The Godfather of Football

Tottenham Hotspur defeated this season's top rival Liverpool 2-0 in the Community Shield, which made the British media feel both gratified and helpless.

I am gratified because in the past few seasons, Tottenham Hotspur has always been the benchmark for the Premier League. Tottenham Hotspur continues to perform at such a high level, which also means that they are very hopeful in the Premier League. He continues to perform well in the Champions League this season and even continues to perform at the highest level in the Premier League.

The reason is that the stronger Tottenham Hotspur is, the less suspense there will be about the Premier League championship.

Some people say that the Premier League has begun to enter the era of oligarchs. Tottenham Hotspur is the first oligarch to emerge because they have completed five consecutive Premier League championships in the past five seasons, while teams such as Liverpool and Manchester City It is possible to become the second and third oligarchs at any time.

But Wenger doesn't see it that way. Arsenal in the new season can be said to be very ambitious, but the time has already entered August. They claim to have 70 million pounds in their hands, which made all Gunners fans climax for a while, but it turned out that The team has not spent a penny of the 70 million pounds.

Wenger watched the duel at Wembley Stadium live. He pointed out in an interview with the media after the game, "Tottenham Hotspur's victory will cover up many problems, such as Pirlo's aging. I believe No media will notice this after the game!"

In fact, Wenger was right. After the game, almost all the media praised Tottenham Hotspur, and even Pirlo mostly praised it, but they ignored a very important point. , that is the state shown by Pirlo, which has indeed declined a lot from the previous two seasons.

Of course, this can also be explained by participating in the Confederations Cup in the summer.

When Ye Qiu heard Wenger's remarks about Pirlo, he immediately refuted, "We should have more expectations and patience for him. There is no doubt that he is thirty-four years old. We cannot He may be asked to run as unscrupulously as a young man, but I believe he can do more things that young people can't do, such as his passing."

Ye Qiu also revealed that Tottenham Hotspur have been making physical adjustments for him since Pirlo returned to the team to help him get into better shape, but Ye Qiu also emphasized again that because the team will continue to play more It is imperative to rotate Pirlo and even the entire midfielder.

This also reflects Ye Qiu's attitude towards midfield replacement. Pirlo comes off, Matic and Strotter come on. This is an inevitable result, but the process cannot be too fast or too hasty.

After this game, many media also predicted the Premier League championship in the new season. They believed that Tottenham Hotspur is still the favorite to win, but the advantage is not as big as the previous two seasons, but considering that this will This is Ye Qiu's last season as coach, so the possibility of winning the championship is still very high.

"In the past two decades, when talking about English football, you will inevitably talk about the Red Devils Manchester United. When talking about Manchester United, you will inevitably talk about Ferguson. In the past twenty years, Ferguson seems to have become synonymous with English football."

"But Ferguson has retired, and the halo over Manchester United seems to have dimmed. But football has never lacked influential heroes and legends. So Ye Qiu and his Tottenham Hotspur were born, and the Premier League created a new era. A record of five consecutive championships and two successful defenses of the Champions League in six years. This record is enough to make Tottenham Hotspur synonymous with the Premier League in the new century!"

"In the past few years, everyone has said that the Premier League has begun to enter the Tottenham Hotspur era, but we believe that if Tottenham Hotspur wants to do this, they still need to cross a threshold, and that is Ye Autumn!"

"Everyone thinks that Mauro Tassotti will become Ye Qiu's natural successor. This kind of culture that comes from the boot room has had successful precedents in teams such as Liverpool and Ajax, and no one else has Ye Qiu is more familiar with and understands Tottenham Hotspur than Mauro Tassotti, and Ye Qiu has been consciously cultivating Mauro Tassotti to take over in the past few years.”

"But we all know that Ye Qiu has left a very deep imprint on Tottenham Hotspur's body and soul."

"This is Ye Qiu's last season, but it is Mourinho's second season back in the Premier League, Pellegrini's first season in the Premier League, and Moyes' first season in a wealthy club... "

"Perhaps, many years later, when we look back, we will discover the legend of this season!"

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Under the overwhelming publicity of the media and the high expectations of countless fans around the world, the new season of the Premier League has finally begun slowly. As the opening match, Liverpool relied on Sturridge's goal to win 1:0 at home. Beat Stoke City.

Benitez's team had just suffered a defeat in the Community Shield, so in this game, Bei focused on stability. After all, he did not want to enter the state too early at the beginning of the league, but he wanted to enter the rhythm of the league steadily.

But it was claimed to have 70 million pounds, but it was later raised to 80 million pounds. But Arsenal, which has not spent a penny for more than two months so far, suffered a huge humiliation at the Emirates Stadium in the first round of the league. In the 1:3 defeat at the hands of Aston Villa, Belgian center Benteke scored twice.

Belgium is a strange country indeed. It is sandwiched between Germany and France. After crossing the English Channel, it faces the United Kingdom, and next to it is the Netherlands. Whether it is Germany, France, the United Kingdom or the Netherlands, they all have very obvious and clear national culture and characteristics.

