Chapter 324 Target: Quadruple Crown!

Many reporters and professionals have asked Ye Qiu the same question, why did he choose to abandon the 433 tactics that he had used for four years in Ajax and was more familiar with after coming to Chelsea, and instead adopt the 4321 and 4231 tactics?

For this question, Ye Qiu's answer has always been to adopt different tactics according to different types of players, but in fact, he himself knows very well that there is a deeper factor, that is, the flaws of 433.

I believe that many fans in the past have seen Mourinho's 433 at Chelsea, Mourinho's 433 at Inter Milan, and Barcelona's 433 at its peak, and they will naturally feel that 433 should be the strongest tactic of that era.

It is undeniable that 433 does have a very good side, that is freedom.

If you only look at Mourinho's 433, everyone's most intuitive impression should be oppressive defense and sharp and fast counterattacks.

Mourinho is a smart man. He can always master the method of leading the team to achieve stable results in the shortest time, but he does have great flaws at the tactical level. During his time at Chelsea, he did not have enough understanding of off-ball running. In order to bring out the offensive ability of the winger tactics, he could only adopt the meat grinder midfield and use physical strength to run and cover.

The flaw of the meat grinder midfield is that it is too tough and relies more on physical strength. When encountering a team with stronger control ability, it is often easy to be at a disadvantage. Therefore, Chelsea always has one less person when encountering Barcelona.

If you only look at Barcelona's 433 tactics, you will see a pressing offense and an excellent off-ball running and passing and receiving coordination system. Of course, in the eyes of ordinary fans, they may not see these. They will intuitively sigh while watching the game that Barcelona's players play so freely, cooperate wherever they go, and play however they want.

From a purely tactical perspective, Barcelona's 433 is indeed more tactically valuable than Mourinho's 433. The latter relies more on the physical fitness of the players rather than the tactics themselves, but Barcelona's tactics also have a problem, that is, insufficient vertical offensive ability.

Here I must explain that 442 is the most standard and balanced tactic among all tactics, and the distance between the players is just right. But if it becomes 433, the distance between the players, whether horizontally or vertically, is much greater than 442. This is the price to pay for the mobility of the players.

If you want the players to flow and run freely, then you have to reserve space for them to run, right?

Especially for the distance between the full-back and the winger, it has been kept above 25 meters for a long time, and the distance between the winger and the center forward is about 10 meters more than the 442 double forward tactics. This is why Ajax lost a group of outstanding wingers, and the power of 433 was completely reduced, and the team's strength declined rapidly.

In the past, many fans accused Barcelona of passing the ball too much when attacking. This was partly due to the team's ball control system, but in fact, part of the reason was that they lacked a stable ball point in the middle of the frontcourt.

If you look closely at Barcelona's tactics, it is not difficult to find that almost all of Barcelona's ball advancement is to find the wing, advance from the wing to the frontcourt, and then cut back to the middle through the wing players, such as Ronaldinho and Giuly, who were very famous at the time, and then cut in from the two wingers and attacked with diagonal passes.

Why is this so? The reason is very simple. Eto'o is not a qualified single striker in the 433 tactics. Even if he went to Inter Milan, Mourinho used him to the wing.

One thing that must be clarified here is that scoring many goals does not mean he is suitable!

When a team has a strong and stable variety of ball advancement, that is, the so-called ability to create opportunities, even if an amateur striker is placed in front, he can still score a lot of goals, but this does not mean that he is suitable for the team's tactics.

Eto'o's biggest weakness is that he doesn't have enough coordination with the two wingers, and his ability to get the ball in the middle of the penalty area is also slightly lacking. So when he was in Inter Milan, Diego Milito was the stable point to get the ball in the middle of the front court.

Eto'o is undoubtedly a very outstanding top striker. He also has strong tactical adaptability and can play double strikers and single strikers, but this does not mean that he can become the top player in different tactics. Any player can only tap the greatest potential in the tactics that suit him best.

Because of Eto'o's weakness, or deficiency, Barcelona's ball advancement is difficult to pass directly to Eto'o, and more can only go to the side, so there will inevitably be more horizontal passes, and in order to stabilize the ball possession rate, Barcelona has the mechanical pass that is criticized.

Guardiola is also aware of this, so he wants to introduce Ibrahimovic. There is absolutely no doubt that the Swedish striker can get the ball in the front court, but he seems a little unsuitable for Barcelona's tactical system and requirements.

In other words, with Barcelona's technical foundation and team awareness, and Eto'o's outstanding personal ability, their use of 433 still has shortcomings and deficiencies. It is conceivable that in the Premier League, where technical foundation and passing and coordination awareness are obviously inferior to those in continental Europe, there is basically only one way to replicate 433.

Learn from Mourinho, play defensive counterattacks, play the tactics of rapid advancement in the frontcourt, and then use the meat grinder midfield to complete the coverage.

