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

Chapter 283 Confidence

From mid-January to mid-February before the start of the Champions League knockout rounds, Udinese experienced a relatively easy schedule.

On the afternoon of January 1th, it was the first-place battle between Udinese and Juventus. Although Udinese lost the game 17:3, they still led Juventus by 4 points in the standings, which made this top battle seem a bit undeserved.

A week later, on the afternoon of January 1, Udinese visited Palermo. Udinese won the game with a score of 24:2. Bruno once again scored a goal in the game, reaching 1 goals in the season. But his advantage in the scorer list is not too obvious, because his opponent Higuain also scored in this round, with 1 goals in the season, only 24 goals behind Bruno.

On the afternoon of January 1, in the 31nd round of the league, Udinese faced Lazio at home. This is their last game in January.

Udinese's first game in February came on the evening of February 2, and their opponent was Empoli, who was in the middle of the standings.

On February 2, in the 7th round, Udinese’s opponent was AC Milan away from home.

On the evening of February 2, in the 11th round of the league, Udinese welcomed Bologna, another team in the middle of the standings, at home.

The strength of these teams is very limited, including the former giant AC Milan. Although the Rossoneri are currently ranked in the top half of the standings, they have only scored 30 points and are not in good shape.

For these games, it is naturally within the plan of Udinese and Guidolin to score points.

Before the knockout rounds of the Champions League, Guidolin hopes to stop losing points as much as possible and maintain his points advantage over Juventus. Otherwise, when the knockout rounds of the Champions League begin, Udinese, with a thin lineup, wants to fight on two fronts with the powerful Juventus, which is tantamount to wishful thinking.

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On the afternoon of January 1st, Udinese faced Lazio at home. Immobile continued to start and played forward with Taylor, but his position was more flexible and was not limited to the forward position. Guidolin allows him to freely change his position according to the actual situation during the game. Sometimes he can serve as a left midfielder, sometimes he can be a guest midfielder, sometimes he is a center, and sometimes he is a shadow forward.

The game was very fierce, and Bruno was surrounded by many opponents. Guidolin asked Immobile to play as an attacking midfielder to help Bruno share the pressure. It's a pity that Immobile and his teammates don't have a tacit understanding of cooperation - it's not that they don't cooperate, but that they don't have a tacit understanding. Later Bruno had to take over the task of organizing the offense again.

To keep Bruno exhausted. Lazio's head coach replaced Matri in the second half to strengthen the attack.

In order to defend Matri, Bruno received a yellow card on him. However, Savage also received a yellow card for defending Bruno.

Immobile finally returned to the shadow forward position. As an attacking midfielder, his cooperation with the whole team was not tacit enough and he was of little use.

The game ended at 0:0, with no one scoring a goal.

This is Udinese's first draw of the season and also Udinese's first game of the season without a goal.

After being tied by Lazio, Udinese's lead in the standings shrank to 7 points.

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After the draw with Lazio, Udinese's next game is a visit to Empoli. This is the 23rd round of the league.

In this game Bruno did not encounter any resistance in the midfield. Immobile's performance in the shadow forward position was also very active. He also assisted Bruno to score a goal.

Bruno scored a goal, assisted a goal, instigated a goal, and participated in all three goals of Udinese. He was the number one contributor to Udinese's 3:1 victory over Empoli.

Four days later, Udinese continued their away trip and challenged AC Milan at the San Siro Stadium.

The Rossoneri's performance this season is still not good. After 23 rounds, they are only ranked seventh in the Serie A standings, and are 9 points behind the top four. There is basically no hope of participating in the Champions League.

After a fierce battle, Udinese won again with a score of 3:1. Bruno assisted one goal, instigated one goal, and participated in two of the three goals.

Immobile scored his second goal after joining Udinese, a beautiful solo pass. This was also the goal that Bruno was not involved in.

After scoring, Immobile took off his jersey and ran around desperately, for which he received a yellow card.

Di Natale also scored a goal in the game, receiving a pass from Bruno. After dribbling horizontally to open up space, he suddenly took a long shot, and the football flew into AC Milan's goal.

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The last game before facing Arsenal in the Champions League knockout rounds was a home game against Bologna.

The last time the two sides met, Udinese won 2:1 away from home.

Although he will go to London to challenge Arsenal in the middle of next week, because Juventus has been chasing closely behind him recently, Guidolin still sent out almost the entire main lineup in the game.

