The Godfather of Football

There is no doubt that the whole of November belongs to Chelsea!

On November 25, Chelsea tied with Paris Saint-Germain 0:0 at home. Because Chelsea had already qualified from the group stage as the first place, Ye Qiu arranged a full substitute and young players lineup for this game.

Because of this, the outside world also gave a good evaluation of Chelsea's ability to get a draw.

On November 28, Chelsea defeated Charlton 4:0 away, and once again won a round of wild victory. On the other hand, Arsenal tied Benitez's Liverpool 1:1 away, and once again encountered a draw. The gap between the two sides quickly widened to 6 points.

After this round, the outside media shook their heads and believed that with the current situation of Arsenal, it would be difficult to launch a counterattack against Chelsea. Unless the Gunners can defeat their opponents in the 17th round of the Premier League, sitting at Highbury Stadium, otherwise, the Gunners' championship dream will end.

Because Chelsea maintained a winning streak throughout November and played a suffocating offensive storm, Ye Qiu became the best coach of the month in November. This was the first time Ye Qiu won this honor this season, and Ronaldinho, who performed very well in Chelsea, won the best player of the month.

As the selection of the World Footballer of the Year and the European Footballer of the Year is approaching, Ronaldinho's state has obviously become better and better, and the call for these two honors is getting louder and louder. The Brazilian's biggest competitor is not someone else, but his teammate Lampard, who is also performing very well.

As for Shevchenko, Henry and other players, although they performed well, they were obviously slightly inferior to Ronaldinho and Lampard in terms of team honors and player performance. The Blues also have a good chance of cultivating a World Footballer of the Year of their own.

Entering December, Chelsea's first game was the League Cup quarter-finals. The team challenged Premier League Fulham away. As a result, Chelsea reversed Fulham 2:1 with goals from Davis and Van Persie and successfully entered the semi-finals.

In another match, Manchester United beat Wenger's Arsenal 1:0 at home.

The current situation of the Gunners really proves the saying that when it rains it pours.

On December 4, Chelsea beat Newcastle 4:0 at home, which is Chelsea's 7th consecutive victory so far.

However, Arsenal also improved in this game, beating Birmingham 3:0 at Highbury Stadium, catching up with Chelsea.

The last round of the Champions League group stage will be held in the middle of the week. Arsenal must beat Rosenborg in this round to qualify as the first in the group. This forced Wenger to do his best in this game, and finally defeated Rosenborg 5:1, while Chelsea drew 1:1 with Porto away.

Meeting Mourinho again, Ye Qiu's mind was obviously no longer on the Portuguese, so he had no intention to argue with Mourinho. After the group stage, Ye Qiu's Chelsea and Mourinho's Porto stood out from the group as the first and second place respectively, and successfully entered the round of 16.

Back to the Premier League, Chelsea finally ushered in Arsenal!

Ye Qiu has never pursued ball control excessively.

He once read Cruyff and Sacchi's explanation of the concept of ball control in the study room, and after absorbing so many predecessors' experience and ideas, he has been constantly reflecting and improving his tactical thinking, one of which is ball control.

There is no doubt that in Ye Qiu's view, Barcelona's ball control in the previous life was indeed outstanding, but even Cruyff himself felt that the Barcelona at that time was obviously a bit of ball control for the sake of ball control, because only ball control could ensure that their defensive loopholes would not be exploited by opponents, which was obviously a bit contrary to Cruyff.

In the final analysis, some of Cruyff and Sacchi's ideas are the same, that is, the strongest offense plus the best defense!

Then, some people will definitely say, how can the strongest spear and the strongest shield be integrated together?

In fact, this is a misunderstanding, because the strongest spear and the strongest shield are obviously aimed at the opponent, which is not contradictory in itself. As long as you have the ability to control him, why can't you integrate a spear in one hand and a shield in the other?

On the tactical level, control often depends on your midfield!

Ball control is only part of control, and controlling space is also part of it. There are also many factors including rhythm and psychology, which combine to form a team's comprehensive control ability on the court.

At this point, Barcelona's ball control has gone to extremes, a little too much for the sake of controlling the ball, causing the team's cooperation to become mechanical, boring, and lack of novelty and excitement.

Of course, Barcelona's ball control system is still very respectable, which is also Ye Qiu's attitude all along. Existence is reasonable. Barcelona can be so brilliant, and they have their advantages. No one can deny all this, right?

So, among all the factors that make up a team's ability to control the court, what is the most important?

Ball possession? Space? Rhythm? Psychology? Morale? Fighting spirit?

Those who say that possession of the ball is the most important should watch the League Cup final between Manchester United and Arsenal. Arsenal had the advantage of possession of the ball, but failed to break Manchester United's goal. Instead, Manchester United scored a goal, and only scored 1 goal, with the final score of 1:0!

