Chapter 345: The first time to steal the limelight from the peerless twins, Part 1

Far away in the dormitory in London, Sarafina and Olivia hugged each other and kissed each other excitedly, but then suddenly realized that this was a bit awkward, so they quickly separated, swaying with their hands and feet, and shouting some strange syllables together to celebrate Li Qi's goal.

Fortunately, it is a high-end apartment with central air conditioning and excellent sound insulation, otherwise it would definitely affect the neighbors. But it also covered up the commentator's explanation on the TV broadcast...

"Looking back at the slow-motion replay, Li Qi's long shot was very clever. Before entering the top of the penalty area, Li Qi, who was originally rushing forward with the ball at high speed, began to slow down.

Before Li Qi shot, he made a fake move, pretending to pass the ball to Rooney who was about to insert himself behind Milito.

Then Marcos and Valdez were both hit at the same time, and unexpectedly prepared to block Li Qi's through pass. It seems that both sides know each other's playing habits very well.

However, Li Qi was one step ahead. He predicted the predictions of his two former teammates. At the moment of passing the ball, he turned his ankle and made a low shot in the opposite direction, which just went through Marcos' crotch which was open when he wanted to intercept the pass.

Although the ball was not fast, it was aimed very accurately at the blind spot in the lower right corner of the goal. Valdez, who had already moved half of his body's center of gravity to Rooney's side, had no way to deal with Li Qi's cold arrow.

Unexpectedly, on the big stage of the Champions League where Barcelona battles Manchester United, the one who broke the deadlock on the field was not Messi or Ronaldo as people had always thought, nor was it Henry or Rooney, but the Italian genius attacker Ricardo Liqui!

It was this season that he moved from the frustrated Barcelona to Manchester United.

Oh! Let's see. Henry is coming on as a substitute. Let's see if Henry can help Barcelona turn the situation around..."

@

In the 76th minute, after Manchester United's exaggerated goal celebration and before Barcelona restarted the game, Rijkaard made the second substitution of the game, replacing Deco with Henry and Iniesta retreating to midfield.

As for the Yaya Toure who just made a big mistake, Rijkaard hesitated, but there was really no good alternative defensive midfielder on the bench. If Xavi or Iniesta played as a single defensive midfielder, they would probably be taken away by Li Qi in one go...

In the nine years he played for Arsenal, Henry scored nine goals in 9 matches against Manchester United. This, combined with his experience against Manchester United, gave Henry the capital to point out the weaknesses of Manchester United's defense to his teammates before the game.

Just as Li Qi is considered to be the person who knows Barcelona best in Manchester United, Barcelona is also full of expectations for Henry and regards the Great Emperor as a trump card against Manchester United.

However, due to a fever that lasted for some time, the French star's recent training was not systematic. Therefore, Rijkaard could only arrange Henry to play the last 15 minutes, hoping that the Frenchman would blow the horn of the Red and Blue Army's general attack at the last moment and deal a fatal blow to Manchester United.

Although from the actual situation, the strategy of the Dutch Black Swan coach has been effective; but unfortunately, facing Manchester United's tough defense, Henry still failed to bring Barcelona the expected goals.

Because not long after Henry came on the pitch, Sir Alex Ferguson continued to adjust the lineup, replacing the somewhat tired Scholes and Park Ji-sung with Anderson and O'Shea, strengthening running and defense, and Hargreaves was able to return to his most familiar position as a defensive midfielder.

So in the last 15 minutes of the game, Li Qi was also guarded by Yaya Toure and did not get any advantage. Facing Sir Alex Ferguson who was ready to stop when seeing the red, Barcelona's counterattack was just a lot of noise but little action.

In the end, thanks to Li Qi's solo shot, Manchester United was not only lucky enough to beat Barcelona 1-0 away from home, but also got a valuable away goal!

@

According to the technical statistics after the game, although Barcelona had the upper hand all the time, its actual ball possession rate was only a little over 55%. This was the game with the lowest ball possession rate for Barcelona this season. It can also be seen that Manchester United's midfield was very successful in restricting and confronting Barcelona.

The two teams had 17 to 12 shots, but 3 to 5 shots on target. Manchester United had fewer shots in total but had more shots on target.

Barcelona has an absolute advantage in terms of corner kicks, with 12 to 4. However, Barcelona has only scored one of the 91 corner kicks it has received in the Champions League this season, which was an own goal by Lyon.

After winning the crucial away game, the entire Manchester United team, including Sir Alex Ferguson, returned home very satisfied and waited for Barcelona's visit next week.

Because at Old Trafford, Manchester United has enough confidence to beat any opponent. This season, Manchester United has 16 wins, 1 draw and 1 loss at home, ranking first in the league, and 5 wins in 5 home games in the Champions League, especially the two wins over Roma, showing a very strong home advantage to the European continent.

