The Era of Emerald

At six o'clock in the evening on August 1997, 8, players from Fiorentina and Barcelona appeared on the turf of the Louis II Stadium on time, quietly waiting for the referee to blow the whistle for the opening.

In Barcelona, ​​although due to the intervention of Zhuang Mingge, a traveler, Ronaldo did not join Barcelona last season as in history, which made the attack power of this Spanish giants discounted to a certain extent, but Barcelona still relied on the veteran Stowe last season. Ichikov's brave state and old Robson's strategizing defeated Paris Saint-Germain in the final and won a European Cup Winners' Cup.

Therefore, after Van Gaal took charge of Barcelona's coach this summer, the Dutch coach immediately made drastic reforms to various problems in the team!

The first strike is naturally the striker line supported by Stoichkov alone. After all, Barcelona will face a third-line battle this season, and it is obviously not enough to have only one reliable striker.

At Van Gaal's request, Brazilian striker Rivaldo, who scored 41 goals in 21 games for Deportivo last season, came to Barcelona for $1800 million.Van Gaal believes that the Brazilian's excellent scoring ability can greatly enhance the team's offensive power; moreover, Rivaldo, who is also excellent in technology and overall situation, can also help Guardiola and Figo take part of the team's organization Work.

At the same time, Van Gaal did not forget to support his Dutch fellows: Haisp transferred from the Roda jc club. The Dutch goalkeeper replaced the Portuguese Baia and became Barcelona's main goalkeeper in the new season; The frustrated Bogarde and Reziger of the Rossoneri left the city of Milan under the call of their mentors and came to the capital of Catalonia with a package price of 400 million US dollars.

Also leaving with the two Dutchmen is Christopher Dugarry. The French center hopes to get more game opportunities to impress the national team coach Jacquet, so as to get a ticket to participate in next year's World Cup in France.

After spending huge sums of money to introduce so many players, Van Gaal naturally needs to use a championship trophy to show his coaching ability and the results of the team's transformation to the club's senior management, and this time the European Super Cup is naturally a good stage.

For the Fiorentina team, Van Gaal can be said to be quite familiar. After all, after the arrival of the Bosman era, it is this Serie A team that has dealt with Ajax the most.Not to mention the frequent trades and in-depth cooperation between the two teams in terms of players, just the fact that Ajax lost to each other in the Champions League final last year is enough for the Dutch coach to remember Fiorentina for a lifetime.

No matter from which angle you look at it, in this European Super Cup final, Van Gaal must do his best to win a victory: if he wins, then he can not only further establish his prestige in Barcelona, ​​but also report a year ago. Lost, although the club, including the fans, will not say much about it, but they will inevitably have some murmurs about the Dutch coach in their hearts.

Therefore, in this game, Van Gaal sent the strongest lineup in his mind: the starting goalkeeper is Hesper, and the four defenders from left to right are Sergi Baljuan, Miguel Nadal, Fernando Cotto and Ferrer, considering that Bogard and Reziger have not played many official games in the past year, and it is still unknown to what extent their state will recover. Naturally, Van Gaal will not let them go as soon as they come up To deal with opponents of Florence's level.

In the midfield, Guardiola dragged the organization back, Celades was on the side to protect, the all-around fighter Luis Enrique served as the front midfielder, and the skilled Rivaldo and Luis Figo were separated on the left and right wings.

On the forward line, the rookie Sonny Anderson is the single arrow. Last season, Stoichkov, the best shooter in the Barcelona team, offended Van Gaal's authority because of some crutches in the summer training camp. The result was the Bulgarian. He was rushed into the stands by the Dutchman, who was planning to make an example of others, and he didn't even make the 18-man roster.

From the formation point of view, Barcelona's starting lineup should be called 4231. Rivaldo and Figo on the two wings can be pushed to the forward line to participate in the attack, or they can retreat to share the team's defensive pressure. Enrique is an all-rounder in the frontcourt. He can constantly change positions and attack during the game, making the opponent's defensive players tired of coping.

Such a gorgeous starting lineup, plus Amor, Reziger, Bogarde, De La Pena, Juan Pizzi on the bench... From the perspective of book strength alone, Barcelona is not Not lost to Florence.

Therefore, before the start of the game, many pro-Barcelona media were cheering for Barcelona, ​​trying to create more pressure on Fiorentina.

However, is this really the case?

Indeed, for many teams, Barcelona, ​​one of the La Liga duo, is a behemoth that is very difficult to deal with.However, for the Fiorentina players, they don't think that the opponent Barcelona in this final is such a difficult role!

If it is a psychological advantage, then almost all the Serie A teams participating in the European war have a huge psychological advantage when facing Spanish clubs-since Barcelona was in its heyday three years ago without Baresi and Costacu After the towering AC Milan abused four to zero, the Spanish team often seemed a little lacking in confidence when facing the Italians. The performance of the Madrid duo in the Champions League in the past two years (Real Madrid was eliminated in the group stage, Atletico Madrid A clean quarter-final defeat by Juventus) suffices to prove it.

Therefore, in the face of the psychological warfare provoked by the Barcelona people, the Fiorentina players are a little dismissive of these small tricks of the other side: Now this Barcelona is not as good as the dream team back then, and Fiorentina's strength is better than that at that time. The current AC Milan is much stronger, not to mention that our head coach is Capello who gave you four to zero last time!With so many factors in our favour, should Barcelona really be the ones to worry about? !

Not to mention the overall strength. With Fiorentina's current player configuration, Capello can almost send two sets of starting lineups of similar strength to deal with the European war and the league. Can Barcelona compare?

"Since the Barcelona people are so confident in the strength of their team, let me give them another four to zero!" Before the game started, in the Fiorentina locker room, Capello said to the players, his face The smirk that couldn't be hidden made everyone's heart skip a beat, thinking that their head coach was really slanderous enough, wasn't it just that he made such a fuss before the game?Actually want to send Barcelona a second four to zero!

"Well, boss, if we can do it, we don't mind helping you." When they said these words, the Fiorentina players didn't realize that they were also led by Capello. up.

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