Chapter 421 Wu Lei Wants to Improve

“Beep, beep, beep—!!!”

At the end of the game, the Chinese team was the better team. Mourinho is very particular about momentum.

You can see that the Chinese team played similarly to Syria in the first half. That's because everyone was in similar condition. In the second half, they adjusted their tactics to gain an advantage. That's why the Chinese team was able to achieve a net score of 2:0 in the second half.

When Jiang Yuan scored the second goal, Syria had already been defeated!
"Brother Yuan!"

After playing the entire game, Gao Lin walked into the locker room and gave Jiang Yuan a big hug the first thing he did.

Although he created the penalty, Gao Lin still had a clear idea of ​​who the team's first penalty taker was.

"That full-back on the other side is such an idiot"

Wu Lei muttered on the sidelines that he was somewhat restricted by Syria's left-back in this game, otherwise he might have been able to score a goal.

"What a shame, but we won in the end!"

Gao Lin put his arm around Wu Lei's shoulders, and the two took a photo together in the locker room, which they would post on Weibo later.

Because of public opinion, Chinese national football players rarely post post-match photos or interview videos on Weibo. However, this trend has changed a lot since they defeated South Korea in the Asian qualifiers last year, and some players in the team have gradually become bolder online.

Among the players celebrating in the locker room, Jiang Yuan noticed Zhang Xizhe who was silent in the corner, so he glanced at Wu Xi and Zhang Linpeng and walked over with them: "Hey, it's okay."

Wu Xi put his hands on Zhang Xizhe's shoulders and squeezed his shoulder muscles: "Anyway, we won in the end, and no one will cyberbully you."

“I know, I know”

Zhang Xizhe shook his head. Although he would not be cyber-bullied if he won, today was Mourinho's first game in charge of the team. If he performed like this, what if he was directly suppressed on the bench later?
Jiang Yuan saw Zhang Xizhe's worry, so he sat down next to him and said, "Mourinho will give players a chance. You just made a mistake. And brother Zhe, you have to know that the goal was not entirely your fault."

“Well, I have to take the blame too.”

After hearing what Jiang Yuan said, Wu Xi quickly agreed, not caring whose fault it was. Since Jiang Yuan said it was not Zhang Xizhe's problem alone, then it was not his problem alone.

"Forehead……"

Jiang Yuan touched his nose. He originally wanted to say that he should return to defense faster, but he didn't expect Wu Xi to take the blame directly.

But this is not bad either. Everyone can share the pressure, so Zhang Xizhe won’t be so nervous.

"Come on, come on, get up"

Jiang Yuan and Wu Xi pulled Zhang Xizhe up from his chair and joined the celebration in the locker room. On the other side, Mourinho came to the press conference again, ready to be interviewed by reporters.

What was a little different from the last time he walked into the room before the game was that the Portuguese walked with the wind this time.

crunch--

Pulling out a chair and sitting down, Mourinho looked at the reporters in front of him.

Snap, snap! Snap, snap!
"Jose, congratulations on your victory in this game. This is your first game as the coach of the Chinese men's football team. This game has also received a lot of attention in China. I would like to ask, as the head coach of this game, what do you think of the course of the game?"

The reporter asked a very detailed question. He asked about the "process" rather than the "result."

We beat our opponent 4:1, and except for not being shutout, this result can be said to be perfect.

When the reporter asked about the process of the game, on the one hand he wanted to understand Mourinho's tactics, and on the other hand he also wanted to see Mourinho's overall attitude towards the Chinese men's football team.

"I think it's pretty good overall. The way this game turned out was actually a little beyond my expectations."

The reporter's eyes lit up: "Is it because the Chinese team performed too well?"

"Huh? No, no, I mean, I thought we could keep the game scoreless, but we didn't."

"wowww!"

Before the word "but" came out, the reporters at the scene had already started to make a fuss.

"So what you mean is that you are not satisfied with the score of 4:1?"

"I'm not completely satisfied. If I have to give a score, I'd give our offense today 7 points. Well, considering our own strength, I think 7 points is more appropriate. But for defense, I can only give 4 points, which is bad. I will find a way to make adjustments to this situation, because after all, we can't always play against weak teams."

Brown sat next to him without moving. In fact, Mourinho's words were quite tactful.

In today's match against Syria, not only the defense but also the offense was a mess. The reason why they were able to win this game was mainly because Syria played rather dull as a whole.

"We saw that you made a very obvious change in today's game, which was to widen the offensive and defensive lines at the same time. Can you tell me your intention in doing so?"

