Chapter 272 Mourinho's biggest enemy is actually him
The closer the match with Liverpool gets, the more lively the city of Rome becomes.
It’s not that the three northern powers of Serie A are not well-known enough and the matches against them don’t attract the attention of fans, but the city of Rome has not welcomed a heavyweight Champions League-level team for several years.
Coupled with the aesthetic fatigue of the domestic league, it is easy to see that local fans are far more excited about Liverpool's arrival than when the three northern powers come to play away games.
Under the coordination of UEFA, Roma reserved 12,000 tickets for the away game, which, together with the 58,000 tickets sold locally, were sold out in an instant after being released online.
Of course there are also a lot of hospitality tickets here.
It goes without saying that Roma's famous players, such as Totti, De Rossi, Cafu, Aldair, and even Batistuta who have not been with the team for long, will all be on site to observe.
A group of people also came from Liverpool, including "King" Dalglish, John Barnes, Gerrard, Carragher and Michael Owen, who was later excluded from the ranks of legends by Liverpool fans because he moved to the Red Devils Manchester United. They all came to Rome.
In addition to the celebrities from both teams, there are many third-party fans who have booked seats in advance through the Roma club or announced on social media that they will come to watch the game:
Italy national team head coach Roberto Mancini, Spain national team head coach Luis Enrique, Netherlands national team head coach Van Gaal, Croatia national team head coach Dalic, Argentina national team head coach Scaloni, and England national team head coach Southgate also came to the scene.
There were also Gary Neville and Thierry Henry as live commentators for Sky Sports.
There are many other legendary players like Ronaldo, Pirlo, etc. who also have no clear reasons.
Those who know know that it is the opening match of the Champions League group stage, while those who don’t think it is the Champions League final, which is why it is so eye-catching.
As English fans arrived one after another, the Roman police were on high alert.
In just three days, more than forty English fans, or more accurately, football hooligans, who had drunkenly fought with local fans in the city center, were arrested and detained.
But the local fans of Rome are naturally not pushovers. Several major fan organizations have formulated detailed "reception" plans, making giant human wave flags held by hands in the stands, waving team flags, posters, slogans, and even preparing several songs specifically for use in confrontations, satirizing and hitting back at Liverpool.
Don't think that all the competition will only happen after the game starts. Outside the bar where English fans gathered, there were diehard fans of Roma singing war songs in groups.
The English, however, do not have the operatic talent of the Italians. They prefer to solve problems with their fists after getting drunk, which is why the Roman police are chasing them everywhere.
Mourinho hopes that the players will focus on the process and results, and downplay the opponent they are fighting against, Liverpool.
What he meant by looking down upon was not to despise or look down upon the opponent, but to not think of playing against Liverpool as a big deal, as it would become a burden on one's behavior.
Many young players become "abnormal" when playing against the giants they support or the idols they admire. They are either too restrained or too eager to prove themselves and act out of line.
You know, wanting to prove yourself too much on the court and underestimating your opponent will both cause your movements and tactics to change.
Three days before the game, Chen Xiaoliang finally ended his rest and observation and returned to the team to participate in training.
The 3-3 draw in the last game, plus an assist to Dybala, earned him 5 training points, and the training two days before the start of the game brought him another 8 training points.
Training value 36 → 49
The abilities are basically at level 15, and to increase further you will need 80 training points, so these 49 points can only be saved for now.
However, before the game started, Chen Xiaoliang encountered a "challenge" on the training ground.
During the half-time attack and defense drills, Gvardiol repeatedly and actively came over to defend Chen Xiaoliang, whether it was blocking shots, intercepting dribbling or competing for high balls, each time he was like a wound-up spring, showing no mercy to the captain in front of him.
Chen Xiaoliang found it interesting, as this experience had often occurred to them in extra training when Enzo had just joined the team. However, Enzo, who was in a more forward position, was better at intercepting and defending in order to disrupt and obstruct the opponent's offensive advancement, while Gvardiol, as the team's last line of defense, would use more defensive methods to end the offense.
Faced with such a highly targeted "challenge", Chen Xiaoliang did not have any good solution for a while, especially the half-time attack and defense drills, which were not meant to be a casual fight or one-on-one duel. Both sides had clear tactical arrangements stipulated by the coaching staff. The attacking side represented by Chen Xiaoliang practiced the combination , while Gvardiol was given the task of blocking and stealing in the new defensive combination by Mourinho.
This is also to make use of his speed, courage and tough style of play to make up for the shortcomings of the two existing right central defenders, Smalling and Mancini, who are slow in turning and have weak ability to return to their secondary defensive positions.
