Chapter Ninety-Three: Resist Me (2-in-1)
Descartes did not know that Moliel was seeking his own happiness with the help of his sisters, and perhaps he regarded the little girl's attachment to him as a kind of vanity, but he did not understand that there were many things in this world that could be dragged out, but feelings could not.
After all, he is still young, and sometimes he will regard a girl's love for him as a bragging capital, because of the conversation between his friends, maybe he won't say it directly, but whenever his friends mention that he has a little star with a golden house, and at the same time cast all kinds of envy and jealousy eyes, he will inevitably feel a little fluttering, and after returning to the apartment, he will not be so concerned about separating from Moriel, as long as he can hide it from An Jieli's side, He even thinks it's a good thing to have such a little lover.
But when the little lover wants to change careers and become a real lady, he doesn't know how to deal with it.
However, the rest of the story has not happened after all, and now in front of him is the fierce Evra and the high morale of Manchester United.
The second leg of the 08-09 Champions League semi-final between Manchester United and Arsenal kicked off at 10:45pm local time on May 6, with more than 70,000 fans watching the life-or-death match between the two sides, in addition to more than 100,000 fans watching the big screen in the main square outside the Emirates Stadium.
The coaches of both teams, Arsene Wenger and Alex Ferguson, understood that the two teams could tacitly stop at the last minute in the last game, but in the "last" 90 minutes, there was nothing anyone could do. At this stage of the season, every next game is about the ownership of the championship and the gains and losses of tens of millions of euros.
Arsenal have played a total of 57 games so far this season and they have waived the Carabao Cup. But in the FA Cup, league and Champions League, they are on three fronts. All have reached the final stage; Manchester United, on the other hand, were not far behind, having taken a spin in North America before the season, and with the Charity Shield and all sorts of games, they even played one more game than Arsenal. Count it out. They've played 58 games now.
Such a dense schedule. The players of both teams have already reached the moment of exhaustion, although the main lineups of the two teams have not suffered major injuries so far, but in fact, the players' physical fitness and fighting spirit have exhausted to a certain point. Because not only do they have to play for their clubs, but most of them also play for the national team, and they have been going back and forth for just a few months, and they can barely breathe.
At this time, technique and tactics no longer occupy the most important position, and willpower is the most critical issue. We often hear on the news that so-and-so team suddenly collapsed in the final stage of the season, and so-and-so team's performance suddenly declined in the last few games, and finally lost a certain championship regrettably, in fact, these are the direct manifestations of the collapse of the player's willpower, people are still those people, and the technology cannot be suddenly forgotten overnight, but why is their performance a sharp decline? In fact, it is because these players have developed a kind of war weariness at this stage, they want to finish the game quickly, no matter what it looks like, in short, it is good to complete the task as soon as possible and get time to rest, and they no longer think about the championship or other things in their hearts.
To avoid this, the club and the manager and others need to do a lot of work. We also often hear in the comments that a certain club will gradually gain the upper hand at the end of the season because they have championship experience, and a certain club will lose the championship because they lack experience, so what is championship experience?
Many people will think that this so-called experience is that there are many old players in the team, who have won the championship, until how to play at the end of the season, in fact, this statement has a certain one-sidedness, the real "championship experience", in fact, it is actually the club or management has the corresponding experience in facing the players' war-weariness, and knows how to adjust the psychology of the players at this time, so that they can muster up the remaining courage in the final stage of the season and win the championship back in one go.
And there are many so-called "dark horse" teams, they are soaring in the early stage of the league, they are simply unstoppable, but in the middle or second half of the league, their performance slowly died down, and some dark horses even fell directly at the door of the championship, which is quite regrettable. This happens, in addition to the fact that these clubs do not have sufficient personnel reserves, the most important reason is that their management does not know how to adjust the psychology of the players, and when they are excited, they are at a new high, and when the players have participated in too many games, they have no good way to readjust the state of the players, and finally can only end up in a tiger-like situation.
But that is obviously not the case for Arsenal and Manchester United, who have won 10 Premier League titles in the last 12 years, and it would be incorrect to say they have no trophy experience, so they also know what matters at this time.
