches
In mid-December, the temperature in Madrid has dropped to around 10 degrees Celsius, and the wind is still very cold. Therefore, most leagues in Europe have a winter break, which generally starts before Christmas and lasts from half a month to a month. Doing so will not only avoid some of the coldest days in the northern hemisphere, but also give players who have been tired for months a chance to recuperate and prepare for the second half of the season. However, 2016 is a European Championship competition year, and club competitions need to end early to allow enough time for the national team's training camp, so this year, many national leagues have shortened or even canceled the winter break, and La Liga has given up the two-week break in previous years and filled the schedule. However, fortunately, the La B League was not suspended due to the national team break, so even if there were more promotion and relegation play-offs, the schedule was not too rushed, and the normal winter break was still obtained. After the eighteenth round of the league on the 19th and 20th, the rest began until after the New Year's Day of the following year, a full two weeks.
That is, on December 19, at home against C.F. Mahadaunda (C.F. Rayo Majadahonda), the coaching staff and players of Castilla will be able to take a day off. Most people will return to their hometowns to spend time with their families, after all, the members here are no match for the big stars of the first team, without a good annual salary, not to mention extra income such as advertising, and without money, you can't go anywhere to a tourist destination, that's the truth.
As a superb otaku, Li Mudi naturally plans to return to Mallorca, completely return to the farm and the arms of his parents, and live a life with a living range of only 100 square meters. Unfortunately, this great plan went bankrupt before the detailed design began. On December 15, when the team had just started training, several "uninvited guests" came to the Castilla training base, led by Real Madrid's eternal legend Raul González Blanco.
The King of the Bernabeu just led the New York Cosmos to the North American Football League championship in the United States on the 16th of last month, and then announced his retirement, ending a 21-year brilliant career. At that time, due to the need to lead the team to participate in the game, Li Mudi did not go to the United States to witness it in person, and the official blessing video invited all world-class superstars, and it was naturally impossible for him to get the opportunity to be on camera as a rookie coach, so he just made a phone call at night and chatted briefly.
Raul is back in Spain because he has been hired by the Spanish Football Federation as an ambassador for La Liga in the United States, and a signing ceremony will be held in Madrid in the next few days, followed by the relevant personnel of the Football Association and the accompanying video reporters. The video promoting La Liga is naturally mainly based on the two giants of Real Madrid and Barcelona, and by the way, a little youth training information is taken, and Raul, who is the absolute protagonist, naturally wants to give this opportunity to his family first.
After a brief conversation with the chairman Mr. Francisco in the office building, he went to the training ground accompanied by Garcia, the manager of the public relations department, but Li Mudi had no idea about it before. Seeing this sudden arrival, he hugged Raul deeply with a surprised expression, and after a brief inquiry about the intention, he asked the members of the coaching staff to come over and asked them to direct the boys to cooperate with the shooting. This film is used to introduce La Liga, and there will naturally not be too many shots about the youth training of the reserve team, and it will end after simply shooting some training environment and hard practice of the young players. The group will move to Real Madrid's first team, focusing on the Bernabeu. Before leaving, Raul and Li Mudi agreed to have dinner together in the evening.
The film crew's short shooting of ten minutes brought a very exciting atmosphere to the Castilla training ground, and the boys not only looked forward to showing their faces in the promotional video, but also met their former idol Raul, everyone was very happy, and the training effect seemed to be better than usual. Seeing this, Solari jokingly said that in the future, he would invite more celebrities to come over, let everyone provide some old guys' phone numbers, and line up to enhance the quality of training.
Six people came to the dinner party in the evening, in addition to Raul and Li Mudi, Zizu and Guti naturally will not be absent, and Hierro and Morientes, who are out of town, have also arrived, and this small circle with a deep Real Madrid brand has completely gathered on this night. Except for Raul and Hierro, the other four are the managers of their respective teams, and the eldest brother Hierro is also interested in taking up the coaching whip, and the topic between them is naturally inseparable from the current situation and future development direction of the Real Madrid first team. All six of them are Real Madridists through and through, and they are very close to each other, so they can speak their minds freely and argue without fear of being held against them. With the strength of the wine, Li Mudi very "arrogantly" proposed that Qizu should bring in De Gea and replace Navas no matter how much it cost; Sell Danilo at the right price; Even in the future, if Manchester United are interested in Bale, it is acceptable not to lose money. As soon as these suggestions came out, he was ridiculed by several people, thinking that he had really drunk too much, and Li Mudi could only leave one sentence: The truth is sometimes in the hands of a few.
After a profound exchange of experiences in coaching each other's teams, the topic turned to the Christmas and New Year holidays, where everyone has their own vacation plans, most of which are foreign travels, except for the sad Qi Zu. Hearing that Li Mudi's otaku nature had exploded again, and that he was going to stay on the farm in Mallorca for two weeks, the other five people's eyes widened, and they felt that there was an alien mixed in with them. After a fierce collision of Eastern and Western cultural customs, Li Mudi, who was alone in the camp here, was outnumbered, and was persuaded by Raul to follow the family to the United States for a week on the grounds that the Orientals were only Christmas. Of course, traveling to the United States is not too attractive for Li Moody, but Raul said that he can get an invitation to Trump's charity dinner in New York and meet Uncle Tom's future CEO, and this gimmick is enough to tempt him. Well, in fact, what he is really going to meet is Trump's daughter Ivanka, Li Mudi doesn't have any bad intentions, he just wants to find an opportunity to take a photo with her and post it on Twitter to increase some popularity......