Think about it again, did Ferguson's Manchester United also use such tactics when they won the Champions League?

Think about it again, why did Wenger cling to 442?

When the players' technical ability, running ability and other qualities do not meet the requirements, it is a dead end to rashly adopt the 433 tactics. So for Ye Qiu, only when Fabregas, Messi, Ribery, Van Persie and other players mature and can stand on their own, he will turn to 433 to maximize the team's offensive power.

It can be said that there are not many people in today's football world who are more familiar with and understand 433 than Ye Qiu, because this set of tactics is his specialty, and he has also studied the experience and experience of many world-famous coaches on the 433 tactics, so he knows very well the weaknesses and shortcomings of this Barcelona team at present.

In Ye Qiu's eyes, Rijkaard's team has problems everywhere.

Eto'o, as a single striker, does not respond well to the left and right wing lanes, let alone Iniesta and Giuly form the wing lanes. The former is a little slower, but has good skills and enough creativity, but behind him are Abidal and Van Bronckhorst, and behind Giuly is Belletti. There is a big gap between the wingers and the full-backs.

Barcelona's midfielders are Xavi, Motta and Max, and the two central defenders are Edmilson and Puyol. The thickness of the midfield is relatively weak, and Barcelona advocates ball control and counter-grabbing, which has a premise.

When Barcelona can get continuous high-speed passes and players can effectively run back and forth, this Barcelona is the most threatening, because their pass penetration will tear open any line of defense.

Because of this, when Barcelona encounters those La Liga teams that lack defensive ability, are not strong in oppression, and are unwilling to defend and counterattack, they hardly feel the pressure of defense. This is why Barcelona can perform well this season, but when Rijkaard encounters Ye Qiu's Chelsea, his 433 tactics collapse.

Chelsea still uses the 4231 tactics, with Van der Sar as the goalkeeper, Evra, Cannavaro, Terry and Maicon in the back line, Deco and Makelele as the double defensive midfielders, Ronaldinho, Lampard and Rooney in the front court, and Drogba as the lone striker.

Out of confidence in his team, Ye Qiu announced his starting lineup for the Nou Camp stadium early after playing the FA Cup match against Newcastle. Not surprisingly, all the main players played, but he played a variety of tactics.

First, they did not compete with Barcelona for the ball, but tried their best to launch a pressure-type defense against Barcelona's ball possession. Once they got the ball, they did not stop the ball and went straight to the front court, or Ronaldinho and Rooney on the wing, or Drogba and Lampard.

Ye Qiu knew very well that in front of Barcelona's defense, Chelsea's front court players had a certain advantage in getting the ball, even the young Rooney, so Chelsea could boldly pass the ball forward. There were many receiving points in front, and the quick pass to the front court could maximize the effect of Barcelona's counter-grabbing and hit the opponent's enthusiasm.

Second, once the ball was obtained, the full-back quickly moved forward to hit the opponent's soft spot between the winger and the full-back in the shortest time, using the advantage of numbers, as well as repeated impacts and breakthroughs, to disintegrate Barcelona's defense from the wing.

Therefore, in this game, Ronaldinho and Evra, Rooney and Maicon almost completely beat Barcelona's two wingers into a sieve. If it weren't for Drogba's lack of ability to seize opportunities, Barcelona would have lost at least 5 goals in this game.

With the first and second points, Chelsea naturally gained the advantage on the field, and used Barcelona's half as the main battlefield in the game, thereby suppressing and disintegrating Barcelona's tactics.

In fact, the first leg of the Champions League round of 16 knockout match held at the Camp Nou Stadium had lost suspense since the 3rd minute. After receiving the pass from the backcourt along the left side, Ronaldinho quickly broke through, shook off Belletti, got rid of Puyol in the left corner of the penalty area, and faced Valdes who attacked after entering the penalty area. He directly shot calmly.

The ball drew an arc and hit the right net in the goal, 1:0!

After that, Chelsea kept using the advantage of stable ball possession in the frontcourt, played the characteristics of wing attack, hit the weaknesses and deficiencies of Barcelona's wing defense, and attacked and suppressed Barcelona's wing again and again, but never found a chance to break Barcelona's goal again.

Until the 67th minute of the second half, Ronaldinho retreated to receive the ball and made a wide diagonal pass. Rooney quickly got the ball and advanced to the right side of the penalty area. He made a quick stop and passed the ball. Drogba distracted Puyol and Edmilson, and Lampard scored with a close-range header, 2:0!

These were also the only two goals in the game. Chelsea defeated Barcelona 2:0 away!

At the moment when the whistle sounded at the end of the game, the entire Camp Nou was completely desperate!

If Barcelona brought bitterness and tears to Barcelona fans last season, then the team's performance this season has improved. Rijkaard boldly promoted Iniesta and introduced many players to further strengthen the team's overall strength, allowing Barcelona to perform well in La Liga.