“It’s just a transition”

As soon as Mourinho finished speaking, Brown, who was sitting next to him, suddenly touched his waist and reminded him. After the Portuguese reacted, he immediately changed his words: "I think this tactic is more suitable for today's game. I think our offense lacks some front and back layers, and we can't achieve the kind of smooth advancement from the backcourt to the frontcourt, so I need to use the width of the court to activate the running ability of some players."

"Are you referring specifically to Jiang Yuan when you mention some of these players?"

"That's right, of course."

At this time, the reporter raised a very interesting question.

That is, apart from Jiang Yuan, does Mourinho think there are any players in the national football team worth training?

The Portuguese has made many praised deals in his career, including bringing Kante and Jiang Yuan to Chelsea, and before that, Drogba and others.

Mourinho's vision is unquestionable, but his attitude towards the Chinese national football players...

The entire press conference fell into silence, and the cameras in the room were pointed at Mourinho who was sitting there: "..."

“It depends.”

"Based on this game, I think there are still some pretty good players in the Chinese national team, such as Lei, Zhang (Zhang Yuning), and, um... Liao (Liao Lisheng). Liao can make some good through balls, which surprised me. Lei's positioning is also good!"

Okay, no need to say more.

The fans in the live broadcast room had bitter expressions on their faces.

Based on the Chinese people's ability to understand, Mourinho's words have been analyzed three or four times from inside out.

There are still no particularly talented players in the Chinese national football team!
“But I think they still have a lot of room for improvement.”

Mourinho added: "Physical fitness is an aspect that can be further improved. I would suggest to the management to invite several new fitness coaches, because only when the physical strength is sufficient can the players better adapt to high-intensity games."

The reporter took up his pen and quickly wrote down Mourinho's words.

Mourinho and Li Yi have somewhat different philosophies. Mourinho is a coach who attaches great importance to defensive players participating in offense and offensive players participating in defense.

Take today's game for example. In the second half, except for Jiang Yuan, all other offensive players basically returned to defense. Sometimes Jiang Yuan would even take the initiative to move to the middle to get the ball.

For the same total running distance of 6km, players will be more tired when playing in an all-out attack and defense style, because your 6km distance includes more sprinting distance.

"After this game, the next game of the national football team will not be until August 8, which means there will be two and a half months of free time. During this time, will you train the players?"

"certainly"

Mourinho made a direct statement: "I will ask the player's club for more time. Although it is difficult, I will try my best."

2018 FIFA World Cup Qualification for Asia, Group A Table:

1. Iran, 19 points

2. South Korea, 17 points

3. China, 15 points

4. Uzbekistan, 9 points

5. Qatar, 3 points

6. Syria, 3 point

Team News: The year with the biggest gap in strength? The top 12 teams in the Asian qualifiers are seriously polarized, with Syria at the end of Group A having only 3 points, while Thailand at the end of Group B has only 2 points.

Top scorers in the Asian qualifiers.

1. Jiang Yuan, 16 goals - China

2. Son Heung-min, 5 goals – South Korea

3. Yukiyo Ueda, 4 goals – Japan

4. Azmoun, 4 goals - Iran

5. Taremi, 4 goals - Iran

The front page headline of London Evening News: In the first round of European qualifiers, England drew 2:2 with Scotland away. Should Southgate be sacked directly?

The front page headline of "Manchester Evening News" - Summer transfer king, Romelu Lukaku joins Manchester United, transfer fee is no less than 8000 million euros.

Italian famous reporter Romaro: Here We Go! Chelsea midfielder Matic transfers to Manchester United, the transfer fee is around 4500 million euros.

Chelsea team reporter Liam Twomey: New coach Tuchel recommended German defender Rudiger to the management. Chelsea is positive about completing the deal, but they want to buy Kyle Walker first.

This June is the same as usual, with new football news every few minutes. But what is a little different is that this year, in addition to transfer news, there are also news about the European and Asian qualifiers.

With the impressive record of a 2:2 draw with Scotland, Southgate was sprayed on the hot searches by fans, but soon his popularity in terms of understanding the team dropped because someone helped him attract the attention.

The front page of China Football News: Mourinho puts pressure on the club through the Football Association to prevent national team players from returning to the national team before the end of June. He hopes to have time to make new arrangements for his tactics. The Portuguese believes that Chinese men's football players should receive more professional physical training. The team expert undoubtedly pinned this news, and many people in the comment area criticized Mourinho.

The Premier League was suspended in June, but the Chinese Super League is still going on. With Mourinho's move, what can strong Chinese Super League teams like Evergrande, Haigang and Shandong Taishan do in the next two or three games?
Most of those who understand the team watch the five major leagues, but there are also many fans of the Chinese Super League teams. Mourinho's move is almost equivalent to smearing his own face.

