Chapter 229 It’s Another Awards Season, Mourinho’s Real Madrid Has a Great Harvest [Please Subscribe! ]

The League Cup match with West Ham United did not consume much energy for the entire Chelsea team, after all, the intensity was there.

After defeating West Ham United 6-1 in the first match, the second leg of the League Cup semi-final was just a formality for Chelsea.

In addition, this year's League Cup final will be held on March 2, almost two months later.

So from now on, Chelsea will basically eliminate the League Cup from its three-line battle.

Instead, it will be replaced by the FA Cup, which will be played every half a month.

Compared with the League Cup, which will be finished in March, the most headache-inducing thing about the FA Cup for all Premier League teams is its competition system.

In the League Cup, if the two sides are tied in regular game time, then the two sides will go directly to overtime on the spot.

If the winner is still unclear, a penalty shootout will be played.

At least the winner will be decided in one game.

But in the FA Cup, if you dare to draw, you have to play another play-off. This competition system is really disgusting!

You should know that the FA Cup is already the second half of the Premier League from the third round of the Premier League teams.

The further you play, the tighter the schedule of the Premier League teams, so the FA Cup has a play-off system, which is a big trouble for the major Premier League teams.

Chelsea has a relatively deep bench, but for Mourinho, he is also hesitant whether to fight for the FA Cup in the future.

Fortunately, the Premier League teams have only played one round of the FA Cup, and the current schedule can still be dealt with. Mourinho also plans to play and see.

If the follow-up really affects the team's preparations in the league and the Champions League, then he can only reluctantly give up the FA Cup.

Just like last season, he gave up the King's Cup in order not to affect the defense of the La Liga and the Champions League.

There is gain in loss, like the season when he led Real Madrid to win six titles, it is really a rare opportunity.

After making a rough decision in his mind, Mourinho no longer paid too much attention to the subsequent schedule of the FA Cup.

However, before devoting himself to the preparations for the Premier League, Mourinho still had to decide on the loan of several young players in the second half of this season.

At present, except for the two young players Van Ginkel and Kalas who will stay in the first team, the rest of the young players in the team will either return to Chelsea's second team or be loaned out by the club.

Among the loaned players, the most concerned and cared about by Mourinho are naturally Ake, Maguire and Salah.

It is easy to find a loan team for Ake and Maguire.

Mourinho just picked a circle in the English Championship League, and finally let the club directly contact Barnsley Club, which is now ranked second from the bottom in the English Championship.

Barnsley executives, who are suffering from poor defense and poor results this season, immediately agreed to the opportunity to rent two defensive talents from Chelsea for free.

If it was in the normal season in the past, when Barnsley had no performance concerns.

They would not make such a loan decision to help other Premier League teams train players almost for free.

But this year there is really no way. The team has not invested much. Since the beginning of the season, Barnsley has been hovering outside the relegation zone of the Championship.

Before the halfway point of the season, Barnsley fell directly into the relegation zone.

Now that the Championship has just finished the 25th round, Barnsley has lost 13 games and conceded 43 goals, ranking third among the 24 teams in the Championship!

With such a bad defense, Barnsley can no longer care about whether to help other Premier League teams train new players for free.

It’s good to have defensive players to use!

What's more, Maguire was trained by their own youth training camp and is a rising talent in the English League One.

Such young defensive talents usually transfer directly to the English Championship promotion team or the middle and lower teams in the Premier League.

It is a pleasant surprise that they can now rent for free for half a season to help with relegation without paying wages.

So the procedures for Maguire and Ake to rent out to Barnsley were handled quickly.

Before the 21st round of the Premier League between Chelsea and Hull City on January 11, the two young players had already reported to Barnsley.

However, for Salah, Mourinho plans to let him stay in Chelsea for a while.

In subsequent games, such as the Premier League and the FA Cup, Mourinho plans to give Salah more playing time and opportunities.

Let him adapt to the rhythm of English football first, and let him practice with the first-team players more and get a preliminary run-in.

After that, he will be loaned back to Basel, and Chelsea will still bear all of Salah's wages, so Basel should not have any problems.

When Salah finishes all the remaining Swedish Super League games this season and returns to Chelsea next season, his position will be easy to arrange.

After arranging the players' loan work, Mourinho led the team to prepare intensively for the last two days.

On the afternoon of January 11, the opening match of the 21st round of the Premier League between Chelsea and Tiger City was held at the Kingston Communications Stadium.

Compared with the first half of the league, when the two teams first fought, Hull City has now experienced nearly 20 Premier League games.

They are now surprisingly ranked tenth in the Premier League standings.

For a newly promoted team, Hull City's performance can be described as amazing.

They don't have many goals, which may not be worthy of their current tenth position in the Premier League, and their offensive ability is at most in the lower part of the Premier League.

But their defensive ability is quite good, and they can be ranked in the top eight of the Premier League.

