Coaching career started as a college team coach

April 6, 2018.

Rome Olympic Stadium.

The blue ocean was surging, and the cheers sounded so harsh to Wei Le. At this time, Wei Le, standing in front of the visiting team's technical area, crossed his arms and looked a little wooden.

The score was 2:0, and the time was 40 minutes.

It was not until shortly after the game started that Wei Le realized where their thinking was missing a link. They considered whether they should attack or defend, but they didn't expect why Lazio couldn't take the initiative to defend?

Of course, playing at home, everyone basically didn't plan to be conservative at home; of course, with a 6-2 victory in the last game, normal people would continue to attack while taking advantage of this momentum; of course, Lazio's morale was high. But can this infer that Lazio will definitely attack?

In fact, it can't.

But Lazio, led by Inzaghi, has basically been using an aggressive offensive style of play, which has caused Wei Le to fall into a misunderstanding of thinking. Because the news was unknown, he could only think about the possible tactics of this game based on the usual tactics of Inzaghi.

Even when he used his system to simulate at night, the system predicted that Inzaghi might use an offensive style of play in this game based on the current information. This made him relax his vigilance even more, and he spent time to simulate one or two games and went to bed directly.

But these are all excuses. In the final analysis, it was Wei Le himself and the Wolves coaching staff who underestimated the enemy.

"We underestimated the enemy." Wei Le turned around and said to Celars. Celars nodded.

In theory, the Wolves have no capital to underestimate the enemy. They were promoted from the second-level league last season. Those traditional giants are out of reach for them. They play the role of challengers in almost every game.

In this game against Lazio, when Lazio won the Serie A championship and the Italian Cup championship, the Wolves were still wandering in the English League One!

How dare they underestimate the enemy?

But maybe the victory after victory made Wei Le relax his vigilance, or maybe the continuous schedule made the players and coaches a little numb; or maybe the previous defeat to Manchester City made Wei Le a little disappointed, affecting his calmness. But in any case, for Lazio's away game, they obviously did not make special preparations and plans like before the game against Dortmund.

Why not think about it in advance, if Lazio starts with a defensive counterattack, how to deal with it? Why doesn't Wei Le do more simulations in the system?

Why not?

You know, the preparations for the knockout match against Dortmund started on the day they knew that the opponent was Dortmund. They thought about five or six possible starting lineups and possible tactics of their opponent's head coach Steger.

Wei Le did eleven or twelve simulations in the system, constantly polishing his tactics, until the last few games were basically able to achieve a complete victory, he was sure that he had found a way to deal with Dortmund.

He had sufficient expectations for the result of that game. They arranged special training programs and asked substitute players to play Dortmund players to practice how to target the personal characteristics of Dortmund players in advance. Therefore, Wei Le could confidently tell the players before the game that he was confident of winning this game.

What about the game against Lazio?

But the fact is that no one thought of doing this, or thought of it, but felt that it was not important and did not do it. Wei Le thought carefully, whether it was himself or the team, there was a kind of "mysterious confidence", that is, he did not know where the source of confidence was, but it was confidence.

Sometimes, it is a good thing to be confident, especially when a team is capable. But now it is obviously not prepared and not 100% sure, that is conceited, that is, underestimate the enemy.

The result is that Wolves are now two goals behind before the end of the first half of the first round of the Europa League quarter-finals.

The development of the game exceeded Wei Le's expectations from the beginning.

Lazio turned 3-5-2 into 5-3-2!

Some teams in the Chinese League also used 3-5-2 when learning the Italian style of play, but because the players did not understand football well, the space behind the wingbacks on both sides was very large, which would lead to counterattacks.

The wingbacks had to retreat to a relatively backward position, making the entire formation 5-3-2, and the effect of the wingbacks participating in the attack could not be achieved at all.

From 3-5-2 to 5-3-2 in fact, these teams in the Chinese League were forced to do so, but at the beginning of the Lazio game, Wei Le discovered that Inzaghi was deliberately playing 5-3-2!

They piled up in the backcourtFull of people, it seems that they are going to defend from the first minute.

"Dare to play like this at home?!" Wei Le was shocked. He didn't expect Lazio to have such courage. Obviously, the previous games were won by attacking, but in this game, they resolutely chose to retreat and defend.

But he was just surprised and didn't think there was any problem.

Until the fifth minute, the first goal happened.

Because of the long-term attack, the Wolves players were also a little anxious. De Paul, who was in the defensive midfielder position, went directly to the place almost parallel to the front midfielder to organize the attack, leaving Rodri alone in the backcourt.

In addition, because of Tierney's absence, the radical Alphonso Davies basically stood on the sideline, which was equivalent to the position of a winger.

Trossard, who was in the front midfielder position, was knocked out of the north by the tall and strong Italian defenders. And Van de Beek, the front midfielder, was squeezed out of the dangerous area and had to control the ball in the midfield.

At this time, the Wolves' formation was very deformed. It was hard to say what kind of formation the Wolves were in. If I had to say it, it might be 3-1-2-4.

It was too radical and had lost the balance between offense and defense. But when Wei Le discovered this, the accident happened at this time.

The Wolves' attack was ended by an irresponsible cross. Alphonso Davies was still raising his hand to apologize to Jota in the middle. Goalkeeper Strakosha held the ball in his arms, stood up, and began to look for people in the frontcourt.

Then, he made a long pass forward!

Bad!

Milinkovic, who is over 1.9 meters tall, is one of the players with the most successful headers in Serie A this season. At the same time, although Lazio's 1.85-meter-tall Italian striker Immobile in the frontcourt does not have a clear height advantage, he can also compete for high balls based on his good jumping ability.

It is also in this context that Lazio's ball-holding players in the backcourt have the capital to avoid overly complicated midfield transmission, and instead directly use the high points in the frontcourt to adopt simple and clear high-altitude ball tactics.

In the list of successful long passes in the Serie A this season, Lazio goalkeeper Strakosha currently ranks fifth with more than 100 passes.

Wei Le became alert and shouted loudly for the players to concentrate, but when Milinkovic passed the ball over Rodri to Felipe Anderson next to him, the Wolves' backcourt could only pose a direct threat with three central defenders!