Chapter 210: Thoughts Under Crisis
Seven to one, a gap that no one could have imagined before the game.
Many media and fans thought that Roma would win, but they would not have expected such a victory, seven goals in 90 minutes of the game, which illustrated Roma's strong firepower, six of which were scored by fast break after the ball was changed, which also proved that Drinel's offensive tactics had a certain effect.
No one dares to say the specific effect, Roma won only Atalanta, the biggest fish bag in Serie A, to test the role of tactics, but also to play against strong teams.
But that can't stop the media from chasing Zhang Tiehan!
Tactics are tactics, teams are teams, and players are players, even those stars of small teams will be sought after by the media, although the results of small teams are not good, but the pursuit of stars has nothing to do with the team, because of scoring four goals in the game, Zhang Tiehan became the best player of the game, and also received the attention of the media all over Italy.
This can be seen in the post-match press conference.
The media who came to the Olympic Stadium for interviews had no interest in the coaches of the two teams, Mandolini and Drinel, and when it was the reporter's turn to ask questions, almost all of what they asked was related to Zhang Tiehan, and as for what Drinel and Mandolini said before, they did not listen carefully at all.
Mandolini could only express his frustration at the game, "We were ahead, but who would have thought he was in such good shape! I don't want to make excuses for Atalanta's defeat, we have a quality gap with Roma, but the key to the loss is him, his first three goals have made our players lose their morale. β
The 'he' in Mandolini's mouth is naturally worthy of Zhang Tiehan.
All the reporters looked at Mandolini sympathetically, this guy's luck is really bad. I believe that Zhang Tiehan's four balls will definitely impress him.
Drinel originally wanted to talk about his own tactics, which was a summary of the whole Roma team in half a season, and it was also the iconic tactics of Rome in the future, he hoped that his tactics could be recognized by the media, but obviously reporters did not like to hear him talk about tactics, and only wanted to hear his opinion on Zhang Tiehan.
"What do you think of Zhang's four goals?"
"Can you comment on the next table? Did his watch exceed your expectations? β
"What do you think of Zhang's salary? A lot of people think Zhang deserves better treatment......"
"Your new formation. 4231, is it tailor-made for tensor? β
"Does Zhang's table have anything to do with the new tactics?"
Some of these questions are related to the game, and some have nothing to do with the game, but they all involve Zhang Tiehan, involving sensitive issues, and it is naturally inconvenient for Drinel to answer, such as Zhang Tiehan's contract issue, the salary he received is obviously not in line with the treatment of the team's top scorer, but Drinel has no right to decide in this regard. That's a matter for the rest of the club, he's just in charge of managing the team and leading the team to play well.
Thankfully, there are some questions about new tactics.
'My tactics are for the whole of Roma and not for one person, but obviously he's adapting to the new tactics and that's good news because I can let go and get the players to get used to it when we can use it. At that time, Roma would be a world powerhouse! Drinel said with confidence.
It's just that reporters don't believe much in what he calls the 'world powerhouse', and most of them still pay attention to Zhang Tiehan. They are not interested in the new tactics to bring Roma or anything, not to mention, they have never heard of a team changing because of a tactic, and there are many problems in Roma, and they are not solved by a new tactic.
The next question was about Zhang Tiehan, such as his private life. For example, his girlfriend and all kinds of lace news, and some reporters also mentioned Zhang Tiehan's poor car, "He is already a big star, but his car is not as good as the ordinary staff of the Roma club", a reporter mentioned this.
Drinel's explanation for this is: Zhang Tiehan was very nostalgic and unwilling to change cars.
But the reporters didn't believe it, they began to suspect that the Club of Rome had a special treatment of Zhang Tiehan, or that Rome was now unable to pay salaries, and Zhang Tiehan had no money to change his car, these were malicious speculations, but reporters liked to do so.
In the end, Drinel simply stopped talking, and he realized that whatever he said was wrong, and as a manager, it was not right to discuss the 'lace news' of the players with reporters.
