The Godfather of Football

Chapter 636 Taking advantage of the situation

After re-establishing the team's tactical thinking, Tottenham Hotspur was unable to adjust its direction immediately, because the current Tottenham Hotspur was obviously different from the Tottenham Hotspur when Ye Qiu just took over.

At that time, Tottenham Hotspur was almost penniless, and Ye Qiu could directly overthrow it and rebuild it, but the current Tottenham Hotspur could not do that, because there were many top stars in the team, as well as a huge business system, and the fans' requirements for the team were getting higher and higher, so all of this required Ye Qiu not to rush.

But whether it was Theobald or White Hart Lane, the staff of the two offices had already begun to prepare for the future according to Ye Qiu's ideas, especially for the upcoming summer transfer market, they had already begun to actively prepare.

After a week of rest, Tottenham Hotspur ushered in the 29th round of the Premier League, away to challenge Wolves.

This time, Tottenham Hotspur finally had a convincing game, beating Wolves 3:0 away, but Phil Jones did not play. Ye Qiu arranged Beckham to start and form a midfield with Fabregas and Coutinho.

In this game, Beckham also conscientiously fulfilled the duties of a defensive midfielder, that is, position.

Many people look at the data of defensive midfielders on the other side, that is, tackles. They often think that defensive midfielders with good tackles are good players, but they forget one thing. Tackling, especially ground tackles, actually has two sides.

Usually, a player will only make a tackle when he loses the best and most reasonable defensive position. Of course, the reason for the player to lose the best defensive position is not necessarily the player himself, but may be caused by the surrounding environment and teammates, or even the team's tactics.

So, in theory, if a player always appears in the best and most reasonable defensive position and makes the most effective defense, he does not need to tackle, but should intercept or steal when defending head-on.

Even many people have misunderstood the importance of the defensive midfielder. The reason why this position is important is not because there is a player with excellent defense and strong stealing ability here, no, but because there is a player here to cut off the opponent's pass and cooperation route.

Note that there is a player, anyone, as long as you have enough ability and awareness to cut off the opponent's pass and cooperation route, then you can become a qualified defensive midfielder to protect the front of the penalty area.

Because the front of the penalty area is often the key area for the opponent's long shot or the last pass.

So, on the surface, Beckham's physical fitness has declined, his physical fitness has declined, and his fighting ability has also declined sharply. It seems that he cannot take on this important task, but he performed well after he came on the court, at least he protected his penalty area well.

Phil Jones is better than Beckham in everything, but he just can't protect well, because of this!

But Beckham can't play in every game, and even at his current age, it is difficult to play such high-intensity games continuously, so Ye Qiu is also very cautious in using him.

After defeating Wolves, Tottenham Hotspur has remained unbeaten in all 29 Premier League games this season, and the unbeaten record has been extended to 41 games. Even though the team has changed personnel and encountered many problems, Tottenham Hotspur still relies on its overwhelming strength to maintain its unbeaten record.

With 25 wins and 4 draws in 29 games, Tottenham Hotspur has scored 79 points, leading Manchester United, which is currently ranked second in the league, by 60 points. With a 19-point lead, it can almost be said that the Premier League championship has been grasped, unless Tottenham Hotspur has a big collapse in the remaining nine rounds of the league.

But this possibility is almost impossible, because everyone knows that with the current Tottenham Hotspur lineup, no matter who is missing, it can still be invincible in the Premier League, even in the Champions League, it is still very competitive.

After the 29th round of the Premier League, Tottenham Hotspur ushered in the second round of the Champions League round of 16 knockouts.

This time, Ye Qiu made an interesting adjustment to the midfield, and arranged a combination of David Silva, Ramsey and Phil Jones. But the interesting thing is that the three midfielders adopt irregular depth positions, David Silva is in front, Phil Jones is running all over the field, and Ramsey is behind to organize.