<divclass="contentadv">Since losing to Sassuolo in the tenth round of the league, the Bianconeri have shown overwhelming strength in Serie A and have won 2006 consecutive league victories, which is the first in Serie A history. The second longest winning streak, second only to Inter Milan's 2007-game winning streak in the - season.

However, in this round, Juventus will face the powerful Naples. This is also a duel between the second and third place in the league.

Currently, Juventus ranks second with 54 points, while Napoli ranks third with 53 points.

For Udinese, if they can win at home, they can sit back and watch Juventus and Naples fight to the death.

During the game, Bruno and Immobile performed well. Bruno assisted Immobile to score the opening goal.

Then Widmund assisted Bruno and scored the team's second goal. This was Bruno's 26th league goal this season and continued to lead the European Golden Boot rankings.

Udinese fans have not yet calmed down from the excitement of Bruno's goal, and Udinese has once again expanded its lead.

This time it was team captain Di Natale who scored the goal, taking advantage of a corner kick and scoring from the top.

Bologna didn't get a goal back until the last minute of the game, in the 90th minute, but it didn't help.

In the end, Udinese defeated Bologna 3:1 at home and reached 25 points after 64 rounds. With one more game to play, Udinese led Juventus by ten points and continued to lead the Serie A standings.

Two days later, on Valentine's Day, in a highlight match of this round, Juventus defeated Naples 1:0 at home, without conceding a goal for 566 consecutive minutes in Serie A, ending the opponent's 8-game winning streak, and surpassing the Serie A team. The winning streak was rewritten to 15 games.

Juventus, who won, continued to chase Udinese with a gap of 7 points.

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Juventus won fifteen consecutive Serie A victories, causing a great shock in the football world. But the Udinese people did not pay much attention to this game, because Udinese was about to fly to London, England to challenge the Gunners Arsenal.

That is the game that Udinese fans are most concerned about.

Facing such an important opponent in such an important game, there is absolutely no reason not to pay attention.

The media began to pay attention to this game as soon as the opponents came out. The local media in Udinese believe that this game may be the most important game for Udinese throughout the season, while the local media in London feel that they have drawn a good draw. Maybe Udinese was the winner of the Champions League and Serie A last season. The double champion has also topped the Serie A standings this season, but compared to other top clubs, Udinese is still a bit underwhelming.

As for the match between Udinese and Arsenal, if nothing unexpected happens, Arsenal will definitely qualify for the quarterfinals.

"The unfavorable factor for Udinese is that the game is Arsenal's home stadium. The Emirates Stadium is a famous devil's home stadium. Any team playing in that stadium will feel huge pressure. Even Bayern Munich The Cosmos also lost 0:2 to Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium this season."

In this season's UEFA Champions League group stage, the enemies Bayern Munich and Arsenal were divided into a group. Bayern Munich challenged Arsenal on the field, but Arsenal beat Bayern Munich 2:0 and lost completely. The powerful Bayern Munich was beaten to the point of losing their temper.

In the Premier League, Arsenal defeated Manchester United 3:0 at home and defeated Manchester City 2:1.

Bayern Munich, Manchester United and Manchester City are all one of the best teams in Europe, but even these three teams failed to capture the Emirates Stadium.

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After the Udinese team arrived in London, they went to the Emirates Stadium for acclimatization training. Guidolin was fearless at the pre-match press conference: "Of course we know Arsenal are strong, but this is football - there is no rule that the strong will win. We also have a chance."

A reporter mentioned an embarrassing match for Udinese in the 2011-2012 season: "But Mr. Guidolin, your team was double beaten by Arsenal in the Champions League play-offs four years ago. Your players make an impact..."

"I don't think it will have any impact." Guidolin had a very tough attitude at the press conference today, unwilling to show weakness in front of Arsenal people. "That was four years ago, and we are completely different now than we were four years ago. Different."

Guidolin's attitude surprised many people - does the Udinese head coach really have any secret weapon that can compete with Arsenal? Otherwise, where did he get this kind of confidence?

Guidolin also did not explain to the media, and there was no way to explain this matter. In fact, it is better to say that he has the determination to defeat Arsenal than he has the confidence to defeat Arsenal. That's what football matches are like. If you don't even have the determination, why bother participating in such a match? Get eliminated early and go home.

Later, the media interpreted Guidolin's performance at the press conference as a kind of psychological warfare, trying to use this confident performance to create some interference for Arsenal, so that they did not understand Udinese's true intentions, or simply It's just to boost the morale of his players.

Of course the head coach has to tell his men to have the confidence to defeat their opponents, otherwise how can they lead the team?