The reporters were very dissatisfied with Drinel's attitude, they could only interview Zhang Tiehan, but Zhang Tiehan was not so easy to interview, but some reporters were lucky enough to find Zhang Tiehan, Cassano and others who had left the stadium on the streets around the Olympic Stadium, and they were about to go to celebrate the victory.
Zhang Tiehan and others were interviewed and said some questions about the game.
The next day, the front page of the local media "Football Life" in Rome was a photo of Zhang Tiehan raising his hand and smiling, which looked a little arrogant, but it made the Roma fans who liked him full of favor, with the headline 'I will try to score more goals', which was what Zhang Tiehan said to reporters after the game, and he wanted to pass this sentence on to Roma fans.
The Roman media hyped Zhang Tiehan.
They changed their pre-Christmas style, and they were not stingy with all kinds of praise, which was also a helpless choice, to be honest, they didn't like Zhang Tiehan, one was Zhang Tiehan's character, which made him have some small contradictions with the Roman media, and the other was that Zhang Tiehan was not Italian, he was of Chinese descent, and the racial discrimination in Italy was still very strict, and Zhang Tiehan's nationality was German, that is, he was likely to become an enemy of Italy in the future, which was also a big reason why the Roman media didn't like Zhang Tiehan.
But now they can only tout Zhang Tiehan, otherwise Roma fans will call one complaint after another!
Zhang Tiehan conquered the fans with his watch, and conquering the fans is equivalent to indirectly conquering the media, the media is established on the basis of the fans, the fans are their food and clothing parents, no matter what they do, they can't offend the food and clothing parents.
But the media still have questions, especially those outside Rome, and their questions are - how long can Zhang Tiehan's madness last? Will it be the same in the next game?
The problem is quite large......
Since joining Roma, Drinel came to Rome to make Zhang Tiehan the starting striker, and his form has continued, scoring goals in Serie A and the Champions League. He doesn't seem to have a 'goal drought' at all, and his table is even more amazing than Inter Milan's king Adriano, which is amazing, especially when Zhang Tiehan has been scoring goals and is getting better and better.
His table is really getting better and better!
From the start of the game to meet the strong team, the game is not easy to play. By the middle of the season, it would have been nice to meet a team like AC Milan, and now that it's Christmas, Zhang Tiehan can score four goals in a Serie A game, which is a complete testament to how good his form is.
While discussing Zhang Tiehan, after the heat of the big win had passed, they also discussed the tactical changes that Drinel brought to Roma.
Now Roma's tactics and formations are obvious, and Drinel has created a new set of tactics for Roma, which is simply to increase the attack. And it's a quick attack, relying on strong front-court ability, to constantly create chances, and win the game with goals.
Attacking football is what fans like, which means the game will be good, but in the current defense-oriented world, it is not casual to say that the defense wins, and it is a bit of a fool's dream for Roma to rely on such tactics to 'play the world'. After all, not every team is Arsenal, and Roma is a big cut behind Arsenal. What's more, even Arsenal's results in international competitions are not good, they can conquer England, but they can't conquer Europe.
The next thing that made the Italian media realise was to compare Roma to Arsenal. It's really a bit of a 'lifting' of Rome.
Not to mention the lineup, tactics, strength, stars, etc., there is a big gap between the two teams, from the perspective of a modern football club, compared with Arsenal, which spent 300 million euros to build a new stadium and can maintain a stable economic situation. Rome, which has no expenses but has been losing money year after year, is too big a gap.
Not to mention the achievements, the economic gap is something that Rome cannot bridge.
After the match against Atalanta, an incident occurred in Rome, which the Italian media described as "Roma has only completed the 'final step towards normalization'".
On this day, Sensi made a third payment of 26.6 million euros, thus paying off all debts for the two years 2002 and 2003. Since 2002, Roma owes 250 million euros to banks, a huge debt that has left Rome under numerous threats of not being able to register.
