While the two commentators were talking, the Longteng team's frontcourt press was effective. This time, Nie Jiang and Qi Ming were pressing Endo Hang on the left. The former Japanese Olympic team captain passed the ball back to goalkeeper Nishikawa.
As soon as Shuzuo and Nishikawa Shuzuo handed the ball to Mauricio, the latter was surrounded by Chavez and Nie Jiang.
If it was in the past when Moriyoshi Ryota was still around, these three central defenders would definitely be able to use their long-term cooperation experience to ensure that the ball is not lost through reasonable movement. But this time, Mauricio and left central defender Makino Tomoaki did not
Thinking of going together, Makino Tomoaki wanted to go forward to catch the ball and press out the formation, while Mauricio wanted to pass a safe ball to stabilize the defense.
The ball, which was too weak, passed directly behind Makino Tomoaki. When he wanted to turn around and come back to get the ball, Fernando had already used his speed to get ahead of him and poke the ball away.
Seeing that the team was about to launch a one-on-one counterattack because of his own conceding of the ball, Tomoaki Makino could only surrender his body and knock down Fernando with his legs.
"This foul. The referee will definitely call it a card. The Dragons have an absolute chance to attack." He Wei was very dissatisfied with this foul by Tomoaki Makino. After all, once Fernando is allowed to run, he will have countless options to enter the penalty area.
The UAE referee Hassan didn't do anything wrong. He gave Tomoaki Makino a yellow card without hesitation, which was considered merciful.
"A yellow card resolved a one-on-one attack. Tomoaki Makino's foul was very cost-effective." Xu Yang said sarcastically.
The commentator must maintain a certain neutral attitude, but the fans at the scene are not so easy to talk to.
"Black whistle."
"Another idiot from West Asia."
"Referee nmsl!"
Seeing Fernando grimacing on the sidelines as he was being sprayed and treated with spray, deafening curses and boos immediately filled the audience.
In fact, less than ten minutes into the game, the central defender received a yellow card. This was a big blow to Urawa Ruby's defense. After all, the team's pre-match strategy was all about defense. Now the burden on Tomoaki Makino will be 80 years old.
After playing for many minutes, he became timid.
Fortunately, Tomoaki Makino is also a person who has seen the world. In 2010, he was noticed by the Bundesliga team Cologne and bought him for one season. Although he played as a substitute most of the time, he only played 8 games in total.
Later he took the initiative to return to Japan, but at least he had experienced the atmosphere of a Bundesliga game.
No matter how strong Fernando is, he will never be better than the top attacking players in the Bundesliga.
As the Dragons' free kick was confiscated by Shusaku Nishikawa, once he became familiar with Fernando's playing rhythm, and with the help of his teammates, Tomoaki Makino finally stabilized his position.
For example, in the 15th minute of the first half, the Longteng team distributed the ball to the right after continuous passes on the left. Fernando rarely got the ball without anyone defending him. He immediately took the ball and
Started sprinting faster.
Makino Tomoaki chose to follow this time and kept hitting Fernando with his body. The latter showed good physical fitness. He was only 1.74 meters tall. Under the interference of 1.82 meters Makino Tomoaki, he took the ball.
It was very stable and used the sideline to form a breakthrough diagonally.
However, veteran defensive midfielder Yuki Abe promptly provided cover, and Tomoaki Makino caught up with him. The two of them worked together to push Fernando to the sideline, and eventually even succeeded in getting their own throw-in.
"Hi!" Seeing Fernando who was still arguing with the linesman about the ownership of the foul ball, Zhang Sheng whistled, then put his middle and index fingers together and made a forward parabola gesture, "Fernando! hi! Pass the ball,
Pass the ball, remember to pass the ball."
After gaining an advantage on the right and allowing the opponent to receive a yellow card, Fernando was obviously too focused on dribbling the ball past others. This actually gave Urawa Ruby a chance to breathe.
Urawa Ruby, who was used to a slow pace, obviously couldn't cope with the Dragons' overall high-tempo style of play.
The Japanese J-League is called the League of Literary and Art Circles, not without reason.
Too much emphasis on ball control, cross passing, small-scale cooperation, and the deliberate pursuit of small skills that can be passed to each other make the pace of J-League games generally slow. For example, the head coach of the Japanese national team who flew over from Japan at this time is watching the game in the stands.
Halilhodzic lamented: "The competition in the J-League is too weak."
The weak confrontation will definitely bring about the slow pace of the game.
