On January 2, before Li Mudi came to the training ground to lead the team to the last tactical lesson before heading to Rome, bad news came from Germany. Although Mario Gomez is interested in leaving Wolfsburg, the 32-year-old is not willing to go abroad to take any more risks, preferring to stay on home and perform well under the nose of national team manager Loew, and strive to be in the squad for the World Cup in Russia. Stuttgart have already expressed their desire for the powerful centre-forward to join and have made an offer of around €3 million, with Swede Anderson, who has tried to make initial contact there, believe that Torino could but abandon their plans to sign the player on loan.

Although there is an FM system in hand, but before communicating directly with the parties, it is impossible to guarantee that everything is under their control, and when encountering a problem similar to this kind of player refusing to switch to the Red Bull for non-competitive reasons, Li Mudi has no choice but to accept the unfavorable reality of the teacher. Fortunately, several other players on the list have not refused to join, and there is still hope that the team's forward reinforcement plan will be completed.

That evening, the first Coppa Italia quarter-final of the week was played at the Stadio San Paulo, with league leaders Napoli welcoming Atalanta, who had fallen a bit from a year earlier. As a result, the home side, who played in a half-main and half-substitute lineup, were surprisingly locked in a bitter battle with their opponents, with only five strikes on goal in the 45 minutes of the first half, with the players spending more time in midfield. Even though the game turned into a hand-to-hand fight, the number of fouls was not too high, because the referee on duty was Giacomelli, who was suspended internally after the Lazio clash with Torino, and the Italian whistle was extremely strict in this game, and the two teams were shown five yellow cards for a total of ten fouls, causing the players to no longer dare to use excessive movements in the scramble.

After the break, Atalanta, who were in full swing at halftime, suddenly launched a fierce attack at the start of the second half and broke the deadlock after five minutes of relocation. German left wing-back Gosens' low cross from the wing caused chaos in the home penalty area, Switzerland international Cornelius' volley was blocked by a defender, and Belgian Castagne seized the opportunity to blast a shot from a tight angle to beat Napoli's second goalkeeper Sepe.

It was clear that the home side were down from behind, and Maurizio Sarri brought on Mertens and Insigne in the face of a rush just five minutes after conceding the goal, hoping to get the score back as soon as possible. However, Gasperini also adapted to the situation, and with a big wave of his hand, all his players retreated, and resisted the opponent's fierce counterattack with the advantage of defenders. Due to the absence of several important players in the midfield, Napoli's offensive effect has been poor, although they have a certain initiative, but it is difficult to get the opportunity to start the goal.

It wasn't until the 81st minute of the game that the visitors took advantage of a counterattack opportunity to pass Gosens to the left wing, and Gomez, the core of the team, won the ball and drove straight past Romanian central defender Chiriches into the penalty area, and scored from a tight angle on the left side to score again, almost helping the team seal the victory completely.

Unwilling to be defeated at home and knocked out of the Coppa Italia semi-finals, Mertens pulled a point back three minutes later when Mertens headed in the empty net before the goalkeeper came out after receiving a diagonal cross from Insigne's left. However, Atalanta, who still held a one-goal lead, immediately returned to the tactics of swinging the bus, and with the tenacious stubbornness of all 11 players on the field, they finally maintained the score of 2-1 until the last minute of injury time, and eliminated the second seed of the tournament and successfully advanced to the semi-finals.

In fact, the final result of this game is really not an upset in the eyes of those who are interested, because it is only one point ahead of Juventus behind it in the league, and it has not even been able to use all its strength to meet the Champions League before, resulting in being kicked into the Europa League after the group stage.

On the other hand, Atalanta is only 10th in the league, and there is still at least a seven-point gap with Lazio, who have played a game less and is in sixth, and it is difficult to get a place in next year's European competition with the results of Serie A. So it's better to take a gamble and give it your all in the Coppa Italia, so that you can fight for the final title and take the opportunity to qualify directly for the group stage of the Europa League.

The result proved their choice, as they reached the semi-finals of the Coppa Italia for the first time in more than two decades since losing 3-0 to Batty's Fiorentina over two legs in the 1995/96 season. It was only the third time in the club's history that they had reached this point, after the distant 1985-85 season, when the Poseidon Son also reached the final, but lost 4-0 on aggregate to the Napoli side led by the king Maradona.

The reason why Li Mudi is so concerned about this match is because if Torino can get past Roma, they will face the winner of both in the semi-finals. Originally, after the draw results came out, he was still complaining that his luck was really bad enough, and on the way to the final championship, he actually met the top three in the league last season, and it happened to be in second (but this year's strength is not as good as the other two teams), third, and first.

When this schedule was introduced, the Torino coach secretly estimated that even if his team could be lucky enough to snatch a ticket to the last four from the clutches of the Red Wolves, the chances of the Red Bulls being able to improve from Napoli who restrained themselves in the two-legged semi-finals should tend to be infinitely small. If it's a winner-or-lose format, plus the opponent rotates at least half of the main players as in reality because of the league distraction, there may be a chance to steal the chicken once. However, they only caught up with the only two-legged semi-final in the cup competition, which left Sarri and his team with a chance to adjust the situation, and Li Mudi felt that it was really unlikely that he wanted to eliminate this strong opponent, and this season's Coppa Italia journey should come to a halt at the penultimate level.

But he really didn't expect that his most frightened opponent at the moment would be killed by other teams before the encounter, which feels like a store has no money to change and uses a lottery ticket instead, and the result is like winning the jackpot, which is really worth celebrating. Although Gasperini's team is not a soft persimmon, it is the joint weakest in the quarter-finals with Fiorentina, and in the semi-finals, it is the easiest opponent in the eyes of other strong teams. Considering that the other set of matchups is a strong dialogue between the two giants of Italian football, Juventus and AC Milan, the two teams of Torino and Roma don't know how lucky they are, and the Red Wolves coach Di Francesco must also be rejoicing in this ending.

