Chapter 625: Gathering momentum
After two consecutive days of exchanges, the first phase of the transformation plan of Shuangbijia was immediately launched, and with a professional team there to assist in the whole process, Li Mudi could transfer all his energy back to Real Madrid.
From receiving a call from Zheng Xiaoyang after eliminating Atletico Madrid, to dealing with the training of Shuangbijia, it took about ten days for the Real Madrid coach to do so, but his "private work" did not affect the team's preparation and results.
On 1 February, they first hosted their opponents in the 23rd round of the league, Athletic Bilbao. This is a battle that has attracted much attention from the outside world, not because the two sides are very close in strength or all kinds of past grievances, on the contrary, the Basque Lions are now struggling in the quagmire of relegation, and neither the current morale nor ability can be compared with the glamorous La Liga leaders.
However, Athletic Bilbao's trip to the Bernabeu cannot be analysed from a conventional point of view, and they will definitely travel to Madrid with the mentality of fighting their opponents. It was the San Mamés massacre at the beginning of the season that knocked the Basque team, which was in a good situation, into a daze, leading to the collapse. Their storied history of never being relegated since the inception of La Liga is likely to be disgracefully ended this year, and anyone else will fight with the culprit!
It's just that Real Madrid has long been prepared for related difficulties, and the club's board of directors and public relations minister Butragueno expressed his concerns about the scale of the game in an interview with the media before the game, although he was fined by the Football Association, but it did have an effect, so that the referee Rodrigo Hirner who enforced the duel did not let the Bilbao people take too hard action, which greatly reduced the hidden danger of injuries to the home team players.
As a result, the Basque Lions, who are currently third from the bottom of the standings, were unable to cause too much trouble for the mighty Galacticos, and although their defence had played their best in recent times, they still conceded a goal in each half and suffered a 0-2 double defeat by the opponent.
This score is already a decent result in terms of the comparison of the strength of the two teams, but for Athletic Bilbao, who are extremely pessimistic throughout the team, it is undoubtedly like another hammer hitting them in the heart. Because with the end of other competitions, not only did they not escape the relegation circle, but fell by one place, and the relegation situation became more and more precarious.
And not just Bilbao, in fact, the whole of Spain and even the European continent are paying close attention to the grim situation facing this team, after all, as only four old teams that have never missed the domestic top league in history, people are still unwilling to see the tragedy happen, so after the game, many media have appeared comments or analysis on this game and the losing side, which is a hot topic in European football recently.
However, Li Muddy obviously does not have the spare time to pay attention to the life and death of other teams that have nothing to do with him, since the end of the winning streak, the form of most players in the Real Madrid team has shown a considerable downward trend, and his coaching staff needs to deal with it together. Fortunately, the situation faced by the team on all three fronts was relatively smooth, and there was plenty of room for them to adjust.
However, after discussion, the Real Madrid coach decided not to force too much artificial intervention in the players' competitive state, so that they could walk on the invisible parabola on their own according to the laws of nature, in order to let the young men who had been nervous for half a season relax as much as possible. After all, now the team has accumulated a huge advantage, enough for everyone to wave for a while, the most important thing at this stage should be to avoid injuries and accumulate momentum and energy, and make the most adequate preparations for the critical period that will be encountered in April, and the rest of the things can not be kept tense at all times, which is in line with the wise saying of the Celestial Empire "One piece is relaxed, and the way of civil and military affairs is also".
So in the next month and a half, the previous majestic and aggressive galactic battleship almost completely disappeared from the eyes of the outside world. Their on-field performance, which they were always able to play to everyone's amazement, has also become a lot calmer, and the manager's use of troops always gives people a feeling of being out of their heads, and the whole team seems to have changed from top to bottom, and it is completely impossible to see that this is an invincible army that has just tied the super record, which has attracted many black fans who have been silent before to restart the mode of anger.
On 4 February, Real Madrid took on Málaga, who are currently only 11th in La Liga clubs, in the first leg of the Copa del Rey semi-finals, which was supposed to be a matchup without suspense, but the home team surprisingly took the initiative on the pitch after the opening kick-off, and even laid siege to the league leader's penalty area.
Li Mudi used a 3-5-2 formation that had never been used this season in a very strange way, with Rodrygo and Jorge Solsano in the starting line-up at the same time, and also put Kuchi in the midfield position, clearly intending to experiment with new attacking routines. However, his calculation failed to start, and the team's back line was frequently urgent, so that the three of them had to rotate a large retreat to help the team's defense, and the opportunity to get offensive drills in the first half can be said to be very rare.
After the rematch, before the Real Madrid players could show the coach's adjustment strategy at halftime, Malaga scored a refraction with the help of a stroke of luck to rewrite the score to 1-0.
Encouraged by this goal, the morale of the home team instantly rose to the peak, and they began to put on a super-level performance to form a strong pressure on the opponent's defence. Li Mudi, who did not dare to be careless, had to replace teenager Solsano not long after the start of the second half, and changed the formation to 3-6-1 or more accurately 3-4-2-1, strengthening his side's control in the midfield area, which gradually turned the situation around.
It's just that on the offensive side, Odriosola and Álvaro Fernandez, who played as two wing-backs, had some minor problems on this day, and failed to achieve the assist effect expected by the manager, so that Real Madrid's attack could only focus on the middle, which also allowed Malaga to be more targeted.
