Chapter 124 Maradona's left foot, Klose's head

After lunch, the players stayed in the lounge.

In a little while, the draw for the UEFA round of 16 knockout matches will begin at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland. For Sporting Lisbon, this will be another random gamble that will determine its fate.

In fact, the League Cup is not popular with teams from the four major leagues.

The league itself is stressful and the competition is fierce. Playing an additional cup competition and fighting on two fronts will invisibly create greater competition pressure for the team. It is not something that every team can handle.

More importantly, and also the most crucial factor, is that there is no benefit in playing well in the League Cup.

There is little prize money and many competitions. Who would like to participate in such a competition?

Especially for those teams with many superstars, why bother playing hard in the League Cup but earning less than enough money to pay the players appearance fees and match bonuses?

As a result, teams from the four major leagues, especially the top teams, don't like the League Cup at all.

This makes the League Cup a bit like a fight between weak teams.

Of course, this is also relative to the Champions League.

In this case, teams from second-tier leagues such as the Portuguese Super League, French Ligue 1, Turkish Ligue 1, and the Dutch Eredivisie, as well as some teams in the middle and lower reaches of the four major leagues that are willing to play in the UEFA Cup, can easily stand out in this cup competition, and the strong teams are simply unwilling to try their best.

For example, the third knockout round of the UEFA Cup, which is the round of 32.

As per convention, the round of 32 knockout matches is composed of the 24 winners of the second round of knockout matches, plus the eight third-placed teams from the first stage of the Champions League group stage, including teams such as Bundesliga Schalke 04, Ligue 1 champions Lyon, Ligue 1 powerhouse Auxerre, Ukrainian powerhouse Dynamo Kyiv, and Premier League Liverpool.

But after the third round of knockout matches, Schalke 04, Dynamo Kyiv and Lyon were all eliminated, and basically lost to teams that were weaker than them. For example, Lyon lost to Denizlispor of Turkey with a total score of 0-1, and Schalke 04 lost 1-1 away and 1-4 at home to Krakow of Poland.

This situation where strong teams don't care at all has led to the fact that the teams that have entered the round of 16 are generally of similar strength.

That is roughly in the middle of the four major leagues, with only two strong teams like Lazio and Liverpool.

Under such circumstances, top teams in second-tier leagues such as Sporting Lisbon and Porto also have the opportunity to compete for the championship. If they pay a little more attention, it may not be impossible for them to go further.

This is also the reason why Sporting Lisbon attaches great importance to the draw.

Getting a good draw is very important, whether it is the League Cup or the Champions League.

…

Of course, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe also attach great importance to drawing lots.

But before waiting for the live draw to begin, he wandered around the system store on the Road to King of Football.

Since the beginning of this season, he has continued to work hard and participated in more games. Not only has he maxed out the potential values ​​of various attributes of his player level, his strength has basically been trained to over 60, and his advantageous attributes such as speed have exceeded 80.

According to Su Dong's guess, his player level is equivalent to a regional-level star, and he is considered to be somewhat famous.

But now, his strength is only upper-middle among players of this level, and is far from being top-notch.

Su Dong discovered that the higher the level, the more difficult it would be to upgrade in the future.

It is not just as simple as consuming the King of Football points, what is more important is the improvement of strength.

But strength can only be improved through training and competition, which undoubtedly increases the difficulty.

The higher the intensity of the game, the faster your strength will improve.

Therefore, if we can play in the Champions League, our strength will definitely increase the fastest.

If all else fails, the UEFA Cup is barely acceptable, but the Portuguese Super League is relatively slow.

Improving strength requires a long process, but star ability cards can improve Su Dong's competitiveness in a short period of time.

Before the season, Su Dong exchanged a star ability card and got Vieri's [Indestructible], but he still had another star ability card on hand and had not figured out what to exchange it for.

Although the outside world's evaluation of Su Dong is comprehensive, in fact, Su Dong himself knows that he still has many shortcomings.

For example, his left foot, apart from one cross, made almost no contribution in half a season.

As the game progresses, more and more teams will begin to realize Su Dong's characteristics. They will try every means to restrict Su Dong in a targeted manner. If you can only use your right foot, you will undoubtedly be at a disadvantage.

In Su Dong’s shopping cart was a legendary football star’s left foot ability card, Maradona’s [God’s Left Foot].

This card cannot allow Su Dong to directly possess Maradona's magical left foot, because Su Dong's current strength has not reached that level, but it can allow Su Dong to possess Maradona's left foot usage skills and awareness.

After becoming familiar with many ability cards, Su Dong believed that these alone were enough to transform his left foot.

Especially considering that after more than a year of hard training, Su Dong's left foot ability has been trained to 13 points.

