Football career: From winning the championship to becoming a legend

In fact, Ricardo, who was on loan at Sevilla last season, had three chances to face his former club or his real club.

The first time they met was in the European Super Cup before the season. The game was played at a neutral venue. As a new loan player of the team, Ricardo only played half the game and did not have much to show.

The second time was in the 6th round of La Liga, when Sevilla visited Camp Nou, but Ricardo missed the only opportunity to visit Camp Nou last season due to an injury on the national team match day.

The third time was the 25th round of La Liga, the second round of the two sides' competition, but it was moved to Sevilla's home stadium, the Pizjuan Stadium. In this game, Ricardo played as Sevilla's starting striker and played a great role as a shadow striker.

Ricardo first received a cross from Alves and scored with his heel to help the team equalize the score; then, when the team was one man down, he made two consecutive assists in quick counterattacks, helping ten-man Sevilla to reverse Barcelona 3-1 at home!

It was also this game that made the entire Barcelona team completely jealous of Ricardo, the traitor. After all, in the end, Barcelona lost the La Liga championship just by one league point...

However, this is also the first time that Ricardo has returned to the Camp Nou to play since he left Barcelona on loan in the 06/07 season: he left as a rotation substitute with the honor of scoring the winning goal in the Champions League, but now he is back as the starting main force of the visiting team, with a performance of goals and assists this season!

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Barcelona and Manchester United have remained unbeaten in the Champions League this season, with Barcelona winning all five of their home games.

In the seven European matches between the two sides, Manchester United and Barcelona have each achieved two wins, three draws and two losses.

其中巴萨在3个主场取得2胜1平。1994年欧冠小组赛，巴萨主场4比0大胜曼联；1998年欧冠小组赛，巴萨主场3比3战平曼联。1984年欧洲优胜者杯1/4决赛，巴萨主场2比0取胜。

The only final the two sides met was the 1991 European Cup Winners' Cup final, with Manchester United defeating Barcelona 2-1 in Rotterdam.

In the starting lineup announced before the game, Barcelona's Black Swan coach replaced the suspended Puyol with Marcos, while Abidal, Iniesta, Deco and Messi replaced Sylvinho, Bojan, Gudjohnsen and Giovanni respectively.

Although Barcelona has players coming in and out and rotating, half of the starting lineup is still familiar to Li Qi, especially in the midfield and frontcourt; and Rijkaard's starting lineup is still the 4-3-3 formation that Barcelona has used in the past few seasons;

The goalkeeper is No. 1 Valdés;

The left and right wingbacks are No. 11 Zambrotta and No. 22 Abidal, and the double center backs are No. 4 Marcos and No. 3 Gabi Milito;

The midfield trident is No. 24 Yaya Toure and No. 20 Deco, assisted by the brain No. 6 Xavi;

The forward trident is No. 9 Eto'o, No. 19 Messi and No. 8 Iniesta;

The former super thigh Ronaldinho continues to be absent due to injury, the former king of Highbury Henry the Great is also on the bench, and Li Qi's two good friends are the starting forwards, and they may not have many opportunities to match up with Li Qi who plays as a central midfielder in this game.

Yes, Sir Alex Ferguson changed the formation again, deploying a 4-3-2-1 Christmas tree formation, with the Manchester United 3R of Ligue , Ronaldo and Rooney forming the forward line.

In addition, Sir Alex Ferguson's previous joke that he knew whether all Barcelona players had gastrointestinal discomfort unexpectedly backfired on him, as main central defender Vidic suffered a serious stomach disease before the game and missed the game due to injury.

Manchester United's formation is very targeted at Barcelona:

The goalkeeper is No. 1 Van der Sar;

The back four is No. 4 Hargreaves, No. 6 Wes Brown, No. 5 Ferdinand and No. 3 Evra;

The three defensive midfielders are No. 13 Park Ji-sung, No. 18 Scholes and No. 16 Carrick;

The two attacking midfielders are No. 7 Cristiano Ronaldo and No. 17 Li Qi;

The single arrow is No. 10 Rooney.

The task of Hargreaves, Evra and Park Ji-sung is to work together to curb Messi's performance. The former two will provide auxiliary defense, and the latter will closely mark Messi throughout the entire court - the kind that will follow him even when he goes to the toilet.

Ronaldo's goal is to attack behind Zambrotta, who often assists, and between him and the central defender.

