The upcoming schedule is indeed very difficult for Hamburg.
After a relatively easy game against newly promoted Braunschweig at home on August 31, it was an international match day.
And when players with national team competition duties drag their tired bodies back to the team, they will be greeted by a terrifying three weeks in a row.
The away game against Dortmund on September 15th, the away game against AC Milan on September 18th, and the home game against Werder Bremen on September 21st!
This is not over yet.
The next four days will be the second round of the German Cup on September 25, then the sixth round of the Bundesliga against Frankfurt on September 29, and the Champions League home game against Barcelona on October 3.
Finally, after the away game against Nuremberg on October 6, this long series of continuous devilish schedules came to an end.
This is a problem that Hamburg did not face at all last season, and it is a problem that many teams will face when fighting on the third line.
But what makes everyone in Hamburg feel reassured is that Pan Yi seems to have been prepared for this.
He asked Pintus to plan a series of training plans early based on this intensive schedule, which also included intervals for recovery, relaxation and rest for the players.
The tactical training and ability training proposed by Nagelsmann and Inzaghi will also be based on this set of plans to prevent players from being too tired.
During this period of training, Pan Yi will also require various modern instruments to keep up, pay close attention to the physical condition of all players, and use scientific data to determine whether a player can play and for how long.<
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In short, all means are used to ensure that the team can exert its maximum combat effectiveness while ensuring the physical condition of the players and avoiding injuries.
Of course, if we must prioritize these games, Pan Yi would still pay more attention to the Champions League, especially the first round match against Milan.
This is a game against his former club, and it is also Pan Yi's first European game in Hamburg. Of course, he hopes the team can perform well.
Therefore, he hopes that his team can go to the San Siro Stadium with the best lineup and state to win this game.
Pan Yi also has this confidence.
He knows that Milan has been going downhill in the past two years.
After Pan Yi left, Allegri has been unable to come up with any clever tactics, and he has not been able to make good use of the young players Pan Yi bought, otherwise he would not have let Pan Yi take away so many at "low prices"
Already.
Allegri is superstitious about his "dark and hard" style of play, which seemed to be able to sustain it last season, but after severe blood loss this season, it feels like his true colors have been revealed.
The new season of Serie A started later than the Bundesliga. Serie A only played one game after three rounds of the Bundesliga.
But in this first round of games, AC Milan lost to underdog Verona 1:2 in an away game.
Allegri eliminated the "little black" combination of Mane, Balotelli and Niang in the game, and Mane scored a goal in the 14th minute to take the lead.
But Milan's defense could not withstand Verona's Italian veteran Toni. He kicked with his head and kicked continuously in the 30th and 53rd minutes to take the lead.
There is another young player in the Verona team who performed well, and that is Jorginho.
He led the Verona midfield to gain the upper hand in the competition with Milan's dark and hard midfield, which was also a prerequisite for Verona to ultimately win.
In fact, it’s okay to lose, but it’s really unreasonable that a giant like Milan can’t even control the ball in front of Verona.
This bad start also increased the pressure on Allegri, and the fans and the media once again expressed their voices to dismiss him.
What makes Allegri even more embarrassed is that everyone said they wanted Pan Yi to come back and missed Pan Yi's time in Milan. They also said that Allegri's triple crown in Milan was actually thanks to Pan Yi. So for Allegri, this Champions League group match is also an opportunity for him to prove himself again.
He wants to defeat Hamburg and Pan Yi at the San Siro Stadium to prove that he is really better than Pan Yi!
Of course Pan Yi will not let such a thing happen.
He also wanted to use direct dialogue on the court to tell Allegri, look what kind of ruin you have ruined the Milan that I carefully cultivated!
If you don’t understand, you can call me and ask me. But I don’t want to lose face, so I hold on.
So, the best way to "communicate" at this time is to teach Alaigri a lesson during the game.
Only in this way can he know how the real 433 kicks!
……
On August 31, in the fourth round of the Bundesliga, Hamburg faced Braunschweig at home.
Hamburg won this game easily.
Since the international match will begin after the game, Pan Yi also sent most of the main players in this game and took control of the game.
In the 9th minute, Carvajal made a pass from the right. The Braunschweig defender headed the ball to clear the ball. After the ball bounced to the ground, De Bruyne outside the penalty area met the ball and fired a beautiful right-footed volley. The ball was like a cannonball.
Flying towards the upper right corner of the goal, the opponent's goalkeeper flew to save, but it was of no avail, 1:0!
In the 13th minute, De Bruyne made a scalpel-like through ball in his own half. The ball penetrated Braunschweig's defense. Vardy rushed out quickly, successfully countered offside, and dribbled the ball into the penalty area. Facing the goalkeeper
, he calmly pushed the shot with his right foot and scored, 2:0!