Ferguson's coping strategy is bonus + hair dryer, in the skill of boosting morale, if Lord Ferguson dares to call the second, I believe that no one in the entire world football dares to call the first; And Wenger's method can't get rid of these two things, but compared to the re-election, his agitation is slightly less than that.
Thankfully, Arsene Wenger now has a tough enough vice-captain under his command.
To say that Descartes is tough, it does not mean how vicious he is in the face of opponents or the media, in fact, compared with villains like Vieira, Descartes can be called polite most of the time, but like Vieira and others, Descartes has a heart full of fighting spirit, the more critical the moment, the more tenacious his willpower is, the illness and rumors of his youth have not been able to knock him down, how can those little war-weariness make him surrender easily?
So in the pre-game locker room. Descartes replaced Wenger to encourage his teammates, and Wenger is closer to everyone's status than Wenger, so what he says is sometimes more acceptable to the dressing room, in short, no matter what he says, Arsenal's morale is very high in this game, and Wenger on the sidelines nods again and again.
Compared to the Arsenal players, Manchester United's players are not lagging behind in terms of morale. Ferguson's hair dryers work very well when it matters most. Manchester United have won the title in succession over the likes of Chelsea and Liverpool in recent seasons when the players are not as famous as their opponents, relying on the beautiful psychological adjustment ability of Lord Fernandes, who have been the most consistent team to pick up points in the final stage of the Premier League season, the past two seasons. They have lost just one of their last five games before the end of the season. Two draws. This record is the highest among any team in the Premier League, even this season. They were also held to a draw by Middlesbrough in the last ten games, winning against strong teams such as Chelsea and Tottenham in succession, and when Arsenal were chasing points with a ferocious nine-game winning streak, few people would notice that Manchester United had actually unknowingly won five in a row and a four-game winning streak, and the difference between the two teams has always hovered between six and four points, not widened, but also not closed.
Don't think that Manchester United's performance during this period is relatively low-key, just think that they are really easy to bully.
Although this game is Arsenal's home stadium, Wenger and Ferguson are very clear that this home advantage has not been put in the eyes of the two teams, Manchester United has to visit Arsenal at least twice a season, in addition to the league, they always have the opportunity to meet in the cup, so when it comes to the away games of the Premier League teams, Manchester United is simply the most familiar with Arsenal's Emirates Stadium, and the cheers or boos of more than 70,000 Arsenal fans at the scene did not even make the Manchester United players frown. They have long been familiar with fighting in such a hostile environment, and even defeating the enemy.
So in this game, both teams played very hard.
After a slightly dull but murderous first half, the score was still 0-0, with neither team able to break the deadlock first, but also not by their opponents.
Arsene Wenger must have wanted to put the decisive time into the second half, because his biggest trump card will be played in the second half, but he didn't expect Ferguson to have the same idea, which made Wenger a little surprised.
Ferguson's thoughts are actually not difficult to speculate, this game is the second game of the three-round series between the two teams, to say the importance, it is related to the Champions Cup final promotion place, of course, it is extremely important, but again, the third game after 9 days is related to the ownership of the league championship this season, it is still as heavy as Taishan, so in this game, Ferguson's idea is not only to beat Arsenal, but also to play a shadow in their hearts, and completely lose their ability to resist in the game after 9 days.
The best way to break the opponent's psychology is, of course, to defeat them in one fell swoop when they think they are the strongest, so that their confidence completely collapses, so that they think that they are not the enemy's opponent when they are the strongest, and thus completely lose the confidence to win.
Although Lord Fu has never come to China to learn the art of war, he also has a lot of experience in killing people and punishing the heart.
So when Descartes arrived on the pitch, he found himself in a trap that Ferguson had carefully prepared for him.
Although Ferguson wants to crush Arsenal psychologically, he also understands that Descartes is by no means an easy master to deal with, this young player who slipped away from his hands has now become the top star of the Premier League, and all he lacks is a game to make a name for himself on the European or world stage, which is likely to be the Champions League final this season, and of course, he hopes to be at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
So for Descartes, the old lord specially arranged a "big meal" for him.
is not Park Ji-sung, although Park Ji-sung is known as "Mr. Three-Lung Lobe" and is impeccable in running and attitude, but Ferguson understands that with Park Ji-sung's ability, he can't guard against Descartes for 45 minutes; It's not Carrick, Carrick needs to take care of the team's organization and offense, and let him defend Descartes, which is not only a waste of physical strength, but also not necessarily better than Park Ji-sung.
