After being rejected, I became Shi Yijiao

Chapter 269 Winning the Bundesliga Championship in advance!

Three days later, in the 3nd round of the Bundesliga, Hamburg challenged Mainz away.

This game attracted the attention of many media and fans in Germany, Europe, and even the world.

Because Hamburg has already led No.2 Bayern Munich by 7 points after the last round of the Bundesliga with Wolfsburg.

If Hamburg can beat Mainz at the Opel Arena in this league, regardless of the result of the Bayern Munich match, Hamburg will win the championship two rounds ahead of schedule!

In that case, Hamburg can devote all its energy to the Champions League and German Cup in the next time, fighting for the Triple Crown.

This kind of psychological ease of letting go of a game will definitely help Hamburg win the Champions League and the German Cup.

Just considering that 3 days after this round of Bundesliga, Hamburg will usher in the second round of the Champions League semi-final against Atletico Madrid, Pan Yi still sent a lineup mainly based on rotation players.

After all, the Champions League is the most important thing!

But Mainz led by Tuchel will naturally not be caught without a fight.

On the one hand, they don't want Hamburg to step on their corpses to become the Bundesliga champions and celebrate their victory in their stadium.

On the other hand, Mainz is currently ranked eighth in the league and is competing for qualification for the Europa League next season.

As a small team, if they have the chance to participate in the European competition, they must go all out!

……

In today's world football, when it comes to coaches who like to use a three-back formation most, Conte, Van Gaal, Bielsa and others may all be mentioned.

But if it is specifically said that the 343 formation is the favorite, then it is Tuchel.

In Pan Yi's previous life, Tuchel took over Chelsea halfway, and then went all out to implement the 343 formation.

This style of play immediately changed the chaotic situation of offensive "constipation" and poor defense in the Lampard era, and helped Chelsea go all the way to win the Champions League.

So, who in the "ancient" era when the 442 formation was the most popular, first invented the 343 formation, which seemed a bit "weird" at the time?

This question is not difficult to answer, because the person who invented this formation is so famous.

He is the legendary coach in the history of Barcelona - Cruyff.

The then Barcelona coach Cruyff discovered a phenomenon in specific practice: at that time, the vast majority of football teams in the world were using the 442 formation. A 442-to-1 situation.

But for Barcelona, ​​which has outstanding strength on paper, only three defenders are enough to deal with the opponent's offensive players, and there is no need to send as many as four.

In this context, Cruyff had the courage to change, adding a player to the forward line, and at the same time allowing a core defensive player in the backcourt to come to the midfield to participate in assists.

Usually Cruyff will give this player the No. 4 jersey, which is the famous "No. 4 Player" in the history of football tactics.

The No. 4 player is Cruyff's greatest contribution to football tactics and is also a key link in the 343 formation he created.

Although this No. 4 player will appear in many defensive areas in the midfield, he does not need strong physical confrontation ability and outstanding foot skills, but has certain requirements for speed.

This speed does not necessarily refer to the player's running ability, but more refers to the inspection of the situation on the field and the ability to quickly play the ball under the double-team.

To put it more simply, the No. 4 player in Cruyff's tactical philosophy must be full of wisdom, dare to play the ball, and have a good "God's perspective".

Since then, players who appear in this position may not wear the No. 4 jersey, but they will still be called "No. 4 players"-for example, Guardiola, Xavi, and Iniesta can all be qualified for this position responsibilities.

In Cruyff's tactical concept, this 343 formation does not have an absolute core of organization and offense. Many players in different positions can undertake the offensive and defensive tasks under certain conditions.

For example, the organizational task can be completed by Koeman who appears in the defender position. His ability to play the ball at his feet is even comparable to that of some top midfielders, and he can perfectly undertake Barcelona's backcourt grooming tasks.

In addition, Baquero, Laudrup, Guardiola and others can all take on the task of passing the ball forward.

Unlike the 3-back system that was once popular in Italian football, Cruyff's 343 lacks a hint of tight defense and adds a touch of arrogance to attack with all his might.

Even for the three defensive players on the back line, their responsibilities are not "defense" in the full sense, and they will also participate in the offense appropriately at certain times.

Cruyff's contribution to the 343 formation is still affecting the world football today, and also reflects the different concepts of Dutch football and Italian football.

Today, the 343 formation is known for its comprehensiveness of sharp offense and large defensive interception area, and it is playing an increasingly important role in the football tactical arena.

Tuchel is his loyal supporter.