In addition to his left foot, Su Dong felt that he had another ability that was slightly lacking, which was the ability to judge where the ball would land.

How to say it?

Romario's "Wolf in the Penalty Zone" has greatly improved his sense of catching opportunities and his insight into the situation. To put it simply, it improves his ability to run without the ball.

But the problem is that he was not accurate in predicting where the ball would land.

Even though he scored some headers, he actually missed more headers.

Su Dong believes that if he can improve his prediction of where the football will land, with his physique and positioning ability, his header attack will undergo a transformation and may even become an offensive weapon that is no less powerful than his right foot.

In his shopping cart, there is also a star player's heading ability card, German striker Klose's [Aerial Overlord].

This is a star ability card that was newly launched after the Korea-Japan World Cup. At first, Su Dong preferred Bierhoff or the Golden Bomber Klinsmann, but after the World Cup, the system was updated and new cards were launched, which attracted Su Dong's attention.

In this summer's World Cup in Korea and Japan, Klose scored five goals, all of which came from headers, including a header hat trick when he slaughtered Saudi Arabia in the World Cup.

What's even more frightening is that the German center forward is only 1.84 meters tall and weighs only 81 kilograms. He doesn't look like a macho man like Vieri or Adriano. The reason why he can often score headers is because of his accurate prediction of the landing point.

Su Dong has every reason to believe that Klose can score so many headers with his height. If he has the ability to predict the landing point with his own body and running position, how sharp will his header attack be? This is also the most entangled point for Su Dong at the moment.

His left foot is something he needs to improve on, and heading is something he is reluctant to give up.

So which one should I go with, the left foot first or the header first? …

"Su, the drawing of lots has begun."

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Just when Su Dong was struggling, Ronnie patted him gently.

When Su Dong opened his eyes, he saw that the live broadcast of the UEFA Cup round of 16 knockout draw had begun on TV.

Sixteen small balls were placed in a large glass jar. The guest who drew lots randomly drew the balls and took out the names of the teams inside. The two of them competed against each other, and the one who drew first would play at home first.

Even though it's just the League Cup, any team that can make it to the round of 16 is not weak.

Although teams like Liverpool and Lazio are strong, teams like Malaga, Anderlecht, Stuttgart are also good, and even teams like Porto, Sporting Lisbon, Anderlecht are also good.

From the perspective of Sporting Lisbon, the team they least want to face, apart from Liverpool and Lazio, which are obviously stronger teams, is Turkey's Besiktas.

The biggest headache for this team from Istanbul is playing away games.

The flight is more than 3,000 kilometers, which is farther than flying to Greece. It has to change planes in the middle, so the journey takes a total of more than ten hours.

Therefore, whether in the Champions League or the UEFA Cup, playing away games in Türkiye is a nightmare.

Sporting Lisbon has experienced the trip to Greece and knows how difficult it is to play away games, so they naturally don't want to play away games in the Middle East again.

Panathinaikos of Greece was drawn first and faced Anderlecht of Belgium.

Auxerre followed closely behind, but the French side had the misfortune of running into Liverpool.

Houllier's team is very strong and no one wants to face them.

Lazio was drawn into the third group, facing Krakow, which eliminated Schalke 04.

By the time the draw was made, the players of Sporting Lisbon were visibly relieved.

The two teams that we least want to face, the strongest Liverpool and Lazio, have been drawn, so this is great.

For Sporting Lisbon, they are not afraid even if they meet teams like Malaga, Stuttgart, Celtic, etc.

With the strength of the Green Lions, they can definitely compete with these teams.

But soon, as the lots were drawn, everyone's hearts began to tighten again.

The team representing bad luck, Besiktas, has not been drawn yet.

Especially after the five matches between the top ten teams were drawn, among the remaining six teams, apart from Porto from the same country, Besiktas is one of the four opponents that Sporting Lisbon may encounter.

"Is it really that unlucky?" Tonyto said impatiently.

"We just played against Greece and now we are going to the Middle East? If Besiktas is really picked out, I will strongly protest against UEFA for deliberately targeting us and making us run around like this!"

The Spanish midfielder's words were unanimously recognized by everyone.

Who says it's not true? The team travelled a lot to play against Greece.

Are we going to fight Türkiye now?

But things in the world are sometimes like this: the more you fear something, the more likely it is to come.

The first team drawn for the sixth match was Sporting Lisbon.

Almost everyone in the lounge held their breath as they watched the lottery guest reach into the glass jar again, leaving only four small balls in it.

He just reached out his hand and stirred it, randomly grabbed a small ball, opened it, took out the note, then turned it over and faced the live camera.

Beşiktaş! The lounge was first dead silent, and then a burst of curses broke out.

It’s another long-distance away game!

This is definitely going to kill Sporting Lisbon!

(End of this chapter)