Those who say that space is the most important should watch more games of Serie A teams. Why can't they win even though they have excellent defense? Because they lack control over possession of the ball and rhythm.

So, are rhythm and psychology the most important?

In the previous life, the Istanbul miracle, Liverpool finally reversed AC Milan. Wasn't it because of the sudden fast-paced blow after the second half and the anger in everyone's heart?

But you have to know that the Istanbul miracle is full of contingency. If Finnan hadn't been injured, if Ancelotti had made adjustments, if Benitez hadn't been forced to make substitutions, if...

As for chance, this itself proves that this statement is not true!

In Ye Qiu's view, among the many factors that constitute a team's control, no one is more important than the other, or in other words, all factors are very important, and their importance is based on equality.

There is a Chinese saying that "too strong is easy to break", which means that if it is too strong, it will break easily.

Excessive ball control is not good, excessive space control is not good, and excessive emphasis on psychological quality is also not good. All elements must be carried out at the same time to play the greatest role.

Therefore, Ye Qiu's pursuit is to build a perfect team that has achieved the best balance in ball control, space control, and rhythm control, and at the same time has a tenacious will to fight to the end and a never-say-die psychological quality.

Chelsea is now somewhat inferior to mainland teams in ball control and rhythm control, but space control and psychological quality have met Ye Qiu's requirements, so he wants to continue to adjust the team next.

And if Ye Qiu uses this set of requirements for himself as a standard to measure Manchester United, it is not difficult to find that the Red Devils have many problems. Ball possession, space and rhythm all have obvious weaknesses, and they are very big weaknesses.

So what about Arsenal?

Arsenal's biggest problem is that they like to control the ball, and their obsession with controlling the ball leads to Arsenal's poor control of space, which is why Wenger's team is always beaten by opponents again and again.

Therefore, when playing away against Arsenal, Ye Qiu's tactics for the team are to control the space and use the space to compress Arsenal's passing, that is, to weaken Arsenal's control of the ball, but in order to ensure the team's effective control, Ye Qiu arranged his tight control area in his own half.

But to do this, there is a prerequisite, score first!

Attacking has always been Ye Qiu's forte, and this time is no exception. He has been preparing for how to score since the first second of the game, and Chelsea has also tried 3 shooting opportunities in the first 5 minutes, changing 3 people to shoot.

In the fourth time, Chelsea changed the routine. Ronaldinho broke through Lauren on the left and passed the ball. Drogba headed the ball in the penalty area. Rooney stopped and knocked back after getting the ball. Lampard shot from the front of the penalty area and the ball went into the net, 1:0!

The whole process happened in the blink of an eye. I believe that many Arsenal fans have not reacted yet, and the ball went in.

After breaking the deadlock in the 7th minute, what Chelsea did next made Wenger feel very frustrated.

Ye Qiu no longer defended high, but instead took a steady retreat and deployed tightly in his own half.

As long as Arsenal controlled the ball in their own half, Chelsea didn't care at all. At best, Drogba would go up to harass and grab a few times symbolically, but generally he would not be too far away from the center line to ensure that he could return to his own half to rush to help as soon as possible.

Chelsea's attitude made Arsenal feel incomprehensible and helpless, because even if they played the ball like a flower in their own half, you still couldn't break the opponent's goal.

Arsenal's offense seemed very powerful, but in fact there was a very obvious weakness, lack of tactical support points.

Ye Qiu knew very well what the battle at Highbury meant to both sides, so he didn't think he should choose a head-on confrontation. That would be too risky. If Chelsea really played a head-on confrontation, they might not lose, but they might not win either.

But now he chose another smarter way, using his strengths to defeat the opponent's weaknesses.

Henry is good at breakthroughs and rushes, which is very beneficial for a high-defense team like Chelsea. Bergkamp is good at controlling the ball and connecting, Pires is good at distributing the ball, and Ljungberg is good at back-insertion. These are Arsenal's advantages. The offensive formation formed by this group of players is enough to give any team a headache even in European football.

The strategy adopted by Ye Qiu is to limit the activity space of all players, so that Henry's breakthroughs and rushes have no place to use. When Bergkamp has to face the opponent's double-teaming frequently, when Pires can no longer effectively distribute and organize the ball, Ljungberg's back-ins are blocked everywhere, and Arsenal's offense is completely paralyzed.

Why? Because they lack a support point that they can rely on at critical moments!

When modern football pays more and more attention to targeted defense and strict overall layout, it becomes more and more difficult to attack. It becomes more and more troublesome for you to break through the opponent's defensive system. At this time, You need a tactical fulcrum that can provide you with stable support in front, usually a center!

