Chapter 177: A surprising first half of the season! Three new players in the winter break!
Conte, who is trapped both internally and externally, is unwilling to go to Rome to suffer humiliation
"Conte strategically gave up the Europa League, UEFA was furious, Tottenham may be in trouble"
"Football's version of the Empty City Strategy? Mourinho easily won over Tottenham"
Once the news of Tottenham's withdrawal spread, the above was the title of the press release issued by normal media.
The Korean media, which had been expecting Son Heung-min to "educate" Chen Xiaoliang at the Olympic Stadium in Rome and were worried that Tottenham, which was in poor form recently, might not be able to beat Roma, which had just defeated Inter Milan and had an explosive performance at home, immediately went into full gear to win back a point in the public opinion front for their national idol.
"Son Heung-min missed the opportunity to reign in Rome, and the scam of the worst Kopa Award winner continues"
"A player who has never entered the Champions League wants to be the best in Asia? A professor from Korea National Sports University argues from multiple dimensions: Chen Xiaoliang is still far behind"
However, compared with the self-boasting of these Koreans above, the following news is what makes Chen Xiaoliang and the Roma Club feel incredible.
"A certain Serie A team fan believes that Chen Xiaoliang is an electric bionic AI high-intelligence robot secretly developed by a Red Country enterprise and Tesla, and submitted a petition to the Italian government website to expel him from Serie A, which received 400,000 signatures from netizens."
The petition also claimed that Chen Xiaoliang's average running distance of 13.32 kilometers per game was far ahead of Brozovic, who was second. In the last game against Inter Milan, he ran an astonishing 14.1 kilometers, which is definitely not something a 17-year-old young player can do.
At the same time, due to the close cooperation between the Donghai Municipal Government, local state-owned enterprises and the American giant Tesra, and the construction of a huge production plant in Donghai City, it can be inferred that Chen Xiaoliang from Donghai City must be a bionic robot jointly developed secretly by the two parties.
There are causes and effects, and there are reasons and evidence.
Of course, the Serie A committee and the Roma club would not pay attention to such absurd remarks. Instead, the sponsor took the opportunity to hype up the concept of "machinery", seized the hot spot of traffic, and made a big fuss about it. At the same time, Chen Xiaoliang's reputation was brought to more parts of the world with this absurd news.
After winning the most important game of the first half, Roma's condition and morale were greatly boosted.
In the next three games in December, they played well overall.
On the evening of December 13, they beat Spezia, ranked 17th in the league, 2-0 at home.
In the 5th minute of the first half, Smalling headed in Pellegrini's corner kick and scored his second league goal of the season. In the 55th minute of the second half, also from a corner kick, Ibanez headed in Veretout's corner kick and scored his third league goal of the season.
In this game, due to the weakness of the opponent, Chen Xiaoliang returned to the position of single defensive midfielder, Cesco also entered the rotation, and Abraham served as the single striker.
On December 18, in the 18th round of the league, Roma will challenge Atalanta away.
Since Inter Milan won 4-0 at home against Cagliari in the last round, and beat Salernitana 0-5 away in the game that has already ended in this round, they have surpassed Roma in points, number of goals and goal difference.
However, in the Serie A ranking rules, when the points are the same, the priority is the win-loss record of the two sides. Therefore, as long as Roma wins, it will continue to dominate Inter Milan.
It is not an easy game to face Atalanta, ranked 6th, away from home. Being able to rank 6th and closely follow Juventus, leaving behind a number of veteran teams such as Lazio and Fiorentina, is enough to show how combative this team is in the league.
What's more, their 63-year-old head coach Gasperini is a well-known and capable coach. Similar to him is the Spaniard Unai Emery of Villarreal.
These coaches may not be able to succeed in leading a top club, but they can always achieve results beyond expectations when leading a mid-level team.
Last season, Atalanta finished third in the league standings with 78 points, just 1 point behind runner-up AC Milan, and thus qualified for the Champions League.
At their home stadium, the Azzurri, Manchester United only managed to tie 2-2 with their team in the Champions League group stage thanks to Ronaldo's last-minute equalizer.
However, Mourinho and his disciples were like enlightened practitioners, without any obsession in their hearts. When faced with such an opponent, they resolutely used their signature skill - defensive counterattack.