From a tactical perspective, it is a bit like Ancelotti's tactics when he was in AC Milan. David Silva is Seedorf, Phil Jones is Gattuso, Ramsey is Pirlo, and Kaka at that time looked more like an attacker, so whether it was Hazard or Messi, they could play some of Kaka's duties.

This adjustment was also forced. Phil Jones likes to run around, just like Gattuso back then, so Ye Qiu simply adopted this tactic to release his energy in this aspect, and then used David Silva and Ramsey to play the role of connecting the past and the future in the midfield.

It has to be said that in this game Tottenham Hotspur almost overwhelmed Roma at home. Phil Jones, the troublemaker, once again messed up Roma, and David Silva also performed very well with one assist and one shot in the game. Messi and Cavani each scored a goal in the frontcourt, and the team won 3:0 against Roma at home.

In this way, Tottenham Hotspur eliminated Roma from the Champions League with a total score of 7:2, and successfully advanced to the quarterfinals.

After Tottenham Hotspur entered the quarterfinals, the other seven teams that entered the quarterfinals were also released one after another. The Premier League still had three teams in the quarterfinals, namely Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea and Manchester United. Another team that entered the round of 16, Arsenal, was defeated by Barcelona in the knockout round.

After the round of 16 knockouts, UEFA drew lots for the Champions League quarterfinals the next day. This time, Tottenham Hotspur drew its old rival Manchester United, and staged a Premier League derby. In the same zone as Tottenham Hotspur were Barcelona and Shakhtar Donetsk.

It should be said that Barcelona's luck was better than Tottenham Hotspur. In addition, Chelsea, Real Madrid, Inter Milan and AC Milan were divided into the same zone. It seems that Serie A and La Liga are besieging the Premier League.

After the Champions League in the middle of the week, Tottenham Hotspur went north to Manchester and played a FA Cup match with Manchester United.

Manchester United did not send all their main players in this match, because many of their players had played in the Premier League and Champions League consecutively, so Ferguson arranged a rotation in this match. Ye Qiu arranged a lot of substitutes in the second round of the Champions League, so the rotation effect was more ideal. With the goals of Cavani and Fabregas, they defeated Manchester United 2:0 away.

And the opponent in the FA Cup semi-finals is still from Manchester, Mancini's Manchester City!

On March 19, the 30th round of the Premier League, Tottenham Hotspur won a 1:0 victory over Ranieri's West Ham United at home with Messi's goal. Although the Hammers played very tenaciously and the defense was organized quite tightly, they were ultimately no match for Messi's flash of inspiration.

After this battle, Tottenham's 19-point lead almost made the Premier League lose suspense in advance, or it should be said that other teams only had a theoretical possibility of winning the championship, because Tottenham could declare victory in advance as long as they won two more games.

After 30 rounds, the Premier League was suspended and the European Cup qualifiers started. Ye Qiu was in Theobald every day, discussing with the members of the coaching staff and Bobby Harms and others how to further improve the team's tactical transformation and changes, and also discussing the team's summer transfer operations.

Just before the fifth round of the European Cup qualifiers, which was on March 30, Ye Qiu received a call from Finland in Theobald. Nokia's chairman of the board John Ollila called Ye Qiu personally.

"Can we meet and talk?" John Ollila asked on the phone, with a tone that was somewhat tragic of a loser.

"Okay!" Ye Qiu nodded and agreed, "I'm going to Estonia tomorrow, but I can go to Helsinki first!"

Ye Qiu originally planned to go to Estonia to watch their match with Italy, and Tallinn and Helsinki are separated by the Baltic Sea, a very close distance, so he can go to Helsinki to meet John Ollila first, and then go to the capital of Estonia.

…………

…………

There is a saying that is very true, a lean camel is bigger than a horse.

Don't look at Nokia now It seems to be in a dilemma, the financial statements are terrible, the stock price has been declining continuously, the market value has shrunk rapidly, and the former huge empire seems to be collapsing, but these are the views of outsiders. In the eyes of people who understand the whole operating model, Nokia is still a long way from bankruptcy.

