God of Greenery

After a day off, the team resumed daily training on Monday, February 2.

After the previous Sunday's game, the Eredivisie ended all matches in the 26th round.

In this round of competition, although Alkmaar's victory with Jiang Xiaolin's stoppage-time lore did not change their ranking, they still ranked 11th, but they widened the distance from the 12th place and narrowed the distance from the previous 10th place. name gap.

After the end of this round, the 12th-placed Nijmegen only had 27 points, while Alkmaar had 33 points, and the points gap between the two sides widened to 6 points.

Utrecht, which is ranked 10th, currently has 35 points, and Alkmaar is only 2 points away from it, and a ranking replacement may occur in one game.

This score is quite close, which makes people jealous.

If Alkmaar only scored 1 point in the previous seven games, they would not dare to look forward to the standings.

Everyone looks back to see if Alkmaar can relegation this season. A successful relegation is a victory.

But now, after the team started to tie and win, and narrowed the points gap with the 10th place, Van Gaal had to improve his pursuit a little bit.

There is no need to think about the championship, and the qualification for the Champions League is not enough. Van Gaal set his goal on qualifying for the UEFA Cup play-offs.

Dutch football's Champions League and UEFA Cup places are different from the five major leagues, and are not directly determined by the standings at the end of the season.

Because there are only 18 teams in the Eredivisie, the league ended early, so it is necessary to increase the number of games to increase the influence of football.

The added games are the Champions League play-offs, the UEFA Cup play-offs, and the Toto Cup play-offs after the end of the league.

This is not qualifying.

The UEFA Champions League qualifying competition refers to the pre-match competition between clubs from various countries to compete for the place in the UEFA Champions League group stage.

The Eredivisie's UEFA Champions League play-off is a play-off to compete for the UEFA Champions League places allocated to the Eredivisie after the end of the season.

According to the rules of the Eredivisie, in addition to the Eredivisie champion directly qualifying for the UEFA Champions League group stage next season, other UEFA Champions League qualifying places, UEFA Cup places, and Toto Cup places must be competed in the play-offs at the end of the season.

The rules of the play-offs are more complicated. Anyway, the champion directly advances to the UEFA Champions League group stage next season. The second-fifth place will participate in the UEFA Champions League play-offs to compete for the remaining Champions League places in the Eredivisie. The team that loses will add the sixth place. ——The 2th place will participate in the UEFA Cup play-offs to compete for the UEFA Cup places allocated to the Eredivisie by UEFA.

After failing to compete for the UEFA Cup play-offs, they can still compete for the Toto Cup qualification, and can enter the UEFA Cup by virtue of the TOTO Cup.

In other words, as long as you enter the 10th place, you will be eligible to participate in the UEFA Cup play-offs and participate in the competition for the UEFA Cup qualification next season.

The 11th place Alkmaar is only 10 points away from the 2th place Utrecht.

Therefore, after discussing with the coaching staff, on the morning of February 2, Van Gaal called the players and coaches to hold a meeting of ideas in the conference room, and proposed the team's league goal in the final stage of the second half of the season: to enter the top 26 in the standings, Qualify for the UEFA Cup play-offs, win the play-offs, and qualify for the UEFA Cup European War next season.

Jiang Xiaolin naturally wanted to raise his hands to agree: it has always been the dream of Huaguo players, and even more so, the dream of Huaguo fans to be able to play in Europe.

Of course, the European War is the collective name of the Champions League and the UEFA Cup.

There is no hope for the Champions League now, and it is good to be able to sprint towards the UEFA Cup qualification.

Then, when everyone unified their thinking and decided to qualify for the League Cup, Jiang Xiaolin received a new task from the system in his mind.

Task 6: UEFA Cup place
Task requirements: Help Alkmaar reach the UEFA Cup play-offs this season, and then qualify for the UEFA Cup next season.

Reward: 1 experience + undercut shot (special skill)
If this task is completed, Jiang Xiaolin will have another special shooting skill, which makes him look forward to it.

After winning the game and having new goals, the morale of the Alkmaar team has been boosted, and the enthusiasm for training has increased a lot.

Jiang Xiaolin's scoring performance in two consecutive games, as well as the speed of technical improvement shown in training, have convinced most of the team.

Coupled with the proficiency in language communication, Jiang Xiaolin's popularity in the team quickly improved, and he got along with his teammates a lot, and the team cooperation and teammate's tacit understanding began to improve rapidly.

Van Gaal even directly arranged Jiang Xiaolin in the main team during the training match, and formed the team's double forwards with Hamdoy, basically confirming Jiang Xiaolin's main position.

As for the No. 9 Zhengyin striker Ali who returned from injury, he can only go to the substitute team aggrieved.

Just as aggrieved as Ali is the original main goalkeeper Joey Didulica. He was also injured and replaced by Sergio Romero, and then the main position disappeared.

With Jiang Xiaolin in the front and Romero in the back, the new lineup performed quite well in the training games. The main team often beat the substitute team by a large margin, but they didn't concede much.

The strength of both offensive and defensive ends has improved. It is no wonder that Van Gaal no longer cares about relegation, but wants to qualify for the UEFA Cup.

On the afternoon of February 2, after training, Juncker announced on behalf of Van Gaal the 29-man squad for the 27th round of the Eredivisie away game the next day.

Jiang Xiaolin continued to be selected for the third game without any suspense.

Of course, Jiang Xiaolin is no longer satisfied with being selected for the 18-member National Congress, he is more looking forward to starting.

With full physical strength, he came off the bench for more than 10 minutes in the last game, and he couldn't vent at all.

On the morning of March 3, after having breakfast at the base, the whole team took a bus to Kerkrade in the south of the Netherlands, where Alkmaar will challenge Roda JC there in the evening game.

In the afternoon, in a hotel near the Limburg Park Stadium, home of Rhoda JC, Juncker announced the starting list for the game on behalf of Van Gaal.

Goalkeeper, defender, midfielder, each name was read from Juncker's mouth, some people were happy and some were worried.

When starting to read forwards, Jiang Xiaolin and the other three forwards who entered the 18-man roster became nervous.

I only heard Junker read: "Number 10, Hamdoy."

Hamdoi breathed a sigh of relief, he was really afraid that he would be dropped from the starting list.

But Jiang Xiaolin and Ali, as well as No. 18 Wien Bloom, who entered the 16-man squad, all became more nervous.

Of course, Wien Bloom's chances were even smaller, and he himself didn't expect too much, mainly Jiang Xiaolin and Ali, both of whom were pounding in their hearts.

Then, I heard Jun Ke read: "No. 29, Jiang Xiaolin."

Hearing this, Jiang Xiaolin took a deep breath, relieved his nervousness, and clenched his fists secretly.

Finally entered the Eredivisie starting list.

Another historic breakthrough.