God of Green

Even in a two-round knockout match, a three-goal lead is already a huge advantage.

Therefore, Maarten Martens, who scored the third goal, and his teammates celebrated wildly, and the Alkmaar home fans in the stands also applauded and celebrated excitedly for the team's big lead.

Coach Van Gaal and assistant coach Jonker on the sidelines also hugged each other. Jonker hugged Van Gaal and laughed: "Boss, your tactics worked. This goal was too easy to score."

Van Gaal smiled and said: "Yes! With a three-goal lead, the game is much easier now! No matter how the opponent plays next, we will win. Tell the boys to shrink the formation, play defensive counterattacks, and continue to use Jiang Xiaolin to attract the opponent's defensive attention and attack from multiple points."

Junker nodded, ran to the crowd of players celebrating and celebrated together, and then explained Van Gaal's latest tactical instructions, and Jiang Xiaolin and others said they knew.

While Alkmaar was celebrating, the players and coaches of Zenit St. Petersburg were at a loss.

On the one hand, the score of 3-0 stunned them.

Faced with such a score, even the Russians, who call themselves a fighting nation, no longer have much confidence to continue fighting and turning the tables.

On the other hand, what Alkmaar showed in this attack made them feel at a loss.

They didn't know whether the offensive players of Alkmaar, such as Moussa Dembele and Maarten Martens, did not pass the ball to Jiang Xiaolin intentionally or unintentionally.

They also didn't know whether Maarten Martens' shot was his personal decision on the field or the tactical requirement of the head coach Van Gaal.

Not to mention that they were already three goals behind, even if they were not three goals behind, they had lost their direction on how to play the next game.

On the one hand, the fact that they were three goals behind forced them to increase their offensive strength and strive to score goals in order to retain a glimmer of hope for a comeback in the second round.

On the other hand, they had to do their best to prevent Alkmaar's counterattack while attacking.

Otherwise, if Alkmaar scored another goal, they would not even have a slight chance of a comeback in theory.

In the European knockout matches, there were examples of teams that fell behind by three goals in the first round away from home and turned the game around in the second round, but there was no precedent of teams that fell behind by four goals in the first round and still turned the game around in the second round.

Therefore, the players of Zenit St. Petersburg were very confused.

They must attack, otherwise they would die.

But what should they do when defending?

Should they focus on defending Jiang Xiaolin, or should they take into account other players of Alkmaar?

If they focus on defending Jiang Xiaolin, they are afraid that, like just now, Alkmaar will not pass the ball to Jiang Xiaolin at all, and other players will easily score the ball.

As for defending other players of Alkmaar, with Jiang Xiaolin's ability, it is possible that he can break through the defense and score a goal.

Everyone couldn't help but look at the coach on the sidelines.

After falling behind by three goals, the opponent's third goal was neither an assist nor a shot by Jiang Xiaolin. Jiang Xiaolin just ran to the front court and attracted the defense of three players on his side, allowing Alkmaar to score easily.

As a coach, his intuition told him that this might be the opponent's tactical arrangement, which was to use Jiang Xiaolin to attract the attention of his defense, so that other players could get a chance to shoot and score easily.

But he didn't dare to gamble.

Because Jiang Xiaolin's personal ability was too outstanding.

Just looking at the first two goals, as long as the defense against Jiang Xiaolin was slightly relaxed, Jiang Xiaolin was very likely to score or assist, which made it difficult to relax the defense against him.

Helplessly, the head coach could only order a full-scale attack.

As for defense, he could only focus on defending Jiang Xiaolin.

Because Jiang Xiaolin was only one person after all, and there were too many other Alkmaar players.

Since Zenit St. Petersburg was going to attack, how could it have the energy to defend against the counterattack of so many people on the other side?

It would be good enough to focus on curbing the counterattack of Jiang Xiaolin alone.

This was the last struggle of Zenit St. Petersburg.

The players naturally followed the coach's instructions.

After the game resumed, Zenit St. Petersburg, trailing by three goals, really launched a full-scale attack.

In addition to the two central defenders, even the full-backs and defensive midfielders went to the frontcourt to participate in the attack, because the reality of being three goals behind left them with no way out and they could only give it a try.