However, his original intention of using the 343 formation is slightly different from Cruyff.

Faced with the popular 442 formation in the early years, most teams will use two central defenders to counter the opponent's two forwards, which seems to be a natural way.

But for the head coaches of some middle and lower teams, the giants often have top-notch superstars, relying only on some mediocre central defenders for 1-on-1 defense, obviously there is no way to meet the defensive requirements of the head coach.

In this context, increasing the number of defenders seems to be the most direct way to improve the quality of defense.

As a result, some head coaches made groundbreaking breakthroughs and took the lead in using a three-back formation in many games against giants. With two wing backs who retreated significantly, they could effectively cover most of the midfield. area.

In other words, when Cruyff used 343, he was thinking of reducing a defender and adding a forward to strengthen the offense;

The head coach of a small team like Tuchel wants to add a central defender and use more central defenders to fight against the strong forwards with outstanding abilities.

In this way, the 343 formation has suddenly become extremely applicable in the current tactical structure, and it is not surprising that it can be favored by many head coaches.

For any team that emphasizes offensive and defensive balance and offensive and defensive transformation, 343 can exert huge energy on both ends of the offense and defense, and its fast turnover also fully reflects the increasingly important "sense of speed" in modern football.

At the same time, due to the natural ease of switching between 3-backs and 5-backs, the head coach also has more room for choice in on-the-spot tactical scheduling.

Is it offensive or defensive?It depends on where the two wingbacks stand.

Moreover, the 343 formation is also very conducive to the head coach to control the overall situation, not just the transition between offense and defense.

For some teams, considering the poor overall strength, blindly assigning too many responsibilities to players will lead to confusion in the offensive and defensive system.

In this context, many head coaches are more advocating the "segmentation" of offense and defense. More generally speaking, it is to let defensive players do their best to defend and let offensive players do their best to attack.

The existence of 3 central defenders makes the team's backcourt control relatively stable, and can effectively resolve the opponent's press during the ball out stage.

Even if the opponent increases their defensive strength, they can use two relatively free midfielders to make a large-scale retreat, making the backcourt a "trapezoid"-style 5-man pass control system.

With 3 central defenders as the bottom line, the two wingbacks don’t have to worry too much about wing defense in the offensive state, they can safely penetrate into the opponent’s third defensive area, and form a side-center combination with the three forwards already existing in the frontcourt .

The existence of two wing backs does not necessarily mean that the ball must be taken along the wing to launch an attack. Sometimes it is also a good choice to draw the opponent's defensive attention by running without the ball.

Once the wingback penetrates into the opponent's defensive hinterland, it will inevitably force the opponent to send out a 2-3 wing defense group to limit their further advances.

In this case, the defensive pressure on the three forwards who are relatively close to the center will be reduced, and the wing back will run without the ball to create more space for the teammate in the center to take the ball, whether it is a direct long-range shot from the outside Or a more subtle small-scale coordination in the middle is a good choice.

In the choice of offensive tactics for the three-man group in the middle, the biggest advantage brought by the 3 formation can be perfectly reflected-since the three forwards can cooperate with each other in a relatively small area, even if the opponent arranges a multi-person defense, it is difficult. In a short period of time to reach the point where everything is covered.

Generally speaking, the center forward will immediately press the opponent's small penalty area to force the two central defenders to retreat. The two retracted wingers can easily take the ball at the top of the penalty area and grab the opponent's midfield Pass the ball before the defender is in place.

Thanks to the existence of the 3-back, the two full-backs who originally had to undertake many defensive tasks under the 4-back system will be liberated from the side.

They can advance significantly in the offense and even become the team's two wingers;

It can also retreat to the back line under certain circumstances and become the team's two full-backs, transforming the original 3-back formation into a 5-back formation with a larger defensive coverage.

"Then why is such a good formation not as popular as the 4231, 433, or even 442 formations in today's world football?"

At the tactical meeting, after listening to "Teacher Pan Yi" tell about the past and present of the 343 formation, many coaches raised such questions.

"All formations have advantages and disadvantages, and 343 is no exception." Pan Yi replied, "The reason is that this formation has great influence on the players' personal strength, tactical adaptability and the choice of the coach's philosophy. There are relatively strict requirements. Once used improperly, it will not only fail to enrich the team's technical and tactical system, but may even have a negative impact."

Then Pan Yi began to talk about the weaknesses of the 343 formation.

This is also the focus of this tactical meeting.

Because they are now going to use a 433 formation to deal with Tuchel's 343!

