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Chapter 311 Wonderful Cooperation
Nuremberg is a weak team, but their composition of players is not too bad. They have the Slovak striker Mintal who once won the Bundesliga top scorer, Greek striker Charisteas and Ghana striker Boyakje are also well-known strikers in the Bundesliga, and in terms of history, Nuremberg, which has won many German league championships and the first Bundesliga championship before World War II, is much more brilliant than Hoffenheim. This can be seen from their stadium. There are about 5000 people, and the newly moved Rhein-Neckar Arena in Hoffenheim can only accommodate 3 people.

Although Nuremberg's performance in recent years has not been good, nearly [-] fans still poured into the Francenstadion for the first game of the league. In comparison, although Hoffenheim played quite well last season, the Rhein-Neckar Arena is not often able to be filled with [-] fans.

This is the difference in background, and it is also the biggest bottleneck that restricts Hoffenheim's further progress. Both Hoffenheim and Sinsheim are small cities-maybe it is more appropriate to describe Sinsheim as a town, and Hoffenheim as a village-of course, the population of such a place is not too large. If it weren't for the owner Hope's strong financial resources and has been using his own money to make up for the shortfall, it would be impossible for Hoffenheim to be as carefree as it is now.

This is also the most troublesome point for Hope. Of course he can use his own money to make up for the shortfall now, because this amount of money is nothing to him, but he is almost 70 years old after all, how many years can he last?If he is gone, Hoffenheim will be beaten back to its original shape, which is the last thing Hope wants to see.

Of course, this is not something that Rangnick and the rest of the club can solve. What they have to solve is only the opponent in front of them.

In the first league game, Rangnick sent out his main lineup. The goalkeeper was German goalkeeper Hildebrand. The two full-backs were German rookie Baker and Croatian veteran Simunić. The central defenders consisted of Chinese defender Li Jie and 25-year-old local defender Comper.

This lineup is also very good in European competitions. Although there are no superstars and other players, such players are probably only qualified to be counted in the entire Bundesliga now.

Long Bisheng sat on the bench. The Bundesliga rule is that a team has a maximum of eight non-EU players, and a maximum of five players can appear in the roster. Hoffenheim now has eight non-EU players, four of which are the main players. They are Li Jie, Gustavo, Eduardo and Obasi. Judging from this point of view, Lannick still places great importance on Long Bisheng.

After the start of the game, Hoffenheim took advantage of their skillful fast advancement and frontcourt pressing to launch an attack. Nuremberg, who is at home, was naturally not to be outdone.

The starting lineups of both sides are four-four-two in the midfield diamond position. This formation is rarely used by teams, because it is very risky for the current team to just put a defensive midfielder in front of the defense line. The chances of the defense line directly facing the opponent's offensive firepower have greatly increased.

But in fact, the tactical play of both sides is not the traditional [-] diamond position.

On the surface, Hoffenheim only has Gustavo as a defensive midfielder, but all their players have a wide range of movement. When they return to defense, they will return to the defense collectively. Even the forwards will return to the front of the penalty area to help defend.

Nuremberg's Mintal is an attacking midfielder, but he is an alternative attacking midfielder with better offensive ability than organizational ability. On the field, his main task is to detect leaks under the cover of two centers and give full play to his goal-breaking ability. The heavy responsibility of organizing offense and defense is handed over to the other three midfielders.

Such two alternative diamond-shaped midfielders face each other on the field, which is very beautiful.Hoffenheim launched an offensive with the help of a wide range of running and superior strength to their opponents, while Nuremberg continued to launch counterattacks under a solid defense. The two center forwards continued to use their impact in the frontcourt to create trouble for Hoffenheim's defense, while Mintal was like a ghost, usually not appearing, and when he appeared, he often scored goals.

In the 201st minute of the first half, Nuremberg completed a perfect counterattack with a direct long pass from the backcourt. Charisteas in the frontcourt overwhelmed Li Jie with a header and ferried the ball. Li Jie could only interfere as much as possible when the opponent had an absolute advantage in height. Wo shot a tricky ball in front of the ball, the ball scraped the lawn and flew into the goal, Hildebrand couldn't catch it.

Hoffenheim fell behind zero to one, and Long Bisheng, who was watching from the bench, couldn't help cursing. At this time, he didn't think that if one of the two forwards performed poorly, or if the team was in trouble, he would have a chance to play.

What he didn't know was that other people didn't notice his movement, but Lannick did, with a smile on his face.

Of course, Rangnick did not pay attention to the expressions of the substitute players when the team fell behind, but because Hoffenheim actually had a considerable advantage before conceding the goal. As long as it is not extremely unlucky, scoring will happen sooner or later.

Sure enough, before the end of the first half, Hoffenheim equalized the score.

It was Ibisevic, their top scorer in the past two seasons, who scored the goal. After receiving a beautiful goal from Eduardo in the middle, Marin quickly threw off the opponent's defender with his own speed and then changed direction to break through the penalty area.

During the intermission, Rangnick did not criticize the players for their defensive problems. Instead, he asked the players to run more actively in the second half, especially when the two wingers could change positions frequently with the striker, completely disrupting the opponent's defense.

After the start of the second half, Hoffenheim's players faithfully implemented Rangnick's policy and used a wide range of running to make Nuremberg's defensive players dizzy. It often happened that Ibisevic or Obasi pulled to the side, but Marin and Salihovic went to the penalty area to charge...

Thirteen minutes after the start of the second half, Hoffenheim, which had messed up Nuremberg's defense, finally managed to overtake the score.

This is a wonderful goal that made Long Bisheng applaud.

At the beginning, Nuremberg was attacking, but they were strongly blocked by Gustavo at the front of the penalty area. Just when Mintal was about to score the ball, the ball was intercepted by a Hoffenheim player.

It was Hoffenheim's original organization midfielder Eduardo who stole the ball.

After Eduardo steals the ball, he starts to dribble forward by himself. When he dribbles, Hoffenheim's offensive line has begun to advance rapidly into the opponent's half.

Marin also did not show his extraordinary skills. After taking two steps, he immediately distributed the ball to the right, where he should have been.But this time, it was striker Obasi who received the ball on the right.

After going back and forth, Nuremberg's defense line was far from being in order. A defender rushed towards Obasi, but although Obasi was tall, his speed and technique were also quite good.

A central defender from Nuremberg rushed forward, while the other central defender followed closely beside Ibisevic - Hoffenheim's top scorer who scored the equalizer must focus on marking, otherwise he might be able to overtake the score again...

At this moment, Obasi passed the ball. He passed the ball to the other side of the back point. The remaining central defender of Nuremberg had been attracted by Ibisevic to the front point. There was no one around Salihovic who caught the ball to defend...

Facing a panicked goalkeeper, the Bosnian midfielder slammed the ball into the goal of Nuremberg with a powerful kick.

With this wonderful goal, Hoffenheim made a good start in the Bundesliga this season, winning a small away goal against Nuremberg.

(End of this chapter)