On Saturday 19, at 20:00, Castilla's last official match of 2015 filled up 8,400 places at the Stadio Alfredo Di Stefano.
With 20 points from 5 wins, 5 draws and 7 defeats in the previous league, Mahada Onda is 15th in the standings, very close to the relegation zone. The formation used in this game is 4-1-4-1, which is mainly defensive, and the players on the field have relatively high attributes in terms of teamwork and work commitment. Among the players to watch out for are left wing-back Potilla, right midfielder Quake and striker Acha, who are the only three players in the tournament's 16-man squad who have averaged more than seven points per game.
Castilla played all the main players in this game, and the starting lineup was: goalkeeper Yáñez, right wing-back Forlan, central defenders Hector and Leon, left-back Abnell, central midfielders Odegaard and Toro, forward Enzo, right winger Alvaro, left winger Pull Left, and center forward Mariano.
Today's Madrid is only minus 4 degrees Celsius, the wind is still very strong, and the conditions for the game are not ideal. Before the game, the coaching staff specially extended the warm-up time, but when the game started, the players' bodies were still a little stiff, mistakes on the field were frequent, and there was even a funny scene of two people fighting for the landing spot but neither of them could touch the ball.
The inability to flexibly control the body leads to large deviations in movements. In the fifth minute, Abnell threw a throw-in and pulled the left to receive the ball in the penalty area, and when the opponent's right-back Rubio raised his foot too high, the referee awarded a penalty. It was Castile's third penalty in two consecutive games, and it was disallowed after a strong opposition from the visitors. However, Abner's penalty, as he had done a week earlier, was denied by the goalkeeper and the perfect opportunity was missed. The lack of penalty ability is one of the weaknesses of this Castilla team, and Li Mudi and the coaching staff have thought of a lot of training methods to improve the penalty ability of the players, but unfortunately they have not achieved good results so far.
The morale of the undead away team was immediately high, but unfortunately it was indeed inferior in terms of strength, and several attacks did not achieve any threat, and then had to return to the routine of defensive counterattacks.
In the 17th minute, the home team broke the ball at the back, after the pass of two central midfielders and the front midfielder, the ball was distributed to the left side, inserted Abner crossed to the far post, Mariano jumped high, forced the visiting central defender to push the ball into the top corner of the goal, 1-0, Castilla seized the second good opportunity of the game to change the score.
A stalemate ensued on the sidelines, with both sides attacking and defending each other, but neither could create a good chance to open the scoring, and the score remained at 1-0 at half-time.
At half-time, snowflakes fell in the sky, causing new difficulties for the players on the field and the fans watching the game.
The wind of more than level 4 wrapped in light snow, which seriously affected the players' vision and made it difficult for everyone's body surface temperature to maintain to the extent that they could play normally. The wind also seriously interfered with the trajectory of the football, and all kinds of exaggerated curveballs began to appear over the field, and Enzo's long pass even drew a trajectory that was even more powerful than Carlos's S-shaped arc back then! Looking at the comical performance of the 22 players on the field, Li Mudi reminded him of a group of zombies chasing an iron ball in a multi-directional super magnetic field, which was very funny.
After contributing countless jokes that could be broadcast on hilarious sports shows, the home side sealed the win in the 70th minute when Toro's long-range shot from 25 yards slammed into the visitors' goal to make it 2-0 and completely extinguish Mahadaunda's last hope of a draw.
After this round of matches, Castilla reached the winter break with a record 50 points in the history of La Liga B with 16 wins, 2 draws and 18 rounds of unbeaten records, with 55 goals scored and three goals conceded being the best among the 80 teams in the four groups in this division. Li Mudi began to have some popularity on the European continent, according to some Spanish tabloids, there have been more than one La Liga team and other second- and third-rate league teams have shown interest in him, Li Moody's legendary road has a very amazing start.
At 22:00, Raul visited the Bernabeu and was warmly welcomed by the home fans as the former king. Under his watchful eye, Real Madrid swept away the visiting Rayo Vallecano SAD with a 10-2 bloodbath, Bale scored a senior happiness, Benzema's hat-trick, and Ronaldo scored twice. Real Madrid narrowed the gap with the top two in the standings with this victory, Atletico Madrid lost to Malaga in this round of games, Barcelona went to participate in the Club World Cup, Real Madrid's 34 points have touched the butts of the two sworn enemies with 35 points - this word, there is no one!
The next day, after warning the lads not to break down during the break, Li Muddy announced that the team was on leave and disbanded. He flew back to Mallorca, stayed with his parents for two days, and then flew to New York to join Raul, who had just returned the day before, and began his first vacation abroad.