A strong center is very important for teams that like to defend high and press the ball. This is an important reason why Ye Qiu refused to give up Drogba until he died.

Arsenal's offense is good at dealing with loose defense, but once they encounter a pressing defense, they immediately feel uncomfortable and paralyzed, so they didn't even have a shot in the entire first half!

When the on-site commentator Andy Gray said this statistic, I believe it was not only the group of Arsenal fans at Highbury Stadium who shouted for attack who were confused, but also people watching this game all over the world. A showdown between two of the Premier League's strongest teams?

What does it mean when one team forces another team so hard that they don't even have a chance to shoot?

"Arsenal is indeed in big trouble!" Andy Gray shook his head sadly at the moment when the referee blew the whistle to end the first half. He felt that this was definitely not just a Premier League game. Because according to the current momentum, Chelsea has made it clear that it not only wants to get 3 points, but also wants to completely defeat Arsenal psychologically.

Everyone can see that the current morale of Arsenal is very low, because they have performed very poorly in recent times, and now if they lose to Chelsea at their home court and end their unbeaten record, the gap behind in the league will expand to At 9 points, I couldn't even get a chance to kick into the opponent's goal. They would completely collapse!

"Chelsea's tactics in this game are very different from the past. Ye Qiu obviously adopted more defensive and counterattack tactics, which were also more targeted, especially in terms of tightening the midfield and backcourt. He completely blocked Arsenal. Na's attack, whether it was Henry or Bergkamp, ​​was obviously unable to threaten Chelsea's goal."

"But if that's all, then Chelsea has nothing to be proud of. The key is that Chelsea had 9 shots in the first half. Except for 1 goal in the first 4 shots, the other 5 shots were all through He did it through counterattacks, 4 of which shocked Arsenal’s defense.”

"Another very obvious sign is that the pace of this game is very fast, and the offensive and defensive transition speed of both sides is very fast. I even dare to say that this is this season, no, it can even be said that it is the best in all Premier League games in recent years. It was the fastest-paced game, but in the fast-paced game, Chelsea relied on its own strong pressing system to force Arsenal to not even have a chance to kick off the ball. This has to be said to be an astonishing achievement. !”

"Of course, this also has a lot to do with the fact that Arsenal players are obviously in poor condition and handle the ball too blindly. They often make unnecessary passing and receiving errors in fast-paced games, while Chelsea only needs to seize the errors. "

"We should also see that amidst Chelsea's strong pressure and pressing, Arsenal seems to have a lot of possession of the ball, but they lack threatening direct passes, and more cross passes and back passes. The offense lacks sharpness, and even the ball The team's final kick was also affected. Henry had at least two chances to kick, but he missed them both. "

"This is obviously a sign that there are problems with the team's tactics and player psychology. Wenger must make adjustments in the midfield. Otherwise, Arsenal will continue to be suppressed by Chelsea in the second half!"

"Of course, Chelsea's tactics are not completely without problems. They adopted methods to increase the rhythm and speed of the game to bring down Arsenal, but they also paid a certain price."

"As we all know, Ye Qiu emphasizes speed. Whether it is the speed of passing and receiving, the speed of technical movements, the speed of approaching the opponent, the speed of defending, the speed of assisting defense, etc., these are what Ye Qiu has always emphasized. Yes, and they also made full use of these advantages in the first half, even forcing Arsenal to not take a shot, which made the opponent extremely embarrassed. "

"But the price for Chelsea is also very high, and that is physical fitness!"

"To meet Ye Qiu's requirements at such a fast pace, Chelsea's players had to put in more brutal physical exertion than usual. Their running distance fully reflects this, and this may also be the key to turning the situation around in the second half. An important factor, after all, Chelsea cannot maintain a fast pace and high-intensity pressing for 90 minutes.”

"So, for Arsenal, this is an opportunity. How to seize this opportunity depends on how Wenger makes adjustments."

Ye Qiu naturally couldn't hear Andy Gray's analysis, but when he walked into the visiting team's locker room at Highbury Stadium, he clearly felt that the players were in a good mood. , that is more because Chelsea adopted a weak defensive posture.

When Ye Qiu walked in, everyone looked at him, and the Chinese man had a confident smile on his face.

"I said, Arsenal has nothing to be afraid of. We defeated them last season and we can still beat them now. Even, believe me, starting from tonight, no one will be afraid of Arsenal anymore!"

Everyone felt Ye Qiu's strong confidence. He not only wanted to beat his opponent in the game, but also to hit his opponent hard psychologically, so that his team could walk more smoothly on the road to winning the championship.

"A year ago, we taught all Premier League teams how to beat Manchester United. A year later, we have to teach all teams how to beat Arsenal. So, in the second half, it's time for us to shake our fists!"