When Urawa Ruby met a Chinese Super League team other than Longteng, they were able to use their crushing foot skills to avoid the opponent's defense and pressing, and then used their own pressing to separate the opponent's local players and foreign players.
The contact made the Chinese Super League teams with top foreign players extremely uncomfortable to play, suffocating, and even easily defeated these rich teams.
In real history, in their two games against Shanghai SIPG in the semi-finals, they cut off the contact between Hulk, Oscar, and Elkeson and Akhmedov, as well as Chinese domestic players, forcing
Hulk kept working alone, and then used a player with excellent physical fitness and experience in European competitions like Makino Tomoaki to target Hulk.
In the end, after eliminating Shanghai SIPG, Tomoaki Makino became famous, and for a time many Chinese Super League teams were associated with him.
But when encountering a team like the Dragons, which is accustomed to high-tempo confrontations and whose footwork skills are not too backward, Urawa Ruby was really blinded.
Just like when you encounter Kashima Antlers, Osaka Sakura, Kawasaki Frontale and other teams that emphasize confrontation in the league, you are at a loss. The core factor why Urawa Ruby played passively in this game is the incompatibility with the rhythm of the Dragons.
In last year's AFC Champions League, Urawa Ruby had an excuse to say that the Dragons had top foreign players like Ben Alpha and their defense could not withstand the impact. Now that Ben Alpha is gone, Urawa's defense still cannot withstand the impact.
After Fernando was yelled at by Zhang Sheng a few times, his attitude in the game immediately corrected. He also formed a whole with the team. His speed and skills still reflected the level that a foreign player should have.
Many times the results of 11 are very different.
Fifteen minutes before the first half, Fernando, who insisted on playing alone, let 11 be less than 2. Fifteen minutes later, he had a chemical reaction with his teammates and let 11 be greater than 2.
In the 22nd minute, Fernando also attracted Tomoaki Makino and Yuki Abe on the right. This time he got ahead of the two and passed the ball to the right center back Liming who came up with an assist. The latter quickly passed the ball
A big foot went to the left.
The Longteng team instantly formed a four-on-three situation on the left.
Qi Ming, who received the ball on the left, followed the path of the ball and pushed the football straight out. Because the direction of the ball was not towards the penalty area, and Chavez suddenly came around and stuck Endo Hang's body tightly, knocking the ball out.
With him behind him, Urawa Ruby's defense on the right was obviously careless. Midfielder Shinya Yajima and right center back Endo Hiro actually gave the ball away to each other.
There was no reason for Qi Ming to let go of the opponent's big gift. His ball gag was originally very weak, so he quickly accelerated to catch up with the ball and brought it all the way to the baseline.
"Qi Ming catches the ball, eh? Is it too big?" Even He Wei was fooled by Qi Ming's action at first, "Hey! No, Qi Ming caught the ball and hit the goal! Nie Jiang, the ball went in. Game.
At the 22nd minute, Nie Jiang broke the deadlock and helped the Longteng team score their first goal."
"Qi Ming should be the first scorer for this ball." Xu Yang said happily, "His pass was passed to himself a second later, and with the next inverted triangle pass back, Urawa's defense was completely messed up.
."
"Obviously, the Longteng team's use of the width of the court to quickly pull left and right caused loopholes in Urawa Ruby's defense." He Wei extended the topic even further, "Mauricio's position was actually very stable. You see in the end
He was the one who went to intercept Qi Ming, but there was such a big gap in the penalty area, and there were people in the middle and back of the Long Teng team, so he could only defend one line."
After losing the ball, Mauricio on the court also raised his head with a look of displeasure on his face. He couldn't carry the five-man defense with three central defenders and two defensive midfielders, one by one.
After the goal was scored, "Song of Nie Jiang" suddenly sounded in the Jiangcheng Sports Center.
This is a song adapted by the fans of the Longteng team and composed the lyrics by the young hero Xiao Nezha. Whenever Nie Jiang scores a goal, the on-site DJ shouts: "The scorer is No. 9~~~"
After all the fans in the audience shouted: "Nie Jiang!", a group of fans began to lead the rhythm: "It's him, it's him, it's him, it's him. Our hero is Nie Jiang!"
After hearing Nie Jiang's song, the two commentators also laughed. He Wei was obviously very familiar with this scene: "The Longteng fans are not only enthusiastic, they obviously put more thought into it, which few domestic players have."
It’s their own song, and the Dragons heard that most of the players have their own cheering songs, which is so rare.”
The Longteng team, which was leading by one goal, played more relaxedly.