Ferguson arranged to target Descartes specifically for this game was their French left-back Patrice Evra.
Patrice Evra's strength goes without saying, and later the captain of the French national team also sat in the captaincy of Manchester United, and his assists were extremely sharp. But the defence is also not to be underestimated, and Patrice Evra has been the main player at left wing-back for seven of the Premier League's eight consecutive years of best team, which shows how highly he is rated by all walks of life.
And the biggest change in Ferguson's game is to free Evra from the left-back position, specifically responsible for the marking of Descartes, plus the support of Park Ji-sung and Carrick, he values Descartes more than any star in the Premier League.
As for the left-back position left by Patrice Evra, Ferguson sent in the young Rafael in this game, which can be regarded as quite bold.
However, Raphael is better than in though young. But good fitness. He is also extremely fast, a Brazilian player and quite technical, using him to defend Walcott's attacks on the left flank. It's about making the most of it. It's also very targeted.
Arsene Wenger inadvertently invented the role of Descartes as a "free man in the frontcourt". Ferguson was simply forced to invent Evra's role as a "free man in the backfield", in short, Patrice followed wherever Descartes ran. This is a real "close marking". In the past, of course, it is not that no team has tried this trick, but firstly, the strength of the players who mark the defense is not as good as Evra, and secondly, the tacit understanding of those teams is obviously not comparable to the players of Manchester United, and they use a back to run around with Descartes, and in the end it is possible to mess up their own defense, but the position arranged by Ferguson for Evra is not a back at all, it is purely a "personal bodyguard", that is, no matter where Descartes runs, others can ignore him and stick to his position, The only person who defends him is Evra, he doesn't need to divide areas with his teammates, he doesn't have to argue with them about his duties, his goal is simple and straightforward, he can prevent Descartes, he can pass, but he must not let him burst.
In other words, Ferguson actually divided his team into two parts, one part is a regular squad composed of other players, and the other part is called Evra, the French only do their own thing, and the others do other people's things, and the two sides are basically unrelated to each other.
This is the way Ferguson thought hard to deal with Descartes, although this is also quite risky, but on the one hand he believes in Evra's defensive ability, on the other hand, he also hopes to use this method to also separate Descartes and his teammates, Evra is responsible for preventing him from breaking out, and others are responsible for preventing him from passing, then Descartes will lose the capital to call for wind and rain in the front court, and he will not be able to organize the attack in the front court freely, and use an Evra to replace the Descartes chess piece, Ferguson thinks it's totally worth it.
Ferguson's cunning yielded a pretty good result in the first 20 minutes of the second half, and with Patrice Evra's close care, it was extremely difficult for Descartes to connect the ball for 20 minutes after coming on, let alone organise the attack with ease.
In fact, Descartes is not a player who is good at breaking through, his breakthrough, most of the time is with the help of the opponent's defense out of position or in a hurry to make up for the situation, using his keen awareness and super prediction to pass the opponent at close range, when he is forced out of the penalty area to make a medium and long distance breakthrough, his desire to break through and the success rate is actually not too high.
This is mainly due to his physical factors, his speed is not too fast, and his explosiveness cannot be said to be top-notch, sometimes he gives people the impression of being fast, in fact, it comes more from his cadence and prediction, when he really needs to open up the posture and break through one-on-one, he is not unable to pass, but after passing, it is easy to be caught up by others, thus forming an entangled situation. Therefore, the place where he breaks through is more often in the penalty area, in this position, once he breaks through, he can use his shot or pass to decide the situation, without worrying about being chased back by the opponent in a short time, this is the most suitable place for him to play, on the contrary, the farther away from the goal, the less threatening his breakthrough is.
So in the face of Evra's stalking, Descartes basically did not try to break the deadlock with a breakthrough, because he knew very well that with Evra's physical fitness, if he could not plan a threatening offensive immediately after the breakthrough, then Evra would appear in front of him again in the blink of an eye and entangle him to death.
