The Godfather of Football

Beckham's injury still greatly affected Tottenham's midfield.

Although the team played with a semi-substitute lineup in the League Cup in the middle of the week because neither side gave their best, Tottenham, which also played with a mix of substitutes and youth teams, defeated Manchester City 2:0 away.

This season, Ye Qiu has successively transferred several young players in the team to the first team and trained with the first team. For example, Ramsey, Eden Hazard, and Kyle Walker, these three players basically trained with the first team, but either played with the youth team and the reserve team, or played in the League Cup, or occasionally came on the bench.

For the training of young players, Ye Qiu feels that we should not rush, but also not be too slow.

Wenger and Ferguson can be said to have two completely different training methods. Wenger's Arsenal was affected by the financial situation and Wenger's own personality problems, so Arsenal's young players often took charge early, but the problem is that promoting young players to play the main force too early is a bit of a spur to the game, and it also affects Arsenal's performance.

Although Arsenal is now ranked first, everyone knows that Wenger's main lineup is that set, and those young players are simply not up to the task. Once the schedule is intensive, the team's performance will definitely be affected. So now the top favorite to win the league is Manchester United, followed by Arsenal, Liverpool ranked third, and Tottenham and Chelsea tied for fourth.

It's not that Tottenham is underestimated. A very important reason is that Tottenham lacks experience in winning the championship, and with Beckham injured and missing the entire intensive winter schedule, the impact on Tottenham is very significant, but this year Ye Qiu obviously does not plan to make up for it during the winter break because there is not enough time.

Instead of introducing more players, it would be better for Ye Qiu to cultivate Modric.

Ferguson's way of training young players is opposite to Wenger's. He has always been worried about forcing growth, so he usually entrusts young players with important tasks when they are around 20 years old. So he introduced Nani and Anderson this season, but these two players have not been used and cultivated much in Manchester United this season.

As for Evans, another central defender who is now 19 years old, although Ferguson and the coaching staff are very optimistic about this player, even now, Ferguson still does not plan to focus on cultivating him, but plans to loan him out.

Of course, this is also because the central defender combination of Vidic and Ferdinand is becoming more and more solid, but it is undeniable that in Ye Qiu's previous life, Gerard Pique finally chose to return to Barcelona, ​​and even Paul Pogba went to Juventus later, which has a certain relationship with Ferguson's way of cultivating young players.

Many people say that Arsenal is good at cultivating young players, but don't just focus on those finished products, but should see how many young talents are annihilated in the Arsenal team, and Wenger's cultivation method of forcing the growth of seedlings is one of the important reasons.

But Ferguson's cultivation method of waiting for players to mature before reusing and carving them is gradually not in line with the current rules of players. After all, with the development and progress of technology, players will become more and more precocious. They need enough games and training to accumulate experience, especially for some precocious players with more independent personalities.

So many times, Ye Qiu simply brought the youth team to play as substitutes in some more confident games, and then gave them 20 to 30 minutes in a game, or even just let them play for ten minutes. This is a kind of training for them, a kind of training to get familiar with the intensity of Premier League and Champions League games.

According to Ye Qiu, you can't force the growth of seedlings, but you can't be too slow. Adopt the Chinese doctrine of the mean and go in the middle.

How to grasp the scale here depends on the balance between Ye Qiu and the coaching staff.

After playing Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur ushered in another North London derby, but this time they lost 1:2 to Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium, because Ye Qiu arranged a central defender combination of Kompany and Thiago Silva in this game, and Adebayor and Bendtner scored two goals, both knocking on Tottenham Hotspur's goal.

Although Van Persie helped the team score in the middle, they still lost the game in the end.

After the game, the media strongly reprimanded the two central defenders of Tottenham Hotspur. Thiago Silva's performance against Drogba and Adebayor was average, which was already a consensus. But Kompany, who replaced Hangeland in the starting lineup, also couldn't suppress the two high center forwards of Arsenal, which was indeed unsatisfactory.

Even many fans and media called for the team to consider recalling Ledley King, who could not play in Chelsea, or letting Ye Qiu reuse Mike Dawson. At least the frontal defensive ability of the English central defender is still very good.

Although Tottenham Hotspur did not respond to the outside world, there were also many disagreements within the team.

The players were already familiar with how terrible the devil's schedule was before and after Christmas last season, and Ye Qiu had always said that the schedule before and after Christmas would seriously affect a team's entire season, which was a feature of the Premier League.

Therefore, in the last game before Christmas, especially in a major game like the North London Derby, losing to Arsenal, the mortal enemy, affected the atmosphere within the team to some extent. Many media and reporters outside the team doubted the performance of individual players, which added some pressure invisibly.