The reason is very simple, Nokia still has a lot of valuable assets.

For example, Nokia's core assets are mobile phone business and patents, Nokia Siemens Communications, Nokia map business, and... In short, there are still many assets to support this company.

At least, the Nokia headquarters park outside Helsinki is currently being sold to the public, and the price is not very high. Leaf Technology has already been in contact with Nokia and is very likely to take over this office park with four office buildings and an office area of ​​48,000 square meters, which will become Leaf Technology's Nordic headquarters and data center.

It should be said that Leaf Technology has tasted the sweetness of Nokia's layoffs in the past. Almost all the top talents have been absorbed by Leaf Technology, especially some top software and hardware technical talents. This is also a way for Leaf Technology to further improve its talent system, and it does not need to spend a lot of money to poach.

Nokia has no way to deal with this move. Who asked them to lay off employees?

Ye Qiu and John Ollila did not meet in Helsinki. For the sake of confidentiality, they met in a small town called Botvik, about 30 kilometers west of Helsinki. Nokia has a building here.

In fact, if Nokia is willing to sell their assets in Finland and even Europe, they can continue to support this huge empire, but this is more of a struggle, and the longer it drags on, the lower the market value.

John Ollila used to be a senior executive at Citibank, so he knows this very well.

Ye Qiu was the only one present at this meeting. Mauro Tassotti, who was going to accompany him to Estonia to watch the game, did not understand at all and did not attend the meeting. John Ollila brought Nokia Chairman Risto Silasmaa together to form a closed-door meeting of three people.

Obviously, this would not be a negotiation with a final result, but more of an intentional negotiation.

"Congratulations, Mr. Ollila, you have successfully acquired Nokia Siemens Networks!" Ye Qiu smiled and congratulated as soon as they met. This is indeed gratifying news, because the world's most famous network communication equipment and solutions provider Shang finally completely belongs to Nokia.

You must know that although Nokia Siemens lags behind Ericsson and China's Huawei in market share, and in the past period of time, it has been challenged and swallowed up by emerging rivals from China's Huawei and ZTE in the global market, which has forced Nokia Siemens to carry out Adjustments and layoffs, but got through it and is now back to profitability.

To this end, Nokia paid 1.7 billion euros to acquire 50% of Siemens' shares, of which 1.2 billion was in cash and the rest was paid through secured loans. However, as a result, Nokia was originally relatively comfortable with 4 billion The cash flow of around 2 billion euros is now only over 2 billion euros.

At first glance, this is a lot of money. For ordinary people, you can’t expect to earn this much money in your lifetime. But you must know that Nokia is a big company with so many industries and employees around the world. It has more than 4 billion in cash. Liudu can only make do, and now there are more than 2 billion left, which can almost be said to be tight.

And you must know that a very important reason why all companies go bankrupt is that their cash flow is cut off!

There is no doubt that acquisitions are a good thing, but the bad thing is that there are problems with cash flow.

When Eliza Moon told Ye Qiu the news last night, Ye Qiu already knew the purpose of John Ollila's meeting with him, which was that he decided to sell assets and use this method to In exchange for huge cash flow, otherwise, with the current decline of Nokia, it will not be long before it will fall into bankruptcy crisis.

It was obvious that the changes brought about by Ye Qiu were aggravating Nokia's decline, at least faster than in the previous life.

"I believe Mr. Ye Qiu is also a busy man, and I also heard that you always like to be direct, so I won't say more!" When John Ollila met, he sat down and went straight to the topic without saying a few polite words. "We do have the idea of ​​selling some assets, but we feel that the price offered by Yezi Technology is too low, and there is also a problem with the payment method!"

After hearing this, Ye Qiu nodded, "Please tell me!"

"According to our thinking, we plan to sell the mobile phone business, but we do not plan to sell the map, patent and technology R\u0026D departments for the time being. As for the price, it certainly cannot be calculated based on the current stock price. We require a higher offer!"

