Green Field Eunuch

Chapter 82 I Play Football for My Dream

With Totti scoring twice, Roma easily defeated Genoa 2-0 at home, achieving a season double over Genoa.

With Shan Yongzhuo not playing, the focus shifted to Totti, who scored twice.

After the match, the media praised Totti's performance, commending him as still a mainstay of Roma and expressing great admiration for his maintained form.

Tony became increasingly envious as he read these comments.

To the surprise of Rome's teammates, a new member, Luca Toni, had joined the Qigong practice group.

Shan Yongzhuo also noticed this, and could only shake his head helplessly.

Hopefully, this guy won't be led too far astray by Totti and Mexes.

……

On January 24, Roma traveled to Turin to play Juventus away.

In the previous leg at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome, Roma narrowly defeated Juventus 1-0 thanks to a goal from Shan Yongzhuo. Now playing at home, Juventus are naturally eager to avenge their defeat.

However, Juventus' recent situation is not good at all.

Juventus had already performed poorly in the first half of the season, with their two strikers, Iaquinta and Amauri, having a very low goal-scoring efficiency. Amauri was even criticized by Juventus fans as a flop. Their two summer signings, Melo and Diego, also failed to live up to expectations.

During the winter transfer window, Juventus had no choice but to recall striker Paulucci, who was on loan, and instead loaned striker Candreva from Livorno.

However, some of these measures are futile.

In the four matches of the new year, Juventus eliminated Napoli in the Italian Cup, but only managed to beat Parma in the league. They then lost to AC Milan and Chievo, suffering two consecutive defeats.

The Agnelli family seems to have reached their breaking point with the major mistakes made by the newly appointed president Blanc in the transfer market. There is undercurrent of unrest within Juventus, and the team as a whole is not in a good position.

Despite playing at home against a red-hot Roma, Juventus' prospects are still not considered good.

Juventus coach Ferrara attaches great importance to this match. He started preparing early and did a lot of work to prepare for the game.

In the first leg, Juventus lost the match due to Shan Yongzhuo's sudden outburst.

After the match, Ferrara carefully analyzed the situation and found that Juventus had done a good job of limiting Shan Yongzhuo. The combination of Cannavaro and Chiellini was quite effective in restricting Shan Yongzhuo's performance, and the opponent only managed to score one goal from a set piece.

The main reason for losing the game was the lack of firepower in Juventus' attack.

Del Piero is getting old, Trezeguet has been plagued by injuries for a long time, and although the combination of Amauri and Iaquinta has decent attacking power, their ability to seize opportunities is really poor.

Juventus' attack has long relied on wingers making runs down the flanks, followed by constant forward runs from midfielders and defenders to create scoring opportunities; the midfield and attack have always been a major problem.

But Ferrara was also helpless, as there was simply no one to strike!

This also made him complain that the club president, Blanco, was a complete novice, who actually gave up on Shan Yongzhuo, who had scored 49 goals in the Austrian Bundesliga.

If we could acquire a striker like Shan Yongzhuo in the summer, instead of spending a lot of money to buy Diego and Melo, then why would I need to worry about the forward line now?

For example, in this match he could only decide to field a combination of Amauri and Del Piero, whose combined goals were less than half of Shan Yongzhuo's...

That sounds rather sad.

Of course, Ferrara is only being wise after the event. In fact, he didn't like Shan Yongzhuo at the time, but he just didn't voice his opinion. So, he can now naturally shift all the blame to Blanco.

……

Meanwhile, Roma was also preparing for the match. Spalletti and Domenicini explained the tactics to the team; in fact, the tactics had been formulated several days ago, and this was just a review.

Spalletti has now completely abandoned the 4-2-3-1 formation.

Dan Yongzhuo was alone at the front and got caught in the opponent's defensive encirclement, and he was not a true tactical center.

Therefore, in this match, Spalletti fielded a 4-4-2 formation, removing Totti from the lineup. The central midfield consisted of Taddei, Pizarro, De Rossi, and Vucinic, while the forward line featured Toni and Shan Yongzhuo.

Tony's arrival in winter solved Spalletti's immediate problem.

According to Spalletti, although Shan Yongzhuo is 185cm tall, he is not a pure center forward. He prefers to drop back to the edge of the penalty area to receive the ball, and his playing style is similar to that of a second striker.

However, apart from him, Roma had no one else who could play the tactical center forward position. The arrival of Luca Toni solved this problem. Toni could enter the penalty area and play the role of a tactical center forward, while Shan Yongzhuo dropped back to the second striker position.

This will allow Shan Yongzhuo to unleash the full power of his mid-to-long-range shots.

Spalletti patiently explained his approach to the players.

However, typical tactical explanations can be quite boring and irrelevant to most players.

For example, the two center-backs Burdisso and Mexes, and the goalkeeper Sergio.

For example, Shan Yongzhuo...

Spalletti felt he had found a solution, but Shan Yongzhuo believed that he had always played this way, except that before Toni came, there was often no one in the penalty area, and now there was Toni in the penalty area.

Therefore, Shan Yongzhuo was only pretending to listen attentively; in reality, he was daydreaming the whole time.

The following day, the entire Roma team flew to Turin and then took a bus to the Turin Olympic Stadium.

This stadium is Torino's home ground, but Juventus is currently renovating their own new home stadium, the Stadio Alpes, so they can only temporarily set up their home ground here.

"So, is Juventus' home stadium their own?"

On the bus to the stadium, Shan Yongzhuo heard the news and asked the person next to him, Mexes, in confusion.

“Yes, this is the first time in Italy. I heard they’ve invested hundreds of millions of euros.” Mexes curled his lip and said, “In Italy, no team has ever built its own stadium before.”

“Several hundred million euros…” Santos next to him looked envious. “If I could have even a tenth of that, I’d retire right away.”

Shan Yongzhuo glanced at him and said, "You actually retired for money? Isn't that betraying football?"

"Screw football," Santos said. "But what are we playing football for?"

"To... become a real man," Shan Yongzhuo said with a wry smile.

Santos paused for a moment, but then said, "No, it's for the money. If you can get so much money, why bother playing football so hard?"

Mexes, standing next to him, nodded in agreement, clearly showing his strong support for Santos's statement.

After thinking about it, Shan Yongzhuo realized that what they said made some sense...
No, that's not right!

I play football for my dream!
You guys have no idea what my dream of playing football is!
Of course, money is important, but becoming a man's dream is the most important thing.

Shan Yongzhuo looked at them with deep contempt.

(End of this chapter)