In the 72nd minute, substitute Elias Zidane had a pass cut off due to the obvious intention of the through ball. The hosts then launched a brilliant counter-attack, with veteran Spanish national team midfielder Deco (the same name as the Portuguese superstar) delivering a cross-overhead cross to help Argentine striker Rodrigo Marquez, who is on loan from Manchester City, strike off offside.
Looking at Varane, who struggled to chase back after getting up but could only follow the ashes, all Meilinger couldn't help but have a heroic sigh in their hearts at that time, although the French central defender is not yet 33 years old, and he is not very old in this experience-oriented position, but years of injuries still ruined the speed ability that he was proud of in his youth, which is quite helpless.
As for the final result of this goal, without any other interference, Courtois alone wanted to stop Marquez, who has a shot value of 16, which is obviously very unreliable. The home striker didn't even give the Belgian goalkeeper any chance to make a save, instead opting to accelerate the ball past the attacking 'tights' and easily push the ball into the empty net.
2-0, playing at home, Malaga became the first team this season to score twice in a single game, something that few could have predicted before the game. And according to past experience, the team that can achieve a two-goal advantage at home in the first leg has a probability of 71% of the final promotion, which is already quite high, which will naturally cause a lot of turmoil, and some people on the Internet have begun to predict whether this will be the beginning of another shocking upset.
However, Li Mudi and his disciples rejected the possibility of becoming the protagonist of the tragedy, and they took complete control of the situation on the field in the final 20 minutes of the game, and scored a wonderful teamwork goal by Rodrygo, which was a goalkeeper after as many as 12 consecutive passes between five people, and the commentators of the broadcast repeatedly shouted the word "perfect".
In the end, Real Madrid, the defending champion of the Copa del Rey in Spain, could hardly be said to be satisfactory in the first leg of the semi-finals, but the 1-2 defeat still gave them some advantage in the battle for the right to qualify, which is barely acceptable.
However, what was supposed to be an occasional slump continued into the league three days later, and the Real Madrid players were still unable to perform as well as they should, despite the use of a large rotation strategy. At Espanyol's home stadium, the Cornella El Prat Stadium, with Asensio and Mbappe both starting, the La Liga leaders' attacking efficiency was still unsatisfactory, with a total of 17 shots on goal but only 30 in 5 shots, and if it weren't for Pellegri completing a difficult dive to break the net, they might have to hand over a league blood.
And the performance of the defensive end is also a little substandard, many mistakes have been made to leak people, if it were not for the Ukrainian international Andrei Lunin has made two world-class saves, the suspense of the victory and defeat may have been solved early. But it was precisely the goalkeeper's fatal mistake shortly after the opening of the second half that allowed the home team to reap a goal full of surprises, which can be described as a success or defeat.
In the end, a 1-1 draw prolonged the Galaxy Battleship's sluggish form, which worried all the media and fans who followed them, and Li Mudi was also questioned by many reporters, who wanted to find out what happened to this team that was invincible in the first half of the season, but could not get any answers.
On the evening of the 10th, the knockout stage of the Champions League kicked off, and Real Madrid made their debut on the first matchday, visiting the neighboring capital Lisbon to challenge Benfica, the top team of the Portuguese Super League.
As a result, it almost became a dull battle again, and Li Moody also put Ndidi and Marcos Llorente in the starting line-up, making the Spanish giants' intention to play a defensive counterattack before the game was exposed.
Benfica, who wanted to take advantage of the opponent's poor state to see if he could do anything, became a little timid after seeing the super ability of Real Madrid's frontcourt in terms of speed, and did not dare to invest too many troops in the offensive end on his own turf, which made the pace of the game very slow and seriously lacked wonderful pictures.
It's just that the home team failed to take the opportunity to fight hard under the advantage of geography and people, and it became a fatal bitter fruit in the second half, Li Mudi maintained the score of 0-0 until the 75th minute, and replaced Pellegri and Ceballos in succession, using the advantage of his own possession ability to directly complete the counterpressure.
With four minutes of normal time remaining, it was Asensio who scored a beautiful long-range strike from outside the box to get an away goal and a win from the road, and he snatched the ticket to the next round into his own hands, just to put it in his pocket.
At the same time, the under-spectacular but unusually affordable victory seemed to give the Galacticos, who had been in a slump for the better, and after returning home, they beat Real Betis 4-1 at home in the league at the weekend, easing some fears about the team.
Three days later, facing Málaga for the second time in two weeks, Real Madrid finally played the momentum of the world's top giants, pressing the opponent in half from the opening moment to launch a crazy siege, and completed the goal in the eighth minute, not only equalized the aggregate score, but also occupied the initiative to advance because of the advantage of away goals.
The away team that wanted to try their luck on the offensive side could not do so at all, because after the restart, the Real Madrid players immediately launched a crazy high press, and took the ball back within a minute through the extremely high enthusiasm of relentless running, and then entered the cycle of siege - ball conversion - high tackle - player conversion - siege.
What's even more terrifying is that the end of this cycle is not the goal, because the home team played like this throughout the first half, even though they had already changed the score to 3-0 at half-time, but still did not choose to recover.
In the end, it was the Galacticos who did not slow down until 65 minutes later that they defeated Málaga 4-0 against Málaga, who had beaten them just 14 days earlier, and took revenge and reached the final stage of the Copa del Rey for the second year in a row.
https:
Genius one second to remember the address of this site:. Mobile version reading URL: m.