"Reasonable!" Ye Qiu nodded, "But what I want to say is that without patents and maps, I am not interested in Nokia's mobile phone business!" He also said it very simply. This was the point where all negotiations in the past were stalemate.

Nokia's business mainly has four parts, mobile phones and some electronic equipment business, which is what Nokia calls mobile phone business, map business, network communication equipment business and patent and scientific research advanced technology department.

In the past life, many people said that Microsoft made a lot of money. It spent more than 5 billion euros to acquire Nokia and obtained the right to use patents. Anyone who would say this is stupid, because Microsoft suffered a big loss because it just got a mobile phone business. The other three pieces were not obtained at all, so this is where Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia is cheaper than Google's acquisition of Motorola.

It was for this reason that Ballmer had a falling out with Bill Gates, and finally stepped down in despair.

Of course, from Microsoft's perspective, they lack hardware technology, and the price to acquire Nokia is reasonable even if it is higher.

Ye Qiu's idea is not just about mobile phones. He wants mobile phones, maps, patents and R\u0026D technology departments. In this way, after Nokia is acquired, there will be only one network communication equipment business left, which is the business of Nokia Siemens.

The reason why Yezi Technology is resolute is that the map business is the weak point of Yezi Technology and one of the key points of this acquisition. Another key point is patents. For Yezi Technology, the mobile phone business is purely a buy-two-get-one-free thing. , when it comes to mobile phones and electronic equipment, Leaf Technology may not lose to Nokia now, but it still needs to spend money to acquire it?

Nokia's abacus was very good, selling the things that lost money and keeping the valuable things, but is Ye Ye Technology so stupid?

Ye Zi Technology is not like Microsoft now, and it has no shortage of hardware technology!

"Mr. Ollila!" Ye Qiu saw that his resolute words made the scene a little awkward. The three of them were silent, so he took the initiative to break the deadlock, "I hope you can understand our sincerity. I will sit here by myself." It is the most powerful proof that we will also show our sincerity in terms of price. However, unless you package and sell the map, patent and mobile phone business, I think this deal will not be possible!”

John Ollila and Sielasma looked at each other, and both saw each other's helplessness. They were indeed short of cash, because the current cash flow was too dangerous for them, and one mistake could lead to bankruptcy. Crisis, but if it is sold as Ye Qiu said, then Nokia will only be an empty shell.

Because in terms of network communication equipment, they are not leading at all, but lagging behind Ericsson and Huawei by a large margin.

But the problem is that with the completion of the acquisition of Nokia Siemens, Nokia's stock price will fall significantly after the financial statements are announced, and may even fall to an embarrassing level.

In the last round of decline, many of them, including Ollila and Silasma, bought a lot of Nokia shares and increased their holdings, so no matter from which angle, they don't want to continue to fall like this, or even go bankrupt.

Ye Qiu and Leaf Technology have such confidence. They know that you are short of cash, but I have nothing. I have the most cash, and now I am the only one who can propose an acquisition and promise a cash transaction in a short period of time, so if you want to sell, sell it, if you don't want to sell, forget it.

If you sell it earlier, the price can still be negotiated, even if you suffer a little loss, it doesn't matter. After all, you have to beware of Microsoft, who has seen the situation clearly, coming out to disrupt the situation. Ballmer has always wanted to develop Microsoft's hardware technology, so it is better to finalize it quickly, but if you sell it late, the price is not easy to negotiate, and Leaf Technology may not have the interest to slowly entangle in it.

Time is not good for Nokia!

John Ollila and Silasma both felt Ye Qiu's intention of taking advantage of the fire, that is, he is rich and powerful.

Although Ye Qiu said that he would show his sincerity in terms of price, John Ollila certainly would not take it seriously, because he guessed that Ye Qiu was only responsible for the overall situation, and Eliza Moon, who was in charge of the specific acquisition negotiations, would definitely try every means to lower the price.

That woman was extremely beautiful, but she was very vicious at the negotiation table!

Tap the screen to use advanced tools Tip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between chapters.

You'll Also Like