Chapter 359 They Are Taking an Old Path, a Path to Becoming Champions

"I told you, Tony, that guy will definitely surprise you! I watched Leicester City's previous games, and his substitute performance was crazy.

No matter which coach it is, it would be a crime not to let him enter the starting lineup under such circumstances..."

When the game entered the halftime break, Li Ang, who walked into the player tunnel side by side with Kroos, did not hide his admiration for Kante at all.

Kroos nodded subconsciously. After all, in the first half of the first half of the game, he also suffered enough from Kante's steals.

Leicester City did give Chelsea's players too many "surprises" in today's game.

A good forward combination, a stable and tough defense, and a balanced midfield.

Coupled with the new tactical system tailored by Ranieri for this team, all these factors combined together make Leicester City's transformation seem so magical.

And the Premier League fans who watched the first half of this game had to take the initiative to subvert the inherent impression of Leicester City in their hearts.

How can this be the strength of a mid-to-lower relegation team?

They have been able to deal with Chelsea for a full 45 minutes, and they seem to have the strength to threaten Chelsea's defense!

Don't say that they can't beat Chelsea.

Even if the Foxes can't beat Chelsea and Manchester City, they are confident of beating other mid- and lower-level Premier League teams? !

It seems that the top six in the Premier League will experience another turbulent reshuffle.

Liverpool didn't seize the opportunity to stay in the Champions League last season, and they rushed up and fell down.

Southampton and Swansea were one step away from making it to the European war zone for two consecutive seasons.

Now these three teams are about to return to the middle, but before Tottenham and Everton can be happy, Leicester City has emerged again.

However, this slightly chaotic and unexpected competition is exactly what more neutral Premier League fans are looking forward to.

Orderly rankings and competitions are not interesting at all.

In recent years, the Premier League fans' favorite to watch is probably the Premier League games when Leon and Mourinho just joined Chelsea.

Because Chelsea represented the rebellious challenge force at that time, and they did successfully overturn the inherent dominance of the Manchester City duo in the Premier League that season!

Of course, Chelsea has now replaced Manchester United's dominant position, and they are no longer the popular challenge team in the hearts of neutral Premier League fans.

Leicester City is limited by financial resources and influence, and it seems impossible to replicate Chelsea's success.

But this does not prevent them from rising from the grassroots and are likely to gain more and more support and preference from neutral fans in the future.

As long as they continue to maintain their current growth potential, they are destined to occupy a place in the Premier League in the next few seasons.

However, the current Leicester City has not yet reached the peak of its lineup strength.

They can cause Chelsea a lot of trouble, but it is still too difficult for them to win the game against Chelsea.

Mourinho did not emphasize too much in the locker room to pay attention to Leicester City's offensive counterattack in the second half.

He just asked his offensive players to try to avoid sticking to the ball too much in the midfield.

This is the greatest respect for Kante's outstanding performance today.

Mourinho spoke, and no Chelsea main player dared not to listen.

After the second half of the game, Chelsea's midfield offensive players, including Li Ang, increased the number of one-touch passes.

Hazard no longer dribbled the ball too much, and like De Bruyne, began to frequently retreat to the midfield to receive the ball and involve Leicester City's defense.

When Chelsea changed its offensive style, Mourinho also looked at Kante with interest. He wanted to see how the black midfielder read the game.

Even though Kante's large-scale coverage and sweeping in the midfield had attracted his interest before, he was still greedy to see Kante's upper limit.

Just like he had been tirelessly exploring Li Ang's offensive and defensive potential on the training ground many years ago.

This pleasure of digging deep into the "treasure" fascinated Mourinho.

As for the fact that Kante still belongs to Leicester City 100% now?

This is even more trivial~

It is already October, and it will not be long before the 2016 winter transfer window opens. As long as he feels it is appropriate, Kante and Leicester City will not be able to refuse Chelsea's sincere offer.

If it really doesn't work, then Van Ginkel and Loftus-Cheek, who need more game experience in the team, will be loaned to Leicester City.

Mourinho now just wants to know clearly whether Kante is worth his strong digging!

The French midfielder's interest in the opponent's head coach was completely unexpected.