But when Barcelona met Chelsea, known as the strongest team in Europe, they really felt the huge gap between themselves and the top teams. This was not only a gap in strength, but also a gap in tactics.

Cruyff, the godfather of Barcelona who served as the commentator for this game, summarized this and believed that it would be difficult for Barcelona to make a difference in the Champions League. Rijkaard could then devote all his energy to the league. Go in.

"I said before the game that no one understands the essence of the 4-3-3 tactic better than Ye Qiu. He overturned Ajax's traditional 4-3-3 and made improvements to make this tactic more suitable for the trend of modern football. He He is very aware of the various problems that may arise from using 433, and Rijkaard has no advantage at all in front of Ye Qiu.”

Cruyff did not hide his disappointment with Barcelona's performance in this game, even though he knew very well that this was more due to Chelsea's outstanding performance.

"When we clearly know that our opponents are best at suppressing and controlling the rhythm, we should not show timidity in these two aspects. We should counter-press and compete with Chelsea to control the rhythm, because only in this way can we win. opportunities, but at this point, the team did very poorly.”

"I saw that we did not invest determination in the rhythm competition. On the contrary, Chelsea boldly attacked and pressed from the beginning, and successfully scored goals, and our weaknesses on the wing were also exposed. Jaccard’s team is a bit like Ajax before Ye Qiu took over, very similar.”

This also sounds like Cruyff is hinting and beating Rijkaard. He has completely failed to learn the proper experience and lessons from Ye Qiu's transformation of Ajax, and still blindly uses the wing he is familiar with. tactics.

"Another point is that the team's tactical adaptability is very poor. When we saw Ronaldinho and Evra breaking through Belletti again and again, Rooney and Maicon passed us again and again. We should have made changes and adjustments to the defense on the left long ago, but the team did not change at all on this point, and the goals conceded in the second half were still from the wing. "

In the end, Cruyff also summarized the match against both sides, believing that Barcelona lost due to lack of quality.

"Chelsea is a team that is still figuring out its own style, but already has a very high quality of play. They know exactly what they are doing and how they should do it at all times, which makes every move they make full of purpose. Full of ideas and methods, it is undoubtedly worthy of learning by all teams.”

"I usually don't praise a team easily, but what I want to say now is that Ye Qiu and his Chelsea will have the opportunity to reach their perfect peak. They are the biggest favorites in the Champions League this season. I think No team can compete with this Chelsea, no one!"

Ye Qiu also expressed his gratitude at the post-match press conference for receiving the praise from Cruyff, but he said that Chelsea was not at its best yet.

"Many people say we are very strong, but in fact, I know in my heart that we still have deep potential that can be tapped, and I believe that with the emergence of more and more young players, as the team's tacit understanding becomes more and more The better we get, the stronger we will become as a whole, and my players and I don’t want to hide our desire and pursuit of all championships!”

"Yes, we have created a lot of records and history this season, but no one can have too much, and no one can get tired of honors and wins. At least I have not noticed this, so we will continue to go all out. , compete for every championship, compete for victory in every game!”

"I know that there are still many strong competitors in the European arena, but I believe that as long as we go all out, no one can stop us from moving forward!"

Ye Qiu's speech at the post-match press conference was also widely reported by the media and was considered to be Chelsea's passionate declaration to launch an attack on the quadruple crown this season. Everyone at Chelsea was also impressed by the coach's remarks. Ambition is responsive and supportive.

After the first round, William Hill reduced Chelsea's promotion odds to the lowest. Even so, most lottery players still chose Chelsea. They all believed that with the Blues' success at Camp Nou, The momentum is unstoppable, and it is impossible for Barcelona to stop the progress of the Premier League hegemon.

Even among the winning odds, William Hill also offered Chelsea an ultra-low odds of 4.5 to 1. This also proves that the vast majority of fans are optimistic about Chelsea, followed closely by Real Madrid. Compared with AC Milan, the former is 6.5 to 1, and the latter is 7 to 1. The odds are very different from Chelsea.

It was also the knockout round of the top 16. Chelsea won Barcelona firmly, Arsenal lost 1:3 away to Bayern Munich, Liverpool defeated Bayer Leverkusen 3:1 at home, and Manchester United lost 0:1 at home to AC Milan. Among them, the situation of Arsenal and Manchester United can be said to be very serious.

The tragedy of the Gunners has obviously dragged down the league. In the 28th round of the Premier League on February 26, they drew 1:1 away from the Saints Southampton. Because Chelsea had to play in the League Cup final, the 28th round was postponed. Therefore, Arsenal successfully narrowed the points gap to 14 points.

Manchester United defeated Portsmouth 2:1 and successfully caught up with Arsenal's points. The two teams were tied, 14 points behind Chelsea. Since Everton also won, Liverpool, which was also postponed for 28 rounds, fell to fifth place in the league.

On February 27, at 15:00 in the afternoon, the League Cup final kicked off on time at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff!