God of Green

On January 7, 2009, Jiang Xiaolin flew directly from Qianyang City to Tehran, Iran. Of course, it was inevitable to transfer in the middle of the journey, as Qianyang City did not have direct flights to Iran.

Gao Hongbo's new national team had already been assembled and gathered, and flew to Tehran for adaptive training. Jiang Xiaolin was the last to report.

It was already evening when Jiang Xiaolin arrived in Tehran. Even in Iran, Jiang Xiaolin was met and warmly welcomed by hundreds of Chinese and Iranian fans.

The European Golden Boy Award, the goal of dribbling past five players, and the report of the world's first number of goals in the year, etc., made Jiang Xiaolin have a small number of fans and followers in Central Asia.

After following the national football management staff who came to pick him up to the hotel where the team was staying, the team held a small meeting to let Jiang Xiaolin get to know some new players of the new national football team.

The new national football team will naturally be accompanied by new personnel flow, which is inevitable.

Jiang Xiaolin did not express any opinion, waiting to see Gao Hongbo's level!

After a night's rest, Jiang Xiaolin began to train with the team the next day. Jiang Xiaolin found that although Gao Hongbo's national team had the same tactical formation as Yin Tiesheng, both of them played 4231 defensive counterattacks with him as the core, but Gao Hongbo emphasized more on technical play.

The previous Chinese national team, including Dui and Yin Tiesheng's national football team and national Olympic team, all had a monotonous style of play with a bit of mad dog-like scrambles and long passes.

This style of play could still take advantage when the physical fitness of Korean and Japanese players had not grown up.

But now that the economy is developed, the physical fitness of players in East Asian countries has grown up, and Chinese players do not have an overwhelming advantage, this style of play cannot take advantage. It is no wonder that they have not won against South Korea for decades and suffer from Korea phobia.

They can't take advantage of East Asian teams, and they are even more stretched against Central Asian and West Asian teams.

Gao Hongbo pointed out that the performance of the Chinese team has been getting worse and worse in recent years. In addition to the influence of the domestic football environment, the growth of foreign teams and the Chinese team's single-player style of play that relies on physical strength to fight and long passes are also certain factors.

Therefore, Gao Hongbo's coaching philosophy is to transform the Chinese team into a technical team, with more passing and cutting, and more ground passing.

During his coaching term, the Chinese national football team will continue to implement this main tactical thinking and strive to transform the Chinese team into a technical team, rather than a team that relies on physical strength.

If it continues to rely on physical strength, the Chinese team will not be able to take advantage in Asia, let alone compete with African, European and American teams in the World Cup?

Jiang Xiaolin did not pay attention to these problems before, after all, he is only a 17-year-old player.

But now after listening to Gao Hongbo's explanation of his tactical thinking, Jiang Xiaolin also nodded and felt that it made sense.

Then give it a try!

Of course, Jiang Xiaolin played football in the Netherlands for a long time. Dutch football itself is a technical style of play. Jiang Xiaolin can understand and implement Gao Hongbo's tactics without much adaptation.

But for other Chinese players, changing the habitual style of play formed over a long period of time and changing to ground technical flow does require a certain amount of adaptation time.

Therefore, on January 8, when Jiang Xiaolin was doing adaptive training, the training effect of the national football team was not very good, there was some confusion, and the players made many mistakes.

But there is no way, the head coach was changed and the tactical style of play was changed, and this transition period is inevitable.

After one day of training, the next day, at 15:00 on January 9, 2009, the national football team held a warm-up match with the Iranian national team at the Azadi Stadium.

In the previous Oman Four Nations Tournament, the national football team led by Yin Tiesheng had just lost 0-2 to Iran on December 19, which was also one of the reasons for Yin Tiesheng's dismissal.

And in today's warm-up match against the Iranian national team, the performance of the Chinese team was not much better.

In fact, because of the change of coach, new players and new tactics, the Chinese national football team's passing, cutting, running and cooperation are much worse, and the performance of the whole game is worse than the game against Iran in the Oman Four Nations Tournament.

Throughout the game, the Iranian national team scored three goals with the cheers of tens of thousands of Iranian fans on the scene.

On the Chinese side, Jiang Xiaolin only scored two goals by header in a corner kick and passing three people in a quick counterattack.

As for the passing and cutting cooperation with teammates, there was none.