Although Pellegrini's calf muscle injury in training has healed, Mourinho . This also allowed Chen Xiaoliang to appear in the central midfielder position again and wear the captain's armband.
On the road, his hidden attribute of "leadership" can better motivate his teammates as captain.
This allowed everyone to remain calm when facing Atlanta's 71% ball possession rate, and limited the opponent's shots on target to 6 throughout the game.
At the same time, none of the 10 corner kicks posed a threat to the goal.
Just one minute into the game, after passing the ball a few times in the backcourt, Abraham and Chen Xiaoliang completed a two-pass wall pass near the center circle to break away from Atlanta's pressing defense.
Abraham dribbled the ball forward and faced the opponent's goalkeeper Musso who was coming out to shoot. The ball floated into the right side of the goal. Roma got off to a dream start with a 0-1 away win.
In the 27th minute, Roma scored again.
After Chen Xiaoliang intercepted the ball in the backcourt, he made a long pass to launch a counterattack. After Zaniolo got the ball, he made a short pass with Veretout and broke into the penalty area. He shook his left foot to create space and shot into the near corner. Roma took the lead 2 goals away from home!
The poor performance forced Atalanta to make adjustments early. In the 34th minute, Gasperini replaced the Albanian defender Djimsiti, whose performance was disastrous, with Colombian striker Muriel.
In the 46th minute before the end of the first half, Atalanta scored a goal. Slovenian winger Ilicic made a triangle pass back to the middle from the right side of the frontcourt, and Muriel, who had just come on the field not long ago, shot directly outside the penalty area.
The shot, which was not very threatening at first, changed direction after hitting Cristante. Patricio had no choice but to watch the ball fly into the right side of the goal. Atalanta also changed the score to 1-2 with this slightly lucky goal.
In the second half, Roma continued to maintain a defensive position, allowing Atalanta to besiege them and looking for every opportunity to launch a quick counterattack.
In the 72nd minute, Zaniolo was brought down in a counterattack and Roma won a free kick on the right side outside the penalty area.
Chen Xiaoliang, Pellegrini and Veretout discussed it and decided that Veretout would take the tactical free kick.
He passed the ball to Chen Xiaoliang next to him, and Chen Xiaoliang passed it directly to Pellegrini who was making a run. Pellegrini pretended to break into the penalty area, but after a few steps he passed the ball to the back post. With all the defensive pressure taken away by his teammates, Smalling shot the ball near the back post and scored. Roma took the lead 1-3 away from home!
After leading by 2 goals, Mourinho replaced 3 players, but the tactics remained unchanged. Facing Atalanta's crazy siege, Roma players were united and did not give the opponent any chance.
In the 82nd minute, Roma sealed the victory.
It was still Chen Xiaoliang who intercepted the ball in front of the penalty area and made a long pass to Cesco on the right side of the frontcourt, who broke through Atlanta's encirclement with one kick.
Sesco rushed all the way into the penalty area, and when there was a chance to shoot at a small angle, he unselfishly passed the ball to Wu Lei who was in position in the middle. The latter shot directly at the ball without wasting this opportunity, and scored his first league goal since joining Roma!
In the end, Roma won 1-4 away!
This game was also very rare, with 4 goals and 4 assists, all completed by different players.
On December 22, Roma faced their last opponent of the first half of the league season before the winter break at home, Sampdoria, ranked 15th.
Abraham's injury in the 33rd minute gave Wu Lei, who had been training hard, a chance to play.
However, facing Sampdoria's iron defense, Roma once again fell into a vicious circle where they could play football when being besieged, but could not play football when besieging others.
In the 71st minute, Mkhitaryan's cross to Chen Xiaoliang was blocked, but he shot from a small angle and scored a goal. Then in the 79th minute, Sampdoria took advantage of a corner kick and Gabiadini, the striker who had played for Juventus, Naples and Southampton, scored with a shot from the rebound after his teammate's header hit the post.
The score of 1-1 remained until the end.
Failure to win this game also made Roma miss the feat of reaching the top of the league in the last round of the first half of the season.
But after 19 rounds of the league, the team is ranked second with 41 points, which is a pleasant surprise for everyone in the club.