What makes him even more excited is that although the home team announced the squad the day before, Dzeko, Nainggran, De Rossi and other key players were all selected, but in the starting lineup released on the morning of the game, these absolute main players were on the bench. Di Francisco didn't know if it was because of the big side, or because of the league encounter with the strong Atalanta at the weekend, he used more rotation players than Sarri in the starting eleven. In the 4-3-3 formation, only the Dutch international Stroman is the regular midfielder, El Shaarawy, Brazilian left-back Emerson Jr. and right-wing-back Bruno Perez, who joined from the Torino team, are only the main rotations, and the rest are pure substitutes, and even the goalkeeper has sent the Polish Lukas Skorupski, who was born in 1991, which is indeed somewhat unexpected from the outside world.

Li Mudi naturally pays attention to the last round of the league before the vacation, but the difficulty of the Torino team is much lower, facing Bologna, which is in the middle of the middle and lower positions, can win by two goals away from home, let alone at home. So although he didn't give his all in this game, he only made a relatively small degree of rotation, because the core of the three lines such as Mobile, Benasi, and Ranocchia were all starters, and only Casillas was excluded from the squad because of the fact that he had just recovered from a finger injury and the manager didn't want him to take risks. From the point of view of the direct strength of the starters, it is undoubtedly the away team that has a certain upper hand, which gives the Red Bulls a strong sense of confidence, helps the players to play in the game, and lays a good foundation for the subsequent results.

Among the six strong opponents in Serie A today, Li Muddy can still fight evenly or even have a slight advantage in the face of Milan and Lazio, but he is a little passive when he encounters the top three teams last season. His tactical style of play and the team's line-up are not too afraid of opponents with balanced strength on three fronts, but they have never been able to respond effectively to teams with strong attacking ability in midfield. Unlike Juve's all-round suppression of their own side and the impact of Napoli's front trident, Roma can still put a lot of pressure on Torino's defense with world-class stars such as Dzeko and Nainggran. However, today the other party took the initiative to hide his most powerful weapon, and it has to be said that it is a bit of a self-digging grave.

After the opening, the Red Wolves, who had the home advantage, tried to control the ball, and the three midfielders composed of Stroman, French fringe international Gnalons and Brazilian Gersen had good passing skills, although their defensive ability was average. However, due to the tactics of defensive counterattacks at the beginning of the game, the number of people in the midfield was relatively large, and the danger zone of their own side was well protected, leaving no chance for the opponent. Instead, it was the Torino player who took advantage of the home team's passing error in the third minute to play a textbook sneak attack to complete the first attack of the game for both sides, but unfortunately the starting left winger Falke fired a powerful right-footed shot over the crossbar from the edge of the penalty area and failed to take advantage of the opposition's negligence to help the team take the lead.

However, Roma still invested more troops in the offensive end, trying to suppress the Red Bulls on the field, although they also formed a few shots through cooperation, but in the first half hour of the game, the visitors, who were still mainly counterattacking, looked one step closer to scoring a goal.

In the twelfth minute, Diego Llorente broke the ball at the back and drove to the front of the court, Falke jumped beautifully past the defender and then collided with his teammates to break through the edge of the penalty area. Left wing-back Barreca, who followed up at full speed, fired a powerful volley from the left side of the penalty area without stopping, and the ball grazed the crossbar and flew off the bottom line, and the Torino team missed another great chance to score.

In the 23rd minute, a rare attack by the visitors was terminated by a foul, Benassi hoisted a free kick into the box on the right, and Silvestri, who was inserted in the back row, dived into the goal with a header, which was blocked by goalkeeper Skorupski. There was a lot of exclamation in the Olympic team, and some of the home fans were already very unhappy with the situation in front of their goal.

Seeing that the situation was not good, Di Francesco gave instructions to make adjustments, and the two Roma full-backs reduced the number of assists, which made them less dangerous in attack, but also completely prevented the visitors from occasionally playing quick counter-attacks. And the frontcourt players who have no worries have gradually found a way to break the opponent's dense defense by constantly pulling runs and passing.

In the 31st minute, all three of the home team's central midfielders pressed to the front of the Torino penalty area, forcing the latter's defence to be very tight and deep. El Shaarawy, who played as the starting left winger in this game, took the ball and made two consecutive cross feints, suddenly moved closer to the middle, and under the running position of his teammates, he found a gap on the left side of the top of the arc of the big penalty area, and hit the goal with his right foot from a long distance, and the ball crossed an extremely beautiful arc past the away goalkeeper who flew to save, but hit the crossbar and bounced on the goal line, and then rebounded back to the middle of the small penalty area. Returning in time, Ranocchia slammed the ball into the air before Czech striker Schick, who had gone to make a stoppage, before being cleared off the touchline by Las Diarra on the penalty line.

After the dead goal, all the Roma players rushed to referee Calvares to complain that the shot should have crossed the goal line. However, after communicating with the referee on the side of the goal of the away team, the referee firmly signaled that no goals were scored. The slow motion given by the local broadcaster also clearly showed that the ball smashed right on the goal line, then bounced out and did not cross it in its entirety, so the referee's decision was accurate.

The home side were naturally unrelenting, and they scored four goals in the next five minutes to give them an overwhelming advantage in momentum. Especially in the 36th minute, Emerson Jr., who once again inserted the assist, sent a low cross from the left to the back post, and Turkish winger Yundale shot with his left foot seven meters in front of the goal without being marked, and the ball was high above the crossbar, missing the golden opportunity to score, so that the Torino team once again escaped from death.