Of course the Football Association agreed. Not many people in China watch the Chinese Super League, but there are definitely a lot of people watching the World Cup. In the eyes of officials, the World Cup is definitely more important than a Chinese Super League. As a result, the main players of the major Super League teams were locked in the Hebei training base.

After the storm, the fans' initial excitement has almost subsided. If you think about it carefully, given the polarization level of the Chinese Super League, as long as the main players of each strong team are not there, there will be basically no big fluctuations in winning or losing.

Almost three days after the summer training camp, the well-known commentator Dong Lu revealed a piece of news to Chinese fans on Weibo, that is, Jiang Yuan also participated in this training camp, and because of this training camp, he directly lost his original three-week vacation in June.

"When the Football Association held a meeting, the Chinese Super League clubs and players had some opinions, but after knowing that Jiang Yuan would also stay, they all kept silent."

The coaches and big-name stars all stayed to practice together, which made those players who originally liked to vent their dissatisfaction shut up.

It is hard to imagine how Mourinho persuaded Jiang Yuan to give up the three-week vacation.

This is really powerful!
In fact, only Jiang Yuan himself knows about this matter. He can only get his next template if the Chinese national football team enters the finals of the World Cup in Russia.

If Jiang Yuan wants to perform better in the league next season, he needs to activate a more highly activated template. The prerequisite for obtaining the template fragments is that the Chinese men's football team needs to qualify for next year's World Cup.

Now it is in third place, and the gap with second place South Korea is only 2 points, but China will face Uzbekistan in one of its next two games. Compared with Syria and Qatar, Uzbekistan is more difficult to deal with.

……

On June 6, the Chinese Football Association announced that it would introduce two fitness coaches from French Ligue 22 teams Saint-Etienne and Montpellier to replace the original Chinese coaching team.

At this point, except for assistant coach Gao Hongbo and the team medical team, all other members of the Chinese men's football team have been replaced.

June 6, National Men's Football Training Base.

"Gogogo! Run! This is a test. You are not allowed to stop and rest!"

Abel shouted to the players running on the grass. Today was a physical fitness test for the national football team. It involved five shuttle runs throughout the game, 5×100×2, a total distance of 5 meters. Abel set the standard for the players at 1000 minutes and 3 seconds.

drop!
"Grass!"

Jiang Yuan, who finished first, came near the goal, put his arm on the post and pressed his forehead on his forearm.

The difference between this 1000-meter turnaround and the 1000-meter run is quite large, and it's on grass, so it's really damn uncomfortable to run.

After the last player finished running, Abel recorded the results one by one on the form.

Apart from Jiang Yuan's 3 minutes and 09, the best result was Zhang Yuning's 3 minutes and 23 minutes, followed closely by Wei Shihao with 3 minutes and 24 minutes. The two of them ran together and crossed the finish line at about the same time.

The top three are all overseas players, and the other 20-odd players all failed to reach the 3 point standard.

"Give me"

Mourinho reached out and took the notebook from Abel's hand, sighed after reading it, and then handed the notebook to Brown. The assistant coach had a similar expression.

All I can say is that the physical strength of these players on the team is as bad as imagined, or perhaps even worse.

"yue!"

A voice was heard from the crowd, and Zhang Yuning walked to the edge of the court and vomited out what he had eaten at noon.

Abel held his forehead with one hand and said, "I told you to run on your own. Don't try to follow the person in front of you. There are still tests to come!"

Zhang Yuning and Jiang Yuan ran up together at the beginning. He ran too fast in the front, so he had to grit his teeth to hold on for the next 300 meters. It would be strange if he didn't vomit in this situation.

Zhang Yuning was a little embarrassed. He simply rinsed his mouth with water, pretended nothing was wrong and walked back.

Mourinho took a photo of the 1000-meter return run and saved it on his mobile phone, and asked the players to take a walk and rest on the spot.

There is a 10-minute break before the next test, and Mourinho will emphasize some things with the players during this break.

When he coached Inter Milan and Chelsea before, Mourinho allocated ball training and off-ball training in a ratio of 7:3, but considering the overall physical fitness level of the national team players, Mourinho decided to make a slight adjustment.

40% of the time spent training without the ball should be more appropriate for the Chinese national football team at the current stage. After the overall physical fitness of the players in the team reaches a relatively high level, the time spent training without the ball can be reduced to 30%.

The players learned through the translator what Mourinho had just said, and there was a sudden wailing on the field.

"Awesome, you're going to do this every day from now on, right?"

"40%, basically I have to exercise once a day"

"Stop it, damn..."

"Can you..."

"Quiet!"