But Belgium has always given people the feeling of being a soy sauce, but the headquarters of the European Union is located in Belgium.

In fact, Belgium is a bit like a low-key prince in Europe. Their culture was once brilliant, but it was an outbreak after a long period of precipitation and accumulation, and then it returned to silence again.

The same is true for Belgian football. They were once the Red Devils of Europe, but in the past period of time, they did not have too impressive stars, but the football of this country is like their culture, low-key and restrained. After decades of accumulation and precipitation, Belgian football began to usher in an outbreak.

Today, Belgium has many talented football players. Tottenham Hotspur has two stars, Kompany and Hazard, and the youth team has three young players, Andreas Pereira, Januzaj and Youri Ledimans. In addition to the loaned-out Courtois, Tottenham Hotspur has a large number of Belgian players.

This is also related to Tottenham Hotspur's early attention to Belgium. Anderlecht is currently a partner of Tottenham Hotspur, and this team is scouting for young talents in Belgium, providing an endless supply of talents for the five major European leagues.

Like Lukaku, Benteke, Dembele, Witsel, Fellaini, Vermaelen... The outpouring of talents in Belgium is bound to make the European Red Devils of the year come back again, and there is even hope for a big fight.

This time, it was the Belgian center Benteke who killed Arsenal!

After the game, Wenger and Arsenal issued a purchase request to Aston Villa with the positive attitude of "I can't beat you, so I will poach you to death", but Aston Villa clearly marked the price, and if you don't have 30 million pounds, don't knock on the door.

This scared Arsenal's half-extended hand and quickly retracted it.

But it's no wonder that Witsel transferred from Benfica to Zenit for 40 million euros, and he also transferred from the Portuguese Super League to Russia. For a player like Benteke who has proven himself in the Premier League, the transfer fee is too low, which is indeed a bit unreasonable, and this center forward is only 22 years old.

When Arsenal was hesitating whether to get Benteke, Tottenham Hotspur's first round of the league was an away challenge to Crystal Palace, a team in southern London. As a result, Tottenham Hotspur beat Crystal Palace 5:0 away, laying a solid foundation for the start of the new season.

In this match at Selhurst Park, veteran Pirlo, who was regarded by the media as being about to be put into the cold palace before the game, and the team's new player Lewandowski became the absolute protagonists of the team.

Crystal Palace played at home. In the first half hour, Crystal Palace used its tenacity and pressing pressure to create a lot of trouble for Tottenham Hotspur. However, at the critical moment, Pirlo made a fine straight pass, and Lewandowski took the ball in the penalty area and turned to shoot, which was done in one go and opened the scoring for Tottenham Hotspur.

And just two minutes later, Pirlo made another diagonal pass, Ribery broke through on the left and passed the ball to the back point, and Messi inserted and scored, 2:0!

After that, Crystal Palace adopted a dead-defense strategy, and made two consecutive substitutions during the halftime break, all of which were mainly to strengthen defense, but Pirlo made a long pass over the top shortly after the start of the second half, and Lewandowski rushed into the penalty area and volleyed, which scored another goal for Tottenham Hotspur, 3:0!

As time went by, Crystal Palace's physical strength became worse and worse. In the last half hour, they were almost suppressed by Tottenham Hotspur. Ribery and Ramsey's goals helped Tottenham Hotspur lock the score at 5:0!

The first start of the league made Tottenham Hotspur win the applause of the whole house.

But at the same time, Manchester United beat Swansea 4:1 away, Manchester City beat Newcastle 4:0 at home, Chelsea beat Hull City 2:0 at home, West Ham United beat Cardiff 2:0 at home, and several strong teams in the Premier League played well in the first round of the league, only Arsenal lost at home.

After the first round of the league, Tottenham Hotspur had to participate in the European Super Cup, so the third round of the Premier League was adjusted to midweek, and in the third round of the league, Tottenham Hotspur had to challenge Arsenal away.

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The Emirates Stadium has always been a popular place for Tottenham Hotspur in the past few seasons.

Strictly speaking, Arsenal can no longer be called North London in this game in North London, because Tottenham Hotspur has already moved south to the Stratford Stadium in the city center. More seriously, this is a London derby.

Before this London derby, Arsenal announced that they had introduced German star Ozil from Real Madrid for more than 40 million pounds. This is also a heavy signing that Arsenal finally made after several smoke bombs this season.

Wenger also couldn't wait to arrange Ozil to start in this game, hoping to use the German star to impact Tottenham Hotspur's formation, kill Tottenham Hotspur at their home court, and win this London derby.

Ye Qiu made some adjustments for this game. Tottenham's goalkeeper and defense did not change much. Ye Qiu replaced Kyle Walker with Azpilicueta, but made some adjustments in the midfield. Matic replaced Pirlo in the starting lineup, Vidal became Matic's midfield partner, Hazard, Messi, Ribery in the frontcourt, and Lewandowski as the striker. Tottenham changed to a 4231 tactic.

