Zeng Zheng was deeply moved by Ladd's narration.

Although it has not changed Chinese football, it has not brought any results to Chinese football.

But aren’t his efforts for Chinese football worth mentioning? Isn’t the temperament and spirit he showed worth remembering?

Ladd said to Zeng Zheng: "Football is just my means of livelihood; philosophy is my interest."

He also told Zeng Zheng a story.

At a grand celebration in ancient Greece, Aristotle was invited to attend as the most distinguished guest.

The people were brightly dressed, and after the parades, games, and drinking, they gathered around him and asked eagerly what he thought of it.

Aristotle replied slowly: "There are so many complicated and colorful things in the world - this is what I don't want to see."

Speaking of this, Ladd continued: "But if I happen to participate in the running competition of this celebration, I must insist on running to the finish line, because this is my responsibility."

In fact, it was not his wish to serve as the head coach of the Chinese team again.

Because he missed the best opportunity to cooperate with the national team, and he only received the transfer order when he was already fully focused on cultivating young talents.

This is unfair and inappropriate for Ladd.

But when the task of bamboo shoes arrived, he still resolutely chose to take office.

As a southerner who has been immersed in Chinese culture for many years, he also knows very well that his position as head coach is just an "agent".

Once Bamboo Shoes finds an outstanding head coach candidate, he will be replaced immediately as before.

Therefore, he has been prepared since he took office and once again became a "consultant" before the competition.

But this does not affect his hope that this team will be good and strong.

After spending a few days with Ladd in Maojiawan, Zeng Zheng became more and more admired for this southern old man.

He is humble, elegant and never fights with others.

This is completely opposite to Zeng Zheng, who has a bad temper on the court.

A head coach without power is like a substitute teacher - although he usually wins the respect of the students, when something happens, no one is willing to listen to him.

Now is the time when "something goes wrong".

Although Kirin Beer Cup is fighting on other people's territory.

But the fans and leaders absolutely cannot accept that the "Millennium Dragons" team, to which the whole country has devoted their efforts, is so vulnerable.

After understanding Ladd's character, Zeng Zheng also realized.

Now is not the time to be angry at all.

If we don't give some people a blow in the head as soon as possible, I'm afraid it will be too late.

"Mr. Ladd, what is the national team's schedule like in the past month?"

Ladd thought for a while, then clapped his fingers and said: "Comrade Li Xiaoguang said that our national team should play as many games as possible this year."

"After the Kirin Beer Cup, there will be a friendly match against Yugoslavia at the end of February."

"In early March, the Chinese team was invited to participate in the CONCACAF Gold Cup."

Glancing at Zeng Zheng, Ladd continued, "There will be two friendly matches after returning from the Gold Cup. One is the hk team, and the other is the Olympic team you lead."

Zeng Zheng nodded after hearing this.

Although Xu Fang proposed a friendly match between the National Football Team and the National Olympic Games.

But looking at the national team's schedule, it's obvious that they have guessed Zeng Zheng's intentions and plan to screen, prepare, and temper before playing this game.

But Zeng Zheng was not worried.

Zeng Zheng also watched the Kirin Beer Cup game.

If the original team is given another chance to play, even if they can't win the game, the other team won't be able to win.

To put it bluntly, Ladd actually does not have much power in the national team.

...

Although the outside world did not know about Ladd's trip to Maojiawan, "good news" came one after another.

Zhang Xiaorui, Li Tie, Li Jinyu and Sun Jihai were called back to the team one after another for unknown reasons.

This greatly encouraged the fans.

But in fact, these four people were a little dumbfounded after returning to China.

I originally thought they were the "four overseas students" participating in the National Olympic training camp, but I found out that they were actually the training base of the national football team.

After learning the whole story, Zhang Xiaorui almost gave up and returned to Portugal.

Fortunately, Zeng Zheng called the four of them one by one, and they were able to calm down and train with the team.

After all, for the National Olympic team members, they are the "preparatory group" of the national football team, and it is reasonable to be called upon at any time.

On February 28, the national football team went to Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, to play a friendly match with the Yugoslav national team at the Partizan Stadium.

The only goal of the game was scored by Mijatovic with a header from Mihajlovic's free kick in just 7 minutes.

After the goal was scored, due to concerns about the counterattack speed of the national football team, the Yugoslav team recovered quickly and did not give the national football team a good chance to score.

