Chapter 6 Defeat Westhoff

August is usually the hottest month of the year in Amsterdam, but in September, the daytime temperature is not much different, but after the sun goes down, you can feel the cold wave coming down from Northern Europe.

Especially since he had just lost his first game as an independent leader, Ye Qiu felt even colder in his heart.

For him, Amsterdam is a strange city, where a group of strange people gather. From the training building to the gate of Detok Most, all he sees along the way are strange foreigners, either with With an expression of gloating about his misfortune, or a look of indifference, no one would come up to him and ask him a few questions in concern.

"Who said Ajax is full of human touch?" When Ye Qiu walked out of the door, he did not forget to look back at the Ajax team logo next to the door. It seemed to be the head of an old man wearing a hat. This made him Ye Qiu suddenly became curious. Could this be the portrait of the founder of Ajax a hundred years ago?

Just when Ye Qiu was looking at the huge team emblem, someone appeared next to him.

"Do you know who is on the Ajax badge?"

After Ye Qiu heard the voice, he turned around suddenly and found that it was the club chairman Michael Van Praag.

This surprised him a little. Why did he appear here?

Shaking his head, "Isn't it the portrait of a certain person in the history of the club?"

Van Praag was stunned for a moment, then laughed and shook his head: "This is indeed a portrait of a person, but it does not belong to the club, but to Greek mythology."

Just when Ye Qiu was full of surprise and curiosity, Van Praag asked again: "Do you know about the Trojan War?"

"Of course!" Ye Qiu must have heard of it.

"Does Achilles know?" After Ye Qiu nodded, Van Praag continued, "During the Trojan War, after Achilles died, the Trojans went crazy to snatch his body and strip him of his armor. , at this critical moment, King Ajax of Salamis brandished his spear, repelling waves of enemies, guarding Achilles' body, and finally succeeded in driving the Trojans back city ​​and return Achilles' body to Greece."

"Ajax means eagle in Greek, and his name is Ajax. The founders of our club named him after him, and used his head as the club's emblem. They started from founding this club. , to inject the soul into this team, that is, no matter how bad the result is, how bad the environment is, we must have an extremely strong desire to win!”

When he said this, Van Praag's hand reached out and gently wiped the team emblem on the wall, as if to wipe away the non-existent dust on it, but he said, "This is Ajax!”

Ye Qiu was silent. He knew that every wealthy team has its own historical heritage. Obviously, this is the heritage of Ajax, and it is also the spiritual inheritance in the hearts of countless Ajax people.

From Jaap van Praag to Michael van Praag, the Ajax spirit has been passed down from generation to generation.

"My father once told me that when he chose Michels, he never thought he would succeed, but at that time he believed that the revolution was destined to gain success through bloodshed, so Michels' coaching He also experienced pain and failure in the early days, but he succeeded later and everyone respected him as a saint!"

In the eyes of all football people, Michels represents total offense and total defense, and represents sacrosanctity. But now, from Van Praag's mouth, Michels turns out to be just An ordinary person.

History is like a rebellious and extreme child. When it likes a person, you cannot see his bad qualities in history. On the contrary, when it hates a person, it is difficult for you to find out his good qualities. .

Ye Qiu was a little strange. Why did Van Praage tell him this?

As if he had read through Ye Qiu's thoughts, Van Praag chuckled, "You don't have to guess, I pass by here every day after your training. I like walking in the deserted Detok Most. Like that feeling.”

After a pause, he smiled again, "The reason why I tell you this is because during the meeting that morning, I suddenly felt that your courage and insight are very similar to a person."

"Who?" Ye Qiu asked strangely.

Van Praag suddenly burst out laughing, as if hearing Ye Qiu ask this, the more he felt like it.

"A person who I love and hate equally, but..." After a moment of silence, he changed the topic, "I will tell you slowly when I have the opportunity in the future!" Then he sighed deeply. The tone is, "Young man, you are only 25 years old. You still need to learn more, such as learning to accept failure, learning to bravely face challenges, and learning to seize opportunities in adversity!"

This time, after finishing speaking, he turned around and left, leaving Ye Qiu with his back.

"If you think that I will be discouraged after losing a game and need your comfort, then you underestimate me!" Ye Qiu muttered to Fan Praag's back unconvinced. road.

But his heart felt a little warmer.

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They lost a game, but Ye Qiu took advantage of this opportunity to unify the players' ideas. At least they no longer resisted Ye Qiu's training, and became more devoted, and they were more likely to fight against the odds. Posture.