He is now thinking of ways to help his midfield partner and even his teammates on the back line to further reduce the defensive pressure.

His playing style is very "dark and hard", but his mind is very smart and flexible.

Unlike many rough midfielders from Africa, Kante still likes to use his brain to think and read the game.

Physical fitness and outstanding tackling skills are his strengths, and under this superficial strength, he also has a similar position and defensive prediction talent to Li Ang.

So when Chelsea drastically improved their offensive style and relied more on passing to engage Leicester City's defense, Kante only adapted slightly and then changed his defensive mode.

His running coverage on the court is still very wide, but now he is more combined with his defensive anticipation ability to force Chelsea's offensive "receivers".

Yes, the potential receiver rather than the ball carrier.

Such defensive changes cannot intuitively improve Kanter's defensive efficiency in terms of statistics, but it is very effective in delaying Chelsea's vertical passing attempts.

It's a simple truth. Kante is very good at running. He can use many seemingly blind pressing choices to bet on a certain Chelsea forward pass.

But Chelsea's offensive players did not want to bet on Kante's interception ability, let alone give Leicester City a chance to seize the opportunity to counterattack in transition.

Even after adding more lateral pull passes, Chelsea can still securely obtain some threatening passing opportunities, and can also securely tear apart Leicester City's defense.

But it's obvious that Kante delayed Chelsea's attack on Leicester City, and he did the best within his current capabilities!

After seeing Kanter quickly change his defensive method, Mourinho sat on the coaching bench and slapped his thigh hard, as if he had made an important decision!

However, more neutral fans in front of the TV did not see what important contribution Kanter made to his team.

They just watched this short black midfielder running tirelessly on the court.

It was inefficient to press Hazard and Suarez, Chelsea's threatening offensive players in the frontcourt, again and again.

In the end, Leicester City still failed to withstand Chelsea's offensive pressure. In the 78th minute of the second half, the defense was torn apart by the pass-and-run connection of Leon and Suarez!

However, this time it was not Li Ang who passed the ball to Suarez to move forward, but Suarez who dropped back to receive the ball and sent Li Ang a beautiful diagonal through ball!

This contrasting style of play made Leicester City's defenders very helpless.

After Li Ang successfully countered offside and got a single chance, he hit a shot from the far corner very simply.

And Schmeichel was beaten so badly that he didn't touch the football spinning in the air at all.

Li Ang's shooting skills have improved a lot compared to what was visible to the naked eye last season.

When it comes to seizing opportunities, Li Ang is becoming more and more like a "cold-blooded shooter".

Of course, he still can't shoot at the same level as he did before.

But he basically scored all the goals he should score, and rarely made any mistakes. This is already a quite remarkable performance!

After taking a two-goal lead, Chelsea shifted into a defensive posture that shrunk across the board.

Ranieri replaced two strikers at the last moment to give it a try, but in the face of Mourinho's bus formation, Leicester City could only suffer at home.

The score is not big, but the gap in strength between the two teams is still quite obvious.

However, Leicester City fans are not frustrated. They are very satisfied with the team's remarkable performance against Chelsea.

After the game, Li Ang took the initiative to find Kanter, who played very well today, exchanged jerseys with him, and gave him a very friendly hug of encouragement.

This shy guy still has a little problem with his English pronunciation. He clearly said thank you to Li Ang, but to others around him, it became the internationally accepted "greeting".

As soon as Drinkwater heard Kanter's pronunciation, his expression changed instantly, for fear that Li Ang would misunderstand.

In the end, Li Ang laughed and waved his hand to indicate that he heard clearly, and said to Kanter jokingly:

"In the future, if some malicious reporters interview you, just greet them like this directly, and then make a statement saying that they heard wrongly. This is an excellent reason~"

Li Ang's easy-going and generous attitude made Kanter and other Leicester City players relax.

However, when Li Ang left with satisfaction and Mourinho took the initiative to praise Kanter for his outstanding performance today, the eyes of a large number of reporters on the sidelines suddenly lit up!

But Mourinho did not show too much enthusiasm for Kante alone. He also embraced Vardy and Mahrez, who also performed well today, and seemed to treat them equally.

As for what news reports reporters will write tomorrow, Mourinho has nothing to do~

While handing Leicester City its first defeat of the season, Chelsea also continued to put pressure on leading Manchester City.

