From the man behind the football king to the football king.

Chapter 249 Bruno becomes increasingly confident

Over the weekend, Udinese ushered in the fourth round of Serie A and faced Empoli at home.

Empoli, a newly promoted team last season, successfully avoided relegation. However, due to their limited strength, they performed poorly in the first three rounds of the season, with 3 draw and 1 losses but no victory.

Udinese has been spending too much in recent times. The international players all traveled long distances to return to their home countries to work hard, and after returning, they fought non-stop against the two powerful enemies of Lazio and Manchester United. Everyone was exhausted physically and mentally, so Guidolin made appropriate rotations in this game.

On the defense line, Maguire sat on the bench, Erto and Danilo partnered as central defenders, and Cancelo and Piris served on the wings.

In the midfield, the three defensive midfielders of Vidmont, Badu and Cone were arranged. Itura was put back on the bench, Bruno played as the attacking midfielder; in the forward line, Taylor was substituted, and Di Natale and Zapata partnered.

Although the opponent was Empoli, who had limited strength, Guidolin still did not dare to arrange for Bruno to rest. If Udinese still wants to compete for the Serie A championship this season, it must ensure three points against a team like Empoli. Instead of giving up these easier games, and then go to fight with giants like Juventus and Roma.

Moreover, Empoli were unable to win in the first three rounds. They are in urgent need of victory to reverse the decline and are bound to fight Udinese at the Friuli Stadium. Without Bruno's heavy weapon, Guidolin really couldn't rest assured.

The trend of the game also confirmed this.

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After the opening, Udinese quickly took advantage of the midfield advantage to control the situation on the field and launched offensives one after another.

Bruno is not too involved. This is the arrangement given to him by Guidolin before the game, because the team needs him to maintain stable performance for a long time instead of using him to death, so his pressing in the frontcourt is far less than that of Dee Natale, Zapata, and Vidmon were so positive, but everyone on the team was convinced.

With Bruno and without Bruno, Udinese faces two completely different competition environments.

Just like in the game against Empoli, Bruno standing there, or even just walking slowly, can make Empoli's defensive players feel like they are facing a powerful enemy, for fear that he will not know when he will charge.

This is a powerful psychological shock to opponent players.

If Bruno is asked to try his best in every game, he will definitely have to take a rest. Therefore, the Udinese locker room also agrees with this very much. Even Di Natale and others told Bruno to let him run less, and they would run for him and save their energy to participate in the attack.

Although Bruno didn't perform particularly hard, it was still in the tenth minute. After retreating to the midfielder to catch the ball, he turned and passed diagonally behind him on the right. Zapata quickly stepped in, got the ball before the opponent's central defender and passed it, but Di Natale hit the ball high.

This is Udinese's most threatening attack since the start of the game, and it also reminds Empoli that even if Bruno seems to be paddling, if you are not careful, if you give him a chance, he can kill you in any minute. Life!

However, Bruno is not the kind of person who ignores the overall situation.

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Udinese's attack after the opening round failed to work, but instead they were hit by a counterattack by their opponent.

In the 17th minute of the game, Empoli made a direct pass from the center and Paredes scored a goal, opening the scoring for Empoli.

This goal greatly improved Empoli's morale, but it also dealt a blow to Udinese, because after seventeen minutes of attacking, not only did they fail to score, but the opponent succeeded in a sneak attack, which really shouldn't have been done.

But just two minutes later, Bruno successfully helped Udinese equalize the score.

After Erto intercepted the ball in the backcourt, he passed a long pass directly to the left side of the frontcourt. Bruno quickly caught up with him, got the ball, passed two other players and passed the ball to Di Natale.

Di Natale passed the ball and Zapata scored with a header from close range. This was his first goal since joining Udinese.

Just four minutes later, Bruno took the initiative to retreat again. After successfully stealing the ball, one person turned around and pushed forward with the ball. Suddenly, he passed the ball diagonally to the right. After Widmund got the ball, he knocked back to the center. Di Natale followed directly. He fired furiously and hit a long shot from 2 meters away, once again piercing Empoli's goal, 1:!

After the reversal, everyone in Udinese was extremely excited, especially Di Natale, who scored the goal. He was the first to run to Bruno and celebrate his goal with him.

This is the 231st Serie A goal for the Udinese captain. He is quickly chasing Totti in front of him.

The Roma captain currently has 243 goals, only 12 goals ahead of Di Natale!

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After changing sides and fighting again in the second half, Empoli once played a offensive attack, especially when the wing attacks began to increase, and Bruno was mostly defended in the middle.