But Alkmaar had already contracted its formation under Van Gaal's latest tactical instructions, and the dense defense in the backcourt made Zenit St. Petersburg's aggressive attack ineffective.

Even Jiang Xiaolin retreated outside the penalty area to participate in the defense.

He stood at full valueThe interference of the opponent's passing and cutting skills made it difficult for Zenit to shoot from outside the penalty area.

After all, breaking dense defense is a global problem in football, not to mention that they don't have a long-range shooting expert like Jiang Xiaolin, and they have to be interfered by Jiang Xiaolin's full-value positioning skills.

So, after the game resumed, Zenit St. Petersburg bombarded Alkmaar's half for more than 20 minutes, but failed to score a goal, and even the threatening shots that hit the goal frame were few and far between.

On the contrary, as long as Alkmaar counterattacked, it would definitely make Zenit St. Petersburg's defense line a mess, but Alkmaar was a little unlucky and couldn't really turn the counterattack into a goal.

But if there are more counterattacks, you can always score a goal.

Especially in the second half of the game, under the pressure of a big score deficit, Zenit St. Petersburg's players' physical strength reached a critical point after a long period of bombardment. They were exhausted and could not even keep up with Alkmaar's counterattack.

So, it was natural for Alkmaar to score the fourth goal.

In the 76th minute, after Zenit St. Petersburg's frontcourt attack was intercepted by Stein Schars due to a pass error under the pressure of Alkmaar players, forwards Jiang Xiaolin and Hamdaoyi immediately turned around and rushed to the opponent's half and started a counterattack.

Stein Schars, who got the ball, made a two-on-one cooperation with Martens first, passed the Zenit player who was trying to steal the ball, and sent the ball to Jiang Xiaolin's feet.

The two central defenders of Zenit St. Petersburg had originally focused their attention on Jiang Xiaolin. When they saw Stein Schalls pass the ball to Jiang Xiaolin, they naturally gave up on marking Hamdaoyi, another striker, and tried their best to intercept Jiang Xiaolin who was dribbling forward.

As for Hamdaoyi, who was unmarked, the two thought that as long as they stopped, Hamdaoyi would naturally be in an offside position, and it would be useless even if Jiang Xiaolin passed the ball to Hamdaoyi.

As a result, just as the two were thinking this and were about to stop, Jiang Xiaolin suddenly kicked the ball in front of Hamdaoyi.

Hamdaoyi rushed in from the side without stopping, received Jiang Xiaolin's pass and successfully countered the offside, and rushed to the penalty area of ​​Zenit St. Petersburg, creating a chance to meet alone.

The two central defenders, Kanisinahi and Vidicshi, who originally wanted to intercept Jiang Xiaolin, were shocked and wanted to speed up again to chase Hamdaoyi, but it was too late.

They originally wanted to stop and intercept Jiang Xiaolin, but with this change in their center of gravity, they could not catch up with Hamdaoyi who was moving at full speed.

Although Hamdaoyi's shooting skills were not as good as Jiang Xiaolin's, he was the top scorer of Alkmaar before Jiang Xiaolin.

At the beginning of the season, when Jiang Xiaolin was injured and did not return to the team, Alkmaar's main attacking point was Hamdaoyi, who once ranked among the top three scorers in the Eredivisie.

Therefore, although Alkmaar's goals now mainly come from Jiang Xiaolin, it does not mean that Hamdaoyi is completely useless.

Under such a single-handed meeting without any interference, facing the attacking goalkeeper Malafif, Hamdaoyi chose the same common style of play as Jiang Xiaolin, and made a light lob shot outside the penalty area.

Hamdaoyi's lob shot was not wrong.

Not only did goalkeeper Malafev fail to touch the ball when he jumped up to save it, but the ball also went over Malafev's head and fell towards the goal without going above the crossbar, and landed steadily in the goal of Zenit St. Petersburg.

With a "wow...", the entire AFAS Stadium was boiling.

Countless people shouted, yelled, cheered, and applauded in the stands to celebrate Hamdaoyi's goal.

4-0!

In the 76th minute, with Jiang Xiaolin assisting Hamdaoyi's goal, Alkmaar took a 4-0 lead at home.