In the past, in order to break the deadlock, the players sometimes seemed nervous, but after scoring a goal, their mentality calmed down. Especially when they had control of the ball, there were more horizontal passes in the midfield.
The Dragons relaxed their pressure in the frontcourt, and Urawa Ruby could finally breathe a sigh of relief. With a big wave of Hori Takashi's hand, the team pressed out of their formation and started a long-lost attack.
Zhang Sheng was standing on the sidelines at this time and did not make any command on the court. After nearly thirty minutes of crazy pressure, the team had completed the first step of the strategic goal set before the game. It was time for the players to work hard.
I regained my strength.
At the same time, we also take this opportunity to see how Urawa Ruby organizes the offense. After all, the Dragons have an away game to play in the second round. You must know that their home stadium, Saitama 2002 Stadium, is not easy to play, and home attack is their specialty.
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Urawa Ruby's defense is not good this season, but their offense has not fallen behind.
The problem is, after observing Urawa's offense for nearly ten minutes, Zhang Sheng had a question mark on his face: "That's it? How did you score 50 goals in the 23rd round of the J-League at this level?"
Due to Kashiwagi Yosuke's injury, former midfielder Takuya Aoki took his place and was responsible for the offensive organization.
In actual practice, the effect is not good.
In the same game of passing and controlling, Takuya Aoki is far inferior to Yosuke Kashiwagi in terms of his game observation ability, dribbling skills, passing accuracy and imagination.
At the beginning, He Wei kept praising Takuya Aoki: "Takuya Aoki is very active on Urawa Ruby's side. He keeps running up and down to respond. This is a b2b midfielder's style of play, much like Paulinho."
"Takuya Aoki made Urawa's defense much tougher in the middle, although it didn't have a great impact on offense." Then he slowly became clear about his abilities.
In the end, He Wei couldn't help but start to criticize: "The rhythm is too slow, the ball should be played more decisively."
From the initial b2b praise, to purely defensive evaluation, to the final offensive criticism, this is actually the trajectory of Aoki Takuya's performance in the attacking midfielder position in this game - declining all the way.
In previous Urawa Ruby games, the team's offensive and defensive signal was Kashiwagi Yosuke's position. If Kashiwagi Yosuke moved forward more times, it was a signal for Urawa's offense. On the contrary, it was a signal for the team to hold on and then think about subsequent moves.
Now Takuya Aoki has learned enough from Paulinho about his positional movement. The result is that under his organization, the team operates as fiercely as a tiger and can only shoot less than five times.
The only one who can pose any threat to the Longteng team is their forward Shinzo Xingzhi.
As a former international player of the Japanese national team, the 31-year-old is at the peak of his career.
Even with obvious defensive problems, Urawa can still be ranked eighth in the league. The AFC Champions League's ability to reach the quarterfinals depends on the team's offensive ability. Shinzo Kougai is Urawa's most decisive figure.
After 23 league rounds, he scored 15 goals and is the biggest favorite for the J-League Golden Boot.
When he was young, Shinzo Xingai was good at speed and hard work, which was what he relied on when he was selected for the Japanese national team. This year, as he gets older, his speed has inevitably declined, but his shooting skills have improved.
A lot.
Regardless of whether it is Petrovic, who was dismissed before, or Takashi Hori, who is now taking over, he is always used as a savior. He is never absent from the league. In the AFC Champions League, except for the weak teams, he plays the entire game.
In the first half, Urawa Ruby's only four shots were completed by him, and all of them posed a threat to the Longteng team's goal.
In the fifth minute, his long-range shot caused Jiang Akechi to take the shot. Urawa got a corner kick. In the corner kick, his header hit the goal frame for the first time.
In the 17th minute, Xingzhi Shinzo once again reached the Longteng team's penalty area, and his volley missed the post and went out of the baseline. Jiang Mingzhi didn't even react.
In the 19th minute, Urawa Ruby's free kick in the frontcourt, Shinzo Kougai grabbed the second point and formed an attack again.
In other words, several shots from Shinzo Kougai gave the Urawa team the idea of being able to attack.
Seeing that the team was able to advance the offense within 30 meters of the Longteng team at the end of the first half, Hori Takashi decided to continue to strengthen the offense.
After all, in the first thirty minutes of the game, the Longteng team's high-position press required a level of physical energy that he had never seen in the J-League.
In the two clashes with Shanghai SIPG, another Chinese Super League team, in the group stage, Urawa's three goals were all scored at the end of the first half.
With Zhuyu in front, the team can completely copy the Longteng team, which is also in the Chinese Super League.