Knowing the opponent's weaknesses, and then using your own strengths to attack them, is the way to win a game.

"The 343 formation is indeed easier to play an eye-catching and gorgeous offense, but its many limitations are also very obvious."

"First of all, the 343 formation looks on paper. Although there are as many as 4 players in the midfield, the two wing backs on both sides will not belong to the midfield for a long time, and will help the midfield to assist in the organization and scheduling."

"In other words, even if the two wingers can drop back to assist, there are still only two players in the midfield most of the time."

"For a team with limited midfielder personal strength, using only two players for defensive interception in such a vast area will inevitably bring huge hidden dangers."

"Even in the process of organizing the attack, the two midfielders do seem a little too thin."

"In view of this situation, once our defensive players accumulate many people to encircle and press, it will be difficult for Mainz's mediocre midfielders to pick out the ball, and it will even be snatched away by our players in a short time, thus giving us a chance to counterattack ..."

In addition, a major disadvantage of the 343 formation is the problem of side defense that Pan Yi often emphasizes.

As we all know, the 343 formation has a very obvious reliance on the insertion of the wing back, and the final final decision also depends on the outflanking of the wing back on the opposite side at the back post.

Under this premise, the problem of insufficient numbers in the midfield will be further magnified.

Although there are three defenders sitting in the backcourt, because the wing defense is too weak, two of them must be pulled down to the wing in a defensive state, which will lead to a huge rib gap in the middle!
In addition, the 343 formation has higher requirements on the personal abilities of players in some positions (mainly wingbacks), and the offense and defense will also show a serious sense of separation at certain times, which is not conducive to the transition from offense to defense. return quickly.

These are all points that Hamburg can use when facing Mainz, and they are also the key to defeating Tuchel!
……

When the coaching staff of Hamburg and Mainz shook hands before the game, Tuchel didn't know why there was a hairy feeling.

He felt that the coaches in Hamburg looked at him a little lewdly, as if he had no clothes on.

Although Tuchel believes that it is polite to stare at each other's eyes when shaking hands;
But the people in Hamburg are too polite, right?He just stared straight at it, and even showed an indescribable smile.

How did he know that this was because Pan Yi analyzed his tactics so clearly in the tactical meeting before the game, so that everyone looked at Tuchel now and felt that the whole person had been seen through...

And after the game officially started, it really proved this point.

After the two sides tried for nearly 10 minutes, Hamburg began to exert force.

The three midfielders composed of Makoto Hasebe, Paulinho and Charhanoglu, faced Gass and Soto in the middle of Mainz, easily took over control of the midfield.

After Mainz's attack failed, their rib space was undoubtedly exposed under the high pressure of Hamburg.

Charhanoglu saw the opportunity and sent a through pass, Wu Lei began to use his speed to make a breakthrough, and directly entered the penalty area.

At this time, Mainz's wingback Park Joo-ho had already assisted and stepped forward, making it difficult to return to his position. Their right center back, Stefan Bell, hurried over to defend.

But Wu Lei's shooting action is also very fast. Before Stefan Bell came close to lean on his body, he directly poked the ball with his toe and poked the ball towards the far corner of the goal.

After completing the shot, Wu Lei was also knocked to the ground by Stefan Bell from the side.

Seeing Wu Lei's sudden shot with almost no warning, the goalkeeper Karius, who was blocking the near corner, was a little caught off guard.

By the time he reacted and fell to the ground towards the far end, the ball had already passed before his eyes and entered the far goal.

Seeing Wu Lei's goal, the Hamburg TV commentator in the commentary roared and shouted frantically:
"GoooooooooooooooooooooooLLLL..."

"The goal is scored! In the 25th minute, Wu Lei kicked the ball into the goal of Mainz!"

"Wu Lei opened the scoring, and Hamburg leads Mainz 1-0 at the Opel Arena!"

"The Bundesliga champions are waving to us!"

"Long live Wu Lei, long live Pan Yi, long live Hamburg!"

The Hamburg players and fans celebrated wildly, while the Mainz players who lost the ball were extremely depressed.

In fact, for this game, the Mainz coaching staff headed by Tuchel also made a lot of careful preparations and made targeted restrictions on Hamburg players.

For example, Hamburg's striker, who Mitrovic will let him mainly mark, who will make up the defense, how Wu Lei's line is positioned, who is going up and who is behind, are all properly arranged.

Before 20 minutes, they did seem to have managed to hold off Hamburg's attack.