In the 66th minute, Wu Lei passed the ball in an inverted triangle from the left. Carvajal received the ball from the other side and entered the penalty area. He shot the far corner with his right foot. The ball hit the left post and bounced into the net, 3:0.
!
In the 73rd minute, De Bruyne made a precise pass in front of the penalty area. Salah made a pass from the right. Vardy volleyed with his right foot near the penalty spot and the ball went straight into the net. Vardy scored twice, 4:0!<
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Hamburg finally defeated the newly promoted Braunschweig with four goals and won the first four consecutive league victories.
However, other opponents in this round of competition overturned one after another.
Except for Dortmund, who narrowly defeated Frankfurt 2:1 and maintained a complete victory like Hamburg, there is no third team with a complete victory.
Mainz lost 1:4 to Hannover 96 in an away game, while Leverkusen lost 0:2 to Schalke 04.
The most surprising thing is Bayern Munich.
They encountered stubborn resistance from Freiburg in the away game, and in the end the two sides shook hands with each other 1:1.
As a result, after four rounds, Hamburg still ranked first in the standings with 12 points and a goal difference, and Dortmund ranked second.
Then there are Bayern Munich with 10 points, Bayer Leverkusen with 9 points, Hannover 96, and Mainz.
Then the league will temporarily take a two-week break and enter the national team match day.
Compared with last season, this season in Hamburg, almost everyone ran out on the national match day.
The first-team players are basically all national players from various countries!
Even if they are not national players, they will be recruited by youth teams of all ages in various countries. For example, Jonathan Tower is still the captain of the youth team.
Although Rudiger is only 20 years old, he performed well in Hamburg and was favored by Loew, who allowed him to join the adult national team for inspection.
——Of course, in fact, as long as the players of the German national team are recommended by Pan Yi to Loew, they basically do not need to be inspected.
Who makes Loew be regarded as Pan Yi's "little fanboy" now?
So in the end, those who stayed in the training center on the national match day were the substitute goalkeepers Neuenhaus and Drobny who played there by themselves. At most, Dickmeier and Westermann were playing with them. They didn't even play normally.
Training is not possible.
So Pan Yi simply let them take a break.
As soon as this difficult two weeks was over, Pan Yi immediately asked the team's doctors, physical coaches, rehabilitation therapists, etc. to examine and perform physical therapy on the returning players as soon as possible, so that they could get rid of fatigue as soon as possible and return to the team.
Coming in for training.
After all, Hamburg is about to face a battle with Dortmund in the Bundesliga!
This is a direct confrontation between two teams that both have four consecutive victories.
Fortunately, this national team match day did not bring too many FIFA viruses to Hamburg, that is, no one was injured.
It's just that some players have played a full game or are tired from traveling, so they are more tired than other players.
Therefore, when the game against Dortmund came, Pan Yi also made a choice based on the current situation and put together a competitive lineup.
This lineup mainly removes the international players from South America and Asia. They run far and play for a long time, and they are indeed very tired.
Except for goalkeeper Navas, there is generally no need to worry about the physical condition of goalkeepers anyway.
Among the European internationals, Van Dijk has become the main force of the Dutch national team. He also played two games on the international match day, so he was allowed to rest first. The same is true for Scotland's Robertson.
Players like Vardy, Kante, De Bruyne, and Carvajal are not yet able to play the main role in the national team, and their playing time is relatively short, so their recovery conditions are also better.
Just because De Bruyne and Calhanoglu were allowed to play at the same time, Pan Yi asked Kanter to play in the deep midfielder position, and let De Bruyne and Calhanoglu occupy the two sides in front of Kanter.
Provide support.
This midfield combination will be less cunning, but under the protection of a ball-grabbing machine like Kante, it can also bring out the characteristics of De Bruyne and Calhanoglu who are good at passing the ball and have threatening long-range shots.
Can function as a dual core.
Anyway, various combinations of midfielders are often used in training, so everyone is familiar with them.
Dortmund, who is also about to challenge Naples away from home in the Champions League group stage, has compiled a 4231 strongest lineup.
All the new players who joined Xia Chuang have appeared, and their offensive power seems to be much stronger than last season!
This also shows Klopp’s attitude towards this game: The Champions League is indeed important, but I want to win your Pan Yi’s hamburger!
Before the game, Aubameyang chatted and laughed with all the old Milan players from Hamburg, including Pan Yi. After all, everyone got along well during their time in Milan.
But when the game started, Aubameyang didn't give Hamburg a good look.
