The Godfather of Football

"What bad luck!"

Under a black umbrella, Ye Qiu poked his head out and looked at the dark sky above. It was raining.

Not big, but enough to make people tired!

"I encountered this kind of weather in the first game. Damn it!" Ye Qiu didn't expect his second team debut to be like this.

Ricklink was used to it. "It rains a lot in the winter in the Netherlands. You'll get used to it. If you go to England, you will definitely be more depressed than here. The weather there will definitely drive you crazy!"

Ye Qiu smiled. In his previous life, he had learned about the weather in England from many reports. There was an English Channel across the way, but he didn't expect that there would be so much rain in the winter in the Netherlands. It was really depressing to think about it.

He scanned the stands behind him again. It was empty, with only a dozen umbrellas, one of which was Huang Chu's.

"Our second team is born by a stepmother, and the fans don't like it!" Ye Qiu was depressed. He thought that Ajax attached great importance to youth training, and there should be many people watching the second team's games. Now he found that there are only a few people, which is depressing.

"If the weather is good, there will probably be a hundred people, but in this kind of weather, who is willing to watch? I guess those are the parents or friends of the players!" Ricklink is still used to it.

If you do youth training, you really can't do it for a long time without a good attitude.

In this game, Ajax's second team met NEC Nijmegen's second team, which is also a century-old team in the Netherlands, but the youth training is relatively average, so it ranks in the middle and lower in the Youth League.

In this game, Ye Qiu still arranged the traditional 433 formation of Ajax, but made changes and adjustments in the specific division of labor.

The goalkeeper did not change, but Abidal and Heitinga were both arranged by him to the back line, with Heitinga playing as a central defender and Abidal as a left back. This was also a signal of Ye Qiu's changes and adjustments to the back line.

The right back in this game was a Dutch teenager named Van der Roo, who was not tall, but fast and flexible.

The midfield was still in a triangle position, with De Jong and Maduro dragging back and Sneijder rushing forward. On the right was a black player named Kulu who had performed well in the second team before. It was said that he was transferred from the Ajax club in Cape Town. Van der Vaart still appeared in the left winger position he was very familiar with.

Huntelaar was in charge of the forward line.

It can be said that Ye Qiu's starting lineup fully selected his own team and lineup, but only added some players from the original second team on a certain basis. After all, the elites of the original second team had been transferred to the first team, and some were loaned out, such as Van der Meide who was loaned to Twente, so he simply chose young players directly.

In this 433 formation, Ye Qiu adjusted the tasks. Van der Vaart's position was no longer pressing the opponent's defense line, but retreated, taking more back-insertion attacks and cutting into the middle, while Kulu and Van der Ru formed the offensive cooperation on the right, among which Van der Ru was in a relatively forward position and took more assists.

When the right back attacked, Abidal's position should be appropriately shrunk to the middle, and the defense line should be changed into a 3-back system. With De Jong and Maduro in front, it is enough to ensure the solidity of Ajax's defense line.

This is the case in theory, but it may not be achieved in practice, because it is necessary to consider the players' tacit understanding, overall cooperation, and the players' awareness and ability in running, assisting defense, and filling positions.

Many times, more time is still needed for rehearsal.

But as always, Ye Qiu's requirements for the team are still to push the ball forward as quickly as possible, to achieve one-touch as much as possible, and all players should run actively.

To this end, at the tactical meeting before the game, he specially instilled a new game concept into the players.

"From the first second of the game, everyone must concentrate all their energy on the game. Every action, every movement, and every pass must serve the game and must have a clear purpose. I can point out four points for this purpose!"

"One, ball possession, two, space, three, teammates, four, opponents!"

"I hope you can remember it firmly in the game and always ask yourself, why do I pass this ball? Why do I run here? Why do I do this action?"

"I believe that when you can do it, every action in the game has a purpose that meets these four requirements, then you will become a very successful top professional player!"

This is some of the gains he recently got from Sacchi's book. Although he is emphasizing the game, he will also emphasize this point in training next, striving to make the players must achieve the requirements that are closest to actual combat in every training, so that they can use it like an arm in the game.

And he finally began to understand that if his 11 players, every move on the court, had the purpose to meet these four requirements, then he had every reason to believe that this would become a strong team, an invincible strong team.

This was also the first time that he really found the way to train a strong team.

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The right side was the source of Ye Qiu's attack, but Ajax started with the left side.

Van der Vaart's skills and personal abilities are indeed excellent. As a left-footed player, he received a pass from the backcourt at the beginning of the game. After getting rid of a defensive player on the left, he passed the ball into the penalty area.

But unfortunately, before Huntelaar got to the point, the ball was cleared by the central defender of Nijmegen.

However, this attack also sounded the horn and confidence of Ajax's attack. After all, the second team has to surpass the opponent in strength, and it is playing at home. How can they be polite to the opponent?

