The game had been played for 20 minutes, and although the Milan and Fiorentina players were both looking for opportunities to score and were constantly trying, they were never able to find the back of the net.

Compared with the Fiorentina players, the Milan players were obviously out of shape except for a few minutes of good football in the opening game, except for Desailly, Panucci, Rossi and Marco Simeone, who did not participate in the Shijie Cup, played normally, and even the most consistent old captain Baresi made a few undeserved passing errors.

If it weren't for Rossi's excellent performance, high and low, Milan would have been scored by the Fiorentina five minutes ago.

Capello stood on the sidelines, looking at the Milan players who seemed to be full of energy on the field, but in fact they were strong and capable, his brows were tightened, he did not expect that this time the American Shijie Cup would have such a far-reaching impact on the Milan players.

At the beginning of the summer training camp, Capello thought that the crux of the team's sluggish form was that many players were seriously lacking in physical reserves, and that these players gradually diluted their desire for glory after winning a series of championships......

In response to these difficult problems, Capello, who is proud and extremely confident, has done everything he can to endure the difficulties he faced for the first time in his coaching career.

Just as the problems he found were gradually brought into his control and everything began to go on the right track, Capello was surprised to find that the problems in Milan now seemed to be far from being as simple as he imagined......

Since the beginning of the summer training camp, the biggest characteristic of the Milan players in the past month or so is the ups and downs in their performance against their opponents. The "performance" itself on the field is not the focus of a "rational" coach like Capello, but if the ups and downs of a team's "performance" are often inversely proportional to the "competitive state" of the players, it cannot but attract Capello's special attention.

Just imagine, if a team is in good form but can't win the opponent, when it's not in good form, it can win inexplicably. So, even the slightest bit of dedication on the part of a manager can't really be happy, because the situation is completely out of the manager's control - if the outcome of the game can be manipulated by the "unwarranted" things of good luck and bad luck, what else can the managers who are hoarse on the training pitch and often fidgeting on the sidelines? Wouldn't it be nice to leave it to luck directly!

The soccer ball is round, but the pitch is square! As Coach Lobanovski said, anything can happen on the football pitch, but competitive sports always have its own rules, and all the manager has to do is prepare for most of what will happen on the pitch.

When Milan defeated Inter Milan next door in the warm-up match, and then lost to Cremonese strangely, when the suspense of the game became more and more unpredictable, when the unbelievable happened to Milan again and again, AC Milan, which has always been "stable" in recent years, was finally engraved by its head coach Capello as "abnormal".

Under the double pressure of surprise and anxiety, Capello, who broke out with a sense of responsibility, vaguely felt the "unusual" of the Milan players through the team's "instability".

Through a chance encounter, he finally discovered the crux of this "unusual" player, which is a "curse" imposed on many of Milan's main players, a strange thing called "Shijie Cup Nightmare".

Shijie Cup Nightmare, for this kind of torture that is not simply psychological or volitional, Capello, who can't empathize, is a little powerless to deal with this kind of problem, even if he exerts some external force in a targeted manner, it is better than nothing. Because, the so-called "curse" always has a specific object, and to really open this "curse", it is mainly dependent on the "heart" of the person.

Capello, an outsider, is a "Shijie Cup nightmare" that is common to Milan players who represent the Italian national team in the Shijie Cup. There was no clear idea at first, and Capello's knowledge of it was entirely accidental, thanks to a secret conversation with the old captain Baresi.

The majesty of Capello's three years in charge of Milan and his own "seniors" with Baresi (Capello played for Milan from 1976 to 1980) determined the "seriousness" of the secret conversation. Fabio Capello's "Who would you like to play with at centre-back?" "Let the old captain feel it instantly, the already very serious atmosphere in this room is a little heavier.

As a former captain of both Milan and Italy, Baresi is well aware of what the unsmiling and majestic words of the coach in front of him mean behind them.

It's not that he can't make a choice – whether it's the European Champions League final in May, where he faced Barcelona at the top; In the Shijie Cup in the United States, Paolo Maldini did his job as a "temporary" centre-back in the absence of injury, but now there are two ironclad centre-backs in the squad - himself and Billy Costa Curta.

Capello asked Baresi this way, which means that he is so unhappy with Costacuta, who made frequent low-level mistakes in the warm-up games, that he has already begun to plan to break up the pair, which has been hailed by the European media as "the best centre-back combination".

Baresi's reluctance to take the initiative to "destroy" the golden combination with Costacuta is mainly due to Baresi's trust in the ability of his centre-back partner Costacuta, and of course, the "master and apprentice" status between Costacuta and himself.

It was with this consideration that Capello's proposal to Baresi to "replace Costa Kuta" was firmly "rejected" by captain Baresi. When Capello asked Baresi why he made this choice, the captain inevitably mentioned the "Shijie Cup nightmare" that Capello did not know - the "Shijie Cup nightmare" that existed in all the Milan players who participated in the Shijie Cup final.

Perhaps as a footballer, Capello has been away from the field for too long, and the traces of time have made Capello suddenly discover his strangeness to something new. Baresi's narrative made him have to re-perceive the shijie behind the players hidden on the green field.

The American Shijie Cup final, which he thinks he is very "familiar with" (as a top Italian coach, watching all the classic game footage is their most basic homework), it turned out to leave such a deep "psychological shadow" in the hearts of Italian players, which is not simply the "fate" of "penalty defeat and defeat" that has continued from the 1990 Italian Shijie Cup to the present; Nor is it the "penalty fear" that only happened to a few people such as Massaro and Baresi (after that final, many Milan players who participated in the Shijie Cup final refused to take the penalty), and every detail of the decisive battle at the Rose Bowl Stadium became an unforgettable and lingering haze for the players of the Azzurri like a curse.

The terrible thing about the "curse" is not that everything is unbearable, but that kind of details that penetrate the bones, and the "imprint" of the new game is constantly infused with the "imprint" of the time when they are familiar, and sometimes, the player with such a "nightmare imprint", even if there is a "short circuit" on the field for a second, is very fatal, it will be enough to ruthlessly take away the victory that the team should have won.

Capello is lucky, as the head coach, he can allow the old captain Baresi to "confess" to himself without reservation; He was also unlucky, because he was also the head coach and soon witnessed Costa Curta being possessed by this "Shijie Cup nightmare" at the San Siro Stadium in Milan......