At the pre-match press conference, Reiklink was indeed very low-key. When reporters asked him what he thought of Nigeria as an opponent, he boasted about Nigeria as if he had discussed it with the coach of the United Arab Emirates in Asia: "
They are definitely the strongest team in this World Junior Championship. The players' personal abilities are very strong, and their tactical discipline is very good. We have made history, and the next step is to enjoy the process of the game."
In a private meeting with the players, Rick Link kept unloading the burden on the players: "We have reached the semi-finals, which is the best result in our history. Every time we take a step forward, we will
We are making history. But what I want to say is that the reason why we have reached this point is not because of who sent us through. We rely on our strength. In the next game, it is time for people all over the world to
Everyone looks at our style."
"What I said before was not a lie." Ricklink continued, "Nigeria is really strong. But think about it, why do we rarely see African teams reaching this position in the World Cup? That's
Because they also have many weaknesses, and the weaknesses are very obvious."
"First of all, their tactical execution ability is really average." Rick Link analyzed the players. "Secondly, their psychological quality is also really average, which means they can only play with the wind."
After all, Rick Link comes from a long-established European football powerhouse, and his analysis is very accurate.
In youth football, African teams do well, but there are reasons for this.
In youth football, especially the U17 age group, physical advantages have a huge impact on the game. For example, in the last game, Wang Xing relied on his own body to completely defeat the Mexican team.
The African teams are even more exaggerated. Black people are the earliest to develop among all races. In addition, because the household registration system in most African countries is disordered, some are overage, are cheating, and even they don’t know their age.
There are so many players.
In recent years, African youth teams have taken this advantage to the extreme. Especially in countries like Nigeria, which have a certain football foundation, the selection of youth teams has increasingly relied on physically developed and strong players.
This is also the reason why Nigeria’s performance in the junior world championships in recent years has been extremely dazzling.
But once it reaches other levels, such as the World Cup, or even the slightly higher World Youth Championship (U20 age group), the excellence of African teams basically disappears.
At the age of U20, players' physical growth has basically matured, and their skills, intelligence, and tactical execution ability take the first place. African teams basically have no advantage at this level.
Specific to the most critical tactical execution ability, the Chinese national junior team does not have no chance in this game.
First of all, due to economic reasons, many Nigerian players have a very clear purpose of playing football, which is to live and make money and get ahead in Europe, so they particularly want to express themselves. In order to show off on the court, they use their bodies to simply crush and then break through.
It's everywhere.
Secondly, when the team scores the first goal, their tactical execution is still relatively in place. Once they fall behind or even reach a stalemate, they are easily impatient and prone to chaos. Things often happen.
Therefore, the tactic arranged by Rick Link for the team is to attack at the beginning. Once a goal is scored, they will defend and counterattack across the board, taking advantage of the speed of several players in the frontcourt to seize opportunities; if the attack at the beginning fails, by the fifteenth
Minutes later, do a good job of counterattack and defense, use more skills with your feet in the midfield to control the ball, and delay the game to the later stages. The further the later stages, the greater the advantage of the national junior team will be.
At 7 o'clock in the morning the day before the first round of the AFC Champions League final, the semi-final match of the National Junior Team in the World Junior Championship officially started.
Originally, the event IP of the World Junior Championships was not very valuable among sports event IPs, but this time LeTV Sports made the right bet. Because of the outstanding performance of the Chinese national junior team, it historically reached the semi-finals, which made the recent
Chinese fans who were resentful of the lack of results at the national team level in 2016 were very enthusiastic.
Coupled with LeTV's campaign through various media, the national youth team's game has become a hot topic in China's domestic football recently, and the corresponding click-through rate has increased a lot, once exceeding the values of some popular TV videos.
Therefore, LeTV continued to send the combination of Li Xin and Dong Lu for this game. After all, this pair of commentators still has a certain influence in the country, and their commentary style is indeed sought after by many fans.