It was raining, the grass and the ball were slippery, and the Ajax players advocated one-touch ball, resulting in many mistakes.

The first 20 minutes of the game looked more like a show of mistakes by the two teams.

The game was carried out in the 23rd minute with bumps and bruises, and Ajax took the lead in breaking the deadlock on the field.

Van der Vaart got the ball on the left and attracted the pressure of the defensive players. Seeing that he could not break through, he passed it to Sneijder. After the latter got the ball, he passed it straight to the opponent's penalty area before the opponent double-teamed him.

After Sneijder passed the ball, Huntelaar was already ready. He saw the direction of the ball and blocked the defensive player behind him with his body. He swung his right leg lightly and swept the ball with the inside of his right foot.

The ball hit the inside of Huntelaar's right foot, turned slightly, and almost stuck to the right post and went into the opponent's goal. It was very simple and clean, but the ball went in!

When Huntelaar shot, his body was squeezed by the opponent's defender, and he lost his balance and fell to the ground, covered with water. However, when he saw the ball fall into the opponent's goal line, he immediately grinned. This was his first goal for Ajax.

"Well done, big guy!" Van der Vaart came over and pulled Huntelaar up.

No matter who scored the goal, it was a good thing to score and win the game.

"You have to learn to score five or six goals in a row like you did before!" Sneijder also came over to congratulate Huntelaar on his goal. Obviously, he still remembered the game against Grafschap in the B2 team.

Huntelaar smiled awkwardly. He just wanted to play hard and perform well, so as to prove his strength in front of the Ajax coach and scouts, so that his favorite team would notice him. Not to mention, Ye Qiu came to him soon.

Thinking of this, Huntelaar couldn't help but look at the sidelines and found that Ye Qiu didn't know when he walked to the sidelines. He didn't care about the rain and gave him a thumbs up, "Well done, beautiful goal!"

This made Huntelaar feel a sense of satisfaction for no reason.

In his opinion, this represented the head coach's affirmation of his efforts and goals.

But Ye Qiu just stayed outside for a while, and returned to the coaching seat after the game resumed.

"This kid has solid basic skills, a steady stop, and accurate judgment of the ball path. He is a natural killer!" Ricklink is known as the Hawkeye. He has a good impression of the two players introduced by Ye Qiu, especially Huntelaar.

As a striker, although shooting sense, talent, speed and so on are important, stopping the ball is also very critical, because if you can't even stop the ball well, how can you make the next move?

Yes, there are also some top strikers who are not good at stopping the ball, but if you look closely, it is not difficult to find that the goal efficiency of those strikers who are not good at stopping the ball fluctuates greatly, which is a bit like a nervous knife, but those strikers who are good at stopping the ball are often more efficient and more stable.

There is no way to say which one is good and which one is not. Existence is reasonable, and the key is to see the trade-offs!

"The body is relatively thin and lacks confrontation!" Ye Qiu laughed.

"Only 16 years old, there is still a lot of time!" Roland thought this should not be a problem.

The current batch of second-team players are indeed young, only 15 or 16 years old. It will take at least three years for them to play the role of pillars in the first team.

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Sometimes, a football game is difficult at the beginning.

With the first goal, the situation opened up. Ajax, who took the initiative, began to become more confident, and their strength became smoother and smoother, and naturally dominated the situation on the court.

In the 41st minute, Kuluer and Van der Ruy cooperated on the right, using their speed to break through the opponent's defense and then made a cross from the bottom. Huntelaar made a lob pass in front of the crowd, and Van der Vaart was like a slippery loach in the crowd, and got in front of the opponent's goal. Facing Huntelaar's pass, he gently cushioned it with his left foot.

The ball was cushioned into the opponent's goal by Van der Vaart, and the goalkeeper of Nijmegen II didn't even have time to react.

2:0!

Ajax, who scored consecutive goals, seemed very happy, and each one looked extremely excited.

But unfortunately, there were no fans in the stands of the second team's home stadium. The only sound that could respond to their goal was the increasingly loud rain.

But at this moment, Ye Qiu walked out of the coaching booth again, walked to the sidelines, and clapped vigorously. He was still very young and understood the minds of young people to some extent. He knew that young people liked to be affirmed and encouraged, so sometimes when facing these young people, you have to use both kindness and force. In the end, adopting a strong pressure policy may not achieve good results.

With a score of 2:0, they returned to the locker room and the players changed into a set of uniforms provided by Adidas.

"You all did a great job in the first half!" Ye Qiu waited until everyone was ready before he began to summarize and arrange.

"But I want to say a few things. First, our midfield did not put enough pressure on the opponent in the front of the penalty area. De Jong and Maduro should be more active and proactive in pressing, but remember, be clean!"