However, as if the game in front of Hamburg was just a warm-up, it only started to really enter the state after 20 minutes.

And once Hamburg started to work hard, the previous deployments of Mainz seemed to disappear all of a sudden, and they were in vain, and Hamburg quickly scored a goal.

Tuchel gritted his teeth and decided to give up the offense first and stabilize his position before talking.

So his 343 suddenly became a position similar to 541.

As a result, the resistance encountered by Hamburg's offense increased sharply.

Players from both sides piled up within 30 meters of the Mainz goal, and the penalty area was densely packed with figures. Even the long-range shots of the Hamburg players could not reach the goal at all, and they were blocked by someone blocking the hole or stretching their legs in the middle.

As a result, both sides failed to score again in the rest of the first half, and entered the intermission with a score of 0:1, and Hamburg temporarily took the lead.

After a 15-minute break, the two sides changed sides and fought again.

After adjustments during the intermission, Mainz's defensive counterattack became more stable and layered.

Facing Mainz, which is like a bus, Hamburg resorted to the weapon of breaking the bus-high-altitude bombing.

Isn't Mitrovic on the field!
In the case that the midfield is completely controlled by Hamburg, the frequency of Hamburg's 45-degree crosses from the wing is also very high.

One kick fails, another kick, two kicks, three kicks...

Finally, in the 78th minute, a cross from Dick Mike hit Mitrovic's head. The Serbian center pointed the ball down because it was inconvenient to shoot directly with his back.

And not far from Mitrovic, the unguarded Hamburg captain Westermann volleyed directly from outside the penalty area without stopping the ball!

The ball went into the goal like a sharp arrow, and the goalkeeper Karius didn't even react, so he turned his head and watched the ball go into the goal.

The Mainz fans who were booing Hamburg just now suddenly fell silent, the entire Opel Arena was as silent as death, only a few Hamburg fans and the commentators of various TV stations shouted wildly there.

On the field, Westermann, who scored the second goal for Hamburg, rushed to Pan Yi excitedly and gave him a big hug.

Other teammates also gathered around to celebrate.

Although it was still far from the end of the game, this goal can be said to have sealed the victory.

Because the situation of the game is doomed that the opponent will not dare to counterattack aggressively. If Mainz really dares to invest their troops in the attack, Hamburg is likely to score more goals.

In fact it is.

After being scored two goals, Tuchel really had no choice but to step up his offense.

But in that way, the number of defenders in the backcourt is reduced to only 3, the space on the sides and the wings will be even greater, and the difficulty of passing the ball in the backcourt will also become much more difficult.

In the 88th minute, Mainz goalkeeper Karius wanted to pass the ball to the defender with his feet, but found that both sides were pressed by Hamburg players.

So he wanted to throw the ball to launch a fast break, but he made a mistake in his busy schedule. When he threw it, he was blocked by Mitrovic with his foot, and he was directly blocked into the goal.

0: 3!

Hamburg leads Mainz by three goals, and this game has been won!
Thousands of Hamburg fans held a model of the Bundesliga champion's salad plate in the stands, singing and dancing, regardless of the feelings of the Mainz fans.

And many Mainz fans have already started to leave early, too lazy to watch Hamburg's celebration.

With a 3-goal lead and the temptation to win the championship early, the Hamburg players on the court also seemed a little absent-minded.

Finally, in the 90th minute, Mainz finally took advantage of a mistake in Hamburg. Gu Zizhe made a steal and passed it to Shinji Okazaki. ball.

But this is of no avail to the result of the whole game.

After 3 minutes of stoppage time, the referee blew the whistle for the end of the game. Hamburg defeated Mainz 3:1 away and won the German Bundesliga championship in the 2013-2014 season two rounds ahead of schedule!
After the game, the players and fans of Mainz left the field one after another, leaving nothing but Hamburg players and fans who won the championship in advance to celebrate in the Opel Arena.

After all, it was an away game, and the atmosphere when winning the championship was not as strong as at home.

Not even a proper awards ceremony!

But that didn't stop the Hamburgers from venting their excitement.

Although I have been mentally prepared, when this moment really came, all the Hamburg coaches, players and fans were so excited that some fans even shed tears of excitement.

More than a year ago, when they were still struggling in the relegation zone, who would have imagined that they would have the scenery they have today?

Soon, they found the greatest contributor to this great achievement——Pan Yi!
Pan Yi was thrown high into the air by a group of people, and then fell down.

Pole!
"Fuck! You bastards, no one reaches out to pick me up??!"

(End of this chapter)