The Godfather of Football

Coming out of Kingston upon Thames, passing the M1 highway, we arrived at the Theobald training base in southern Hertfordshire. The total distance is 60 kilometers, and the time is about one hour.

This section of the journey is obviously half of the distance from Kingston upon Thames to Southampton in the past. The latter basically takes about two hours to reach each time. Moreover, as the defending champion of the Premier League and the newly promoted giant team of the Champions League for two consecutive times, Tottenham Hotspur's influence is not comparable to Southampton.

The only regret is that Luke Shaw's whole family are Chelsea fans.

Six years ago, when he was eight years old, Luke Shaw participated in the talent selection of Chelsea's Football Development Center in Guildford, but the student selection that time did not take a fancy to him. The reason was the same as what David Silva encountered when he was selected in the youth training camp of Real Madrid that year. They all disliked their bodies because they were too thin.

But it was also during this selection that Luke Shaw was selected by Southampton's famous scout Pridebarry and was taken to Southampton. He stayed there for six years until this summer, when Southampton ran into trouble and fell into a bankruptcy crisis. Tottenham Hotspur's scout Peter De Visser found Luke Shaw and persuaded the Saints to bring him to North London.

This is his first time to come to the Theobald training base this season.

Today is the first day of Tottenham Hotspur's new season training camp. When Ye Qiu called him before, he expressed the hope that he could come to the team in advance because he hoped to have a face-to-face communication with Luke Shaw.

"Hello!" The security guard stopped Luke Shaw's father's car and motioned them to roll down the window.

"Hello, sir, I'm Luke Shaw's father. Mr. Ye Qiu called and asked us to come and meet him!"

The security guard had received the notice long ago and recorded Luke Shaw's name. He nodded and said, "The first team is training, so we can't let you drive in. Please drive the car to the external parking lot behind the security room and then walk in. Thank you!"

Luke Shaw's father followed the security guard's instructions and drove into the gate of the Theobald Training Base. He turned right to the parking lot between the news building and the security room. This is a parking lot for external personnel.

After getting off the car, the father and son returned to the main road and walked inside.

"It's just like a garden here, Luke!" The father was a little like Grandma Liu entering the Grand View Garden. Everything was full of amazement.

Luke Shaw was a little speechless. He had never imagined in Southampton before that a training base could be built like a park. It was really great. Especially when he thought that the Theobald Training Base was the most advanced super-luxury super-five-star training base in the world, he was excited.

In the future, he will have the opportunity to train and play with the world's top players such as Messi, Ribery, Fabregas, etc. in such a training base. This is a great encouragement to him.

Soon, they came to the fork in the road. A security guard came up to lead them and told them directly that the first-team training area should turn right, but reminded them to keep quiet because the first-team was training for the new season.

Entering the first-team training area, they were naturally moved again, and soon they came to the training building, which was full of BMWs, and then their attention was attracted by the people in the comprehensive training area in the distance.

Like the first training of the season in previous years, Tottenham Hotspur's first training session of this season was in the morning, which was open to the public, allowing all fans and reporters to come to the scene, but now it was afternoon, and this training session was closed, so when Luke Shaw and his son entered here, they found that everyone was meticulously warming up on the training ground.

"Luke Shaw?" Just when they were hesitating about who to find, someone called his name.

The father and son turned around and saw Ye Qiu, who was accompanied by several famous coaches. This almost stunned Luke Shaw. He could never have imagined that his first meeting with Ye Qiu would be like this.

"Yes, Mr. Ye Qiu!" Luke Shaw was a little nervous.

Ye Qiu smiled, turned his head to look at Tassotti, and suggested with a smile, "Mauro, aren't we short of a left back? Why not just let him go up and try? It's a training session anyway!"

Tassotti smiled, nodded in agreement, and looked at Luke Shaw, "Luke, how are you prepared? Do you dare to go up and try?"

"First-team training session?" Luke Shaw was a little surprised because he had just arrived.

"Yes, Marcelo participated in the Confederations Cup final and will not join us in the United States until tomorrow, so we will have a split team training this afternoon. We are short of a left back, so you can play this position. Although you are only fourteen years old, give it a try!" Mauro Tassotti also thought it was quite interesting.

Football clubs don't actually have too many formalities, so it's not a big deal that Luke Shaw went straight to training as soon as he arrived at the team. After all, it's very common for the first team to temporarily transfer players from the youth team to participate in training. It's just that the youth team hasn't started training yet today, and Luke Shaw was caught.

"Is there a problem?" Ye Qiu looked at Luke Shaw.

The latter looked at his father, who was about the same height as him, and felt his father's joy and encouragement. He looked at Ye Qiu again and nodded heavily, "No problem, I'm willing to try!"

Ye Qiu immediately called a staff member over and asked him to take Luke Shaw to the locker room to change clothes and warm up.

The locker room in Tottenham Hotspur's training building is very spacious. Luke Shaw swears that it is definitely many times more spacious than the locker room in Southampton's stadium, and all kinds of facilities are very complete, including shower rooms, massage chairs, projectors, tactical boards and other equipment and props that can only be found in stadium locker rooms.