A week later, in one of the stadiums in De Tokmost, Ajax B2 welcomed Groningen B2.

Although it was just a youth team match, Ye Qiu learned from the previous match. He took a look at the situation of Groningen B2 before the game and found that Arjen Robben was in the team. What's more, this guy was the star player of the team and had to start.

Playing at home and familiar with the game for two weeks, the players of Ajax B2 became more skilled in controlling the game, especially the rhythm and habits of running, receiving and passing that they developed in training, which they were more familiar with in the game.

Ye Qiu's training was originally very practical. Now in this youth team match, the opponent's pressure was not obvious. The players got a more relaxed environment and were more relaxed in using it. They began to show some power, but there were still many mistakes.

In the first half, Ajax B2 team scored the leading goal with the assist of Sneijder and forward Rui. However, in the second half, Arjen Robben made continuous breakthroughs on the left and then cut into the penalty area. He used his personal ability to equalize the score for Groningen. However, before the end of the game, Sneijder's goal helped Ajax surpass the score again.

The score of 2:1 was finally maintained until the end of the game, and Ye Qiu won the first victory in his coaching career.

Ye Qiu was not surprised by such a result, and there was nothing to be happy about, because the opponent's strength was not as good as Ajax. However, he still gave the players a high evaluation, praising them for showing considerable progress in the game, hoping that they would continue to work hard, and must not slack off, and must continue to work hard.

However, there was not much response from Ajax for this victory of B2 team, because someone stole the limelight of B2 team and took away all the attention.

Shame! Feyenoord defeated Ajax twice in one day!

This piece of news became the front page headline of the Amsterdam Evening Post the next day. The whole city was furious about the two defeats in one day, especially the 0:2 loss of Ajax to Feyenoord at home in the fourth round of the league, which made all the Ajax fans in the city furious.

Relatively speaking, the news that Van Persie led Feyenoord B1 to a 1:0 home win over Ajax B1 was unlucky to become the foil of the first team's defeat, but Westhof did not appear in the newspaper.

Relatively speaking, the Amsterdam Evening Post was quite polite. Schuld Mosso, a famous reporter from the Common Daily, one of the three major Dutch paper media, directly wrote a commentary, saying that Ajax's three consecutive victories this season were full of coincidences and accidents, but confused everyone's eyes.

"All Ajax fans must remember that in the 31st round of last season, at the Arena Stadium, they beat the champion Feyenoord 6:0, making this traditional strong team that just won the league championship lower its head at the Arena Stadium. But four months later, Feyenoord saved its face with a perfect victory at the Arena Stadium!"

"Waters's deployment of troops made it difficult to see his true intentions, especially his excessive arrogance in the back line, which gave Feyenoord's frontcourt offense an extremely loose space. The tall and strong Argentine striker Cruz was wantonly in Ajax's The player was violent in the penalty area, but Waters failed to come up with an effective means of containment throughout the game. "

"The poor Waters should thank Cruz. Fortunately, he was too poor at seizing opportunities. He only scored a goal for Feyenoord and created an assist. If he had seized the opportunity better, Feyenoord would have been fully capable of giving Ajax a 6:0 at the Arena Stadium!"

"Perhaps, after this defeat, the management of Ajax, who is eager for quick success, will become more sober!"

The overwhelming pressure from the media and fans immediately made De Tokmost feel a sense of urgency.

Football games are like this. Victory and failure are only separated by a line, but it is the gap between heaven and hell. The winner is the king and the loser is the bandit. This truth is even more vividly reflected in the world of football.

But because of this tragic defeat of the first team, the entire Ajax became a panic, which greatly diluted the previous bet between Ye Qiu and Westhoff.

But for Ye Qiu, this defeat was not surprising, it was just a matter of time, and it had nothing to do with him. For him, the most urgent thing now was the bet in two months.

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In his previous life, Ye Qiu was a homebody. Apart from work, he spent most of his time in his small apartment. He had never been in love since he was a child, so after crossing over, he could stay in the hotel room patiently and increase his self-value.

In the past half month, he read a lot of books and materials related to football, and he had previously paid to buy two masterpieces by Michels and Cruyff from the system store, which improved his tactical knowledge to 13 points.

With a full score of 100 points, 13 points is indeed still very bad, but the progress is very gratifying.

After winning his first game and completing a system task, Ye Qiu was awarded 5 bonus points. He decided to buy a book in the system store to continue improving his tactical literacy, because his ambition was to become a head coach. Without rich tactical literacy, this was impossible.

