Chapter 9: First Team Training, Facing the Monkey King
Because Tottenham fired Pochettino midway through last season and hired Mourinho to take over the club, he did not have enough time to make adjustments to the team in accordance with his expectations and needs, and at the end of the season he only ranked sixth in the league.
It was not until this summer window that Mourinho made a large number of personnel adjustments to the club, clearing out a group of redundant players whose contracts had expired, introducing players in their prime such as Hojbjerg, Reguilon, Doherty, and signing the famous world wave background board Joe Hart to supplement the team's defensive lineup.
However, the most dazzling one is the superstar Gareth Bale who returned on loan from Real Madrid.
Including Chen Xiaoliang, the entire first-team has a total of 27 people.
Watching other players arrive one after another, Chen Xiaoliang also finished his solo training and helped the coaches set up training props.
First make yourself familiar with others with a good attitude.
Kane, Bale, Lloris, faces that Chen Xiaoliang could only look up to in front of the screen, now appeared beside him and became his teammates!
Holy shit! These are all undisputed big stars!
Those well-known players were surprised to see a new stranger in the team. Many of them even asked Son Heung-min if he was his fellow countryman in South Korea.
Chen Xiaoliang was speechless.
Can Korea find another one as big as mine?
Despite being mentally prepared, the intensity of the first-team training still far exceeded Chen Xiaoliang's imagination.
Just the shuttle run used as a warm-up is enough to daunt most ordinary people.
However, Chen Xiaoliang is not afraid of overdrawing his physical strength. He knows that what he needs most at the moment is to accumulate training time and increase his attribute points as soon as possible.
In order to shorten the time of physical recovery and increase the ability to run on the field, he prioritized training on endurance and physical fitness.
As for those poor attributes that are less than 5, they will be improved through regular team training.
Endurance determines how long you can run in a race, while physical fitness determines how quickly you can recover after fatigue.
As long as these two attributes are improved, the daily training time can be gradually increased from 5 hours. Combined with the physical recovery cards given by the tasks, wouldn't it be possible to train like a perpetual motion machine?
Thinking of this, Chen Xiaoliang gritted his teeth and followed the main force closely. Even if he was left behind, he would never give up.
Fortunately, after completing several sets of warm-up exercises and starting more intense physical training sessions, Chen Xiaoliang, who had participated in a competition the day before, was grouped together with the players who had just finished national team training and returned to the club to start restorative technical training.
The first item is the circle grabbing exercise.
This made Chen Xiaoliang very happy, because what he was most worried about was the tactical coordination and passing and receiving training, which would expose his weaknesses. However, only the circle-grabbing training could fully demonstrate his advantages.
A total of ten people including Bale, Hojbjerg, Aurier, Ndombele and others were divided into two groups. The eight people in the outer circle passed the ball and could only touch the ball with one foot, while the two people in the inner circle were responsible for grabbing the ball.
As long as the ball is snatched away midway, the two people who snatch the ball will switch roles with the two people who pass and receive the ball.
At first, these players didn't take the thin Chen Xiaoliang seriously, and even deliberately reminded him when passing the ball to him to avoid the ball being intercepted and punished.
But who would have thought that after a few rounds, even Chen Xiaoliang himself did not expect that the entire training would become a one-man show for him.
Any ball that passes through his defensive area will be intercepted, and once the ball is intercepted, Chen Xiaoliang will be switched to the outer circle to pass the ball. As long as someone passes the ball to him, either he fails to catch it firmly and it is intercepted, or the ball he passes is crooked and slow and is intercepted, so he will be switched back to the inner circle.
In this way, Chen Xiaoliang switched back and forth between the outer circle and the inner circle, leaving all the players looking at each other in bewilderment.
Assistant coach Joao had never seen such a player before. It would have been fine if his passing and receiving skills were as amateur as it could be, but he could rely on fierce steals to make his teammates' passes and receive the ball like an amateur player. Even a superstar like Bale was not immune.
Although Bale's condition at this moment is not as good as when he kicked the amazing overhead kick in the Champions League final, his overall ability is still among the best in the world. But no matter how he chooses the route, uses his footwork to create an arc, or uses fake moves to pass the ball without looking at people, he cannot fool Chen Xiaoliang's defense.
But Bale is the most famous player in the team and a legend of Tottenham. His teammates will intentionally or unintentionally give priority to passing the ball to him. This also makes Bale the one who switches positions with Chen Xiaoliang the most in the inner and outer circles, and the one who is punished to do the most push-ups.
Joao looked at Mourinho in surprise, but he only nodded and smiled confidently.
An hour and a half later, the morning training was over. Although lap grabbing was far less exhausting than physical training, Chen Xiaoliang, who had been training early in the morning, was already exhausted.
After everyone had a brief lunch and rest, the afternoon's attack and defense drills began again.
If warm-up and physical training are to strengthen the players' physical functions and mobilize the body's heat, then confrontational training is the main means for the head coach to implement tactical intentions .
As expected, the main players were assigned to Team A, while the substitutes were assigned to Team B.
Team A has Kane as center forward, Son Heung-min as left winger, and Bale as right winger!
This frontcourt combination alone is enough to make countless fans tremble with excitement!
It is no exaggeration to say that it is one of the strongest front trident in the world!
As the name suggests, offensive and defensive drills are about having the main force repeatedly practice offensive tactics to familiarize themselves with and strengthen the routines. Therefore, the task of Team A at this time is to practice positional warfare offense and rapid counterattacks, while Team B is specifically responsible for defense and counterattacks.
Without too much pressure to return to defense, Team A quickly formed suppression in repeated attacks and broke through the defensive gate of Team B in succession.
At this time, Mourinho nodded at Joao, indicating that Chen Xiaoliang should come on the court to participate in the defense of Team B.
Joao was still hesitating. A 16-year-old kid had played a game the day before and practiced all morning today. How could he have the energy to deal with the fierce attack of the main players?
But when he turned around and saw what happened to Chen Xiaoliang, the PAD in his hand almost fell to the ground.
Chen Xiaoliang, who was clearly exhausted at lunchtime, was now doing aerobics on the grass nearby...
"Where does this kid get such abnormal physical strength?!"
He called Chen Xiaoliang to replace Dele Alli, who had always been disliked by Mourinho.
Before going on the court, Joao mumbled a tactical outline to Chen Xiaoliang, but was interrupted by Mourinho before he could finish.
"Chen, I want you to defend Bell, can you do it?"
Chen Xiaoliang said "Oh", but he was laughing in his heart.
"Can you do it? If I say it's impossible, can you just not do it?"
The experience of snatching almost all of Bale's passes during the lap just now undoubtedly increased his confidence in his defensive abilities.
Ali walked down slowly, pretended to high-five Chen Xiaoliang, then picked up a towel to wipe the sweat off his face with a slight displeasure.
Many people think that Mourinho replaced Ali with a 16-year-old kid in order to deliberately stimulate Ali.
The same drama has been played out at Inter Milan, Real Madrid, Chelsea and Manchester United, but the outcomes are different.
Some people regard this stimulation as motivation, burst out with endless fighting spirit, and finally follow this character coach wholeheartedly and are willing to give everything for him.
Some people, however, regard it as a cruel humiliation and lose themselves under the pressure. They don't want to work with him for a single day, and would even deliberately lose the game just to get rid of him as soon as possible.
But Mourinho didn't have so many thoughts at this time. He is a person who likes to execute his own ideas unswervingly.
He wanted to see with his own eyes what kind of chemical reaction could be produced between the young man from the Red Country, who constantly gave him surprises, and this group of first-team players.
