Chapter 332: Warm-up

“...... 2002 was the last year Real Madrid won the Champions League. Twelve years later, Real Madrid have gone through two Galactic periods, spending a total of more than a billion pounds on the world's superstars. But since 2005, Real Madrid has lost the Champions League round of 16 knockout rounds for six consecutive seasons, creating a bitter joke of 'Sixteen'. Now, 12 years later, Real Madrid are finally in the final, will they be waiting for their tenth trophy?"

The preview of the Champions League final was being shown on the TV screen, and the next was a highlight of Real Madrid's journey this season, especially the 4-0 win over Bayern Munich at Real Madrid, where Cristiano Ronaldo shook his palms back and forth in celebration of the goal.

Coupled with the various roars of the on-site commentary, it really makes people's blood boil.

After introducing Real Madrid, it was replaced by Borussia Dortmund.

"As Champions League winners last season, Borussia Dortmund had a miraculous season last season. But in fact, this season is even more miraculous, and with this season full of injuries, many people are not optimistic about their results this season. For a while, the league and the Champions League, the defending champions seemed to be about to collapse...... But who would have thought that at the end of the season, it would be such a team that would win the Bundesliga? Now they have beaten Simeone's Atletico Madrid to reach the Champions League final for the second season in a row. Since the Champions League restructured, no team has been able to successfully defend the title. This has become a 'spell'. So this time, will Dortmund, who miraculously reached the Champions League final, break the 'curse'?"

The same is to play Dortmund's Champions League road this season.

The highlight came in the first leg of the semi-finals, when Borussia Dortmund defeated Atletico Madrid in a home blitz.

The players of the Chinese national team sat in the restaurant of the hotel where they were staying, eating dinner and watching TV.

The Champions League final between Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund is just around the corner.

The players of the Chinese national team are waiting to watch the final live.

They don't just want to cheer for Zhou Yi and Yan Min, this is the "task" assigned to the team by the new head coach Lippi.

As a team that is going to participate in the World Cup, of course, you have to look at the world.

So how can you not watch the Champions League final, the world's most technical football game?

Watching such a high-level game can also improve the tactical literacy of the players, and at the same time open their eyes to what the top level of modern football really looks like, so that many people's impression of modern football is still stuck in the Tiki-taka label of a few years ago. None of the teams that reached this year's Champions League final played Tiki-taka football, Real Madrid clearly not, and Borussia Dortmund, despite their excellent passing ability, have a more versatile style.

Lippi hopes to get more out of his players by watching the Champions League final.

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While the television broadcasters were warming up for the final with various programmes, players from Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid had arrived at the final venue, the Stadium of Light in Lisbon, Portugal.

At the same time, the starting rosters for both sides are out.

For Real Madrid, Khedira replaced Alonso, who missed the final due to suspension, while Raphael Varane replaced the injured Pepe. Khedira has only played 117 minutes since last November, and Ancelotti's arrangement is very risky and under pressure.

The starting goalkeeper was Casillas. Prior to this Champions League final, Cassie played a La Liga game, which was the final round of La Liga and the second league game of the season for Casillas. Although Jose Mourinho has left Real Madrid, Casillas has not been the victor either, and he remains firmly on the bench after Carlo Ancelotti took over. At the same time, in order to take care of the face of the Real Madrid captain, Ancelotti adopted the strange method of rotation, that is, in cup competitions such as the Champions League and the Copa del Rey, Casillas was the starting goalkeeper, and in the league, Diego López was continued.

After Real Madrid reached the Champions League final, if they insisted on only letting Casillas play in the cup, then Casillas would face the embarrassing situation of not having a game to play for 24 days from April 30 to May 24.

This is very bad for Casillas, who is going to play in the Champions League final, because if he doesn't play for a long time, he can't maintain his form.

What will a goalkeeper who hasn't played for more than 20 days do in the Champions League final?

So in such a situation, Real Madrid finally arranged for Casillas to play two league games.

One was a make-up match in the 34th round of the league on May 7.

The other game is the final round of the league, where Real Madrid hosts Espanyol.

Although he played two league games, he only played those two games in 24 days, and Casillas's game volume was still far from enough......

When the time comes, in the final, no one can say what kind of performance he will be able to show.

In addition to goalkeeper Casillas, Real Madrid's starting defenders were right-back Carvajal, centre-back Varane and Ramos were a combination, and left-back was Coentrão instead of Marcelo. Luka Modric and Khedira and Di Maria in midfield, while Gareth Bale, Karim Benzema and Cristiano Ronaldo up front.

Borussia Dortmund's starting line-up was no different from before.

Goalkeeper Weidenfeller, right-back Piszczek, centre-backs Hummels and Papastathopoulos, left-back Schmelzer. Sven Bender and Zhou Yi, Yan Min and Reus in midfield, and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Mark in front.

It can be said that apart from the players who are injured and cannot play, both teams have fielded the strongest lineups they can field.

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When he went out to warm up, Zhou Yi did not observe the layout of the final venue of Guangmin Stadium, nor did he look at the TIFO of the fans on both sides on the stage, and he set his eyes on Casillas most of the time.

In fact, the final battle with this opponent, Zhou Yi has simulated it many times in the virtual space.

In countless simulations, he found a problem, but he wasn't sure if it would still appear in reality, so he now wanted to find some clues from it by watching Casillas warm up......

Real Madrid seemed to be consciously feeding Casillas the ball when they were warming up, asking him to find his form.

Zhou Yi noticed that Casillas was relatively steady when he received the shot. But when his teammates began to deliberately raise the ball to Casillas, Cassie made some mistakes, although not much, but they were taken into account by Zhou Yi.

In fact, Casillas has always had a weakness of receiving high balls, but he made up for it with excellent second reflexes, plus deliberately strengthened his training in this area, so this problem was not very prominent when he was in his prime. But as he gets older, and he hasn't played well in the past two seasons, his form has dropped significantly, and the problem has come to the fore again, and even a little ...... Fatal.

Casillas' inconsistency in receiving high balls stems from his personal height flaws.

Among the world's top goalkeepers, Casillas's height of only 1.85 meters is a shortcoming.

Compared with him, both Buffon and Neuer are more than 1.9 meters tall, Buffon is 1.91 meters, and Neuer is 1.93 meters, both height and flexibility. Even Sun Pan is one meter ninety meters tall.

The high ball is the weakness of Casillas that Zhou Yi observed in the virtual game, and he has not been well corrected in reality.

After seeing Casillas' performance, Zhou Yi took his gaze back and concentrated on his own warm-up, he had already got the information he wanted.

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After finishing the warm-up and returning to the locker room, Zhou Yi directly found Klopp and told the head coach what he observed during the warm-up.

"I didn't notice much of it before...... Klopp muttered as he listened. "But it's helpful for us. Thank you, Zhou Yi. ”

"You're welcome, coach, as much as you can. ”

"But very few players pay attention to those details. ”

Zhou Yi scratched his head, he couldn't tell the head coach that he noticed this when he found out that Casillas always made mistakes on the same issue in virtual matches again and again, right?

It seems that the long-term inability to play regularly and steadily has had a much greater impact on Casillas than most people think......