But if you can't break through, you can only use the pass to organize the attack, but at this time Descartes found that Ferguson's arrangement is indeed quite exquisite, Evra is alone to defend him, and others will not make extra defenses even if they see him running over, but when he wants to pass the ball, he will find that those Manchester United players who don't seem to react have all become obstacles, and they firmly stand on the route of Descartes' pass. Blocked the running of the rest of the Arsenal players.
This is the role of Ferguson's two systems, one to prevent him from breaking through and the other to prevent him from passing, which is similar to the unreleased passing on the basketball court, and the ultimate goal is to isolate Descartes from Arsenal's attacking system and make him a "special player" who relies on his own strength to attack.
With such treatment on the basketball court, it is natural that you can shoot unscrupulously, and the basket has no cover, as long as it feels good, maybe a few more shots will make the opponent's tactics self-defeating. But football stadiums are different. There's still a goalkeeper on the goal line, and there's no way Patrice Evra can really let him burst into the box, so Descartes is really feeling a sense of detachment right now, with him and his teammates. Gradually, contact was lost.
Manchester United have been successful in their defensive tactics. He received an unexpected surprise.
The game lasted 24 minutes. The veteran Paul Scholes fired from distance from outside the box, but it wasn't too dangerous and it was right. But Almunia made a mistake because he was too nervous, and he actually got rid of it when he held the ball!
Just as Almunia was about to make amends, it was too late to say that it was too late, and a red figure appeared in front of him, and with a poke of his toe sent the ball into the Arsenal goal.
Tevez, who had only been forgiven by Ferguson before the game, was persuaded by his agent to apologize to Lord Ferguson for such an important match, and Ferguson finally agreed to his request to play in the starting line-up considering the importance of these two games.
Unexpectedly, Tevez, who had been held back for two months, was so lucky, and his active scrambling was not only secretly praised by the old man, but also won him this excellent opportunity to make up the shot, and when he appeared in front of Almunia, Gala, who was defending him, was even four or five meters behind him.
With this goal alone, the old man has made up his mind in his heart to buy Tevez completely next season, so that he and Rooney form a fixed forward line of Manchester United, as for the price, it is not impossible to increase a little, although 35 million pounds is unacceptable, but 30 million euros is not impossible to rise a little bit.
The goal made more than 70,000 Arsenal fans watching the game fall into silence, they originally thought that Arsenal would take advantage of the home advantage in this game, and beat Manchester United to the ground, but they did not expect the two teams to play carefully in the first half, and Descartes did not change the situation after coming out in the second half, but Manchester United seized this opportunity that was not a chance and exceeded the score.
Theoretically, Arsenal have two away goals, and they only need one more to qualify for the final, but in reality, Arsenal fans have no hope of breaking through Manchester United's goal, and Descartes, who had high hopes for them, is getting caught up in Evra's constant entanglement, while Van Persie, Nasri, Theo Walcott and others? Accustomed to Descartes' involvement and organization in the front court, they behaved like a swarm of headless flies in this game, trying hard enough, but never being able to find their way.
At this time, the only hope is that Wenger will quickly come up with a strategy to deal with it.
Wenger was also standing on the sidelines at this time, his brows were tightly locked, looking at the players on the field thoughtfully, as Arsenal's "Descartes dependence" became more and more serious, Wenger has become accustomed to leaving the problem to Descartes to deal with, I didn't expect Ferguson to do so well in this game, he would rather abolish an Evra, but also trap Descartes in the cage, it can be seen from the process of the game, even if other players pass by Evra with the ball, he will not look at it, he only has Descartes alone in his eyes, All his goals were to make it difficult for Descartes to get the ball, and even if he did, it would be very uncomfortable.
This kind of "Seven Injuries Fist" similar to hurting me for one kick for your hand made Wenger so depressed that he almost vomited blood, and what was even more sad was that Manchester United also scored first, didn't this make them play "Seven Wounds Fist" to be more interested?
Wenger thought of countless ways to deal with it, trying to save Descartes from the cage, but he found that in the face of Ferguson's almost rogue "redemption" tactics, all the methods he thought of were flawed, Manchester United was missing Evra, Park Ji-sung and Rafael, and Arsenal was missing Descartes but became their own in the front.
