Chapter 554: Defending the Title Again

The 10:0 victory over Roberto Martinez's Wigan Athletic made Tottenham Hotspurs completely popular, especially the team's top star Leo Messi, who performed a five-star streak and was once again hyped by the media.

Tottenham Hotspurs were also happy to help Messi win this year's World Footballer of the Year.

Three days later, Tottenham Hotspurs played the fifth round of the Champions League group stage with a lineup of all substitutes and young players, and defeated Standard Liege 2:0 at home. After the main lineup got enough rest, they defeated Aston Villa 2:0 in the 14th round of the Premier League at the weekend, and continued their unbeaten record.

After this round of matches, French Football Magazine first announced a list of the top ten European Ballon d'Or nominees, including Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid, Xavi and Van Persie of Barcelona in La Liga; only Ibrahimovic of Inter Milan in Serie A; and Drogba of Chelsea, Gerrard of Liverpool, and Messi, Ribery and Fabregas of Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League.

Tottenham Hotspur should be the biggest winner of this list, because in addition to the three major superstars in the team, more importantly, Van Persie was shortlisted for this list because of his outstanding performance in Tottenham Hotspur. From this point, it is not difficult to see the strength and level of Tottenham Hotspur's star-making ability.

On the contrary, after sending Cristiano Ronaldo away, Manchester United, although Rooney was introduced, did not have a single player on the list, which was indeed a bit embarrassing. Many people even began to hype that Manchester United was about to decline, but Ferguson sneered at this.

On December 1, after several days of continuous and intensive hype and publicity, Messi was printed on the cover of French Football Magazine, which almost proved one thing to everyone, that is, this year's French Football Magazine European Golden Ball Award has belonged to the Argentine.

In this magazine, in addition to disclosing the award-winning process, the results of the selection were also announced. Messi took the top spot, Cristiano Ronaldo and Xavi ranked second and third respectively, which was consistent with the outside world's speculation.

With the advent of the information age, the media is becoming more and more developed. It is becoming more and more difficult to continue to maintain a sense of mystery, and it can even be said to be impossible. Almost all fans have already given the European Golden Ball Award to Messi, and the announcement of the award is just a formality.

Tottenham Hotspur's first match in December was against Manchester United, the quarter-finals of the League Cup, which was held at White Hart Lane. Ferguson arranged for young players including Brown, Anderson, Gibson, Obertan, Welbeck to start, clearly intending to use the cup match to train his troops.

Ye Qiu also did not arrange the main lineup to play, but arranged for young players such as Varane, Nastasic, Ramsey, Hazard, Kyle Walker, Pogba, Phil Jones to start, and directly competed with Manchester United's second team.

In the end, Tottenham Hotspur, who had better defense, defeated Manchester United 2:0. The trident composed of Macheda, Obertan, and Welbeck had almost no good chance in front of the defensive lineup headed by Varane, Nastasic, and Phil Jones. In the end, they were defeated at White Hart Lane and returned to Manchester, and were eliminated from the League Cup by Tottenham Hotspur.

Especially the central defender combination of Nastasic and Varane, in this game, withstood the test of Manchester United's young attackers, and ensured that the goal was not lost very steadily. In particular, the Serbian central defender's excellent physical condition and air control ability made people shine, and he won the title of Vidic II after the game.

French central defender Varane is also a young central defender recently introduced by Ye Qiu. He has excellent physical fitness, speed and explosiveness are not shortcomings, and his skills are also solid and stable. He looks very much like Zielinski of the first team, or Pique of Barcelona.

However, the most impressive midfield combination of Phil Jones, Pogba and Ramsey in this game.

Although they are all young players, this set of midfielders of Tottenham Hotspur has beaten the midfield composed of Park Ji-sung, Anderson and Gibson of Manchester United. Under the suppression of Tottenham Hotspur's midfielders, the Red Devils' midfield was unable to find the state and rhythm for almost the entire game.

Phil Jones was as passionate and vigorous as ever, while Pogba scored a goal with a sudden and powerful shot from behind, winning recognition from the outside world. He was also called Yaya Toure II by many media after the game, and he began to rotate in the first team this season.

The victory in this game also made the outside media pay great attention to Tottenham Hotspur's youth training camp again, especially the many young players emerging in the team, who have shown impressive strength. You know, in the past few years, Tottenham Hotspur has cultivated outstanding players such as Gareth Bale, Hazard, and Ramsey.

Compared with Manchester United's young people who are basically 18 or 19 years old, or even 20 years old, Tottenham Hotspur's Pogba, Nastasic and Varane are only 16 years old, while 19-year-old Ramsey and 18-year-old Eden Hazard have already established themselves in the first team, which is obviously different from Manchester United's youth training policy.