Throughout the first half, except for Zhang Xiaorui's long shot from 30 meters away that threatened the opponent's goal, there were no other exciting shots.

On the contrary, Yugoslavia frequently launched long passes from the backcourt to hit the two defenders of the national football team, posing a great threat and making it difficult for the national football team to defend themselves.

In the second half, the Yugoslavia team replaced all players except No. 6 Grozdic and No. 9 Milosevic. The national football team also replaced most of the main players and included four returning members of the National Olympic team.

The South team's formation obviously presses forward, but because the substitute players are worse than the main players, the ability of the midfield and backfield to deliver the ball is not as good as in the first half, so the pressure on the national football goal is not greater than in the first half.

It is precisely because of the forward pressure of their formation that they give the national football team's forwards an opportunity.

In the 72nd minute of the second half, Li Jinyu used a sneak attack to win a one-on-one goal, but in the end he failed to grasp it.

In this friendly match, the national team lost 0-1.

At the post-match press conference, Ladd was very happy to be able to lead the team back to his homeland to compete with the Yugoslav national team after so many years. He was also satisfied with the performance of his players and believed that the team was constantly improving.

After watching this game, Zeng Zheng immediately wrote a pertinent evaluation on the forum.

"...Compared with the previous China-Japan match, the performance of the national team, which included several young Olympic players, was obviously much better."

"Specifically, the shadows between the players were much better than the last game."

"In the Sino-Japanese match, our passes were either wide-open shots without bounds, or continuous ultra-short passes within two or three meters. This shows that the connection distance between players is not well controlled."

"In this game, we can see that the national football team can at least stand up in the midfield, and often pass a few good shots to force the opponent to adjust their defense. Of course, this is related to the fact that the Yugoslav team is not aggressive in the midfield, but the players

The improvement in response awareness is also obvious.”

"Secondly, in terms of various statistics, there is not much difference between us and the Yugoslavia team."

"Both sides took 6 shots and corner kicks. In terms of the number of times we scored the opponent's 30-meter area, we were still higher than our opponents. This is because our players did a good job in interception in the midfield."

"But the problem is that although they are not inferior to Yugoslavia in shooting and corner kicks, they do not have as many threatening attacks as their opponents. This fully reflects the gap in the personal abilities of the two teams."

"Facing high-level opponents, we fully exposed our weakness of playing the ball too slowly."

"Many times it is not that there are no opportunities, but when we are adjusting with the ball and looking up, the opportunities are gone."

"So we often see the national football team steal the ball in the midfield and then immediately pass the ball away."

"The opponent's 30-meter area is where we concede the most goals."

"This fully exposes that our players are still not up to par in terms of their ability to launch the final pass, or in other words, the cooperation is not so smooth and we can't find the backbone."

"In addition, it is worth mentioning that when our midfielder pressed forward, in order to keep the overall formation compact, the back line also pressed into the center circle."

"However, since the two central defenders, General Fan and Li Ming, are both good at frontal defense, they are relatively unable to judge the opponent's passing route and side protection in advance, so they are easily beaten behind by the opponent."

"This is also the reason why we had more dangers in the backcourt in this game."

"In this regard, this requires the goalkeeper to expand the scope of his activities and take on the responsibility of sweeper at certain times. But judging from the live game, Jiang Jin is obviously not suitable for this role."

"Of course, the team's overall ability cannot be improved in a short period of time. We should give Ladd time to change the team. At the same time, we should also see that our overall performance in this game is good."

"It should be said that Coach Ladd's answer is quite satisfactory."

As soon as Zeng Zheng posted his post, thousands of replies immediately followed.

"Coach Zeng, don't just watch all the time, do something!"

"Coach Zeng, how can you be a good man if you always talk? When you find a problem, you start to help correct it!"

"Coach Zeng, my heart aches after reading your post. We know the problem but no one takes action to correct it. You can't always watch from behind!"

"Coach Zeng, when will you become the head coach of the national team???"

...

While the fans were anxiously waiting for a response, Zeng Zheng had successfully been "promoted" to the role of national team consultant through this post, and boarded a flight to the United States along with Ladd and the national players.

The CONCACAF Gold Cup is an international football championship held every two years by the CONCACAF Football Confederation.

The predecessor of the Gold Cup is the Central American and Caribbean Championship, which was held as early as 1941. At that time, only Central American and Caribbean island countries participated.
To be continued...