Golden Greenery

( ) When Manchester City returned to Europe from the United States, they did not return directly to Manchester. Instead, they went to Iceland first. The team met in Reykjavik and conducted a training camp.

August in Iceland is the season of gods. When you come to Iceland, you have to mention the miraculous rise of Icelandic football. How this small country of ice and fire with a population of 300,000 eliminated England and entered the quarterfinals in last year’s European Championship, and how it defeated England in the 2018 Russian World Cup European Qualifiers. , beating Croatia, Ukraine and Turkey in the same group to rank first. How can you be so virtuous?

In those years, although Icelandic football was better than the four major European teams of Liechtenstein, Andorra, Faroe Islands, and San Marino, it was still only as good as it was for self-entertainment and aloofness. Icelanders were rich. At that time, they were one of the richest countries in the world. Football was just a pastime after being full and thinking.

But such a paradise-like football was shattered by a game thirteen years ago.

In 2004, Icelandic League Champion Hafnarfjörður participated in the UEFA Cup and met the fierce but unknown Bundesliga newcomer Madiborg in the first round.

The first round was okay, a 0:3 loss at home was a decent loss, but in the second round as a guest at the Victor Stadium in Hannover, the score of 15:0 directly sent the Icelanders back to ancient times.

15:0 set a single-game point difference record in the three major European Cups. Zhuo Yang's nine goals alone was also a personal single-game scoring record in the three major cups. Both records still stand today. Madiburg was the UEFA Cup champion that year and won it again.

You can lose, but you can't lose so shamelessly. Icelandic football didn't cry. They remembered this day with red eyes.

That year was the richest era in Iceland, which had universal finance. The country and the people had countless spare money. Football is a flower, all dependent on the land, so Iceland began a large-scale construction project and built dozens of indoor football fields across the country, making this sport that originally only existed in the summer a full-time sport.

Don’t be fooled by Iceland’s population of 300,000. They should be regarded as part of Europe as a whole, especially Northern Europe. Excellent physical fitness, no matter the cost of financial investment, and efforts to recruit players with Icelandic origins, Icelandic football soon moved from semi-amateur to full-professional.

Rich Icelanders only did one thing in those years - play football. Ten years later, there were registered players across the country. There are 300,000 people, excluding half of the women, and excluding the elderly and children, which means that almost all adult men of appropriate age and suitable for sports are playing football.

With such enthusiasm, it is difficult to play football well.

To this day, almost all the players of the Icelandic national team play in professional leagues in the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Don’t take it seriously that the main goalkeeper is a director and the head coach is a dentist.

It’s nothing more than versatile. Zhuoyang is still a piano professor, can we say that he is an amateur player?

Today, the Viking war cry resounds over Europe. The happy Icelanders have long forgotten the frustrations of the past, and Zhuo Yang has no idea that he has done such a big thing.

There is a deeper reason for the rise of Icelandic football - everyone from the private sector to the government needs to use an image to fight against the debt pressure of European powers.

To put it bluntly, it is to show one's self-righteous spirit.

All the people in Iceland play in finance. In fact, financial speculation is their number one sport. But when the global financial crisis hit in 2008, it was these opportunists who played the game, and Iceland went bankrupt, both as a country and as a private sector.

After becoming the only bankrupt country in the world, each Icelander owes an average debt to the bank equivalent to seven or eight years of household income.

The great news is that Icelanders held a referendum to pay back the banks. You bite me?

They were so angry that Britain, their biggest creditor, almost sent warships to destroy them, and the elegant old lady in Buckingham Palace overturned the dinner table.

Let me tell you, contract spirit and gentlemanly demeanor, these words have been invented just to tell others.

The big island of ice and fire was first discovered by Viking pirates, and it was also the first pirates to settle here. Their descendants robbed them without knowing it, but they could rely on them without knowing it. This is a bloodline inheritance.

The legendary and famous female pirate "Black Anne" placed her fleet in Iceland, and her incredibly rich treasures were buried somewhere in Iceland, but people found them.

Legend has it that Black Anne's husband was an unknown duke in Europe.

Zhuo Yang didn't know Hei Anni and had never heard of it.

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Manchester City came to Reykjavik not only for training, but also for a warm-up match against the Hammers West Ham United.

Gundogan and Bernardo Silva, who did not go to North America for training with the team, also came here to meet with the team. New players, left back Benjamin Mendy, also met with their new teammates. .

Monaco will definitely become the biggest player supermarket this summer. The transfer window is only halfway open, and the Ligue 1 champions have sold half of their main lineup. Monaco's four major transfers were sold for a total of 340 million. Mbappe went to Paris, Bakayoko went to Chelsea, and B and Mendy were harvested by Manchester City.

With a worth of 52 million pounds, equivalent to 57.5 million euros, the 23-year-old Mendy has suddenly become the most valuable defender in football. A year ago, Monaco bought him from Marseille for a mere 12 million euros, which is a huge sum. good business.

Mendy was the best left back in Ligue 1 last season, and his performance is indeed worthy of such an increase. Mbappe, who did not make the best team of the season, sold for 180 million, not to mention Mendy.

But what Manchester City wants is not the best left back, but the best left back that meets Guardiola's tactical requirements, so it remains to be seen whether Mendy is worth so much money in Manchester City.

But today we can't watch it. Mendy came to the meeting with a minor injury. He can only watch from a distance but not play with him. He can't play.

Zhuoyang can't play either, not because he can't play, but because five days later there will be a European Super Cup between Manchester City and Manchester City, and Manchester City will have to practice their lineup and tactics for that game. But because Zhuoyang grabbed Ronaldo's ankle in the Champions League final, he was suspended for two games due to his red card and couldn't play in the Super Cup, so there was nothing wrong with him in today's preview.

When returning from the United States, Guardiola had been worried that Zhuo Yang would use this excuse to leave the organization and return to Manchester City alone. Who knows where he would go after he broke the deal.

So Lao Gua has been thinking about the reasons for rejection, whether soft or hard, not to mention moral kidnapping. Mendy, who is not very agile in his legs and feet, must come to join him. This is the excuse of "everyone is in order", with the purpose of blocking Zhuoyang's mouth.

Unexpectedly, Zhuo Yang never mentioned the matter of leaving the group, but happily came to Iceland together. Something is wrong, either a scam or a monster. At first, Lao Gua thought that Kou Kou had also arrived, and that Her Royal Highness the Princess was visiting Reykjavik, but it was not the case.

There are indeed monsters, and Zhuo Yang saw Fa Xiao Haiyang here. With the ocean, there is an Icelandic girl.