For De Jong, Ye Qiu certainly would not forget what he did in his previous life, but he is now the coach of Ajax, and De Jong is a player that Ajax is very optimistic about. Naturally, he could not ban De Jong because of some things in his previous life, so he wanted to re-instill some defensive ideas into him.

"Also, we didn't pass the ball fast enough. I said we need to speed up the tempo. They are used to playing at a slow tempo. We speed up the tempo and beat the slow with speed. This is our advantage!"

"But no matter what, I am very satisfied with your performance in the first half, but I believe you can do better!"

Ye Qiu's requirements and emphasis made Ajax's midfield pressure tougher in the second half. The double defensive midfielders covered a larger area, giving strong pressure to the midfield of Nijmegen II. Once the ball was successfully intercepted, the ball was immediately transferred to the wing to launch an attack.

This set of tactical strategies helped Ajax quickly establish the advantage in the situation and score in the second half.

Hantrall scored another goal for Ajax II in the 52nd minute of the second half, rewriting the score to 3:0.

After that, in the 58th minute of the game, Sneijder took advantage of Van der Vaart's cross pass and shot from the front of the penalty area, expanding the score for Ajax to 4:0 again.

But just when Ajax's morale was high, Abidal was shown the second yellow card of the game by the referee for a small action, which turned into a red card and he was sent off the field. Nijmegen also got a penalty kick, which was scored by the opponent's forward, 4:1!

The advantage that Ajax II, who was one man short, had finally established was quickly equalized by the opponent. Especially when one man was short, although they could barely maintain the situation, it was not easy to gain an advantage again.

In the end, this game ended with Ajax defeating the opponent 4:1.

Ye Qiu felt that Abidal's foul was unnecessary, but he could understand it. After all, Abidal played in the amateur league before. It was undoubtedly impossible for anyone to ask such a player who came from a wild ball to have such good professionalism and tactical qualities in just one week.

Therefore, in the locker room after the game, he only reminded and exhorted Abidal for his unnecessary foul, but did not punish him at all, but continued to give patience and help.

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When Ye Qiu led the team back to the locker room on the bottom floor of the stands, Waters also watched the whole process of this game in front of the window of the head coach's office on the second floor of the first-team training building separated by a wire fence.

4:1!

He was not surprised by this score, because the strength of Ajax's youth training is absolutely unquestionable.

You know, the Ajax youth team led by Van Gaal at that time had the strength to compete with the professional teams in the Dutch League, so Waters was not surprised to defeat Nijmegen II.

He was thinking about more.

For example, Huntelaar who scored the goal and Abidal who was sent off with a red card, these two people did not belong to Ajax's youth training, but joined De Tokmost a week ago, and Waters knew nothing about this.

What does this mean?

This means that Ye Qiu has completely ignored him!

Recently, there is a rumor in De Tokmost that he is excluding Ye Qiu, so he prevented Ye Qiu from being an assistant coach in the first team.

He did not deny this. He did not advocate driving Westerhoff away at first because he wanted Westerhoff to check and balance Ye Qiu in De Tokmost. He also had the idea of ​​winning over Westerhoff, after all, the latter was a famous Dutch coach. However, he did not expect that the development of things would be somewhat beyond his expectations.

Now Westerhoff is an assistant coach of the first team and is also in charge of De Tokmost, but the second team has become Ye Qiu's territory, and the attitude of the damn Leo Beenhakker is very ambiguous. No one knows what he is thinking.

You know, who would believe that Ye Qiu introduced these two players without Leo Beenhakker's consent?

Could it be that Ye Qiu also turned to Leo Beenhakker?

If this is the case, then who else in the entire Ajax can he trust?

Sometimes, people will make self-centered mistakes, just like Waters now. He is confused by the authorities and naturally does not see that he is the first to distrust others. How can he ask others to trust him sincerely?

As a man who likes to dwell on trivial matters, he finally thought hard and came to the conclusion that he lacked prestige and power!

If one day, I was the one who controlled the competition power of the club, who would dare to ignore me?

When he thought of this, Waters was full of desire to win tomorrow's game. He had just won a big victory in the last round, and now he was full of confidence.

In the away game against Sparta Rotterdam the next day, Waters' team took the initiative to attack from the beginning, showing a determination to win the game. On the contrary, Sparta Rotterdam, who played at home, retreated to the camp, avoided the attack, and took a steady counterattack.

A sneak attack in the first half dealt a heavy blow to Ajax, and Waters' team had to accept the situation of being 0:1 behind for half an hour.

Until the 86th minute, winger Grünshall forced a breakthrough to create an opportunity, and passed the ball to Brian Laudrup to score, equalizing the score, but in the end they were unable to score again.

In this way, Ajax tied Sparta Rotterdam 1:1 away.

After this round of games, the gap between Ajax and PSV Eindhoven, who had won 11 consecutive victories, widened to 5 points.