Chapter 302 Visiting Chelsea’s Base
During the time that Lin Feng was away, the National Olympic Team had played several friendly matches in the UK.

The first opponent was Queens Park Rangers of the English Championship. Historically, it was during this warm-up match that the famous fight between the National Olympic Team took place.

Because of the dispute on the court, a full-scale conflict broke out between the National Olympic team players and the opposing players. The fight between the two sides resulted in injuries to many players of the National Olympic team, including Gao Lin, Chen Tao, Zheng Tao, Wang Dalei, Jiang Ning and others. Zheng Tao’s injuries were the most serious and he was taken directly to the hospital by ambulance for emergency treatment.

Maybe it’s because the head coach is different, or maybe it’s because the players’ mentality is different.

This time, the National Olympic Team did not have any conflicts with the opponent, but throughout the game, the National Olympic Team lost badly.

With several main players absent, the National Olympic Team, relying on a number of substitutes who played in the domestic league, suffered a crushing 0:3 defeat away from home.

In fact, Queens Park Rangers are not very strong. They just barely managed to stay in the Championship last season.

But Queens Park Rangers have the characteristics of a typical British team: fast pace, strong impact, rough style of play and a love of fouls.

The National Olympic Team, which was lacking its main players, was stunned by the opponent’s offensive style of play right at the start of the game. At the beginning of the first half, when many players had not yet entered the game, they lost the ball in a confused manner.

After conceding the goal, the National Olympic players were somewhat unconvinced. They felt that if they could beat a French Ligue 1 powerhouse like Marseille, how could they lose to a relegation team in the Championship?

However, the National Olympic Team’s hasty counterattack did not produce any effect, and the opponent seized the opportunity to score another goal.

By the end of the first half, the National Olympic Team was already two goals behind.

After the start of the second half, the players on the field calmed down a lot.

Although the opponent is just a Championship team, they are not the main players of the team. The victory over Marseille in the last game was the credit of the main players and had little to do with them.

In comparison, the opponent is at least the main lineup of the English Championship, while most of them have only played in the Chinese Super League or even the China League One, and some have not even secured a main position in the club. What qualifications do they have to look down on a team from the English Championship?

I have to say that after the National Olympic Team won several games in France, their mentality was really a bit floating!

Just because we won a game against Marseille by chance, we started to look down on the Championship teams!
They probably don’t know that, in fact, the level of the Chinese Super League, in Europe, is probably only slightly higher than the third-tier league, but definitely not as good as the second-tier league.

This has been said more than once by many foreign players playing in the Chinese Super League and many international players who have studied abroad.

Xie Hui even directly said that if Shenhua was placed in the German 2nd Division, Shenhua would not be able to stay in the league.

The level of the Championship is similar to that of the German 2nd Division, or may even be stronger.

This means that even if the top teams in the Chinese Super League were placed in the English Championship, they might not be able to stay in the league, let alone a group of young players like them who haven’t even secured a starting position in the Chinese Super League. They actually dare to underestimate their opponents. They are really too arrogant!
In fact, losing by only three goals was the result of the opponent showing mercy.

Because they lost the first game so badly, the players became much more honest after realizing the gap.

Although their morale was affected a little, they took the following training much more seriously.

This made Krauchen very satisfied, so he arranged another opponent for the National Olympic Team on February 2 – Brentford from English League One!

Brentford was the third place in League One last season and had the opportunity to be promoted to the Championship through the play-offs, but unfortunately they lost to Swansea in the play-offs and missed this opportunity.

Seemingly affected by the failure to get promoted last season, Brentford’s form has declined a lot this season. They are currently ranked last in the English League One and are likely to be relegated to the fourth-tier league.

As the hope of relegation was slim, Brentford simply gave up and even took the opportunity to accept a friendly match business order from the Olympic Team to make some extra money.

Once they are relegated to English League Two, the attention they receive will only drop further, and by then I’m afraid no one will be willing to challenge them to a match.

Although Brentford is only one level behind Queens Park Rangers, the feeling of the Olympic players on the field is extremely obvious.