Before the game, Li Xin and Dong Lu analyzed the starting lineup of the Chinese national junior team: "In this game, Rick Link still arranged a 4-2-3-1 formation. Wang, who performed extremely well in the last game,
Xing did not play, but the faster Yang Yilin was on the front line. Together with the two fast horses Nie Jiang and Liu Ruofan, this was a typical defensive counterattack lineup."
"If Rick Link wants to counterattack quickly, the right wing should be the main direction of attack." Dong Lu analyzed more deeply, "Yang Yilin and Xiang Tiange on the right wing are both top-notch in speed.
, Cooperating with Liu Ruofan who is supporting in the middle and Nie Jiang who is in the front, if the Chinese national junior team wants to counterattack, it will definitely attack here."
Soon the game officially started.
In this game, Nigeria's lineup was as strong as ever - the 4-3-3 offensive formation fully demonstrated their desire for a big victory.
Nigeria's formation is the same as what their head coach Amunike and his disciples said before the game - they have one and only one goal - to win the World Junior Championship.
Amunike is a famous player in Nigerian football. As an over-age player, he helped Nigeria win its first Olympic championship. Later, he played for the world's top giants like Barcelona. He is a typical African genius player - delicate skills, extremely fast speed, and jumping.
Surprisingly, most of the players for this Nigeria U17 national team were selected according to this standard.
It's just that Amunike's playing style is too painful - he is the kind of fast break expert who kills one thousand enemies and damages eight hundred, so when he reached the peak of his career, he suffered from frequent injuries.
His performance began to be restricted, and his poor performance after moving to Barcelona earned him the reputation of a "parallel importer."
Historically, he came to China for trial training during the A-A period, but injuries made him in poor condition, and he was not interested in the Yunnan Hongta team at the time. He also sadly went to West Asia for gold plating, and finally ended up as a full-time player in West Asia.
started his professional football career.
Amunike is a typical player-turned-coach. Historically, after leading the Nigeria U17 national team to win the World Junior Championship, he was successfully promoted to the head coach of the Nigeria national youth team, and later entered the adult national team as the head coach of Nigeria.
Technical advisor of the national team and assistant coach of the national team's offense.
At the end of the interview before the game, when a Chinese reporter asked him about his experience in the A-A trial training and his views on the Chinese national junior team, Amunike seemed a little unhappy. That experience was not worth recalling.
Good time.
And in the pre-war meeting with his disciples later, Amunike expressed his desire to abuse the Chinese National Youth Team: "Our opponent is called the biggest dark horse in this World Junior Championship. But the reason why the dark horse is called
They are called dark horses because no one paid attention to them before, but now everyone has seen their strength. The offensive line relies entirely on their No. 9 Nie Jiang, and the defensive problem is not small. Their two main central defenders,
One often makes mistakes, and the other has average heading and replacement abilities. Our strength is far stronger than theirs, so in this game we want to knock them back to their original shape. What I want is not a simple victory, but a big victory!
"
Amunike's words also made his players echo: "Can the Chinese play football? Don't they only sell some low-quality daily necessities in the market?"
In fact, the words of this Nigerian player are also the impression that most Nigerians have on the Chinese - because China has begun to attach importance to trade with Africa, there are now many Chinese doing small businesses in Nigeria, and some profiteers often sell some domestic copycats.
Inferior products have caused many Nigerians to have a bad impression of the Chinese.
Therefore, after the game started, the Nigerian team, which had the right to kick off, launched a strong attack from the beginning.
When Rick Link saw this situation, he almost smiled crookedly, because the situation in Nigeria was too easy to fight back. If he knew that some rude questions from Chinese reporters would anger Amunike, he would probably give this reporter
Send a big red flower to thank him for his divine assistance.
However, Nigeria's offense is not so easy to defend.
In the second minute of the first half, Nwakari, the captain of Nigeria and the core of their midfield, used his extraordinary physical flexibility and the explosive power unique to black people to successfully beat the midfielder Zhang Huachen of the Chinese national junior team. What followed was
His long shot tested Huang Dawei's ability, and the latter made a flying side dive and pinned the ball to the ground.