Li Qi's responsibility is to strangle Barcelona's organization in the midfield together with Carrick and Scholes, mainly to keep a close eye on Xavi's passes.

The tactic arranged by Sir Alex was a steady defense and counterattack, taking advantage of the gaps in the transition between offense and defense.

2008年4月23日晚上20时45分，白衣白裤的曼联客场挑战蓝红球衣的巴萨的07/08赛季欧洲冠军联赛半决赛首回合焦点战，在诺坎普球场展开争夺！

However, soon after the start of the game, before Barcelona could get into the game and start passing and controlling the ball, Manchester United pushed the speed to the limit and started a blitzkrieg of pressing. Li Qi's tackle and Rooney's long shot created a corner kick that led to a crucial event!

Just 89 seconds after the kick-off, Li Qi took a corner kick from the right side. With the help of Rooney's pick-and-roll, Ronaldo successfully scored from 11 yards in front of the goal and headed the ball into the goal!

At the moment when the ball was about to fly into the upper left corner of Barcelona's goal, Gabi Milito who was guarding the goal line clearly blocked it with his hand!

Swiss referee Busacca decisively awarded a penalty kick and the Argentine defender was also given a yellow card warning, but it was obvious that all Manchester United players believed that this was a handball foul that deliberately destroyed the goal and should be sentenced to the penalty of a red card package.

Including Li Qi, everyone took turns to put pressure on the referee. After all, he was not very familiar with Xiaomi and they were not teammates, right?

But the referee obviously did not dare to give a red dot in such a global focus battle: just give a standard yellow dot, punish him quickly!

So Manchester United's first penalty taker, Cristiano Ronaldo, took the ball and started his standard penalty kick process...

Swinging the ball, stepping on the grass, pacing back and forth, Ronaldo's stare, running-up, free throw!

Ronaldo's penalty successfully fooled Valdés, who completely guessed the wrong direction. However, Ronaldo used too much force and shot the ball directly, which went off the right post and flew into the stands.

Manchester United missed the chance to start the game in a dream, and Barcelona managed to escape the disaster...

After five minutes, Manchester United's crazy dog-like full-court pressing had to stop for a while, after all, their physical strength had to be distributed throughout the court. After that, Barcelona took advantage of the home court and slowly took control of the midfield. After all, Barcelona has played like this in the past few seasons and is not very good at other routines.

The focus of Barcelona's attack is still on Messi's side. It depends on whether he changes position to the left or the right, but Park Sam-fee always follows him.

For a while, this made Messi, whose technical style had not yet fully matured, feel a little uncomfortable. After all, he was at a disadvantage in terms of height and weight, and Park Sam-fei didn't care about his physical strength in fighting with him. Even if he was passed once and a second time, he would still come up to interfere with Messi at the first time, and really follow him all the way off the court.

So Messi could only cooperate with the attack more through passing the ball.

For example, in the 14th minute, Messi cut inside and got rid of Park Ji-sung for a short time, but before the latter could get back to him, he made a straight pass. Iniesta, who was moving flexibly, made a triangle pass back from the left side of the penalty area, but Deco who followed up in the middle failed to shoot before Carrick who returned to defense.

Without Messi's sharp continuous breakthroughs to create open spaces for his teammates, the threat is still there, but it has been greatly reduced.

In addition, Sir Alex Ferguson instructed Manchester United's midfield and backcourt to shrink the middle as much as possible, block Barcelona's cut-in and penetration through the middle, and allow Barcelona to go down the bottom to cross the ball or create corner kicks; after all, Barcelona's height was at a clear disadvantage in this game, with only Yaya Toure and Abidal over 1 meters tall in the team.

On the Manchester United side, more than half of the team are over 1 meters tall...

So in the 17th minute, taking advantage of Van der Sar's clearance error, Barcelona created three consecutive corner kick opportunities, but failed to create any scoring opportunities.

Manchester United gradually stabilized their formation. Although they were at a disadvantage in ball possession, they began to create threats through counterattacks. This was also Sir Alex Ferguson's main tactical arrangement after the failure of the opening attack plan. They used the impact of Manchester United's 3R combination to gallop freely in the backcourt of Barcelona!

……

[I may not be able to hold back the second update tonight.]

It will most likely be tomorrow afternoon, so don’t stay up late waiting. 】