On July 24, the Italian Football Federation released the specific schedule and draw for the 2016-17 Coppa Italia season on its official website. This season's Coppa Italia will traditionally be divided into eight rounds, with the first four rounds being qualifiers, with the first round taking place in the last three days of July and the final date set for 2 June 2017 at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.

Let's start with a brief overview of the most important cup in Italian football: it began in 1922, but was cancelled on the way to the second tournament and was not resumed until 1935, 12 years later, and was suspended for more than a decade between 1943-57. Until last year, the Coppa Italia had won 68 times, and Juventus were the undisputed champions, winning the competition 11 times. They are followed by Roma, and the Red Wolves have an exceptionally good record of nine titles. They are followed by Inter Milan with seven, Fiorentina and Lazio with six, Torino, AC Milan and Napoli with five (Torino are sixth with nine runners-up). The last time the Red Bulls won the trophy was in the 1992-93 season of the last century, and the previous four times they won the trophy were in 1936, 1943, 1968 and 1971.

In the previous 2007-08 season, the Italian Football Federation had changed the format of the cup in turn, they changed the participating teams from the previous Serie A, Serie B and Serie C, to only Serie A and Serie B A and Serie B A a total of 42 teams participated, and the two-legged home-and-away system that had been used before the final was also changed to a winner-winner, and the venue was also forcibly designated as the Olympic Stadium in Rome. As a result, the tournament lost its former appeal, and some teams in the lower leagues lost the opportunity to interact with strong teams and even become famous overnight. As a result, the following season, the Football Association had to change the rules again, increasing the number of places that could participate to 78, allowing teams with better results in Serie C and Serie D to participate, and the nature of the Coppa Italia became very similar to the English FA Cup.

However, unlike other countries' cup competitions, where each round is drawn to select the opponent, the draw for the Coppa Italia is completed in one go, and the roadmap has been determined from the first round of the qualifying round to the final final. The draw for this tournament is also seeded, with the defending champions being the top seeds, and the teams that qualified for the title last season were seeded 2 to 8 (or replaced by teams with a high league ranking if there weren't enough), and the eight teams will not meet each other before the quarter-finals. Torino, on the other hand, finished 12th in the league last season and must face a seeded team in the quarter-finals, and this year's opponent is the Rossoneri.

Li's side will begin their Coppa Italia campaign in the third qualifying round, and depending on the draw, they are likely to meet their satellite Vercelli on 13 August. Then the final qualifying round on 29 November could be against Salernitana or Pisa in Serie B, followed by a formidable opponent AC Milan in mid-January, and if they get past it, the next hurdle awaits arch-rivals Juventus, who will face Atalanta in the last round, and almost no one will believe that the latter can overthrow the Italian football giants. If Torino are able to step on the old woman's body, it is likely that the winner of the semi-finals will be between Fiorentina and Napoli, and the final opponents should be between Roma and Inter. It can be said that Torino's signing is really bad enough, and they met AC Milan and their city rivals too early, so that their cup trip this season was sentenced to death early by the outside world, and most people believe that the Red Bulls are at most two rounds and want to win the championship? Let's go home and dream!

Finally, I would like to add a special piece of information about the Coppa Italia: as we all know, every time a team wins ten league titles, it can embroider a golden star on the team crest, as of last season, Juventus has embroidered three, while Milan has one each (there are two championships left to embroider a second one), and the other teams have none (Turin is still three championships away from this star, and it feels like the future is also a slim chance in reality!). ）。 In the Coppa Italia, the defending champion can embroider a special championship logo on next season's cup jersey – a red, white and green target pattern with a red bullseye and a white and green ring on the outside. For every 10 Coppa Italia titles, a silver star can be embroidered on the chest, an honour that only the Old Lady has so far, but Roma are just one title away from becoming the second team to be embroidered with a silver star, while Torino is five years shy of it......

In short, in the eyes of all the club's personnel and fans except Li Mudi, there is nothing to look forward to this season's cup competition, and the dream of winning the Italian Cup and qualifying for next season's Europa League can be woken up early, and the team's new coach still said that it was too early to say.

On July 27, Li Mudi led a team to the neighboring district of Lombardy, this time to Bergamo, the capital of the province of Bergamo, one of the most famous cities in northern Italy, just about 40 kilometers from Milan. Once won the Coppa Italia in 1963, and cultivated Donadoni, Philippe Inzaghi, Vieri and countless other Italian superstars of the old Serie A team Atlanta Football Club is located here, nicknamed the son of the sea This team was founded in 1907, and officially joined the Italian professional league in 1929, although the league results have always been not good, only won five Serie B championships and one Serie C championship, but as one of the most successful youth training bases in Italy, It has also made a huge contribution to the fact that the Azzurri have been able to maintain a top position in world football.

In the 2015-16 season, Atalanta's performance can still be called decent, with 11 wins, 12 draws and 15 losses in the league, with 45 points with Torino, and finally ranked 13th in the standings because of the relationship between wins and losses, seven points above the relegation zone, and successfully landed early. In the Coppa Italia, they lost 1-3 to Udinese's men in the fourth round of qualifying, and went out early, compared to the 0-4 defeat to Juventus at the time of the 16th to 8 (old woman again!). Torino is also slightly inferior, so before the start of this game, most of the fans' media are still more optimistic about the Red Bulls, even if they have just changed a new coach of the Celestial Empire with little experience.