But although Gvardiol's intention of challenging was very clear, there was no problem with his personal conduct and quality. Even when he sometimes had physical conflicts with his teammates because of his fierce kicks, he would greet them politely and then take the initiative to reach out and pull up the fallen teammate.
But after a while, he might tackle the ball fiercely again.
But Chen Xiaoliang didn't care. Instead, after the training, Cesco and Enzo asked him during the extra training:
"Captain, why don't you teach that new guy a lesson? This is not like you."
Chen Xiaoliang laughed: "How can I show him my true colors?"
Cesco glared and said, "Tack him!"
Enzo said: "I want to tackle him, but we are both on the defensive..."
Chen Xiaoliang burst into laughter: "Then I'm on the attacking side, so I can't tackle him. It's okay, the coach will be very happy to see his attitude. I hope that with his arrival, the team's defense will make fewer mistakes."
Cesco whispered, "But we can't let the new guy be so arrogant..."
Chen Xiaoliang: "Hey, you were too polite when you first came. Didn't you push Tammy (Abraham) to the bench? Besides, he is a central defender. How many chances do I, a midfielder, have to steal the ball from the opposing central defender?"
"We should save our energy for the next opponent."
The three of them were chatting, and Kvaratskhelia remained silent.
Cesco, who is sunny and generous, can never hide what is in his heart: "Kwa, don't be nervous, you don't say a word."
Kwa turned around and smiled at him: "I'm not nervous, but I don't know if the coach will let me start."
Chen Xiaoliang was really amused by these three peers who were crazy about football. He said to Kwa: "Don't worry, he has been waiting for this moment."
The one who knows birds is Xiaoliang.
Although the feud between Mourinho and Guardiola represented by the "Guardiola-Guardiola feud" is more familiar to fans, in fact, in Mourinho's coaching career, Klopp is his biggest victim.
In the Red Country, many people gave Klopp the nickname "Fa Fa Fa Mu Gong".
Among the coaches he has played against more than five times, the German coach is simply Mourinho's nemesis.
The two have faced each other 13 times, with Mourinho having 2 wins, 4 draws and 7 losses, and is at an absolute disadvantage with a winning rate of only 15%, lower than his 16.7% against Ronald Koeman and 20% against Guardiola.
During Mourinho's coaching of Real Madrid, his team met Dortmund twice in the Champions League, once in the group stage and once in the Champions League semi-finals.
In the group stage, Dortmund first defeated Real Madrid 2-1, and then drew 2-2 with the Galacticos away from home.
In the Champions League semi-finals, Dortmund won 4-1 at home and lost 0-2 away, but still eliminated Real Madrid and entered the final.
In the Premier League, Mourinho, as Chelsea coach, once faced Klopp and lost 1-3. After coming to Manchester United, the two had four encounters, with Mourinho drawing 3 and losing 1. At Tottenham, he suffered four consecutive defeats.
The 4th and 5th "Magic Bird Nemesis" are Tottenham's current coach Conte and Frank Rijkaard, one of the Dutch Three Musketeers who has retired at home for a long time. Mourinho's teams against the two have only a 33% winning rate.
In the 4-1 match between Dortmund and Real Madrid at home, Lewandowski was in great form at the Westfalenstadion, scoring four goals and sending Real Madrid into a crushing defeat. A month later, the madman was dismissed from his job due to a fruitless season.
In the Premier League 2.0 era, Mourinho, who returned to Chelsea earlier to start a second business, could not avoid Klopp, the killer: in December 2015, the "Mourinho II" Blues met Liverpool and lost 1-3, and the team completely collapsed.
After this battle, exactly one month later, Mourinho, who had suffered consecutive defeats, heard the second bell for the dismissal from his boss Abramovich in the middle of the league.
Do you think it’s amazing enough that one person made Mourinho unemployed twice?
No, it's not over yet.
When Mourinho moved to Manchester United, Klopp still followed him closely.
In the first two encounters between the two teams, Mourinho briefly took the lead with one win and one draw, and it seemed that everything was developing in the direction of changing his destiny. However, in December 2018, in front of more than 60,000 players at Old Trafford, as well as the Glazer family, Sir Alex Ferguson, CEO Ed Woodward and other board members, Manchester United was bombarded 36 times by Liverpool and lost 1-3, exhausting their last bit of patience with Mourinho.
This time it took less than a month, only one day, for Manchester United to announce the firing of Mourinho.
The dismissal was dismissal. When the other Premier League giants expressed their dissatisfaction with Klopp's inhumanity and insistence on kicking Mourinho out of class, Klopp did not forget to rub salt into the wound. He answered the reporter like this:
"He wants to succeed at Manchester United, but when the results are not what they want, the manager has to bear the consequences. I certainly have no doubt that he will find a job two days after being sacked. Compared with those coaches in the lower leagues who have nowhere to go, Mourinho is very lucky."