Ferguson has always emphasized that Manchester United attaches great importance to youth training, but in fact, in the past few years, Tottenham and Arsenal have made the greatest efforts to promote young players. The latter is forced to do so due to financial constraints, while Tottenham actively promotes young players and sells the team's stars at the right time in exchange for high transfer fees.

As for the attitude towards young players, Ye Qiu once said that young people nowadays are becoming more and more precocious. Many players are no different from young people in their twenties when they are 18 years old, so they will begin to have some requirements for themselves at this time, such as playing in the first team, such as making more contributions to the team.

"We need to constantly create more opportunities and growth space for these emerging young players!"

So Tottenham is not stingy in selling any player in the team, because there will be more players emerging soon in the echelon.

There is another reason that Ye Qiu never told the public, that is, some semi-finished products introduced from outside, such as Pogba, Nastasic and Varane, often when they are about 18 years old, if they still can't see the hope of entering the first team, they will start to be alienated, or even choose to leave the team.

There are huge benefits to introducing semi-finished youth training. First of all, because they have proved their strength and potential in some aspects, the success rate of this kind of semi-finished youth training is very high. It can even be said that as long as you guide and help them properly, they can quickly become talents with relatively low risks.

But the disadvantage is that they often choose you because they think you can give them opportunities. If you don't let them see this opportunity, they will choose other teams and their loyalty will be relatively low.

Therefore, Ye Qiu's attitude is very clear. As long as the young rookies in the team show enough strength and potential, I will give you a chance, whether you are 16 or 18 years old, anyway, as long as you show it, I will give you a chance to enter the first team, participate in rotation and substitutes, and accumulate experience.

Of course, if you have enough ability to show that you can play as a starter in the substitute and rotation, such as Gareth Bale, or Falcao replacing Cavani this season, then I will let you play as a starter.

It should be said that this is the most sincere and effective talent echelon promotion plan that Ye Qiu can give.

But Ferguson obviously doesn't think so. He still prefers to let young players enter the first team for rotation when they are in their early twenties or even around 22 years old, because at this time the players are relatively mature and stable, their technical and tactical styles are also formed, and they also have strong strength.

So whether it is Welbeck or Macheda, they have not performed in the league and the Champions League yet, but this group of young people from Tottenham Hotspur, although they are only sixteen years old, have played in the league. With Tottenham Hotspur's outstanding performance in the Champions League, Ye Qiu has decided to arrange all of them to start in the last round, which is the sixth round of the Champions League group stage.

Playing in cup games at the age of 16 is already a huge temptation for young players. If they are arranged to play in the Champions League and the Premier League, they will definitely be more loyal.

Of course, we cannot tolerate and trust young people blindly. We should also give them some appropriate pressure, and the biggest and most effective pressure is to let them feel the almost cruel competition of the first team.

After eliminating Manchester United and reaching the semi-finals of the League Cup, Tottenham Hotspur will face the star-studded Manchester City, but the two-round semi-final will be held in January 2010, so there is no need to consider it for the time being.

Back to the Premier League, Tottenham Hotspur challenged Everton away. The strong Tottenham Hotspur defeated Everton 4:1 away. Messi, who just won the European Golden Ball, scored twice, and Ribery and Falcao scored one goal each.

In the middle of the week, the team went to Greece to challenge Olympiacos away.

In this game, Ye Qiu fulfilled his promise to young players before playing against Manchester United in the League Cup, that is, to arrange young players and substitute lineups to start, including Nastasic, Varane, Hazard, Ramsey, Pogba, Phil Jones and other players all got the start, and the team's vice-captain Beckham led the team.

But because there were too many young players, Tottenham Hotspur lost away, 0:1, to Olympiacos.

For this defeat, Ye Qiu did not say much. In an interview with the media after the game, he still told the evaluation of the group of young players in the team. He believed that young people are full of vitality and passion, and losing the game will not affect his trust in young players. He will continue to give young players more game opportunities and space to play in the future.

As for the mistakes made by the two young central defenders in the game, which led to the team's loss of the ball, Ye Qiu also defended them, believing that everyone was responsible for the loss of the game, and it should not be just blamed on the young people.

In the final analysis, it is still insufficient strength!

Ye Qiu knew very well that opponents in the Champions League, especially away games, would be very difficult to play even if you were to face opponents who were obviously inferior to you, not to mention that you were playing with a group of young players who had no experience at all, which was simply asking for trouble.

But we must also clearly see that losing is actually a kind of experience. At least the young players have played in the Champions League early on. This experience and this lesson will make them more mature in the future and urge them to continue to make progress.

Back in the Premier League, Tottenham Hotspur continued to maintain a strong momentum of scoring goals, and defeated Wolves 4:0 at home, extending their unbeaten record to 16 games.