After gaining the ball, the Chinese national junior team immediately counterattacked. Huang Dawei's hand throw found Yang Yilin on the right, who also immediately started to face the Nigerian team's midfielder Age Chukwudi.
Yang Yilin is not tall, just over 1.7 meters tall. In terms of physical strength, he is even more different than Ague Chukwudi. The latter has always been designed as a defensive midfielder by FM, FIFA and other games.
The monster in the game, and he does have this ability - strong frontal interception ability, extremely strong body, a typical African "beast-waisted" player.
But in this kind of counterattack, speedy players have too many advantages. As a famous fast horse player among the younger generation in history, Yang Yilin's one-on-one ability is indeed very strong. He takes advantage of his flexible body and a simple
The change of direction in the high-speed dribbling completed the breakthrough.
It is a pity that Nigeria's left back Anumdo is also a very fast player. After seeing his teammate being broken through, he used his own speed to catch up with Yang Yilin, and then directly knocked Yang Yilin away with a physical collision.
The collision almost caused it to fly sideways, and the ball rolled directly out of the sideline. The physical gap between the players on both sides was very obvious.
The referee did not make any comment on Anumdor's defense, which meant that this was a normal physical confrontation.
At this time, Nie Jiang, who was running in the middle waiting for Yang Yilin's pass, did not complain about his teammates. He gave Yang Yilin a thumbs up to express that the opponent played well. Then when the Chinese national junior team's defensive position was well established,
Nie Jiang said to Yang Yilin: "You can try to cut inside and hit the goal. If you feel that the chance is not good, you can pass it to me."
Facing the big brother of the team, Yang Yilin nodded sensibly and said: "I know. When I get another chance later, I will pass the ball to you and you will make the decision."
After resisting the Chinese team's counterattack, Nigeria did not retreat at all and continued to press forward to attack the Chinese team.
Li Xin said with some worry: "This Nigerian team is still different from the previous Nigeria team. In addition to being very powerful offensively, they are also very good defensively. They have a clean sheet against Brazil in the last game to prove their defensive strength.
The Chinese team wants to counterattack in a straightforward manner, so the threat will not be too great."
Dong Lu also said: "So the Chinese boys must be very resolute when they seize the opportunity to counterattack, but first of all they must defend it."
The reason why Dong Lu said this was because Nwakari of Nigeria was on the court and almost caused a breakthrough in the middle. Zhang Huachen had a very difficult time facing his attack. He relied on Zeng Prosperity's return defense to break his attack.
Dribbling the ball.
"Nwakari's personal ability is really strong." Seeing the situation on the court, Dong Lu said, "In fact, his brother is also very powerful. In the last World Junior Championships, his brother Chidibel Nwakari
As the main left back, he won the championship with the team, and later moved to Manchester City. Now he should be loaned to the Spanish second division to play games. This time, his younger brother Kelezi Nwakari is the Nigerian national junior again.
The core of the team, this family’s football talent is really strong.”
After Nwakari's ball was intercepted just now, Zhang Huachen passed the ball back to Liming, who then passed the ball back to Huang Dawei. This was arranged before the game to attract as many Nigerian players as possible.
, and the Nigerian team players who were eager to attack did press forward to grab the ball.
After Huang Dawei saw the opponent's player pressing up, he passed the ball to Xiang Tiange on the right. The latter looked very confident when facing the Nigerian left forward Abel Orji's attack. After receiving the ball, Huang Dawei
He pulled the ball and immediately accelerated after avoiding the opponent's attack.
After all, Abel Orji was a forward, and his defensive movements were rather reckless. After being passed by, he completely lost his defensive position, allowing Xiang Tiange to charge forward.
The charging Xiang Tiange made the Nigerian side very fearful. Yang Yilin was playing for the first time, so he didn’t feel familiar with the opponent. However, Xiang Tiange, as an absolute main player who has appeared as a starter from the first game, Nigeria was very worried about him.
The breakthrough from the wing is impressive.
This time the Chinese team's counterattack seemed more prepared.