As the head coach of the team, Ye Qiu himself was also under pressure, because after losing to Arsenal, the team fell out of the top four and fell to fifth place. For the English media, it was like a holiday, especially after Tottenham Hotspur had just won the future ownership of the main stadium of the London Olympics.

Whether to recruit players during the winter break is not only a matter of opinion among the outside world, but also among fans and reporters. Even the coaching staff of Tottenham Hotspur also had different opinions. Some people thought that they should recruit players, especially a high-level central defender. After all, there is only one central defender with a stable performance, Hangeland, and Thiago Silva's performance has been mixed.

Ye Qiu was in the coaching room just now, and he was rarely domineering. He directly stated that he did not plan to recruit players during the winter break, whether it was a central defender or a midfielder, especially a central defender. "I don't think there is any central defender in the transfer market that is suitable for us and has the conditions to recruit him."

With just this sentence, he suppressed all other opinions a little dictatorially and resolutely continued to trust Thiago Silva.

Central defenders are very scarce nowadays. One of the most important reasons for this situation is that the tactical system of European football has developed by leaps and bounds in recent years. Everyone knows that integration is the future trend, and all coaches with a little foresight are transforming their teams in an integrated way.

Perhaps in the eyes of many fans, integration is a good thing for mid- and lower-level teams, because fans are not clear about the situation.

The so-called integration is the pursuit of stability, one plus one is greater than or equal to two, and one is the strength of the players. So for the team, one advantage of integration is that the overall strength of the team will no longer be like in the past, with core players injured and the team's performance fluctuating too much, but this is a nightmare for mid- and lower-level teams, because they will find that it is becoming more and more difficult to upset, because the strength of their players cannot be compared with that of strong teams at all. The result of integration is that the gap between the two sides is even greater.

For some players in the integrated strong teams, especially scorers, scoring goals becomes easier and easier, because integration leads to strong teams easily crushing weak teams, and scoring is naturally easy.

So this season, Tottenham Hotspur has scored 41 goals so far, Ribery has scored 14 goals alone, three more than the second-ranked Manchester United winger Cristiano Ronaldo, while Van Persie has also scored 7 goals, Messi has scored 6 goals, and the trident has scored 27 of Tottenham Hotspur's 41 goals.

But this is on the offensive level, but what about defense? It's getting harder and harder!

To a certain extent, the overall transformation of the current football offense is relatively fast, but the overall transformation of defense is a bit behind. One very important reason is that it is easier to cultivate and carve an offensive player than to train a defensive player, and for defensive players, changing style is not a simple matter.

Ye Qiu can even say that even in 2013, the transformation of central defenders is still in a very awkward stage, so if you look at the top central defenders in 2013, you will find that you can't pick out a few top central defenders. Even in the top teams, there are also many central defenders who seem to be very bad and unstable in your impression, but they are already the main players of the top teams and are counted in the world of football.

Ye Qiu dares to say that in today's football, no one is more tactically far-sighted than him, because he has experienced all this personally, and he knows very well what changes will happen in the future, so he can always be ahead of others. This time, he still has to be ahead in the training of central defenders.

But facing the coaching staff, he can be dictatorial, because it is not the first time he is dictatorial, but he thinks that he should talk to the players.

Coming down from the second floor of the training building, Ye Qiu planned to go to the pitching machine training room, which has become the favorite place for Tottenham Hotspur players. Another place is the indoor football competition venue, where there are group competitions every day, and the players will also formulate some interesting rewards and penalties by themselves, such as cleaning the toilet.

But when Ye Qiu was about to leave the training building, he found that the people he wanted to find were all in the gym, which made him feel like laughing, because he felt that the team's central defenders least needed to practice strength and confrontation.

"Are you in a meeting?" Ye Qiu walked in directly.

Thiago Silva and Kompany were both there, and the Belgian was still sitting on the seated chest press.

"Boss!" The two central defenders were obviously discussing something. When they saw Ye Qiu coming in, Thiago Silva stood up immediately, and Kompany immediately got off the chest press.

"Don't we have a rule that it is not necessary to use gym equipment for training privately?" Ye Qiu said in a somewhat hard tone.

Every piece of equipment in the gym has its fixed function. As a professional player, the more you practice here, the better. The most important thing is to be reasonable, and Tottenham Hotspur has very high requirements and management measures for these.

"We have consulted Professor Peter Brandt." Thiago Silva explained quickly.

Ye Qiu didn't say anything more after listening. He looked at Thiago Silva and then at Kompany. This Belgian kid has a bald head that is really unique. His head is big and round. He looks a bit like the squash in Plants vs. Zombies.

"If you have time, I think you should watch more game videos and practice passing and receiving the ball, especially the fast diagonal long passes to the two wings." Ye Qiu gave his opinions to the two central defenders.