Before the game started, everyone who got the starting lineup was surprised by Tottenham's change of formation, because after taking Pirlo, Ye Qiu not only did not arrange Ramsey, a midfielder with increasing creativity and passing ability, to start, but took him down instead.

But many people were also surprised that Ye Qiu was not conservative, because he took down a midfielder and replaced him with a player like Hazard who had excellent wing attack ability, which set a tone for this game, that is, attack!

At the beginning of the game, Tottenham surprised many people who thought they would lose their creativity, because they found that Tottenham did not play conservatively. On the contrary, they kept launching attacks, and the configuration of the double defensive midfielder was very interesting.

Relatively speaking, Vidal was on the right and Matic was on the left. The former pressed forward and the latter fell back. The two players covered a wide area, especially Vidal, who frequently pressed to the front of the opponent's penalty area and responded beside Messi. Once he lost the ball, he immediately went to counter-grab at the first time, making him look like a frontcourt player instead of a defensive midfielder.

Similarly, Tottenham's defense line did not actively press forward, but appeared more in the midfield area.

Arsenal arranged a four-man midfield combination of Flamini, Wilshere, Rosicky and Cazorla in the midfield of this game, but from the beginning, they were pressed into their own half by Tottenham Hotspur. In this area, Tottenham Hotspur did not fight for possession of the ball, but launched an attack once they got the ball. Although Arsenal had possession of the ball, they found that the more possession, the more dangerous it was.

Fast is everyone's first impression of this game.

Arsenal's ball was fast, and Tottenham Hotspur's pressure and counterattack were also very fast, because they played in Arsenal's half.

Matic served as the team's defensive player, and Marcelo and Azpilicueta on the two sides pressed forward, making it almost difficult for Arsenal's ball to be pushed into Tottenham Hotspur's half, and more long passes could only be used.

But when the long pass reached Tottenham Hotspur's half, Arsenal had no advantage at all.

In this situation, Arsenal looked like they were being pressed down by Tottenham Hotspur and beaten in their own half.

In the 16th minute, Hazard faced Jenkinson, made a one-on-one breakthrough and passed the ball to Lewandowski, who headed the ball to Ribery, who volleyed the ball into the net, 1:0!

After that, Arsenal quickly stabilized their position, but still could not find a way to break Tottenham Hotspur's cage. It was difficult for them to resist because of the pressure in Tottenham Hotspur's frontcourt, especially Vidal's large-scale running and grabbing, and Matic's backward interception and blocking, which made it difficult for Arsenal's pass to penetrate the front of Tottenham Hotspur's defense to create threats.

In this situation, Arsenal can only take a defensive stance.

However, in the 30th minute, Matic intercepted the ball from Wilshere and passed it directly to Messi. The Argentine turned around to get rid of the breakthrough and passed it directly to the right side of the penalty area. Ribery inserted again, got rid of Gibbs, and shot directly at the right corner of the penalty area at a 45-degree angle, and once again penetrated the Arsenal goal, 2:0!

But in less than five minutes, Vidal returned to defense and intercepted the ball, Thiago Silva made a long diagonal pass, Hazard broke through the left and passed the ball to the penalty area, and Lewandowski scored in front of the goal, 3:0!

In the first half, Tottenham easily took the lead of three goals. Arsenal had almost no resistance in front of Tottenham.

For those who were skeptical and worried about Tottenham's change of formation before the game, they were now surprised to find that Tottenham once again presented a completely different style from before. They were faster, sharper, and more deadly.

At first glance, they seemed a bit passive, for example, they did not have too much possession of the ball, and once they stole the ball, they began to look for scoring opportunities, which made the game very fast-paced. But the problem was that they seemed to have no possession of the ball, but they were firmly in control of the situation.

Arsenal's possession rate in the first half was 49.2%, which seemed to be evenly matched, but in the first half, Arsenal did not even have a chance to shoot at the goal, only two shots, while Tottenham Hotspur, on the contrary, shot 18 times in the first half, such a shooting efficiency is amazing.

Matic is not Pirlo, he is faster and more concise, the ball almost never stops at his feet, and he turns it out as soon as he gets it. He is more like a perpetual motion machine, running non-stop, moving non-stop, running a distance of up to 13 kilometers throughout the game, and the ball is immediately passed when it reaches his feet. He always maintains a very calm and rational mental state.

"He completely dominated the entire Tottenham Hotspur midfield. No matter who enters this area, Matic will make him breathless. He is a terribly calm player!"

Richard Keys, who was in charge of the commentary, said with emotion, "As early as when he was in Southampton, we clearly realized that Matic had the potential to become a top defensive midfielder, but when he came to Tottenham Hotspur, we found that he had already shown the level of a top defensive midfielder, because in this powerful tactical system and with the support of his teammates, the strength that Matic has shown is really amazing!"

After that, Richard Keys laughed jokingly, "I wonder how Mourinho, who was sitting in the stands to spy on the military situation during this game, felt when he saw Matic's performance in the first half at this moment?"

The live TV camera really gave Mourinho a close-up, but the Portuguese looked very calm.

But in the eyes of many people, this calmness itself is a kind of uncalmness!