He put 2 points of the remaining 4 bonus points into evaluating strength and 1 point into motivation. These were what he needed most urgently. The last point was added to affinity. After all, no one would resist becoming a popular person, right?

After completing these, Ye Qiu had exactly 5 bonus points left, and he went straight into the store.

There were many things sold in the store, but they were all closely related to the head coach, such as some famous head coaches' unique insights into football, some wonderful comments on tactical formations, and some analysis of classic tactical duels. These were all of great benefit to improving a head coach's tactical literacy.

Ye Qiu wandered around the store, and finally he took a fancy to three books.

One is [Detailed Explanation of Catenaccio] written by Ellenio Herrera, the founder of the Great Inter Milan era, one is [Defense and Pressure on the Football Field] written by Sacchi, and the last one is [On the Spear and Shield of Tactics] written by Beckenbauer.

Herrera's book is about defense. The system believes that as a famous coach who has carried forward the catenaccio, Herrera has some very unique insights into this defensive system, and has profoundly influenced all the subsequent head coaches. The far-reaching influence is not much inferior to Michels's all-out attack and defense.

Sacchi's defense is based on Herrera's defense system, adding more things. The system believes that he is one of the famous coaches who truly turned defense into an art, and at the same time, he also has his own set of attainments in tactical pressure.

"Football tactics, in a way, is a game between the individual and the whole, and Beckenbauer, in a way, is the player who integrates the individual and the whole to the closest perfection. Later, he became a great head coach, so his understanding of football and tactics is worth studying and thinking about by any head coach!"

This is the comment given by the system to Beckenbauer's book, but the specific content is not written.

Ye Qiu pondered over the three books for a long time. All three are good books, and they are all good books that any head coach must study carefully, but some are early and some are late. Now for him, defense is not the most important, but how to arrange troops.

From this point of view, Beckenbauer's book is more suitable for his current needs.

Thinking of this, Ye Qiu bought this book directly.

Entering the study room, he opened the book directly and saw two sentences written on the title page of this book.

"There is no winning tactic in this world, but a good tactic can help the head coach to grasp the probability of winning!"

"The strongest link of the opponent is often the weakest soft spot!"

The first sentence is a kind of positioning of football tactics, and the second sentence is full of paradoxes.

If it was before, Ye Qiu would definitely think it was nonsense, but now that he has a certain basic knowledge of football, he knows that this sentence is absolutely classic and almost explains all the contradictions on the football field.

Just like the game between Ajax B2 and Groningen B2, Robben was the core player of the opponent, but his left side allowed Ajax to create two goals, because when he created offensive threats, he also created trouble for the defensive end, because he hardly participated in defense.

So, sometimes, tactics are really difficult to be unfathomable.

"Everyone familiar with the rules of football knows that the length of the goal is three times its height, and the distance between the penalty spot and the goal is 1.5 times the width of the goal. Through this set of data, we analyze a series of game data and find that the goal rate of penalty kicks is about three-quarters. Isn't it amazing?"

"We also need to know that, excluding the goalkeeper, a team can only arrange 10 players, but adding up the range of activities of these 10 players, it is impossible to completely cover the entire stadium. In any case, any tactics adopted by any team will always leave some space that can be used by the opponent."

"It is precisely because of this that how to optimize the allocation of player resources has become the most important job of a head coach, which is what we call tactical formation in common parlance!"

Ye Qiu was directly attracted by the beginning of the article. Although he did not have much tactical knowledge, he found that this remark was very unique and insightful. It can be said that the core purpose of football tactics was explained at once, which is to optimize the allocation of resources for players on the field.

"Many people like to make up some history and origins for football tactics, but in my opinion, the history of football tactics is a history of exploring space, full of incredible reincarnations!"

"When the middle road is too dense, the side roads with more space begin to become the main battlefield for the team's decisive battle; conversely, when the side roads are overvalued, the middle road will become a battleground; when all teams begin to pay attention to defense, it becomes a trend to gather troops in the frontcourt, and when all teams begin to gather troops in the frontcourt, the backcourt will begin to play a pivotal role."

When Ye Qiu saw this, he suddenly felt that some of the doubts in his mind when he was watching some basic football textbooks before suddenly became clear, because Beckenbauer's words pointed out the true meaning of constantly changing tactical formations.

Coupled with the sentence [the opponent's strongest link is often the weakest weakness], Ye Qiu suddenly figured out a lot, and he finally found the bargaining chip to compete with Westerhoff!

This is also the first time that he is truly confident that he can beat Westerhoff in the field of professional football tactics!