Although Jiang Xiaolin scored two goals, he still failed to save the Chinese national football team from losing 2-3 to Iran.

Therefore, Jiang Xiaolin only got 8,000 basic experience points for 2 goals in this game, and no winning experience.

In terms of performance, Jiang Xiaolin also only received a "good" performance rating, the rating coefficient is 2.

Finally, the total experience Jiang Xiaolin gained is 8000*2=16,000. Adding the training experience of the previous day, Jiang Xiaolin's level experience rose to level 22 63.02/3 million.

After the game, the news that Gao Hongbo lost his first game as coach caused heated discussions and criticisms in the domestic media, who believed that Gao Hongbo changed the tactics at random, and even Jiang Xiaolin played and scored twice but failed to defeat an Asian team.

The Chinese media, eager for quick success, was full of news that was not optimistic about Gao Hongbo.

"Jiang Xiaolin scored twice but couldn't save the team, Gao Hongbo lost the first game!"

"Gao Hongbo lost 2-3 to Iran in the first game, the Chinese team's performance was a mess, and mistakes were frequent!"

"Jiang Xiaolin scored twice in the warm-up match, but the Chinese team lost 2-3 to Iran, and Gao Hongbo's tactical transformation failed! 》

In the news comments of major media, it seems that Jiang Xiaolin must win when he plays, and Gao Hongbo will be sentenced to death if he loses a warm-up match.

The fans also followed suit, mocking Gao Hongbo, and many people believed that Gao Hongbo should not be the coach of the national football team.

Many people have the idea of ​​hiring foreign coaches again, but they don’t know that the Chinese Football Committee, which is currently cracking down on gangs and counterfeiting, has no money to hire foreign coaches?

At this time, Jiang Xiaolin stood up and accepted a separate interview with the sports channel of the national television station to state his views.

He believes that Gao Hongbo’s tactical thinking is correct, and China must give up the long pass and lob method that relies on physical competition and switch to a technical flow.

Otherwise, with the physical fitness of Chinese players, they can only take advantage of Southeast Asian teams at most, and will definitely suffer when facing more aggressive Korean and Central Asian and West Asian teams, as well as technical Japanese teams, just like the Chinese team’s declining performance in previous years.

What's more, if the Chinese team wants to break out of Asia and enter the World Cup, facing the teams from Europe, America and Africa, the physical strength of Chinese players will have no advantage at all.

In that case, how can the Chinese team make a breakthrough in the World Cup?

Therefore, Jiang Xiaolin believes that Gao Hongbo's technical transformation is correct, and he fully supports it. He also hopes that the media and fans will give Gao some time and not be so eager for quick success.

Although Jiang Xiaolin is only 17 years old, his reputation in domestic football is unmatched by anyone.

Not to mention the media, even the Football Committee must pay attention to Jiang Xiaolin's opinions, and the fans are willing to listen to him.

Therefore, after Jiang Xiaolin's interview was broadcast, the Football Committee immediately stood up to express its support for Gao Hongbo and would not lose confidence in him because of a loss in a game.

The domestic media and fans finally calmed down and thought about it calmly, and then they felt that Jiang Xiaolin's statement was correct.

Indeed, in recent years, the Chinese team has lost more than it has won against South Korea and Japan. Perhaps this is because the Chinese team has rough skills and relies only on physical strength to fight and play long passes.

Reflecting on the results of the World Cup qualifiers, it lost all three games in the 2002 World Cup, was eliminated with a net score of 9, and failed to even enter the top ten in 2006.

In this case, it is better to give Gao Hongbo more time to let him make a major surgical transformation of the national football team and see if his technical style of play can change the results of Chinese football!

Amid the external disturbances, the Chinese team continued to train in Tehran for a few days, and then flew from Iran to Syria on January 12 to participate in the first round of the 2011 Qatar Asian Cup qualifiers Group D, where the Chinese team will play away against Syria.

Several teams in the 2011 Qatar Asian Cup, such as the host Qatar, the champion, runner-up and third place of the 2007 Asian Cup, etc., directly advanced to the finals.

Therefore, after the first round of qualifying, 20 teams participated in the qualifiers, divided into 5 groups, 4 teams in each group, and the top two teams in each group advanced to the Qatar Asian Cup finals.

The Chinese team was divided into Group D, with Syria, Vietnam and Lebanon in the same group.