And Curtis Davies, Huddlestone and Livermore, three players who performed well in the Hull City team, are now receiving renewed attention from many old Premier League clubs.

Perhaps they did not perform particularly well in their respective clubs before, but in this season's Hull City team, they are the players who have received the most media attention.

Li Ang was not very impressed with Hull City, but he liked the tiger on their team logo because it looked very domineering.

However, the tactics Hull City used at home in this game had nothing to do with domineering.

Because they directly set up a starting formation of 3-5-2 at the beginning.

It seems that they want to defend at home and contain Chelsea's attack with their good defensive strength.

For such a team. The other teams in the top 6 of the Premier League may be more headache, including Manchester City and Arsenal.

But Chelsea likes it very much. Chelsea now is the same as Real Madrid in the previous two seasons. I like to play against this kind of shrinking team.

Because they have too many ways to break the bus, and Hull City's defense is good, it is only compared with other mid-level Premier League teams.

Everton and Arsenal's defenses, which are better than Hull City's, were not penetrated when facing Chelsea?

Therefore, Mourinho did not make any complicated tactics. He directly instructed his players to press forward boldly and launch an attack on Hull City at the beginning!

Li Ang played very comfortably on the offensive end today, because Mourinho directly arranged Matic and Ramirez to play as double defensive midfielders to clean up Li Ang's ass.

Such a midfield defense combination is more than enough to deal with Hull City, and Li Ang does not need to work hard on the defensive end like he does in daily games.

He only needs to go all out on the offensive end today, and continue to put pressure on Hull City's defense line with Hazard and De Bruyne.

With his organization of the attack in Hull City's half, and Ibrahimovic's occasional retreat, Hazard and De Bruyne's offensive on the wing can be said to be unscrupulous.

In addition to the hard attack, the two do not need to be responsible for additional tactical tasks such as organizing containment.

Facing the successive attacks of the main wings of the Belgian national team, how can Hull City's wingers withstand it?

Their strong defense is also strong in the solid defensive force in the middle.

In terms of one-on-one defensive strength, Hull City's two full-backs Figueroa and Muhammadi are definitely at the middle and lower level of the Premier League.

Let alone Hazard, De Bruyne is fully capable of suppressing such opponents with technical dribbling.

The two full-backs of Hull City who can't withstand the pressure one-on-one can only choose to seek help from their teammates.

Under normal circumstances, if the defense of one side is unbalanced, the defensive players in the middle can help to double-team.

But if the defense of the two sides is almost unbalanced at the same time, it will only make the defensive players in the middle embarrassed.

After all, if both sides need defensive support, who can rely on the middle to withstand Chelsea's offensive pressure?

It is impossible to open the central defense line for the sake of side defense, and then let Chelsea attack more easily, right?

This is an unsolvable tactical problem, and the commentator of Sky Sports also constantly praised Li Ang for his intelligence during the game.

This is the wisdom of a core organizing player, knowing where the opponent's weakest defensive part is, and then using reasonable ball distribution to attack the necessary part.

Once the opponent's defense is unbalanced, the offensive opportunities for the team will come continuously.

It seems that what Li Ang did in this game was to create enough ball delivery for Hazard and De Bruyne.

This job seems to be something that anyone can do, but if someone else comes, such as Oscar, he may not be able to do it.

Because he can't do it like Li Ang, saying that he doesn't want to attack the ball, and Oscar himself wants to eat the ball.

If he partners with him, Hazard and De Bruyne would not be able to control almost all of Chelsea's offensive ball in the first half.

Then it is unlikely that Chelsea will be able to pry open Hull City's defensive weaknesses so easily from both sides.

Li Ang's intelligence lies not only in his strong insight, but also in his ability to always think and delegate power based on the overall interests of the team.

This is the most valuable.

Perhaps it is precisely because of this that Mourinho was able to let the club spend a lot of money to directly dig Li Ang.

And he firmly believed that with Li Ang as the core, Chelsea would be able to rebuild successfully!

For this, he could directly sacrifice Oscar, who had already played well in Chelsea.

Now it seems that Mourinho's decision is extremely correct. It's not that Oscar is not good, but that Li Ang is really rare.

Under Chelsea's continuous wing attack in the first half, Hull City's proud central defense line was also constantly disintegrating.

When Livermore retreated and Huddlestone kept running on the two sides to defend their teammates.

Li Ang only used a sudden dribbling forward to penetrate Hull City's defense line with Ibrahimovic!

In the 29th minute of the first half, Ibrahimovic received Li Ang's breakthrough in front of the penalty area and passed the ball horizontally, and passed Hull City's central defender Alex Bruce with his back.

Then he shot directly through the goal guarded by Hull City goalkeeper McGregor!

Chelsea used enough patience to win the opportunity to break the deadlock in the first half of the game.

