Chapter 321: Training Match ...... Against Tottenham Hotspur
Our first game will be in London. The pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info Our opponent is the Turkish team. In order to find a suitable warm-up opponent, we have a lot of brains. It's definitely not enough to play intra-team games, we definitely have to find some stronger teams to play some high-level warm-up games. Of course, having arrived in England, our every move will obviously be under the noses of our competitors, and the warm-up opponents we are looking for will not target the FIFA national team, but simply play against some English teams on the training ground. Our first warm-up game after arriving in London was against Queens Park Rangers in League One, a team that had just been relegated from the Premier League, and although they were not very strong, they were at least the same as they were. We wanted to find some feeling of playing a strong team in them, but we didn't expect that we won 6-0 and beat this famous team in England's history into a sieve - from then on, it was more difficult for us to find a warm-up opponent, the League One team was afraid of being beaten by us to lose their temper, and most of them refused to play with us, while the Premier League team had the difficulty of all the main players being pulled to play the European Cup, and wanted to find a team willing to play with us. And the team that has not been affected too much by the strength of the team is really difficult.
Until one day, Tottenham Hotspur, a traditional powerhouse in White Hart Lane, came to the door-
"We'd like to play a training match with you. We don't treat it as a commercial competition, after all, the European Championship is about to start, and we don't plan to compete with the European Championship organizing committee for any interests. If you're willing to play with us, we're going to give it our all, because we've got a lot of key players in the squad for the European Championships, but the quality of the players we've left is good. We want to train and promote young players through games like this, and we want to get a closer look at your players by playing against you so that we can invite them to come to White Hart Lane and play for us at Tottenham Hotspur. ”
When the Tottenham Hotspur officials came to us to play the game, the words were very sincere, but he was well-founded, neither humble nor arrogant, which was really likable. The conditions they put forward are quite favorable for our Croatian team - if we run a game into a commercial competition, we will give it our all, but will the opponent just play for the appearance fee? No one knows. If the opponent doesn't do his best, it's useless to find any warm-up opponent. However, if we are facing an opponent who is going all out, even if the lineup is relatively not so good, it can have a better effect on our lineup. We'd rather be like that.
Moreover, the latter option will probably make us in Croatian football even more happy -
Although Croatian football has always been a strong team, the Croatian football league is not necessarily excellent. Because Croatia is a newly divided country, not to mention organizing a reliable national annual league, even on the basis of the original league, it is obviously difficult to improve. The main reason is that Croatia's economic development is so poor. As an Eastern European country, the former Yugoslavia, under the leadership of Tie 0, did not follow the law of development, and its economy was already relatively poor among the European countries, while Croatia, as a country separated from Yugoslavia, was far behind the post-"Yugoslav Republic" composed of Serbia and Montenegro in terms of economy and land area. Therefore, many Croatians' dream of football is to be able to play in the top five European leagues, so that they will not only have a future, but also a "money road".
Tottenham Hotspur, as a strong team in the Premier League, is willing to play training matches with our Croatian team, and intends to see our performance in the training match, so as to decide to find suitable players to enrich the squad in a team as strong as Croatia, which is really great news for our Croatian team. Especially for the young players in our team, they have witnessed Dinamo Zagreb win many championships in the past games, but they have not seen a strong team in the real sense, for them, being able to go out is the biggest benefit, and for the Croatian national team, the players of the national team leave their own country and go to foreign countries to seek the direction of survival, Croatian players in a stronger environment, facing stronger opponents, learning better technical and tactical literacy, It is very beneficial to enhance the strength of the Croatian national team.
As a pioneer of Croatian football in Spain, I know very well how much I can improve myself in a strong team and against some stronger opponents every day. So, as the head coach, wouldn't the wise Blazevic know all this better? Therefore, he did not give much thought to it, and settled the matter.
On this morning, the sun was shining. The grass in the training ground had just been cut with a lawn mower, and the smell of grass was everywhere. We were waiting on the training ground for our opponents, Tottenham Hotspur, and soon we had a strong opponent
The two sides stood on the left and right sides of the pitch, and the game began with the whistle of Mr. Blazevic, who was acting as the interim referee......
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Tottenham Hotspur has all the players in the squad who have come to play in the European Championship, and I don't know any of the rest of the players. However, as a traditional powerhouse in English football, Tottenham Hotspur has been very professional in terms of technique and tactics throughout. Even if they are all substitutes, their style of play and offense are exactly the same as those of the main team! Soon, they were the first to serve and pushed the ball into their wing-back position to face our defensive midfielder Marić.
Marić saw Tottenham push the ball so quickly and stepped forward to firmly hold Tottenham's path down the wing. Tottenham's full-backs saw Marić holding his chokepoint, and instead of daring to force a breakthrough, he passed the ball to the middle of the midfield, allowing the attacking midfielder to control the tempo of the game.