However, the result of this game was a surprise, the score of 3-0 was beyond everyone's expectations, and even the coach of the home team, Gian Piero Gasperini, who has coached Genoa, Inter Milan and Palermo, said after the game that the team won too easily, and it had a great effect on the morale of the players.

In fact, judging from the technical statistics at the end of this game, the two teams should be evenly matched. Atalanta had a total of 12 shots on goal, of which 6 were hit, and the accuracy rate was not low, with 17 fouls and 54% possession; Turin, on the other hand, had 10 shots on goal and five shots on target, also hitting 50 per cent and nine fouls cleanly. In terms of shots, the quality of the goalkeepers of both sides still played a decisive role in the fact that the number of shots was almost equal. The home team has two good goalkeepers in charge, Albanian main international Etrit Berisha, who is on loan from Lazio, has a large defensive area and quick response, and will return to the Blue Eagles to replace Maketi next season; Another goalkeeper, Pierluigi Gollini, who is on loan from Aston Villa in the Premier League, is only 21 years old, but as a traditional precocious goalkeeper in Italy, he is also very balanced in all aspects and has the ability to play the main role in the Serie A team.

Compared with these two players, Torino's goalkeeper Padelli is slightly inferior, the former Udinese No. 2 goalkeeper who is just 30 years old only has goal-line skills at a good level, and the rest of the links such as intercepting crosses, directing the back, one-on-one and attacking are just passing or even below the passing line, which is difficult to reassure. But even with this ability, he is also the most reliable goalkeeper in the current squad of the Red Bulls, Padelly, who played 70 minutes in this game, was scored by the opponent, and the substitute for him Uruguayan Ichaso was conceded two goals in the remaining 20 minutes, so angry that Li Muddy found Valentino Cairo as soon as possible after the game, and asked the latter to bring in a reliable goalkeeper as soon as possible, and by the way, Ichaso was loaned to his old club, the Uruguayan First Division powerhouse Danubio Fútbol Club), it would be better if it could be sold outright.

After this fiasco, some media began to attack the new manager of Turin more brazenly, and a reporter from "Roma Sport" openly bet with everyone in the article, he predicted that Li Mudi will have to be covered and left within ten rounds of the opening round of Serie A, because according to the schedule of the new season of the first division just ruled out by the Italian Football Federation, the red bulls will face Roma, Fiorentina, Palermo, Lazio and Inter Milan in the sixth to tenth rounds. A five-game losing streak seems inevitable, but does the head coach who came to power through the back door on the business operations of the Celestial Empire have a future? It's just two words - fuck off! Yes, after being sponsored by the Celestial Empire corporate sponsorship to give the Torino club a large amount of money for a while, these media gradually reacted, it turned out that this yellow-skinned coach who only had one year of protagonist experience and was still in the third division of Spain, was able to defeat the powerful Mihajlovich, Zaccheroni and Guidolin and other famous coaches with the capital support of the country behind him, and sat in the position of Turin coach. Bare. Naked right. Money trading! The Society of All Evils. Yes. What a terrible thing it is that this kind of corruption has invaded European football! Even the media, which had previously maintained a fairly neutral attitude, instantly joined the ranks of the "anti-Lee" and "black Lee", who constantly slandered Li Moodi's ethics in newspapers and publications, questioned his ability, and incited fans to protest, in order to prove that the Celestial Empire was far inferior to the Italians in football, and then kicked him out of the circle completely. Racial discrimination is indeed pervasive.

But fortunately, the club's top management has not been swayed by those unscrupulous media, of course, it may also be because of the sponsorship of the Celestial Empire and that special contract has played a role, in short, Mr. Chairman has been supporting Li Mudi in an interview recently, and at the same time constantly calling on fans to give more time to this team that has just undergone a big change, I believe that they will be able to play an excellent game after they run in with each other. And the fans of Torino are not mentally retarded, although they are extremely passionate and attacking, but their basic IQ is still not inferior to others, knowing that just one or two poor performances in the warm-up games do not mean anything, and it will take a while of observation to make a correct judgment. So there really aren't too many people running out to make trouble, but in recent days, during the team's daily training, a large number of fans have come to the training ground to watch, compared to those reporters who only know how to run the train with their mouths full, they believe in their own eyes and years of watching football.

In all fairness, Li Mudi's tactical play based on Torino's existing lineup is quite ornamental, with lone striker Belotti having excellent physical strength and active scrambling, and the coach arranged for him to keep putting pressure on the opponent's backline and even the goalkeeper, trying to interfere with the opponent's playmaking from the backfield; If Rajadzic on the left side is a comprehensive attacker with dribbling and passing, then Jesse on the right side is a maniac, after years of baptism in La Liga and personal talent and hard work, his dribbling ability of up to 17 can be proud of the entire Serie A, only a few people such as Dybala, Cuadarado and Kaiser can stand shoulder to shoulder with him. In addition, Bruno Perez's crosses from the back on the right side are also an indispensable regular weapon for the team, and he has accumulated a tacit understanding with Red Babe for a season, and the cooperation between them is difficult for ordinary defenders to control. Coupled with the central combing of Baseli and Benasi and the super tackling ability of Wives and Akwa, the team can completely put out two sets of highly competitive lineups in the midfield, which can be regarded as the strongest link. In addition to the strength of the backline, the performance of this team in training is still worth admiring and looking forward to.

However, just after the fans initially recognized Li Mudi, Torino lost 0-1 away to Chievo in the warm-up match on July 30, which immediately pushed him to the forefront.