The Era of Emerald

The game has been going on for 20 minutes. Although the players of Milan and Fiorentina are looking for opportunities to score goals and are constantly trying, they have not been able to break through the opponent's goal.

Compared with the Fiorentina players, the Milan players were obviously out of shape except for the first few minutes of good kicks, except for Desailly, Panucci, Rossi and Marco Simeone who did not participate in the World Cup. He played fairly normally, and even the veteran captain Baresi, who was usually the most stable, made a few pass errors that shouldn't be there.

If it weren't for Rossi's outstanding performance, high block and low block, I am afraid that Milan would have been scored by the Florentine 5 minutes ago.

Standing on the sidelines, Capello looked at the Milan players who seemed to be full of energy on the court, but in fact they were strong on the outside and capable in the middle, and frowned. He did not expect that this time the World Cup in the United States would have such a profound impact on the Milan players.

At the beginning of the summer training camp, Capello thought that the crux of the team's sluggish state was that many players' physical reserves were seriously insufficient, and that these players gradually weakened their desire for honor after winning a series of laurels. ...

For these thorny issues, Capello, who is proud and extremely confident, did his best to bear all the difficulties he faced for the first time in his coaching career.

Just as the problems he discovered were gradually brought under his control and everything started to go on the right track, Capello was surprised to find that the problems that Milan currently has are far from being as simple as he imagined...

Since the summer training camp, the biggest characteristic of the Milan players in the past month or so is the ups and downs in their performance when playing against their opponents.The "performance" on the field itself is not the focus of a "rational" coach like Capello, but if the ups and downs of a team's "performance" are often inversely proportional to the "competitive state" of the players, it will Can not but arouse Capello's extra attention.

Just imagine, if a team can't win the opponent when it's in a good state, it can inexplicably win when it's in a bad state.Then, even a head coach with a little bit of professionalism cannot be really happy, because this situation has completely escaped the control of the head coach himself-if the outcome of the game can be determined entirely by good luck and If bad luck and these "unnecessary" things are manipulated, what are the head coaches who are hoarse on the training ground and often fidgeting on the sidelines of the game?Wouldn't it be nice to just leave it to luck?

Football is round, but the field is square!As coach Lobanovsky said, anything can happen on the football field, but competitive sports always have its rules to follow. What the head coach has to do is to foresee most of the situations that will happen on the field and Prepare ahead of time.

When Milan beat Inter Milan next door in the warm-up match, they lost to Cremona strangely. When the suspense of the outcome of the game became more and more unpredictable. AC Milan, which has always shown itself as "stable" in recent years, was finally marked as "abnormal" by its head coach Fabio Capello.

Under the double pressure of surprise and anxiety, Capello, whose sense of responsibility exploded, vaguely felt the "unusualness" of Milan players through the "instability" of the team.

By chance, he finally discovered the crux of this "unusual" player, which is a "curse" imposed on many Milan's main players, a weird thing called "World Cup Nightmare".

The World Cup nightmare, Capello, who can't empathize with this kind of torture that is not purely psychological or willful, seems a little powerless to deal with this kind of problem. Even if he exerts some targeted external force, it is nothing more than nothing.Because the so-called "curse" always has a specific target, but to really break this "curse", it still mainly depends on the "inner" strength of the person involved.

As an outsider, Capello is concerned about the "World Cup nightmare" that generally occurs to Milan players representing the Italian national team in the World Cup.At the beginning, there was no clear concept. Capello's understanding of it was completely accidental, thanks to a secret conversation between him and the old captain Baresi.

Due to Capello's majesty in coaching Milan for three years and his own "predecessor" with Baresi (Capello played for Milan from 1976 to 1980) and other reasons, the "secret conversation" between the two sides was decided. seriousness".Capello's sentence "Who do you want to partner with as a central defender?" made Captain Balao instantly feel that the already very serious atmosphere in this room became a little heavier.

As a figure who has already served as the double captain of Milan and the Italian national team, Baresi certainly knows the meaning behind the words of the unsmiling and majestic head coach in front of him.

It's not that he can't make a choice-whether it's the peak match against Barcelona in the European Champions Cup final in May this year; He has fulfilled his duties as a "temporary" central defender very well, but now there are two definite starting central defenders in the team-himself and Billy Costacurta.

Capello asked Baresi like this, which meant that he was very dissatisfied with Costacurta, who made frequent low-level mistakes in the warm-up match, so much so that he had already started to break up the pair, which was hailed by the European media as "the most outstanding pair". The central defender combination".

Baresi is unwilling to take the initiative to "destroy" the golden combination with Costacurta, mainly because of Baresi's trust in the ability of his central defender partner Costacurta, and of course the relationship between Costacurta and himself is indispensable. The title of "Master and Apprentice".

It is precisely because of this consideration that Capello's proposal to "replace Costacurta" to Baresi was firmly "rejected" by Captain Baresi.When Capello asked Baresi why he made this choice, the old captain inevitably mentioned the "World Cup Nightmare" unknown to Capello-existing in all the players who participated in the World Cup. The "World Cup Nightmare" of the Milan players in the final.

Perhaps as a football player, Capello has been away from the green field for too long. The traces of time made Capello suddenly discover that he is unfamiliar with certain new things.Baresi's narration made him have to re-perceive the world behind the players hiding on the green field.

The U.S. World Cup final that he thought was "familiar" (as a top Italian coach, watching all the classic game videos is their most basic homework), it turned out that it left such a deep impression on the hearts of Italian players. Psychological shadow", this is not a simple "fate" of "penalty must lose" that has continued since the 1990 World Cup in Italy; nor is it a "point" that only happened to a few people such as Massaro and Baresi. Ball fear" (after that final, many Milan players who participated in the World Cup final refused to take a penalty kick), every detail of the final match at the Rose Bowl Stadium became unforgettable for the Azzurri players like a spell. The lingering haze.

The terrible thing about "The Curse" is not that it is unbearable to look back on everything, but the kind of details that penetrate the bones, and are constantly infused with the "imprint" of the previous acquaintance in the new game, and sometimes, For a player with such a "nightmare mark", even a one-second "short circuit" on the field is very fatal, and it will be enough to ruthlessly take away a team's supposed victory.

Capello is lucky, as the head coach, he can allow the old captain Baresi to "confess" to himself without reservation; he is also unfortunate, because he, also the head coach, will soon be in Milan The San Siro Stadium, witnessed Costacurta being possessed by this "World Cup Nightmare"...