In the last game against Queens Park Rangers, it was obvious that they were not good at physical confrontation. They were the ones who fell down most of the time during the fights, and naturally they lost more balls.

Affected by this, the National Olympic Team had a very low ball possession rate in the last game, only 33%, the number of passes and the pass success rate were also terrible, and the number of mistakes was very high.

Moreover, because the opponents were tall and strong, and had stronger physical confrontation ability, the National Olympic Team almost never won high penalty kicks, and the first point was mostly controlled by the opponent.

Moreover, the opponent was also very fast. The National Olympic Team had several opportunities to counterattack, but the opposing defensive players caught up easily.

If you can’t control the high point, the cross from the wing will naturally be ineffective.

The inability to get rid of the center made it difficult for the National Olympic Team to succeed in ground coordination.

Even if they overcome all difficulties and pass the ball into the opponent’s penalty area, the opponent’s defenders get into position very quickly, and the Olympic team’s strikers have almost no time to stop the ball, observe and adjust. They often only have one chance to shoot, and that is to shoot as soon as they touch the ball.

Once you miss such an opportunity, it is almost impossible to kick the ball again because there is no space to shoot at all!

Because of this, the National Olympic Team only had three shots in the last game, and none of them were on target.

The reason we only lost by three goals in the end was definitely because the other team let us win!
But when facing Brentford in this game, the players felt completely different!

The opponent’s physical confrontation ability is not as strong, the rhythm is not as fast, and their defensive awareness, chasing speed and even the ability to control high points are much weaker than Queens Park Rangers.

The National Olympic Team, which was extremely embarrassed by the opponent’s pressing in the last game, did not encounter such a problem at all in this game and was able to easily resolve the pressing.

In the middle of the game, the National Olympic Team’s ball possession rate soared to 75% at one point, as if everyone had turned into a passing and controlling master, and the coordination on the ground was dazzling.

The National Olympic Team won the game 2:0. If the opponent’s goalkeeper had not performed well and blocked many shots from the National Olympic players, the score would probably have been even higher.

After this game, the confidence of the National Olympic team players returned, and through these two “positioning matches”, they recognized their own strength and position.

If the main players are not counted, the substitute lineup of the National Olympic Team is probably at the level of an ordinary English League One team.

The substitutes in the domestic league are probably a little better than the Chinese League One and a little weaker than the Chinese Super League. This is actually quite good, after all, they are only in their early 20s and lack some experience and physical fitness.

As time goes by, as long as there are no major changes in the future, their strength will definitely become stronger and stronger.

There is still a year and a half left until the opening of the Olympic Games. As the National Olympic Team continues to adjust and become familiar with its lineup and skills and tactics, and as their bodies continue to develop and their competition experience continues to accumulate, by August next year, they will not have undergone a complete transformation, but will at least be much stronger than they are now!

Thinking of this, the young players in the National Olympic Team are all full of energy.

What they have to do now is to try their best to impress the head coach with their performance so that he can keep them and bring them to next year’s Olympics!
There are nearly forty players going abroad for training this time, but only 23 of them can participate in the Olympics in the end, which means that a small half of the players will be screened out.

This elimination rate is still very high!
……

After Lin Feng arrived at the team, the National Olympic Team immediately started the final training session.

Many players on the team have not cooperated with their teammates for a long time, and the tacit understanding between them has decreased, and their cooperation on the field has also become a lot less familiar. In this respect, they are completely inferior to the substitute players who have been training together for more than a month.

Even in the team’s internal competition, the main team was almost suppressed by the substitute team.

In fact, this is the bad thing about the national team. The players do not come from one club, but often from many different teams. They are not familiar with each other, so naturally there is no tacit understanding.

In addition, there are relatively few national team matches and the intervals between them are relatively long.

Every time the team members got a little familiar with each other, they would soon separate.

When we got together again in the national team a few months later, we found that the tacit understanding we had built up before had disappeared!
As for how to solve this problem, there is actually no good way. At least long-term training is not a good thing.