But in the 3th minute, Udinese instigated a counterattack. Di Natale made a wonderful pass from the right. Zapata drove the ball straight in and finally crossed to the goal. Bruno ran easily and calmly pushed the ball. Hit, 1:!

Subsequently, Guidolin quickly replaced Bruno with Adnan.

<divclass="contentadv">In the 72nd minute of the game, Cone received his second yellow card and was sent off. Udinese had to fight with ten men in the last twenty minutes.

This put Udinese in danger, but fortunately the Udinese players were united and made up for the numerical disadvantage with hard running.

Although Empoli pulled one back in the second minute of stoppage time, it was too late and Udinese eventually won the game with a score of 2:3.

At the post-match press conference, Guidolin said that his idea before the game was to let players such as Bruno and Di Natale play for only minutes, and then the remaining players would hold on to the victory.

"I'm very happy to see the final score. Although there were some unexpected situations on the field, with the efforts of everyone, we achieved the goals we set before the game and everyone contributed."

Empoli head coach Marco Giampaolo said gloomily that Udinese could win because they had two world-class stars.

"Bruno and Antonio are both world-class stars, especially Bruno. He prevented us from focusing on offense. He didn't touch the ball many times, but he created a threat every time. We really can't imagine what else to do besides fouling." Stop him and he changes the whole course of the game.”

But in the end, the best of the game still belonged to Di Natale, because the Udinese captain obviously worked harder.

UEFA's rating was that Bruno only played seriously for less than ten minutes in this game, but he ended up creating two goals for Udinese, and the goal in the second half was more like a casual stroll. In.

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In midweek, in the fifth round of Serie A, Udinese faced AC Milan at home.

Although the Rossoneri is the top club in the history of Italian football, everyone has no doubt that Udinese can win at their home court in this matchup.

AC Milan, which spent 9500 million euros in the summer transfer window and rented Balotelli from Liverpool, performed unsatisfactory after the start of the season, only achieving a record of 2 wins and 2 losses in the first four rounds. , currently ranked tenth in the standings, is obviously inferior to the defending champion Udinese, who has beaten Inter Milan with four consecutive victories, both in terms of state and team strength.

After the game started, Udinese did exactly what the outside world expected, launching a wave of offensive from the beginning.

After last weekend's Serie A match, Udinese once again arranged a rotation.

The veteran Domic started on the left side of the defense, Cancelo returned to the right back, the center backs were still Maguire and Danilo, and the midfielder let Badu, Itura and Adnan partner as a three-back midfielder. , Bruno plays as an attacking midfielder. The striker is the partner of Taylor and Di Natale.

Only two minutes into the game, after Cancelo had a tactical cooperation with Bruno on the right, Bruno was fouled by the opponent's defensive player when he took the ball, giving Udinese a free kick opportunity in the frontcourt.

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The ball was far away from the goal, a full meters, and it was to the right. Everyone basically concluded that this was an indirect free kick. Because of such a long distance, it was really unlikely to hit the goal directly.

But just when Di Natale and Itura ran over to discuss how to cooperate with Bruno, Bruno waved his hand and said: "I'll fight!"

"Fight directly?" Di Natale and Itura both suspected that they heard wrongly. This is a full thirty-six meters long, and it's on the right side, making it difficult to hit.

But Bruno didn't say much. He stood at the penalty spot and glanced at the goal more than thirty meters away. Then he looked at AC Milan's goalkeeper, the -year-old Spanish veteran Diego Lopez, who is meters tall. six.

"I'll give it a try." Bruno smiled.

Of course, Di Natale and Itura would not have any objections. The Udinese captain even jokingly patted Bruno on the shoulder and said: "Remember, if this goal is not scored, you will have to make up three more."

Bruno didn't take it to heart, but looked up at the sky, walked over, picked up the ball, wiped it carefully, and then gently put it back on the grass. After stepping on the turf behind the ball, he silently Counting steps back.

At this time, all the fans in the audience also noticed Bruno's move, and everyone cheered.

"God, is Bruno going to knock on the door directly?"

"The difficulty is really too high. We just calculated that this position is meters away from the goal. It is not that difficult to hit the goal directly. Moreover, his move has obviously given a signal to the AC Milan players. "

"Diego Lopez must be ready. In this situation, it is really difficult to take such a long-distance direct free kick. It is definitely a challenge."

But the Udinese players didn't seem to feel much. Taylor even shouted to Bruno from a distance: "Hey, Bruno, if it doesn't work, just upload it to the head, I'll wait for you!"

Bruno waved his hand towards him, as if to say, don't bother me!