The detailed standings are as follows:
1st, Inter Milan, 43 points
2nd, Roma, 41 points
3rd, AC Milan, 40 points
4th, Napoli, 38 points
5th, Juventus, 35 points
6th, Atlanta, 31 points
7th, Fiorentina, 29 points
8th, Lazio, 28 points
9th, Bologna, 27 points
10th, Sassuolo, 27 points
11th, Verona, 24 points
12th, Empoli, 24 points
13th, Torino, 23 points
14th, Udinese, 20 points
15th, Sampdoria, 20 points
16th, Spezia, 16 points
17th, Venice, 15 points
18th, Genoa, 11 points
19th, Salernitana, 10 points
20th, Cagliari, 9 points
Each team also had a 12-day winter break from December 24 to January 5.
In these three games, Chen Xiaoliang played all the games and received 3 hours of training value and 2 physical recovery cards, 5 hours of training value and 1 physical recovery card, and 3 hours of training value as game task rewards respectively. However, he also used up 3 physical recovery cards in the game.
Training value 19 → 30
Stamina recovery card 5→5
Although Tottenham Hotspur won the Europa League match that they had abandoned, Chen Xiaoliang did not receive any reward from the system because the match had not actually started.
Conte's move made Chen Xiaoliang lose a lot of money...
However, the so-called winter break does not mean letting the players go home to rest, but moving to a place with a more comfortable temperature so that the players can relax and train at the same time.
Boss Dan Friedkin was very satisfied with the team's performance. At the same time, due to the increasing number of sponsorships, the club's financial situation was gradually moving away from the "death line" of UEFA's Financial Fair Play Act. In order to reward the players, he asked Pinto to specially arrange for the team to go to Dubai for a 10-day winter break training, and allowed family members or partners to bring along.
Needless to say, Chen Xiaoliang has become the most envied one again...
Other players who have wives can only bring their wives, and they dare not bring their girlfriends even if they want to... and those who don’t have wives can bring their girlfriends, but they can only bring one.
Chen Xiaoliang is the only one who is called "Personal Sports Science Director" and "Personal Fitness Coach". What's even more outrageous is that Erica did not sign up for all European track and field competitions before the spring of 2022 due to injury. After becoming a part-time fitness coach for the Roma first team, she not only often participated in the team's physical training mainly in charge of Lapetti, but also went to Dubai with the team for training in an official capacity...
During the winter break, reserving physical strength is an important subject...
Besides, which player doesn’t like such a young and fashionable fitness coach…
Often on the training ground, Lapeti’s shouts were no match for Erica’s single gesture.
Teammates often joked with Chen Xiaoliang in private, but those popular jokes didn't work on him.
You joked that Chen Xiaoliang should take care of his kidneys and not let his body be "drained", but his average running distance per game was 13.36. Not only did he run all over the court, but he also almost collapsed during training. He could still fight for another 300 rounds. With this stamina, no one dared to deny that he was definitely an "iron waist"...
You joked and told Chen Xiaoliang to be more careful about "treating everyone equally", but the sisters have a very good relationship and live under the same roof every day. No one could see how Chen Xiaoliang handled it. His teammates only saw two beauties, one quiet and one active, one literary and one martial, and one tense and one relaxed, who served this popular star very well.
Alas, the teammates can only sigh, this is called a winner in life, they can only envy, hate and hate...
Chen Xiaoliang never responded to these jokes.
He still doesn't dare to think about that night in Ajaccio, was it Helena or Erica...
The two sisters look almost exactly the same, except that Erica, a long-distance runner, is a little thinner and likes to tie her hair into a high ponytail, and her pupils are slightly different from Helena's tortoiseshell color, being azure blue. There is almost no difference between them.
Even Reese, David and Cesco, who often meet each other, always admit their mistakes.
In the first five days after arriving in Dubai, Mourinho arranged relatively little training, which was mainly recovery training, so that the players could completely eliminate the fatigue of half a season. The training ended on time at 3:30 p.m. every day, so that the players could relax with their families.
For ordinary people, Dubai, a city of rich people with a high consumption level, is a tourist destination with a high barrier to entry. But for this group of players with annual salaries of millions of euros, it is the most ideal holiday destination from Europe.
Chen Xiaoliang also specially picked Christmas Eve and invited all the coaches, teammates and their families to experience the steak house opened by the famous Internet celebrity "Salt Bae".
Many famous football stars have come to his restaurant, such as Messi, Mbappe, Courtois, Aubameyang , Mahrez, Pogba, etc. He has also hosted legendary superstars like Ronaldo.