Thiago Silva and Kompany looked at each other and nodded. Then Kompany thought for a while and asked, "What about our power confrontation? Do you think it should be strengthened?"

After listening to this, Ye Qiu smiled and shook his head and said, "I can't say whether to strengthen it or not, because for central defenders, power confrontation is definitely necessary, but I think it's enough. On the contrary, you have played many other different positions. Thiago, you have played as a striker and midfielder, and you are very good at holding the ball and passing. Vincent, you have also played as a defensive midfielder, and you are good at holding the ball."

"You know? The reason I introduced you is because of this."

Thiago Silva and Kompany were a little surprised. Ye Qiu never told them why he considered introducing them, but he has always strengthened their ability to hold and pass the ball.

Ye Qiu thought about it and had enough time today, so he decided to take a central defender course, so he took paper and pen in the gym and introduced the two central defenders he was very optimistic about.

"What do you think is the most important thing for all teams to insist on integration? Also, think about it carefully, when you watch the game videos around the beginning of the century, what will you find?"

Both of them were a little surprised by Ye Qiu's question. This question was either too deep or too cold.

"I tell you, when more and more teams become more and more proficient in overall control, running without the ball will become more and more important, because football offense always uses its own advantages to attack the opponent's weaknesses. What about before? The tactical integrity was not strong enough, not tight enough, and the cooperation was not high, so it relied on the individual strength of the stars and used one-on-one to create local advantages. That's why there are the magical performances of Pele, Maradona, Ronaldo and others."

"Because the most advantageous forces of the team are concentrated at one point, breaking through a certain point of the opponent's defense line, and then disintegrating the entire defense, creating a gap, and the chance to score a goal will come naturally, so the personal ability of the stars in that era was very high, the personal ability of the offensive players and the personal ability of the defensive players were all very important. It is very important, because at that time all offensive tactics were trying every possible way to create one-on-one opportunities. "

"But with the arrival of the overall trend, offensive players gradually discovered a problem, that is, the opponent will no longer easily give you one-on-one opportunities. The opponent will maintain the rigor of overall cooperation at the tactical level, making it difficult for you to easily create one-on-one, so Greece won the European Cup! "

Thiago Silva and Kompany are just young players. Their understanding of football, especially the core level of tactical understanding and thinking, let alone compared with Ye Qiu and the coaching staff, even compared with Beckham and other veterans, is far inferior, so when they heard Ye Qiu analyze Greece's success in this way, they were full of surprise.

"After I won the championship in Greece, I said that this European Cup will definitely bring about huge changes in European football, and even the world's football, because everyone has discovered the advantages of holistic football, but to play this advantage, it will bring a new problem, that is, running without the ball." Ye Qiu is very patient. He originally wanted to knock on these two rough gems, so he must make them understand, at least have a concept in their minds, that is, what kind of responsibilities Tottenham Hotspur's central defenders will have in the future, and what kind of system the team's defense is. "For the attacking side, the tighter your defense is, if I don't move, I will be restricted by you, so I have to move, not only me, but my teammates have to move with me, constantly running and pulling the defense line, so with the advancement of integration, whether the player has the ball at his feet or not, he plays a pivotal role on the field."

In the past, when the tactical integration was not strict enough, individual players were allowed to be invisible, even Ronaldo was invisible for a game, and finally scored a goal, it didn't matter, because the impact was not great, but now it is different. Now the integration is promoted, and the running of one person is not active, which greatly affects the overall control of the team.

Suppose the team is likened to a whole composed of 11 people, minus the goalkeeper, there are ten people, and the standard running is set to ten kilometers, that is, the total running distance of a team in a game is 100 kilometers, then the question is, if one of the players only runs five kilometers, what will happen?

If the team wants to maintain his control, then the five kilometers he runs less must be shared by the other nine players, or by several people, or by one player. If no player shares the five kilometers, the team's control will decline.

"Of course, what I said is a hypothetical concept, the purpose is to more vividly describe the operation of integrated football, but I believe you have a deep understanding that football is no longer the era of one-on-one focus in the past."

"Similar to Pele, Maradona, Ronaldo, the era of one person leading a team to completely defeat the opponent has long ceased to exist. I can even say in an extreme point that it is impossible for the current football tactical system to have a king like Pele and Maradona, unless it undergoes a new round of changes in the future."

"Then, think about it again. For all the offensive players you meet, what is the most important thing about their tactics? For defensive players, what is the most difficult thing to defend?"

Even now, Ye Qiu did not forget to test these two young central defenders. Of course, it does not mean that he will deduct points if they cannot answer or answer poorly. He wants them to think about this question for themselves.