The Dortmund attack group composed of him, Mkhitaryan, Royce, and Lewandowski in front is full of firepower and very impactful.
After the opening, the two sides did not have any tests, and directly started the back-and-forth offensive battle. There were constant wonderful cooperation and threatening shots on the court.
But it wasn’t until the 38th minute that the first goal came.
Aubameyang dribbled the ball into the penalty area, Westmann had no choice but to bring him down, and Dortmund won a penalty kick.
Wandowski took the penalty. He calmly pushed the ball with his right foot and the ball flew into the lower left corner of the goal. Dortmund took a 1:0 lead at home!
At halftime, Pan Yi made decisive adjustments to the situation in the first half, letting Wu Lei come on to replace the underperforming Lin Zhijian to strengthen the offense, and let Paulinho come on to replace Calhanoglu, allowing Zhong Zhong to play.
The offense and defense of the field are more balanced.
After changing sides in the second half, Hamburg launched a series of attacks and quickly equalized the score.
In the 50th minute, Hamburg launched an attack by throwing the ball. After Paulinho caught the ball, he took a few steps and hit the goal with his right foot from the front of the penalty area.
The ball hit the left goal post and bounced back into the field. Wu Lei in front of the goal succeeded in a close shot! The score became 1:1!
After that, neither party could make any difference.
Klopp replaced Papastathopoulos, Kyle, Hoffman and others to maintain the pressure on Hamburg, while Pan Yi removed De Bruyne and replaced Casemiro to improve
Midfield hardness.
In the end, Hamburg relied on Wu Lei's contributions as a substitute and drew with Dortmund in the away game.
……
This highly anticipated battle for the top spot ended with the two sides shaking hands and making a draw.
The teams behind them also took the opportunity to catch up.
After five rounds, Hamburg, Dortmund, and Bayern Munich all ranked in the top three with 4 wins, 1 draw and 13 points, while Leverkusen ranked fourth with 12 points.
Schalke 04, another traditional strong team, had a poor start, with 2 wins, 1 draw and 2 losses, ranking ninth with only 7 points.
As for Hamburg's draw with Dortmund, the media's evaluation of Pan Yi was also mixed.
Many media believe that after two weeks of national team matches, Pan Yi can still put together a semi-rotated lineup to draw with Dortmund in an away game with all the main players. The overall strength of Hamburg is now evident.
Pan Yi is obviously saving his energy for the Champions League group stage in midweek, but under this premise, they were not completely at a disadvantage against Dortmund, which is really commendable.
Opponents believe that Pan Yi's approach is actually very dangerous.
It is understandable that he attaches great importance to the Champions League, but if he loses in the Bundesliga, he will lose in the Champions League. If he fails to take care of both ends, he will end up losing both his wife and his army.
Although we have not lost now, we have still lost two points, and we lost them at the hands of Dortmund, one of our most direct rivals for the championship.
If these two points are missing in the final championship battle, and Hamburg fails to make a difference in the Champions League, Pan Yi will definitely regret today's decision.
"I will not regret it. On the contrary, I am very happy."
But at the press conference after the game, Pan Yi said this.
"I not only want to win, but I also want to win while all the players stay healthy."
"Rotating the team's lineup will be the norm for the Hamburg team this season, and you will get used to it in the future."
"I am very pleased to see that all the players in our first team are ready for the game and are full of confidence in winning the game."
"Having said that, I am also happy with the performance of the players today. Not all teams can escape from the Westfalenstadion unscathed."
"To win the Bundesliga championship, it does not require the team to win all the games. In fact, this is impossible. No team in the five major leagues has ever done it."
"What we have to do is to maintain our health and condition, and then do a little better than our opponents, that's enough."
Finally, Pan Yi concluded: "If you want to achieve good results in multi-line operations, it will definitely not work to stick to one lineup... Time will prove everything."
……
In addition to Klopp, the one who also used all the main players in this week's league is AC Milan's Allegri.
Although in the second round of Serie A, AC Milan defeated Cagliari 3:1, which finally allowed Allegri to breathe a sigh of relief.
So he wanted to pursue the victory and let the winning streak make Milan fans forget Pan Yi's existence.
In the third round of the away game against Turin, Allegri sent out most of the main players, trying to eat the opponent in one bite.
But the Turin team, known as the "Bulls", is not that easy to deal with.
In their 352 formation, the two wing-backs Damian and D'Ambrosio caused a lot of trouble for Milan, and the forwards Cerci and Immortali also frequently ran in and out to create threats.
Only six minutes into the game, Torino, playing at home, took the lead in scoring.
D'Ambrosio dribbled the ball into the penalty area from the left, passed several people, and succeeded in shooting with his right foot, 1:0.