The thought of playing separately flashed through Wenger's mind, and it was only then that he remembered that Descartes had not yet become the team's frontcourt playmaker. Arsenal actually has another "nuclear" one!
In his delight, Arsene Wenger set his sights on Cesc Fabregas, who was battling the Reds players for position at the back.
It is said that after Xiaofa was injured, Descartes gradually took over the responsibility of organizing the attack in his hands, and during that time there was a transition of Rosicky, and Arsenal's record did not decline significantly, and when Xiaofa returned to the team, although Descartes had been erected as a new core, but at that time, Xiaofa had made it clear that he wanted to transfer to Barcelona after the end of this season, so he did not show the idea of regaining the core of the organization, but in order to better assist Descartes. Actively recycle his position to the back waistline. Use long passes and scheduling to support your team's attack.
This model is actually the model that Wenger wanted most before, the "two cores" can coexist, and each other can help each other, and Arsenal has achieved a series of dazzling results since then. In order to be able to advance in three lines. All three lines have come to the end.
Now Ferguson has seized on Arsenal's soft underbelly. Locking Descartes with an Evra, Wenger decided to release another "core" of his own, so that Ferguson understood that Arsenal's attack was impossible!
Arsene Wenger took advantage of the deadball and quickly called Cesc Fabregas to the sidelines. With a solemn face, he explained a few words, and at the same time pointed in the direction of Descartes, telling him to find a way to help Descartes get free.
When Cesc Fabregas got back on the pitch, everyone noticed the change, and he went straight to the midfield instead of the midfield line where he had played for almost 75 minutes.
For the change of Fabregas's position, Ferguson of course also expected, with his wisdom and experience, he could not ignore the small law, the former "core" of Arsenal, in fact, he had long thought that when he locked Descartes, Wenger would make such an adjustment, and even the adjustment time was not much different from what he expected.
But in fact, Arsene Wenger's change was in Ferguson's plan. According to his vision, Arsenal will go to great lengths to knock on Manchester United's door when Patrice Evra locks up Descartes, at which point Arsene Wenger will certainly bring Cesc Fabregas up, which is a huge threat to Manchester United, but also a huge opportunity.
Arsenal's main midfielder this season was originally Denilson, this small Brazilian man has good personal defensive ability, but in fact, there are quite a lot of problems in running and positioning, Arsenal lost games that should not be lost at the beginning of the season, the back line is certainly responsible, and the midfield is actually a big hole for them. But when Xiaofa returned from injury, he withdrew from the back waist line in order to make room for Descartes, but he didn't expect this passive change to make Arsenal's waist stand up all of a sudden, although Xiaofa doesn't like to defend, it doesn't mean that he can't defend, and there are two people in the back position, how are they much stronger than just one person, so Arsenal conceded fewer and fewer goals in the second half of the season, and it must be said that the change of double back is also one of the most important reasons.
Ferguson's original idea was to lure Cesc Fabregas out of the midfield, and then take advantage of Denilson's single-man midfield to launch a massive counter-attack.
Tevez's goal was actually unexpected, and he initially wanted to wait for Cesc Fabregas to come out, concentrate on Denilson's weakness, tear Arsenal's defence apart at the edge of the box, and use the final twenty minutes to fight to the death.
Unexpectedly, now that Tevez has scored an unexpected goal and Cesc Fabregas has been brought out, Manchester United's situation is simply better than Ferguson imagined, how can this make him not secretly rejoice?
The only thing to watch out for is that when Cesc Fabregas is brought up front, they have a playmaking core outside of Descartes, and the pressure on United's defence will suddenly increase.
But it doesn't matter, although Ferguson can't take another person to "exchange" with Fabregas like he did with Descartes, but he deliberately arranged for South Korean Park Ji-sung to play in the front midfield in this game, in order to use his excellent running ability to cover the defense of the midfield, Xiaofa came up and handed him over to Park Ji-sung, as for the front, Rooney and Tevez are good at counterattacking, and there are old monsters like Giggs on the side, Ferguson is not worried at all.
What he wants to say to his players now is actually only one sentence:
"Hold it off for me! As long as we stand up behind, victory will definitely be ours! (To be continued......)