However, Manchester City's performance in the new season is indeed very outstanding and stable. In this round of the league, they defeated Crystal Palace 3-0 and still sit firmly at the top of the Premier League.

It seems that it is impossible for this year's Premier League to decide the winner as soon as possible. It will once again be an endurance competition between two monster teams.

After this round of league play, Chelsea and Manchester City once again faced the challenge of the Champions League group stage.

Compared with Manchester City's home game against Sevilla, Chelsea's game in Moscow is much more "arduous".

In late October, the temperature in Moscow at night has reached subzero, and the coldest time is almost minus ten degrees.

This extremely cold weather coupled with the artificial turf at CSKA Moscow's home court is a great test for Chelsea's players!

Fortunately, this is not the first time Mourinho has brought the team to Moscow to play a game, and the Chelsea coaching staff is therefore very well prepared.

Li Ang also kept reminding his teammates of the things they need to pay attention to before the game.

But "paper knowledge is always shallow", when the game started that night, Chelsea's other main players realized what difficulties and troubles they were going to face.

Playing on the artificial turf full of white frost was not a problem for CSKA Moscow's players, but it greatly limited Chelsea's overall technical advantage.

In order to get as many points as possible at home, CSKA Moscow's players were also very motivated and worked hard in fighting and confrontation.

Li Ang adapted quickly. He already knew how to compete with his opponents in today's game.

At the signal of him and Mourinho, Chelsea's midfield and backcourt players decisively gave up the plan of calm organization and directly picked up the old tactics of the Premier League team.

Long pass!

CSKA Moscow's style of play today was already very direct, but they did not expect Chelsea to play more directly than them!

Li Ang almost used himself as a tactical center forward, that is, standing in the frontcourt to hold the high ball, and then looking for Suarez or other teammates who were running.

Such a simple offensive tactic happened to be very practical and easy to use today.

As a result, Chelsea's other offensive players can use the saved energy to attack CSKA Moscow's defense.

In the 28th minute of the first half, Suarez received a cross from De Bruyne and scored!

Just eight minutes later, Li Ang also headed back in a frontcourt set-piece opportunity, assisting Kroos to push the ball into the goal at the top of the penalty area, expanding the lead!

But just when the Chelsea team wanted to pursue the victory and further gain more goal difference advantages, Hazard sprained his ankle in a counterattack.

This terrible injury situation came to the door, and instantly made the Chelsea team feel bad!

While cursing the cold weather in Moscow at night, Mourinho quickly made tactical adjustments and signaled the Chelsea team to slow down the offensive.

Salah played more carefully after replacing Hazard.

Chelsea spent almost the entire second half of the game on defense.

CSKA Moscow also scored a goal through a set-piece opportunity in the 83rd minute of the second half.

But with Mourinho's decisive adjustment of replacing two defenders at the last moment, CSKA Moscow's set-piece tactics no longer worked.

Chelsea finally won CSKA Moscow 2-1, and also won three consecutive victories in the Champions League death group!

However, with Hazard's accidental injury, a difficult problem was also placed in front of the Chelsea coaching staff.

That is, in the subsequent tight schedule, which one should Chelsea pay more attention to, the league or the upcoming League Cup quarter-finals?

However, Mourinho quickly gave his answer.

In the 10th round of the Premier League against West Ham United on October 24, Mourinho continued to send most of the starting players to play.

This basically means that Chelsea will give up the League Cup on October 27!

Faced with such a decision by their own coaching staff, Chelsea fans have expressed their understanding and support.

After all, the team's bench thickness is far less than last season. There are not many veterans in the substitute lineup. How far can the young players go in the two domestic cup competitions in England?

And with Hazard's accidental injury, Chelsea's main lineup now needs more careful protection and rotation.

You have to sacrifice before you can gain. Chelsea's situation this season is very similar to Mourinho's third year at Real Madrid.

If you want to complete the feat of winning three consecutive league titles and defending the Champions League, you have to decisively abandon the burden of the game!

At least now it seems that Mourinho's mind is very clear, and he and Li Ang have led Chelsea to an old path.

A championship path they have successfully walked!