Sensi struggled to pay off these debts, and finally succeeded with three major measures.
Firstly, it has significantly reduced its personnel costs and saved 150 million euros, and secondly, it has reached an agreement with Sky and Mediaset, two major pay TV broadcasters, to receive an initial TV broadcast fee of 64.41 million euros (a total of 124 million euros will be paid to Rome over three years); Last but not least, the Bank Capitalia bought a 49% stake in Petroitalia (the main shareholder of Roma) in March this year, and the funds were secured. However, Rome still has 37.8 million euros in taxes for the first quarter of 2004 that are outstanding, and about 86.5 million euros of long-term debt to be repaid.
While this is good news, the bad news is that the contract between Petroitro and Capitalia stipulates that if Sensi does not transfer some of its other assets by December 2005, then 2% of the entire oil company (including Roma) will be transferred to the bank, meaning that Capitalia will become the largest shareholder in Rome.
Sensi has been in charge of Rome for many years, and has paid a lot for Rome, even if some Roma fans question Sensi's ability, but they will never question Sensi's love for Rome, it is a kind of love that pays for nothing, no one wants the Roma club to achieve good results more than Sensi, and he will never let the power in his hands go away, he must do something to make up for it.
As a result, there has been a lot of media speculation that Sensi is likely to consider having some of his players in the transfer market in the winter and next summer.
Del Vecchio, D'Agostino, Satol, Daku and others are all likely to transfer out, and if you want to maintain the healthy development of the club, Sensi will even have to consider selling some key players such as Cassano, Zhang Tiehan, Mancini, etc., and only in this way can the development of the Roma club really move towards health.
After the brutal economic crisis of winning the title in 2001, Sensi should be well aware that the health of the club is much more important than the title.
Despite two consecutive wins in the league and a big win over Atalanta, the Roma club itself still has a lot of problems, many media have also made some relevant reports, every team's players know the club's problems, and there are many rumors outside, Mancini, Zhang Tiehan, Cassano, Del Vecchio, and even the new talented midfielder De Rossi and the team's core Totti are all mentioned in the report, they may be sold by the club.
This kind of thing has a big impact on the team.
After all, everyone knows that although these are just rumors, it is a fact that the club of Rome has a crisis, such as Montella, although he has just renewed his contract with the club of Rome, it is also possible to be sold, after all, his annual salary of more than 5 million big contract, is a big burden on the club, if you sell him, not only can you get a large transfer fee, but also be able to let go of a burden, and the benefits will be great once and again.
Zhang Tiehan and Cassano do not have the problem of big contracts, but their value is extremely high, and they can directly bring a large amount of transfer income to the club.
Totti...... The rumors between him and Real Madrid have not stopped.
It's a problem that Roma have to face, and it also makes many people in the team have their own ideas.
Zhang Tiehan is the same.
He knew that the club had all kinds of difficulties, which was different from when Sensi asked him to come to Rome, at that time he agreed without thinking too much, and he also felt that Roma was a good choice, but only here did he know that small clubs have the benefits of small clubs, and big clubs have problems with big clubs, but his idea is very simple, for the time being, he doesn't need to think about transfers or anything, after all, it was at least summer, and now there is still half a season to play before summer.
All he's going to do is play these games.
As for how the summer is, it's still too early to say, as long as he can play a good game, the table is good, no matter what, he is worthy of the Roma club, worthy of the Roma fans, even if he wants to leave, it will be an honorable departure.
He chose Rome because he came for honor, and even if there were many crises in Rome, he would strive for honor through his own efforts.
He told Cassano about this thought, and Cassano told sΓΉ others, and as soon as these spread, the minds of many people in Rome stabilized, and they felt that Zhang Tiehan was right, after all, summer is still early, and the economic crisis of the Club of Rome is not a day or two, and it is too early to think about that, and it is more important to work hard than anything else.
In this situation, Roma ushered in a new round of league competition, and their opponents were Chievo, who had been excellent since 2000. (To be continued......)