What this means is that in his eyes, Mourinho is just a "lucky guy" who is just living off his past achievements.
But don't think that this is Klopp's initiative. In September 2018, three months before he was fired after being shot 36 times, Mourinho, who was already besieged on all sides, blasted Klopp at the press conference after losing to Tottenham:
"Klopp? Does he have a continental championship?"
Since then, every time Klopp scores a goal in a game, he will perform his iconic "Farmer's Three Punches" in front of Mourinho.
After the madman came to Tottenham, the bad fate continued.
In the 2019-20 season, Mourinho led Tottenham to park the bus twice, but in the end they lost to Klopp's Red Army by one goal.
In the 2020-21 season, the two teams were tied in the first 90 minutes. Mourinho thought he could finally end his losing streak against Klopp, but Firmino scored a last-gasp goal in stoppage time...
In the second game, we lost 1-3 at home.
Although Klopp was no longer the culprit for Mourinho's dismissal this time, the poor record against the other five teams of the BIG6 ultimately led to Mourinho's dismissal.
So, when a fan claims to be a loyal fan of Mourinho, but regards Guardiola as his number one enemy, it basically proves that he doesn't watch Mourinho's games very much...
This is also the reason why Mourinho, who has a strong team this season, has to keep his secret weapon Kva until the last minute of the summer transfer window to play.
Because the three Premier League teams in the second tier, Liverpool, Chelsea, Tottenham, plus Barcelona, excluding Juventus, a team from the same league that is impossible to meet, 4 of the 7 teams are full of grievances, and the probability of meeting a big enemy is 57%, forcing Mourinho to prepare early in order to vent his anger.
Unexpectedly, he drew the person he most wanted to defeat.
He wanted to end the humiliating five-game losing streak against Klopp, and at a time when the German was in poor form in the new season for Liverpool, he wanted to give him a fatal blow and let him taste how he was treated in the past.
How could Chen Xiaoliang not know his head coach? Sometimes Mourinho himself even felt that the captain he carefully selected knew him better than he thought.
And on rare occasions, he also felt that Chen Xiaoliang did not agree with all his ideas and arrangements, but would make full use of his influence in the locker room to lubricate the relationship between the head coach and the locker room.
This is also the reason why this Roman team has always been highly united despite having had troubles and conflicts in the past and may still have troubles and conflicts in the future.
He doesn't need to use outsiders like Ronaldo to check and balance the local faction headed by Casillas as he did in Real Madrid, nor does he need to use old players like Terry and Ivanovic who support him to suppress newcomers like Hazard and Courtois who have no feelings for Mourinho in the second period of Mourinho.
The Eva incident was nothing more than an obvious fuse. In the environment of political correctness, this gave some players who were already dissatisfied with Mourinho a legitimate reason to challenge and question him.
After Lampard and Drogba have left the team, and Terry, Ivanovic and others have lost their stable playing time due to their aging, they can no longer help Mourinho fully control the locker room.
In this situation, the madman always resorts to his most commonly used, but most double-edged behavior - publicly reprimanding the players in a press conference.
He did this at Chelsea, and the result was a complete collapse of the dressing room. Later at Manchester United and Tottenham, he also did not get support from the dressing room, not to mention that these two teams each had two Frenchmen who were very capable of causing trouble - Pogba and Lloris.
This group of French players' ability to stir up trouble and infighting seems to be innate, requires no training, and is passed down from generation to generation.
But now in Rome, after publicly naming and accusing Karsdorp at a press conference, Mourinho accepted Chen Xiaoliang's private advice and promised that, at least while in Rome, he would not resort to this approach again.
Because he now has a weapon that is more intimidating to troublemakers and has the least side effects on the outside world - locker room isolation.
Chen Xiaoliang will try his best to unite all the players and help them ease the relationship with their teammates and coaching staff. However, once there is a player like Karsdorp who makes irresponsible mistakes on the court and refuses to repent in the locker room, thinking that he has done nothing wrong and forcibly shifting the blame, then he will definitely be isolated by the locker room.
This is also why Spinazzola and Mancini apologized to the whole team immediately after making a big mistake in the last game against Udinese.
They know that if they try too hard to save face, they will suffer in their lifetime.
After all, confidence comes from strength, and absolute confidence comes from absolute strength.
Just as Pellegrini said to Cristante after the training, those players in the team who originally thought they were the number one guys, realized after Chen Xiaoliang’s arrival that from now on, they just had to do their best to play the supporting role of the green leaf.