Starting from the 97/98 season to last season, Manchester United's home record in the Champions League in the past ten seasons was 44 wins, 11 draws and 4 losses, in the past five seasons it was 22 wins, 4 draws and 1 loss, and in the past two seasons, it was 11 consecutive home wins!

If we use the data from this season's Premier League as a reference, except for a draw in the first home game of the season and a disastrous loss in the derby, Manchester United won all other home games. The home record is the primary foundation for Manchester United's lead in the league.

It can be seen that Sir Alex Ferguson would rather be a coward in an away game than return to his home court to beat Barcelona on the basis of being unbeaten away from home, because Manchester United performs very well at home and is fully confident of defeating any opponent.

And Li Qi's explosion in the away game also gave Sir Alex Ferguson a big gift. A key away goal and a one-goal lead in the first leg laid the foundation for Manchester United's advantage in the second leg. Facing Barcelona, ​​which is strong in offense but weak in defense, they can continue to defend and counterattack.

This is somewhat bad for Barcelona.

Although Barcelona has remained unbeaten in this season's Champions League away games with 3 wins and 2 draws, reflecting its good away mentality and on-the-spot state, it is also related to the fact that other European teams are not familiar with Barcelona's tactics and cannot withstand Barcelona's three-pronged ground attack.

In the more familiar La Liga, Barcelona's system does not seem to work so well.

Their away record in the league this year is 4 wins, 8 draws and 4 losses, which only ranks them 7th in the league if only the away results are counted. In recent away games, they even drew with relegation teams Huelva and Almeria, and lost to Real Betis and Atletico Madrid. They only got two points in 4 away games, and it is no wonder that they have no hope of winning the championship.

So at the post-match press conference, Sir Alex Ferguson, who was sitting on the fishing boat, had a flushed face and was very happy. He first publicly comforted the team that had been struggling with penalties today:

"Cristiano was a bit unlucky today. Maybe the penalty came too early and he was not yet able to move. As for the second penalty? In a game like the Champions League semi-final, it is indeed a bit difficult for you to ask the referee to give two consecutive penalties."

Then Sir Alex praised the whole team and mentioned Li Qi in particular: "We defended very well and completely blocked the penalty area, which is not easy to do against Barcelona. We defended the space very well and Barcelona didn't even create any chances.

And Li Qi's performance today was really great. Before the game, I knew that he would be our winning factor as he was very familiar with Barcelona's tactical system, but I didn't expect that he performed even better than I thought.

I haven't looked at the final statistics yet, but my assistant coach seemed to tell me that his pass success rate today was the highest in the team, over 90%. He helped us win back a large part of the midfield control and initiative.

Moreover, he has been playing as a front midfielder and shadow striker, which is a dangerous area deep in Barcelona's defense. It is really difficult not to lose the ball. This shows how good Li Qi is! And the winning goal he scored also gave us an excellent chance of promotion. This is an away goal worth 1.5 points.

Well, Giggs and Scholes also played very well, providing key steals and assists. Their reading of the game was really great..."

As for the somewhat frustrated Rijkaard, he naturally would not respond to Sir Alex Ferguson's words. Although it was under him that Ridge made the transition from the youth team to the first team, it was also he who loaned Ridge out and finally sent him to Manchester United. So Rijkaard could only talk about his own top player Messi to ease the embarrassment:

"In the 15th minute of the second half, Messi felt some discomfort in his thigh muscles. To avoid further injury, he asked to leave the field early, so out of caution, I replaced Messi with Bojan.

Moreover, Manchester United's restrictions on Messi today were very targeted. The Korean was almost inseparable from him, and some actions even tried to kill Messi... Messi will still take on the offensive responsibility of Barcelona in the next round of coaching, and we will reverse and advance at Old Trafford!"

……

Li Qi, who finally enjoyed the treatment of being the protagonist, was very happy when he learned about the praise from Sir Alex Ferguson at the press conference: It's rare for me to steal the limelight from the absolute duo... But this feels great, and once you do it, you'll always get it again! Once is new, twice is familiar, who knows, I might be able to steal the limelight again soon.

But Li Qi also knew that there was another focus battle waiting for him this weekend, which was about the Ligue 1 title, and it was no less difficult than the away game against Barcelona, ​​because he also had to travel to Stamford Bridge in London...

……

[The author has definitely been a sheep these days!

I’m so tired that I can’t open my eyes every day.

I finally made up for the update I owed on Friday, but I owe another update on Monday...

Try to make up for it this week.

The re-editing of the second volume has not even started yet.

There should be another update in the early hours of this evening, but the second update will most likely be during the day. 】