"This is Marcelo's replacement training suit. You are about the same size. Try it on!" The staff found a set of training suits and arranged a wardrobe for him to store his things.

The training suit is the iconic Adidas, but the logo on the chest is Vodafone, which is the training suit sponsor of Tottenham Hotspur in the new season. The contract was just signed not long ago, and the total sponsorship fee is said to have reached 10 million euros.

The sponsor of the chest advertisement of Tottenham Hotspur in the new season is Qatar Airways, which provides a high-priced sponsorship fee of 30 million euros a year. However, due to this huge sponsorship, Tottenham Hotspur's plan to split the jersey sponsorship of the league and cup competitions failed, and all of them were covered by Qatar Airways.

As for the jersey sponsor Adidas, the annual sponsorship fee has also been raised to 35 million euros. This is the price increase given by Adidas after Tottenham Hotspur retained Messi, because Tottenham Hotspur currently has only one top sponsor in the Premier League.

With two major sponsors plus a jersey sponsor, Tottenham Hotspur's annual income from jerseys and training suits is as high as 75 million euros. This income has exceeded Manchester United's 70 million euros, becoming the highest-earning team in the Premier League and the highest-earning team in Europe, and this has a lot to do with Tottenham Hotspur's successful defense of the Champions League.

As soon as he thought of this, Luke Shaw's young face was filled with excitement and blood red. He quickly put on his jersey and shorts, walked out of the locker room under the leadership of the staff, and ran to the comprehensive training area. He didn't even say hello to his father when he passed by him waiting outside.

There were many new faces on the first day of training at Tottenham Hotspur. In addition to several players that Ye Qiu had transferred from the youth team, such as Nastasic, Varane, Pogba and other players, Eriksson who was about to be loaned to Ajax, Neymar, Coutinho, Lucas Jr. who were loaned to Santos, were also in the team.

It is said that they will also participate in this trip to the United States with the team and conduct pre-season training with the team for more than a month.

However, many Brazilian and Spanish internationals in the team have participated in the Confederations Cup, so Fabregas, David Silva, Thiago Silva, Alves, and Marcelo are not there. The captain's armband is on the arm of England's legendary superstar Beckham. When he saw Luke Shaw coming in, he immediately ran over and took him to Peter Brandt for warm-up.

Tottenham Hotspur's warm-up is not a simple warm-up, but a targeted one, specially arranged for today's training session and the physical and technical characteristics of different players, so Luke Shaw feels very fresh when he first arrives.

"Don't be nervous when you get on the court, and show your strength as you like!" Beckham patted Luke Shaw on the shoulder before leaving and encouraged him. He also said the same thing to Kyle Walker and Phil Jones who just joined the team.

After more than ten minutes of warm-up, Luke Shaw returned to the training team and began to train with the team.

When he was standing outside the court just now, he had already felt that Tottenham's training focused on ball training. Everyone held the ball and carried out various basic movement training, as well as some fast passing and receiving cooperation. Many of them were even difficult, and the whole training rhythm was very fast.

Luke Shaw has good skills. He is young and his hands and feet are very flexible. Such training is a bit strenuous for him, but he can barely cope with it. However, after completing it, he had already sweated profusely without realizing it.

Only then did he realize that if he had not fully activated his body during the warm-up just now, he would not have been able to complete such a high-intensity training, and this also made him more clearly aware that everything in Tottenham was very scientific.

After that, two games were played, Monkey and Wall, which are also Tottenham's iconic games.

With the rise of Ajax, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur, these two games have been imitated and borrowed by countless teams. Even in Southampton, they have learned these two games. Luke Shaw has also played them, but it is obvious that they are faster and more accurate at Tottenham Hotspur's training ground.

"The common problems of youth training in England have been verified very well by Phil Jones and Luke Shaw!" Mauro Tassotti said with a sigh while watching the training beside Ye Qiu.

Ye Qiu and Tottenham Hotspur's scouts and coaching staff have summarized England's youth training system. It is difficult to have specific advantages and disadvantages between large-scale youth training and small-scale youth training. The technical gap is not completely irreparable. After all, England has begun to pay attention to the technical details of players in the past few years. Many people find it strange that why England's youth training players generally give people a feeling that they are very rough in both offense and defense?

This is mainly because they have problems with their sense of space in the game.

A player's sense of space in the game is a comprehensive quality, including the judgment of the ball path and landing point in the game, whether he can maintain a suitable distance with his teammates, whether he can find loopholes in time according to the situation, or cut to the ball, or help his teammates to assist in transition and advancement, whether he can accurately predict and arrive at the position that needs to be filled in advance when defending, etc.

England's youth training has always done a bad job in this regard. Even Terry and Ferdinand, who are known as the strongest central defenders in England, still lack a sense of space in the game. In other words, the biggest manifestation is that they failed to form a timely warning of dangerous signals during the defense process.

The reason why they can become top central defenders is mainly due to their physical fitness, not their game awareness. Therefore, although they can also have some extremely amazing performances, they will also have some rash deductions from time to time.