Mourinho shouted, and the players sitting around him immediately quieted down: "This is how I arranged it. Don't tell me that you can't practice like this, it's unscientific, I won't listen to your advice"

"40% physical training is the standard for young players. This training mode will be a little tiring, but there will be no problems otherwise."

Mourinho squatted down and looked at Wu Lei in front of him: "Believe me, if you can improve your physical fitness, your ceiling will be much higher, especially all the players in the midfield and frontcourt. You told me that football skills rely on talent, I can understand, but the fact is, as long as your physical strength has not reached the highest level, there is room for improvement."

According to the physical test results, the current physical level of the Chinese national team players cannot support the defensive counterattack tactics, which is why Mourinho is so anxious.

From what he said, we can also hear that Mourinho is preparing with the World Cup next year as the goal.

Just like the Champions League, if you fight tooth and nail for a qualification but end up being eliminated in the first round of the group stage, then there is really no point.

On the grass, the players looked at each other, and no one spoke.

If this decision was made by Li Yi, someone in the team would have objected to it long ago, but it is not possible now. Mourinho is the foreign coach invited by the national football team, and his status in the top management of the Football Association is incomparable to Li Yi.

If you want to stay here and in the Chinese national team, you must train according to the requirements.

This was the character Mourinho had established when he first joined the Chinese men's football team.

"You guys do the test here first, Leon and I will prepare for the training content for the next few days."

Mourinho stood up and left only two fitness coaches and two assistant coaches (Jones and Gao Hongbo) here to supervise the players' training.

Seeing Mourinho walking away, Wei Shihao lay directly on the ground: "Fuck, the club runs endurance, and the national team also runs endurance, damn!"

Jiang Yuan lifted his butt and moved to sit next to Wei Shihao: "I talked to the agent, he will let the club deal with the problem you mentioned, you just need to focus on training"

The "that problem" that Jiang Yuan mentioned was naturally the fight between Wei Shihao and his teammates. Jiang Yuan and Wei Shihao had known each other for more than a year and knew his character.

He speaks harshly and uses rough hands. If this kind of player goes abroad, he will definitely get into fights with others and may even be isolated by other teammates.

"Fuck, Brother Yuan, thanks"

Wei Shihao didn't care that he was still catching his breath and "lifted" his entire upper body off the grass.

Only Wei Shihao knows how it feels like his national team teammates are the largest shareholders of their club.

“Then there was the matter of the club competition.”

Jiang Yuan supported himself on the grass with both hands, panting as he relayed to Wei Shihao the news he had received from Biko yesterday: "Lexion Ish is now performing steadily, almost at the middle level of the Portuguese First Division. You may have more opportunities to play at the beginning of next season, and it depends on you whether you can seize them."

!!!

Wei Shihao's eyes lit up. How could he not understand what Jiang Yuan meant?

The boss is trying to force the opportunity into his own hands!

"Damn, if I had known earlier I would have gone to Portugal. I actually had the opportunity to go to Portugal, but later I went to the Eredivisie."

Zhang Yuning held his head in his hands and had basically no chance to play for Vitesse in the Dutch Eredivisie.

"No, listen to me, whether you can play or not is important, but it takes a long time to practice. My advice is, like Mourinho said, to train your body well."

Jiang Yuan turned to look at Wei Shihao: "In two months, I gained at least 2kg, which is almost enough to fight in the Portuguese First Division. It's not realistic to always start, but I think it's completely ok to be a rotation player in Lexon Ish."

When playing in the Portuguese League Cup in Porto before, Jiang Yuan had played against a Portuguese League team, so he was clear about the overall level of the Portuguese League.

If Wei Shihao completes his muscle gain, coupled with the preferential treatment he receives during training, it is not completely impossible for him to stabilize in the Portuguese First Division.

"Brother Yuan, what if it's my team and I don't get any chance to play? I'm almost being relegated to the second team."

Zhang Yuning came over and was ready to learn from Jiang Yuan.

"It's the same with the body. You can't see the improvement of your skills in one go. If you run fast during training, the coach will remember you. This kind of objective thing is the easiest to remember. When you think you are good enough, the coach will almost let you go and try. If he doesn't let you go, you can tell him directly in person and he will usually give you a chance."

"The improvement of your football skills depends on playing time. You have to keep playing in that league to reach the level of that league... Well, that's what I think anyway."

Jiang Yuan was speaking the truth, and he also intended to comfort the players on the team.

He is instilling a subconscious message in everyone, that is, everyone must accept the national team's gradually increasing training intensity and must not give up.

At a position on Jiang Yuan's left, Wu Lei was listening very carefully.

In the evening, Wu Lei, who lived next door, knocked on Jiang Yuan's door.

"Brother Yuan, I also want to improve. Do you think I have a chance?"

……

(End of this chapter)