After scoring this goal, facing Hull City, which had to find ways on the offensive end, Chelsea had already won 90% of the game.

Hull City is not good at attacking, while Chelsea is too good at defending.

So when Mourinho shamelessly put up a defensive counterattack against Hull City, the Premier League commentators of various countries also smiled and shook their heads.

The final score of this game was 2-0.

Chelsea defeated Hull City economically and got their first Premier League victory since the beginning of 2014 in the most energy-saving way for players.

After the early game of the 21st round of the Premier League between Chelsea and Hull City, the rest of the Premier League powerhouses appeared in the subsequent game period.

Tottenham, Manchester United and Manchester City all won the game with a score of 2-0.

The next day, Liverpool and Arsenal also defeated their respective opponents away from home.

After this round of games, the top six of the Premier League remained unchanged. The giants all won the games, and only the mid- and lower-level Premier League teams suffered.

Before the war in this round of the league was over, Li Ang had already boarded a plane from London to Zurich, Switzerland with Mourinho and Ibrahimovic.

On the evening of January 13, 2014, the FIFA 2013 Awards Ceremony was held grandly at the Zurich Opera House.

After half a year, Li Ang reunited with his former teammates from Real Madrid.

After a big hug with Brother Long, Li Ang smiled and hugged and greeted Ronaldo, Ramos, Casillas and others one by one.

Of course, Li Ang also had many old acquaintances at the scene, such as Lahm, Neymar, Xavi, and of course Messi, who had not been seen for a long time.

"How have you been lately, Leo? It's been a long time since we last met!"

After hugging Messi, Li Ang squeezed into a group of Barcelona players and chatted with Messi, Neymar and others with a smile.

Facing Li Ang, who is no longer a Real Madrid player, Messi felt much more comfortable and even asked Li Ang jokingly:

Why didn't you consider going to Barcelona to play with him last summer?

"Of course it's because it's more interesting to be your opponent than your teammate!"

This is what Li Ang really thought in his heart.

But looking at Neymar who was close at hand, Li Ang finally used his 100% "Madridist" to fool the topic.

"Also, Cristiano and the others are my beloved relatives and friends, brothers and sisters, how could I abandon them and join Barcelona!"

When Li Ang said this, his face was completely "I am very loyal".

So amid the boos from Xavi and Neymar and others, Li Ang was quickly jokingly pushed out of the Barcelona gang by several people.

In the end, the three Chelsea masters and apprentices sat together with the Real Madrid gang.

At the awards ceremony that night, the biggest gainers were naturally their temporary group.

Mourinho was elected FIFA's best men's football coach for two consecutive years.

Ronaldo won the FIFA Ballon d'Or again and successfully defended the title.

Last season, Mourinho's Real Madrid had as many as six main players selected for the best team of the year!

Casillas, Pepe, Ramos, Xabi Alonso, Leon, and Ronaldo!

The remaining five players in the best team are Lahm from Bayern Munich, Alves, Xavi, Messi from Barcelona, ​​and Ibrahimovic who is now gathered at Chelsea with Leon.

In the specific ranking of the Ballon d'Or announced tonight, Leon and Ibrahimovic both entered the top ten of the Ballon d'Or list!

Among them, Leon ranked sixth in the Ballon d'Or, and Ibrahimovic ranked fourth. Chelsea also had a great harvest tonight.

Head coach Mourinho won FIFA's Best Men's Football Coach award, and two players were selected in the top ten of the Ballon d'Or.

However, Mendes kept complaining after the award ceremony that night, because Leon was just a little short of Iniesta's votes to enter the top five of the Ballon d'Or.

Although this was just a gimmick, it still greatly improved Leon's commercial value.

Leon even comforted Mendes in the end.

"Jorge, if I achieve double 20s this season and can also win a Premier League title and a League Cup, where do you think I will rank in the Ballon d'Or next year?"

Mendes' eyes lit up when he heard what Li Ang said, and he replied without hesitation:

"Top three! You will definitely be in the top three by then. Last season, you suffered a little loss in terms of personal data. Otherwise, I'll tell you the truth.

You can surpass Ibrahimovic, and you may even pull Ribery to enter the top three of the Ballon d'Or directly!

Look at your age, and then look at your honors. Everything is enough, except for the data and further improvement of fame!"

Li Ang smiled and put his arm around Mendes' shoulders.

"Then you should increase the publicity in the future and help me make up for this defect!

Jorge, I will definitely win at least two championship trophies this summer!"

Mendes was very happy to see Li Ang so confident.

Li Ang looked at the dome of the Zurich Opera House, and his heart was very hot.

After witnessing Ronaldo win the Ballon d'Or again this year, the restlessness in his heart has completely disappeared.

Because he has taken an important step in his career.

Everything is going smoothly.

And he also believes that the arrival of his most glorious moment will not be too far away...