Because it is away from the competition environment, relying on training to improve combat effectiveness is actually drinking poison to quench thirst.

The level of tacit understanding may be enhanced, but without the training of formal competitions for a long time, the players’ condition will drop quickly, and once they are on the field, they will be very uncomfortable.

Therefore, when selecting national players, many football powers tend to choose players who play for the same team. For example, the Spanish national team is based on Barcelona and builds the team’s framework around Barcelona’s central axis.

Germany is even more radical. Bayern, the dominant team, has almost captured all of the country’s outstanding players.

When the German national team selects players, just close your eyes and choose according to Bayern’s lineup!

If it were in the past, seeing his players making so many mistakes on the court, Krauchen would probably have lost his temper.

But this time, he was not angry.

Since the next opponent is so strong, the National Olympic Team did not have any psychological pressure at all during the preparation stage.

This was almost a losing game. Although the ball was round, there was a certain gap in strength. The gap was so big that no one thought they could beat Chelsea.

In this case, let’s just not play this game with the intention of winning or losing. Instead, treat it as a valuable communication opportunity, allowing the young players in the team to experience it firsthand on the field and see how big the gap in level is between themselves and the top teams.

Chelsea naturally didn’t take this game too seriously. What was there to be nervous about when they were playing against a bunch of young guys in their early 20s, whose level might not even reach the Championship?
Mourinho announced Chelsea’s starting lineup early before the game. As expected, Chelsea kept many of its main players on the bench.

Big-name stars including Drogba, Lampard and Ballack were all pressed onto the bench by Mourinho, and some were not even included in the roster.

But even so, Chelsea’s starting lineup still includes many stars such as Shevchenko, Robben, Makelele, Joe Cole, Mikel, Terry, Carvalho, Geremi and so on.

This shows how deep Chelsea’s bench is. Even with so many main players hidden in the bench, they can still easily field a very competitive starting lineup.

It is different from Chelsea’s relaxed and casual approach in deploying their troops.

The National Olympic Team has fielded all its main players. With overseas players returning to the team one after another, Krauchen did not hide anything and planned to send them all onto the field.

On February 2, two days before the game, the National Olympic Team members were invited to visit Chelsea Club.

After Abramovich took over Stamford Bridge, he was not only willing to spend money on recruiting big-name players, but also did not skimp on investing in the club’s infrastructure.

For example, the Cobham training base that the National Olympic Team is currently visiting was built at great expense by Abramovich after he acquired Chelsea.

The base covers a large area of ​​130 acres, more than square meters.

There are 15 open-air football fields of various sizes inside the base and an indoor football field for winter training. In addition, there are logistical support systems such as a luxurious medical center, administrative center and media center, which can provide players with many services such as medical care, rehabilitation and psychological counseling.

Due to the large area of ​​the base and the large number of training grounds.

Therefore, Chelsea’s first team, reserve team and echelons of all age groups all train here.

When the National Olympic Team entered this training base, they saw a scene full of vitality and flourishing development.

“It’s only when you go abroad and see these top foreign giants that you know what a real giant team is. Compared with them, the giants in our Chinese Super League are nothing but giants!”

“It’s really incomparable. Their training base is so big, the equipment is so complete, and the configuration is so good. The money spent on building the base alone is enough to buy all our wealthy clubs several times over!”

“Alas, in fact, after coming to Europe, the biggest shock to me is that there are professional football stadiums everywhere in Europe. After seeing these luxurious football stadiums in Europe, looking at those old and run-down comprehensive stadiums in China, I feel uncomfortable everywhere!”

“Indeed, at the beginning, I was not used to the fans being so close to the stadium. If there was any noise on the field, the sudden noise from the fans in the stands would scare people half to death.

But after playing a few games, I gradually accepted this environment and felt it was very good. The close distance not only made it easier to see the details on the field, but also made it easier to interact with the players.

In turn, the fans’ behavior can also better stimulate the players on the field and make them play more excitedly. Alas, I wonder when our country will have a professional football field! “

(End of this chapter)