This basically announced the end of the game, and even ended the outcome of the two rounds of the quarter-finals.

After falling behind by four goals, Zenit St. Petersburg would never be able to turn the tables again!

Let alone the question of whether they could score four goals, even if they could, it would be impossible to stop Alkmaar from scoring counterattack goals.

With Jiang Xiaolin, it will be very easy for Alkmaar to score goals, whether Jiang Xiaolin scores or attracts the opponent's defense and assists teammates to score like just now.

Moreover, there is not much time left in the game.

If Zenit fails to score an away goal and Alkmaar scores a goal in the second round, it will be an away goal worth two. Then Saint Petersburg will win.Zenit St. Petersburg is even more dead.

No matter how you look at it, when Jiang Xiaolin assisted Hamdaoyi to score the fourth goal of Alkmaar, both the first and second rounds of the game are basically over.

The defending champion Zenit St. Petersburg is definitely going to be eliminated by Alkmaar.

Looking at the Alkmaar players running wildly on the field to celebrate, the players and fans of Zenit St. Petersburg lowered their heads as a fighting nation.

Even with their wildness, they had to admit that they lost this game.

Even the second round of the game is no longer a fantasy.

The situation of falling behind by four goals cannot be reversed even by gods.

The defending champion Zenit St. Petersburg's road to defending the title this season was completely ended when Jiang Xiaolin assisted Hamdaoyi to score the fourth goal of Alkmaar.

Sure enough, after Jiang Xiaolin and others celebrated the goal and the game resumed, although Zenit St. Petersburg was still attacking, its determination and strength of attack suddenly decreased a lot.

Obviously, a large part of the players had lost their determination and confidence to continue the game, and they just continued the game by inertia.

It is conceivable what effect such an attack would have?

Not only the offense, but Zenit's defense also began to be chaotic.

Because of the big score lag, they lost confidence in the game and didn't know how to defend.

So, in the 85th minute, when Zenit midfielder Schenlov's aimless shot outside the penalty area was blocked, Alkmaar took advantage of the situation and launched a fast break.

This counterattack was Jiang Xiaolin again.

Although the fourth goal was scored by Jiang Xiaolin with Hamdaoyi's assist, because they had lost confidence in the game, Zenit's head coach did not make any tactical adjustments, and the players on the court could only continue the game by inertia.

In this counterattack, they habitually focused their defensive attention on Jiang Xiaolin.

At most, they paid attention to the defense of Hamdaoyi.

This was the best they could do.

Because it was a counterattack after their attack failed, the back line was short of manpower.

On the other hand, Zenit, which was behind by a large score, also attacked for a long time in the second half, and the players in the frontcourt could not return to defense even if they wanted to.

Moreover, what if they returned?

With such a big score gap, could they still turn the tables?

Therefore, there were actually a few players in the midfield who could barely return to defense, but they stopped chasing after seeing Jiang Xiaolin dribbling across the center line: they gave up directly.

In the end, two central defenders intercepted Jiang Xiaolin and one full-back intercepted Hamdaoyi, but the wing forward Moussa Dembele who inserted on the other side was unguarded.

So, Jiang Xiaolin used his superb passing skills to send the ball to the front of Dembele's running position without any pressure at the moment when Moussa Dembele was about to be offside.

Dembele rushed at full speed and instantly surpassed the back line, successfully countered the offside, and received the pass from Jiang Xiaolin and rushed to the penalty area of ​​Zenit.

The central defender Kanisinahi who was defending Jiang Xiaolin turned and chased Dembele with the ball, but he could not catch up.

Dembele dribbled into the penalty area and faced the attacking goalkeeper Malafev and easily shot a far corner.

The ball went into the goal of Zenit St. Petersburg along the post.

Jiang Xiaolin performed an assist hat trick.

In the first round of the UEFA Cup quarter-finals, Alkmaar defeated the defending champion Zenit St. Petersburg with an amazing score of 5-0, completely ending the suspense of the second round.

In the second round, even if Alkmaar sent Jiang Xiaolin to lead a group of substitutes to play away, Zenit St. Petersburg would not be able to turn the tables again.

100% death sentence.