It seems that there should be no problem for the Chinese team to qualify with Syria, especially when Jiang Xiaolin plays.

But now the Chinese team has changed its head coach and tactics. The last warm-up match was a mess, losing 2-3 to Iran. No one can tell whether there will be any accidents in the Asian preliminaries.

Moreover, some matches in the Asian preliminaries conflict with the matches of Jiang Xiaolin's club, so Jiang Xiaolin cannot participate.

For example, the second round of the Chinese team's match against Vietnam was held on the same day as the Dutch Cup match of Alkmaar. After the communication between the Chinese national football team and Alkmaar, Alkmaar resolutely refused to let it go.

Because the Dutch Cup is a one-game match, and the Chinese team's match is against Vietnam, a weak team in Southeast Asia, and it is a group match., not a single match to decide the outcome.

Therefore, the final decision reached by both parties was that Jiang Xiaolin would participate in the club's game instead of the second round of the Asian qualifiers.

At that time, whether Gao Hongbo's new national football team could successfully defeat Vietnam, a weak team in Southeast Asia, everyone was still a little nervous.

But no matter what, things have come to this point, and everyone can only wait passively.

I just hope that in the first round of the away game against Syria, with Jiang Xiaolin, the Chinese team can win, so that the subsequent games will be much easier to play.

At noon on January 14, 2009, local time, in Aleppo, a major city in northern Syria, the Chinese team was about to usher in the first match of the Asian Cup qualifiers against Syria.

In the locker room, Gao Hongbo was making the final mobilization.

"There are old players in this team, and there are also new players who have been selected for the national team."

"There are players who participated in the 2002 World Cup, and there are players who have won Olympic championships."

"But, that's all history!"

"We were shamefully eliminated from the 2002 World Cup."

"The Olympic champion can only be counted as a game for youth teams under U23."

"Our adult national team has never achieved any decent results."

"So, I hope that during my term, we can win an Asian Cup championship, and then enter the South Africa World Cup and make a historic breakthrough."

"To achieve this goal, we have made tactical adjustments."

"Although we lost the last warm-up match against Iran, we found more weaknesses through that game and have conducted targeted training in the past few days."

"From the results of the training, you are much better than the last game against Iran."

"Today's game, I don't require you to win."

"But you must stick to the technical and tactical play we trained, and use fewer long kicks and fewer aerial balls."

"I believe that we will have no problem qualifying for both the Asian qualifiers and the World Cup qualifiers."

"The problem is that we need to achieve results in the World Cup and the Asian Cup."

"So, from now on, we have to make changes. Even if we encounter some difficulties, even if there are ups and downs in the results, I hope you will have confidence and stick to the technical style of play."

"If a player does not meet my requirements, I will let him go off the field or even withdraw from the national team."

"Do you understand?"

All the players immediately answered loudly: "I understand!"

Gao Hongbo nodded, and then said to Jiang Xiaolin alone: ​​"Although we must adhere to the technical style of play, Jiang Xiaolin, you are an exception. I will give you the authority of a free man in the frontcourt. Whether in the penalty area or outside the penalty area, as long as you have a way to score the ball, I don't care what method you use."

"Your skills have reached the world's top level, so there is no need to practice deliberately."

"If you can help the team score goals and reduce the pressure of public opinion when the whole team insists on the technical style of play, it is also very good."

Jiang Xiaolin nodded to show that he understood.

He knew what Gao Hongbo meant, that it would take a long time for his teammates in the midfield and backcourt to practice their technical style of play, and during this period, the national football team's performance might be somewhat unstable, and they might face criticism from the domestic media and fans.

It is even possible that the Football Committee will remove him from his coaching position in advance under pressure.

The previous guarantee of the Football Committee is of no effect.

Therefore, in this case, the national football team needs to rely on Jiang Xiaolin's goals to win the game and reduce the pressure of public opinion during the transition period of the team's tactical transformation.

As long as they persist for a long time, Jiang Xiaolin also believes that the national football team will definitely make a breakthrough in the World Cup and the Asian Cup.

When the time for the game was approaching, after the staff came to notify him, Gao Hongbo stood at the door of the locker room and high-fived the players one by one to express encouragement.

The first round of the Qatar Asian Cup qualifiers and the first official match of Gao's team are about to begin.