Football: Invincible starting from krypton gold

Chapter 62

On August 8th, three days have passed since the German Super Cup, and there is still one week before the new season will officially start. However, for the 10 teams participating in the UEFA Cup throughout Europe, there is still one game to face before the start of the new season, because according to the UEFA Cup rules, the 3 teams participating in the UEFA Cup before the start of the official group stage will compete in pairs. Finally, after the final results of the two home and away games, 80 teams will enter the group stage, and then divided into 80 groups. It is a single round-robin game. Each team will have two home games and two away games in the group stage. The top 40 teams in the group plus the No. 8 of the eight groups in the Champions Cup will form the top 3. After that, they will officially enter the home and away round-robin knockout round until the final team is determined.

Tonight's UEFA Cup first-round knockout draw for the 04-05 season will be held in Monaco, and for Mainz, it will usher in the team's first European opponent since its establishment.

The final draw ended under the attention of the 80 teams that were about to participate in the UEFA Cup. Mainz also confirmed its first European opponent - the champion of the Swedish Super League Malmö. This team won the Swedish Super League championship last season.

Although Malmö is very unfamiliar to Mainz fans, as Mainz who participated in the European War for the first time, no matter what kind of opponent they draw, they will be unfamiliar opponents. Compared with the experience in the European War, Mainz is at the rookie level. On the contrary, Malmo’s experience in the European War is much richer.

So even though he is not very familiar with the opponent, Klopp still pays more attention to this game. After the result came out, Klopp arranged for the club's scouts to find a way to collect the opponent's game video for preparation.

The first game between the two teams will be played on August 8. Mainz will be home first and then away. The second matchup will not be played until the sixth round of the league.

On the second day after the draw ended, when faced with reporters’ questions about how we viewed the opponents in the UEFA Cup and what the team’s goals for the UEFA Cup were, Klopp replied: “For the European competition, we are a real rookie with no experience. What is the goal of the UEFA Cup, these are still far away, our goal is to be able to participate in the group stage, I think this is our biggest goal."

Klopp is still very humble in front of the media.

In fact, the entire Mainz team has the same attitude towards the media at present, which is to keep a low profile as much as possible.

Chen Xiao also said the same when facing reporters: "I think we should be one of the weaker teams among the 80 teams in the UEFA Cup. Because we have zero experience in European competitions, we need to spend more energy to face strong players from other European countries in the league that lasts dozens of games throughout the season. This will be a very big test for the team's physical fitness and tactical arrangements throughout the season. We have no such experience, so I think our ability to participate in the group stage is the best result for us at present."

Malmö came to Mainz early because Mainz played first and then away. In an interview with reporters, Malmo’s Spanish head coach Manzano said: “I believe this is a very good game. And at this point we have the advantage, so I believe this should be a very good game."

In addition to Mainz, Germany also has three teams participating in the UEFA Cup. They are Borussia Dortmund, Bayer Leverkusen and Wolfsburg. According to the result of the draw, Dortmund's opponent is Lokomotiv Moscow from the Russian Super League, Leverkusen's opponent is Portugal's Leiria, and Wolfsburg's opponent is Turkey's Trabzonspor.

For the other three teams, the hope of advancing to the group stage is very high, because the opponents of these three teams are not too strong, and they are not teams in the mainstream European leagues. It may be that Lokomotiv Moscow may create some troubles against Dortmund at home.

So it is the Mainz team that is really not optimistic.

Originally in Xiaguo, almost no fans would pay attention to games like the UEFA Cup first-round knockout round, and no TV station would broadcast them live. But because of Chen Xiao's existence, after getting the result of the draw to determine the game time and opponent, this game also attracted the attention of many domestic fans. Faced with this situation, CCTV finally decided to broadcast the game live.

Time soon came to the day of the game, and Klopp still sent the same lineup as the previous game.

As soon as the whistle sounded for the start of the game, Mainz immediately accelerated the pace of the game, which was completely unlike the strategy of the last game against Bayern.From the beginning of the game, Malmö was completely unsuited to Mainz's high-position pressing strategy, and the rhythm of the game has been completely mastered by Mainz.

Of course, Malmö does not want to be led by the nose by Mainz, but the gap in personal ability is not small, and the consequences are indeed not small. Another important reason is that Manzano did make a serious mistake in estimating the game. Originally, according to Manzano’s idea, it was impossible for Mainz to take a huge risk after the opening.

Seeing that the situation on the court was becoming more and more unfavorable to him, Manzano kept walking back and forth on the sidelines, thinking about the countermeasures against Mainz's style of play.

While Manzano was still worrying about how to break the game, Mainz got the best chance after the opening.

(End of this chapter)