Meazza Stadium.

Inter Milan "home" against AC Milan.

Players from both sides are entering the stadium.

Inter Milan lined up a 541 formation today:

Striker: Milito.

Midfielders: Sneijder, Cambiaso, Guarin, Alvarez.

Defenders: Yuto Nagatomo, Lucio, Samuel, Zanetti, McConn.

Goalkeeper: Cesar.

Compared to the Super Cup against AC Milan, the starting XI has changed a lot, with more than half of the players being replaced.

The formation has also changed.

Clearly, Stramaccioni was jealous of AC Milan's invincible attacking combination, so he lined up a back five and was ready to defend and then counter-attack.

That's exactly what they set out before the game.

Captain Zanetti made a cameo appearance at right-back in this line-up, and once AC Milan were sluggish and tired, Stramaccioni could make a tactical change without making any changes.

Pushing McCone into midfield, Zanetti moved to right-back, the formation changed to a more attacking 451 or 4231, and then the horn of attack was blown.

Including the current midfield configuration, it is also set up to curb the operation of Milan's midfield.

In particular, letting Guarin watch Kante is the top priority of this style of play, and Stramaccioni also repeatedly told Guarin before the game, and carefully studied Kante's technical characteristics with him and made a perfect plan.

Merely......

Now Stramaccioni is standing in front of the home team's bench, staring blankly at the Milan players on the pitch.

What about N'Golo Kante?

What about Salah, Mane, Ibrahimovic?? ……

The lineup on Pan Yi's side was actually not a single main force!!

Forward: Inzaghi.

Forwards: Seedorf, Aubameyang.

Defenders: Van Bommel, Ambrosini, Flamini.

Defenders: Antonini, Nesta, Mex, Desiglio.

Goalkeeper: Abbiati.

“……？？？”

At this time, there are countless question marks in Stramaccioni's mind.

Dare to love that the information he sent to the Milan training ground to reconnoiter is all fake, and Pan Yi deliberately acted it?

No, it's not right.

Isn't the Milan starter in front of him just showing up at their training ground and practicing against another team?

The only thing that is wrong is that Stramaccioni and they have made it wrong which side is the main force and which side is the substitute......

Stramaccioni couldn't help but be jaw-dropping at Pan Yi's audacity.

In such an important derby, which is related to winning the championship, Pan Yi actually sent a full rotation lineup???

What also baffled Stramaccioni was the tactics used by Milan today.

Pan Yi actually arranged for the team to play the 4321 formation, which is the legendary Christmas tree.

This was also a tactic that Carlo Ancelotti used to play in the early years when he was still in Milan.

But at that time, Ancelotti's use of this tactic was actually a helpless move.

Under his hands, he hoarded four No.10 players such as Pirlo, Seedorf, Rivaldo, and Rui Costa, so An Fat came up with such a method, and the result also achieved very good results.

This formation can accumulate a large number of personnel in the midfield, so that a more cohesive system can be formed in the midfield and backfield, and make it difficult for the opponent to tear through the middle.

On the premise of defensive stability, this formation can also control the midfield well, and then use the individual ability of the frontcourt players to quickly counterattack.

But it also has some flaws, otherwise this formation would have been popular a long time ago.

For example, in the space of the two flanks, it is easy to create a situation where you can defend more with less because there are no wingers in this formation.

And if the opponent is the kind of team that makes better use of space, in the process of frequent transfers, the range of movement of the midfield three players will increase, and it will also be easy to cause instability in the system or be easily pushed around the hinterland by the opponent.

In the current world football, most teams attach great importance to the role of wingers, and breakthroughs and crosses on the side are very frequent, so the 4321 Christmas tree will be very difficult in the face of such opponents, which leads to the fact that the application of this formation is not large.

But now, Pan Yi has used this formation to deal with Stramaccioni's Inter!

Since the 4321 Christmas tree is essentially a set of defensive counter-attacking tactics that are biased towards the middle, then Stramaccioni's pre-match predictions have been completely disappointed, and his deployment against Milan is out of the question.

As for keeping an eye on N'Golo Kante or something...... I could only go to the bench and stare at his silly face.

In short, the current Stramaccioni is completely confused.

This surprised him, but also gave him some bad premonitions.

Pan Yi is a person......

With this courage, Stramacioni also felt that it was not simple.

Thinking about it from another perspective, if he was an assistant coach and finally got a chance to directly command the team to win the league championship, he would never dare to take any risks.

And Pan Yi took all the risks he could.

It's not bad for those players in midfield, AC Milan do rotate them a lot.

However, at the back, especially at centre-back, there have been few injuries due to the consistent play of Virgil van Dijk and Thiago Silva, so Nesta and Mexes have rarely been played.

It can be said that in a stable team, apart from the goalkeeper position, it is the central defenders who do not need to rotate the least.

And in such an important game today, Pan Yi dared to send the two of them to start at the same time, which is really incredible.

So Stramacioni aimed at Pan Yi from time to time.

He really wanted to know, what was going on in the head of this dragon boy?

……

Pan Yi's idea is actually very simple.

It's about protecting the Champions League.

With the second leg of the semi-final against Chelsea just three days after the clash with Inter, he will have to make sure his key players are in the best shape for that game.

In his mind, the Champions League is always higher than the league.

Besides, the league championship is almost in the bag now, and it is not much worse to get it sooner or later.

As for "stepping on the sworn enemy in the same city to win the championship", "it is rare for an assistant coach to perform once", and even including the "breaking the 100-point record" that he said to Allegri before, it is not on Pan Yi's consideration now, at least the priority is very low.

He has now received offers from other teams, and he has to prove that he is not in this game or two.

And with the existing substitute lineup against the main team of Inter, there must be a gap in hard power, including the overall run-in is also average.

Combined with the actual situation of the personnel, such as the lack of wingers, the sharp counterattack of the center forward, and the abundance of personnel in the back...... Wait, Pan Yi decided to use the Christmas tree formation.

This is based on the characteristics of the existing players in the team, a defensive counter-attacking formation based on the attitude of the underdog.

This is also the reason why Pan Yi was a little low-key in the pre-match interview.

It's just that Pan Yi didn't expect that Inter Milan actually discharged a defensive formation, and there were no serious wingers.

"If you look at it this way...... Is there a chance to make a wave? Pan Yi glanced sideways at Stramacioni and pondered.