With 15 wins and 1 draw in 16 games, Tottenham Hotspur is far ahead of the Premier League standings with 46 points, while Chelsea, which ranked second, had 11 wins, 1 draw and 4 losses in 16 games. The Blues scored 34 points, 12 points behind Tottenham Hotspur, which is also seen by the outside world as a basis for Tottenham Hotspur to win the Premier League championship.

Manchester United scored 31 points, while Arsenal only had 28 points, followed by Aston Villa, Manchester City, Liverpool, West Ham United and Birmingham. The most surprising one is Martin O'Neill's Aston Villa, whose performance this season is indeed surprising, and currently ranks fifth.

After the 16th round of the Premier League, Tottenham Hotspur's 17th and 18th rounds of the Premier League will be postponed because they will soon go to the United Arab Emirates to participate in the World Club Champions Cup. These two rounds of the league conflict with the World Club Cup in schedule, so they will be temporarily postponed.

As the biggest giant in the World Club Cup, Tottenham Hotspur has received great attention from the outside world from the beginning. FIFA has forced it to send out its main players to play, because this is the obligation of the European Champions League champion.

Tottenham Hotspur's business department also regards this trip to Abu Dhabi as an important attempt for the team to develop the commercial market in the Middle East, because the team's summer trip to the Middle East was not very effective, because it was more like a business game, but this time it was different, this time it was a battle for the world championship.

Not only Tottenham Hotspur attaches importance to it, Qatar Airways also attaches great importance to Tottenham Hotspur's trip to the Middle East, and has carried out a series of promotions and publicity with Tottenham Hotspur in the Middle East in advance to warm up the club's arrival.

In addition to all the players and coaching staff of the first team, this trip to the Middle East also includes the club's important management and business team. They went to the UAE in a mighty manner, not only aiming to win the championship, but also to further develop the Middle East market. After all, the oil army here is rich.

After arriving in Abu Dhabi, senior government officials of the UAE, executives of FIFA, and even Al Fassim of the Abu Dhabi consortium entered the Tottenham Hotspur training camp one after another. They not only watched a training session of Tottenham Hotspur, but also had a round of exchanges with Ye Qiu, Peter Kenyon and others.

Among them, Al Fassim asked Ye Qiu for his opinion on the current problems of Manchester City.

Although they are competitors at the Premier League level, Ye Qiu and Al Fassim obviously will not play tricks on such things. Ye Qiu also bluntly told Al Fassim that the biggest problem of Manchester City at present is not the player lineup, but the head coach.

"An excellent and qualified head coach can integrate a team in the shortest time. Even if the results are bad, at least he can let everyone clearly see his intentions and tactical framework. But from last season to now, I have never seen even a little bit of integrity from Manchester City. This is the head coach's responsibility!"

Al Fasim expressed his gratitude for Ye Qiu's advice. He did not say whether he would listen, but he politely wished Tottenham Hotspur to successfully win the Club World Cup and continue to win more championships.

In fact, Tottenham Hotspur won the first game of the Club World Cup 3:0 against Atlante, the champion of the CONCACAF Champions League. This old Mexican team finally defeated the Oceania champion team Auckland City, but it was difficult to threaten Tottenham Hotspur's goal in the semi-finals.

The huge gap in strength made Tottenham Hotspur win the first game smoothly. In the final, they met Estudiantes de La Plata led by Juan Veron. This Argentine team, the champion of the Copa Libertadores, caused Tottenham Hotspur a lot of trouble in the game.

In the final analysis, it was the sequelae of the long journey, and the strength of Estudiantes de La Plata itself was indeed not weak, so this game was very difficult. Tottenham Hotspur was in a passive situation on the field for the first time, especially Veron, who performed very well in this team.

But in the end, Cavani's goal helped Tottenham Hotspur beat Estudiantes de La Plata 2:1 and successfully defended the Club World Cup. They won the championship trophy for two consecutive seasons and became the first team in the history of the Club World Cup to successfully defend the title.

This honor made Tottenham Hotspur highly recognized by FIFA President Blatter after the game. The latter made it clear that he was a fan of Messi. Blatter also took the initiative to explain Messi's poor performance in the Club World Cup final, believing that it was mainly caused by excessive fatigue.

With Blatter's personal support, Messi, who just won the European Golden Ball, seems to be the top favorite for the World Footballer of the Year. After all, in the past year, whether from the honor or from the performance, Messi deserved the World Footballer of the Year.

In order to support Messi, Ye Qiu also strongly supported his beloved disciple during the interview, believing that Messi should win the World Footballer of the Year because he was the best player in the past season and deserved recognition.

Not only that, all the players of Tottenham Hotspur's first team, as well as Ye Qiu, Peter Kenyon, Ron Gourlay and other senior executives, all decided to fly directly from Abu Dhabi to Zurich to support Messi in winning the award.

On the contrary, Messi himself seemed to have encountered some troubles in front of the personal award!