In the 28th minute, Turin expanded the score advantage. Cerci cut in and shot hard from the near corner to break the net, 2:0.
In the second half, Milan just woke up from a dream. Kaka was replaced continuously. Matri and others stepped up the attack. Muntari and Balotelli scored two goals in just three minutes from 88 to 90 minutes to tie the score.
equalize.
The final score was 2:2, and the two sides drew.
But judging from the content of the game, Turin still has the advantage on the court, while Milan is full of hidden dangers.
……
Pan Yi summoned the coaching staff to watch this Serie A game together in the conference room.
Although he did not go to the scene, Pan Yi has also collected data from several Milan games so far this season, including the warm-up matches, so he also has some opinions on Allegri's current playing style.
"In this season, AC Milan has become a team that relies heavily on crosses."
"The reason is that Allegri requires players to exchange positions more, which means they must play more flexibly."
"But this way of playing, executed by unsuitable players, resulted in more goals being conceded during the offensive organization phase than last season."
"So increasing the number of crosses may be Allegri's way to curb these mistakes."
"And excessive switching and crossing attacks come at a cost: compared with last season, Milan conceded more goals on the counterattack. Within 20 seconds after losing possession of the ball in the opponent's half, the opponent's counterattack created more
In terms of goal opportunities, Milan will concede 0.08 theoretical goals every 500 passes, which is 33% higher than the previous 0.06 theoretical goals conceded."
The "theoretical goals conceded" Pan Yi mentioned is similar to the "expected goals" (that is, expected goals, xg for short), which is a data used to measure the possibility of scoring a goal in a specific area.
Its concept is actually not difficult to understand. It is to calculate the quality of each team's goal opportunities in a game to determine how many goals that team "should" score in that game.
There is such a data in recent real-life football and FM games, which can be used to analyze whether the team has created enough and good opportunities.
Because sometimes the score on the scoreboard does not fully reflect the true situation of the game.
If you have a lot of "expected goals" but no goals, it's probably because your tactics are actually good and your players' performance is okay, but you're just unlucky.
In short, Pan Yi has already introduced such advanced concepts in data analysis to help him and the coaching staff understand their opponents and their own on-field performance more effectively.
"In addition, Milan's current defense line also has a big problem." Pan Yi continued:
"After Thiago Silva was sold, Allegri chose the main center back partnership of Mexes and Zapata, but their performance, especially Mexes, did not leave a deep impression.
.He is responsible, or at least partially responsible, for the goals Milan conceded against Verona, Cagliari, and this game in Turin."
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"Compared to Thiago Silva, Mexes is not a reliable defender at all. He wins less than 30% of aerial ball challenges in the penalty area. In 1-on-1 defense, his success rate is
The rate is only 68%, and it drops to 40% in the penalty area."
"The reason why Allegri chose him is because of his performance on the offensive end. His ability to create goals has reached 0.67 expected goals per 90 minutes... Haha, I actually noticed it when I was in Milan.
He is a defender who likes to score goals!"
"But the defensive weakness is something we can take advantage of. We can use Mitrovic to compete with him for the top, further reducing his success rate in the top battle and 1-on-1 defense..."
After Pan Yi started, other coaches followed suit.
Nagelsmann and Inzaghi respectively analyzed the problems of Milan's frontcourt and midfield. For example, excessive position switching means that each Milan player's position is far away from the other party, keeping each player away from the ball, making Milan very difficult.
It is difficult to regain possession of the ball lost.
For another example, Milan's three midfielders, especially Montolivo, often run into the penalty area to catch the ball. This style of play increases the area that the remaining midfielders and defenders need to defend when their teammates lose the ball.
Muntari and De Jong's defense can cover a large area, but when they cannot defend in time, the opponent can often cause effective counterattacks.
And Pintus even mentioned that Milan this season has seriously reduced their rotation lineup, and they often use the same set to conquer the world.
Especially in the midfield, they can only use five main players and five substitutes at most.
If they continue to use the 433 formation, is Milan's midfield a bit thin?
Fatigue will reduce their ability to counterattack.
When players do not have enough counterattack ability, Milan will be threatened by counterattacks.
In the Champions League, this weakness may become a problem and is something Hamburg can exploit.
Pan Yi agrees with Pintus’s analysis.
Now many players in Hamburg are playing in the Champions League for the first time, and they are going to San Siro to face Milan. Pan Yi should let the players seek stability first, instead of fighting Milan from the beginning, which is too risky.
But as soon as halftime passes and they show signs of fatigue in the second half, Pan Yi's hidden strength in the league can be fully unleashed.