Of course, it is impossible for any central defender to be perfect. It can only be said that the sense of game space is a common problem for English players, and this common problem makes the training received by English players in the youth training stage, such as irregular running positions, insufficient awareness, rough skills, etc., more vividly reflected in the game.

So we can see that in the Premier League, all teams that can play fast and smooth passing and receiving are basically teams with more foreign players, such as Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal. These two teams are almost dominated by foreign players, and local players have almost no place to stand.

A very important reason is that English players will greatly reduce the fluency of the team's passing and receiving cooperation. Carroll and Ashley Young of Tottenham Hotspur, and even Gareth Bale, are of this type.

So, does that mean that there is no way to solve this problem?

Ye Qiu thinks not, because in the past few years, Kyle Walker has made great progress. After joining Tottenham Hotspur, Ye Qiu and the coaching staff focused on helping him improve in passing and receiving the ball, observing the game situation, and interactive coordination, and constantly reminded him to pay attention to changes in the situation, the positioning of teammates, and the opponent's pressing.

It can be seen that he has improved a lot now than in the past. He has become more confident and calm in handling the ball on the court, and his use of technology has become more reasonable. He has further optimized his sense of space, physical fitness and coordination, honed his offensive and defensive techniques and overall awareness, and further refined his basic skills, making Kyle Walker's progress very obvious in the past few years.

Of course, it is impossible to make Kyle Walker a technically delicate player, but at least he can have the conditions to become an excellent right back in terms of technology, awareness and ball IQ, and even have the opportunity to become a top player.

To achieve this, whether it is Kyle Walker, Phil Jones or Luke Shaw, they all need to quickly enrich their tactical qualities that they have lacked since childhood, and through more games and training, they can develop their own experience in dealing with complex and changing situations, and then gradually develop their own sense of game space.

As the game ended, the two sides began to compete in groups. Ye Qiu deliberately arranged Phil Jones as the right back, while letting Luke Shaw play on the left and Kyle Walker as the right back of the main team to further observe these three English players.

The other two players who joined this season, Coentrao and Romedal Falcao, the former was arranged by Ye Qiu to play as the left back in the main team, and Falcao was arranged to play as the center forward in the substitute team.

In the group training, both the main and substitutes played very openly, and neither side held back, not only because it was an internal training match, but also because it was the first training of the new season, and everyone hoped to leave a better impression on the head coach.

Needless to say, the main team tried their best, and relying on their strong front line of Ribery, Cavani and Messi, and the combination of Ramsey, Yaya Toure and Beckham in the midfield, they quickly established an advantage, launched waves of attacks, and broke the goal of the substitute team again and again.

The substitute team was defeated step by step, which was also related to the fact that the substitutes were generally young players. Neymar, Falcao, Eden Hazard formed the trident, Eriksen, Pogba and Coutinho formed the midfield, Phil Jones, Varane, Nastasic and Luke Shaw formed the back line, and Joe Hart was the goalkeeper.

The huge gap in strength between the main and substitutes made the substitute team passively beaten frequently.

The substitute players were very motivated, fighting for every ball, and had a very fighting spirit. After all, they were the younger generation in the team, and they knew very well that they had a chance only if they fought hard, so they were not timid at all and went directly against the main team.

Neymar, Falcao and Eden Zaha also frequently created some counterattack opportunities, especially the cooperation between Neymar and Coutinho. Near the midfield, Neymar made a long pass over the top, which landed accurately behind Ziglinski. Falcao used his speed to force overtake, rushed into the penalty area before Ziglinski, and shot low into the net.

Neymar's pass won the applause of Ye Qiu and the coaching staff. Don't underestimate this pass, it reflects the insight of reading the game, and Falcao's performance in the first internal confrontation match was also eye-catching. He got a total of five shooting opportunities, and he scored four goals. The efficiency is terrifying.

What surprised Ye Qiu and the coaching staff the most was Falcao's calmness in the penalty area and his handling of the ball, especially the handling of the ball before shooting, which made him handle the ball and the subsequent adjustment and shooting. The whole process was very skillful and smooth, without any obstruction.

And everyone knows that as long as there is no obstruction, it is difficult for the defensive players to stop him from shooting.

Ruud van Nistelrooy, Robin van Persie, Marco van Basten, etc., almost all top shooters have this quality, and so does Falcao. This is an important factor that enables him to have such high scoring efficiency. More importantly, he is well balanced with both feet. Although he is not tall, he has excellent heading ability and is a very comprehensive and efficient shooter.

Ye Qiu is very satisfied with the current talent pool of the team. Neymar will not be able to join Tottenham Hotspur until he turns 18 next summer, but he is already very familiar with the team's tactics. After all, he has been training with the first team for a long time every year.

Although Gareth Bale left this season, Messi stayed, and with Eden Hazard and Falcao, the frontcourt was hardly affected. The biggest test for Ye Qiu is to help Falcao integrate into the team's frontcourt attack combination as soon as possible during the summer training camp and find an effective offensive routine.

Whether Cavani or Falcao is the main player, we have to wait and see the progress of the warm-up match to know!