The other two teams that originally participated in the Europa League were eliminated in the group stage. Manchester United and Manchester City fell out of the Champions League. As a result, they were also eliminated in the quarter-finals. Southampton.
It became the only team still playing in the European League.
Coincidentally, in the Champions League, Arsenal was also eliminated by Milan. Still struggling in the quarter-finals of the Champions League is Chelsea, who have performed poorly this season.
Suddenly, fans of the Premier League began to feel a little anxious. The dominance of the Premier League teams has declined significantly in recent years. In the past three seasons, the Champions League champions Barcelona won two and Inter Milan won one. But what about the Europa League?
If Southampton hadn't won the Europa League last season, the last Premier League team to win the Europa League would have been Liverpool in the 2000-01 season!
Although the strong teams now have to play in the Champions League, the gold content of the Europa League has dropped a lot, and it has also allowed teams in less advanced leagues such as the Portuguese Super League, the Eredivisie, the Russian Super League and the Ukrainian Super League to win a lot of Europa League championships, but the Premier League teams
It's still very depressing that Southampton is the only one left in the Europa League so early.
Not to mention that Chelsea is the only team in the Champions League that has performed poorly in the league this season.
Do we just rely on Southampton and Chelsea to maintain the honor of the Premier League in European competitions?
Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Liverpool, what do you eat?
And Tottenham...oh, Tottenham have no European games to play this year.
In short, while the English media praised the performance of Southampton and Chelsea, they also insulted other strong teams. Poor Tottenham, they were shot even while they were lying down!
In this regard, Noriya and Chelsea's new head coach Di Matteo certainly will not jump out to cause hatred, and both appear to be particularly low-key.
Southampton's opponents in the next round have finally started to get stronger - their opponents are Schalke 04, a team that performed well in the Champions League last season, but their performance in the league declined and they can only play in the Europa League.
the match of.
"We have to be careful about this team. They are the first strong team we have encountered in the Europa League this season." Noriya warned the players.
The players nodded one after another. They knew this very well. After all, compared with Southampton, Schalke 04 is a long-established and strong team, and its performance in recent years has been quite good.
However, Southampton, which had fully recovered its form, performed really well in the following performance.
They first defeated Fulham with a clean 3-0 away game, and then returned to home and defeated Everton 2-0. These two games were not won very smoothly, but everyone was shocked to find that, with the two European games
In the League Cup, Southampton has kept seven clean sheets!
Is this still the Southampton team that scored a lot from the front but lost a lot from the back?
"Our defense has been strengthening, haven't you noticed? Since the offense cannot allow us to solve the problem well, then we will strengthen our defense. If we concede fewer goals, we will score more goals." Noriya said in an interview.
He said with a smile.
The reporters were a little speechless, but Southampton's defense has been really good recently. Even when they faced strong opponents like Manchester City and Everton, they didn't concede a goal. It's really difficult to do this.
After studying the performance of these seven games, the media came to the conclusion that in addition to Southampton using more ball-control tactics to reduce the possibility of conceding the ball, the biggest factor is that Southampton
Don's goalkeeper Navas, and the two central defenders Lovren and Font, their performances are top-notch!
In the past seven games, Navas has averaged more than five effective saves per game, while Lovren has made three and four steals per game, and his header success rate is as high as 93%. This kind of data,
It's a statistic that only a top-notch central defender can possess.
As for Wundt, his performance was also very good, but his statistics were not as eye-catching as the other two.
To put it bluntly, defense can determine the performance of the center back and goalkeeper to a large extent. Southampton's defense is so good now, and it has a lot to do with the performance of the defenders.
In this case, there is no surprise. Players always have good and bad times. The same defensive line is sometimes as solid as a rock, and sometimes it is like tofu.
The same is true for forwards. There will be a period of time when the gods descend to earth, and there will also be a period of depression.
Everyone is used to it!
However, Southampton's recent improvement in form has made people lament that Kiya's adjustment of the team's condition is still very good. It is better to improve at this stage of impact than to start to decline at this time.
In the last two rounds, although Arsenal has started the four-fourth mode and won consecutively, surpassing Tottenham who have performed poorly recently, they are still seven points behind them. As long as Southampton does not perform too badly in the remaining eight games, they can retain their title.
The top four is not a big problem - Tottenham are already ten points behind them.
Now it depends on whether Southampton can achieve the feat that Sevilla has achieved before, which is to defend the Europa League...
Since the beginning of the new century, only Sevilla has defended the Europa League. In the last century, only Real Madrid had defended the title in the two seasons of 1984-85 and 1985-86. In the 1990s, although Inter Milan won the UEFA Cup three times,
, however they have never successfully defended their title.
If Southampton can do this, they will be the third team in the history of the Europa League to do this!
"Schalke 04 is actually a relatively young team... Although they have veterans like Raul, their main players are still relatively young, with the two main central defenders Hewedes and Papadopoulos
Twenty-three, one is only 19 years old, and the main attacking midfielder Draxler is only 18 years old. If Raul, Huntelaar and Farfan are not young, they can really be regarded as one.
They have a youth team. However, compared with last season, they lost their main goalkeeper Neuer. Although Hildebrand is also an excellent goalkeeper, he is still far behind Neuer, so this game
The game... we have to attack in the away game!" Noriya said on the training ground.
The players were stunned - haven't we not conceded a goal in seven games? It's an away game again. Isn't it right to play defensive counterattack and get a better result?
Ji Ya's words made them suddenly realize...
"You all think this way, and everyone at Schalke 04 must also think this way, so we launched a fierce attack in the away game to catch them off guard!" Noriya said.
The players nodded one after another. This is indeed the truth. After all, tactics require surprise, and Southampton did not play tactics that they did not know how to play, but tactics that they were good at.
At this stage of the quarter-finals, there are not many games with this kind of tactical deception. When it happens, you must catch it!