The arrival of Mourinho and the entire Roma team certainly became the moment for "Salt Bae" to perform hard, but Chen Xiaoliang was also very tactful and asked Salt Bae not to put the photo of him and Mourinho next to the photo of Pogba...
Everyone had a great time that night, and many tourists who were visiting Dubai recognized us and came up to us and asked for photos.
However, not every player has a weekly salary of 88,000 euros like Chen Xiaoliang, and a lot of sponsors are queuing up to sign him.
Ghanaian teenager Gyan and Gambian teenager Darbo are typical examples.
Both of them have a weekly salary of only a few thousand euros, which is even lower than some white-collar workers in local financial companies in Rome.
At this time, Mourinho fully demonstrated the charm of his unique coach and gave Gian a pair of shoes worth 800 euros that he had always wanted. He also spent a little more money to buy a set of clothes for Darbo to attend the formal ceremony.
When the two young African-American players received this "Christmas" gift in the restaurant, they were so moved that they burst into tears. The other players were also moved by this scene and came forward to encourage them.
Mourinho was very happy when he saw this, because two-thirds of his perfect winter break plan had been completed.
The team has recovered and the cohesion has improved. All that remains is to wait for the three new players to join them!
Although the transfer window has not yet opened, as the transfer agreements have already been completed and after advance consultations between the two clubs, after completing their last round of games at their old clubs, Dutch left-back Terer Malacia, Turkish right-back Zeki Celik and Serbian midfielder Nemanja Matic flew to Dubai from Rotterdam, Netherlands, Lille, France and Manchester, England respectively to report to their new clubs in advance.
With the arrival of all three new players on December 29, the relaxed recovery training came to an end, and Mourinho started formal training to strive for better results in the second half of the season.
Malacia wore Niles' No. 15 jersey, and Niles' loan agreement was terminated early and returned to Arsenal;
Celik wore the No. 19 jersey, a number that had not been used before;
Matic wore the No. 8 jersey, which symbolizes the main midfielder. The previous owner of No. 8 was Spaniard Gonzalo Villar, but he was constantly injured and his style was completely different from Mourinho's, so he was loaned out early.
Mourinho specifically assigned Chen Xiaoliang to the substitute group in the team's group confrontation, and let the three new players take turns to play against him.
How could Chen Xiaoliang not know this? After all, two of the three people were recommended to the team by him through Riise.
The 24-year-old Celik has decent speed and is not very strong in attack, but his defensive stability is much better than Karsdorp. His marking is average, but his steals are very decisive.
The 21-year-old Malasia is still very young, and his speed is similar to that of Celik. He is not very fast, but definitely not slow. His greatest characteristic can be summed up in one word - courage.
He usually doesn't talk much and is very polite to everyone he meets, but when he gets to the training ground, it seems like he wants to do something with everyone he meets.
He has good one-on-one defensive ability and excellent interception ability on the left, but like Celik, his offensive ability is average, and his crossing and dribbling levels can only be considered above average.
However, there is still room for improvement for these two full-backs, which is in line with Mourinho's goal of having two "defensive" full-backs in the four-back tactics.
The two original main full-backs Karsdorp and Binya can play more as wing-backs with more offensive tasks in the three-back system.
The 32-year-old Matic, the most famous and important of the three new players, has entered the end of his career and his speed and explosiveness have declined seriously. However, with his rich experience, the awareness of this three-time Premier League champion is almost better than any other player in the team.
If many of Chen Xiaoliang's defenses were achieved by relying on physical strength and speed, then Matic constantly used not-so-fast horizontal movements and positioning to cut off the opponent's passing and breakthrough routes.
Moreover, his physical condition is very good. His ability in heading and confrontation is still top-notch in Serie A. His ability in frontal steals and defense is far better than that of Veretout and Cristante. Nicknamed "Ma Xiangqian", his ability to pass the ball straight can provide the team with an additional starting point for attack in the midfield and backcourt.
On the evening of January 1, Roma Club and Manchester United, Lille and Feyenoord announced the transfer results.
The final transaction price was 15 million euros for Malaga and 7 million euros for Celik, while Matic, who had only six months left on his contract, only paid a symbolic transfer fee of 1 million pounds to Manchester United.
Everyone is gearing up for the game because after the winter break, the team’s first game will be at San Siro to challenge AC Milan!
