Chapter 2: Peak Messi
"Lin, Lin, do you hear what I said?"
Deulofeu saw that his friend was distracted, so he waved his hand in front of his eyes and asked with a puzzled look on his face.
"Yeah, I'm listening!"
Lin Quan came back to his senses and replied.
Deulofeu looked unconvinced and asked curiously:
"What were you thinking about just now? I called you several times and you didn't respond?"
Seeing his friend's puzzled expression, Lin Quan knew that this guy was getting curious.
So he made up an excuse and said, "I was just wondering how many goals Messi can score this year?"
Messi is Deulofeu's idol. When he heard Lin Quan mention his idol, he immediately became interested.
"I suppose there must be sixty or seventy of them?"
Messi scored a total of 57 goals in the 2010-2011 season, including 53 goals for the club and 4 goals for the national team.
This season's performance is obviously better than last year, so there is a high probability that the total number of goals will exceed that of last year.
Hearing Deulofeu's answer, Lin Quan smiled and shook his head and said, "Gerrard, isn't Messi your idol? Why are you so conservative in your prediction?"
“Conservative?”
Deulofeu looked confused. Is sixty or seventy goals still conservative?
He was very curious, in Lin Quan's opinion, how much is considered unconservative? "Then how many goals do you think Messi can score?"
"I think we can get 80 or even 90 goals!"
Lin Quan answered seriously.
"Don't be ridiculous. Do you know what the world record is?"
When Deulofeu heard Lin Quan's words, his eyes widened and his face was full of disbelief.
You know, the current world record is only 85 goals.
If Messi can score 80 or 90 goals, doesn't that mean he has a chance to break the world record? But how can this world record be broken so easily?
Gerd Muller's record was set in 1972. For 40 years, no one has been able to break it, and no one has even come close to it.
Although Messi is great, Deulofeu couldn't even imagine that Messi could break this record.
"I know, the current world record is 85 goals in a natural year set by German player Gerd Muller in 1972 for Bayern Munich!"
"But in the first five months of this year, up to this game, Messi has scored 46 goals, less than 40 goals away from Gerd Muller's record."
"It's only five months into the year, he still has a lot of time to continue to create goals. Based on his current form, I think this record is not that far-fetched!"
Deulofeu was finally convinced. He counted on his fingers and began to calculate the probability of Messi breaking the world record and stopped disturbing Lin Quan.
Lin Quan withdrew his gaze from Deulofeu and looked back at the field.
After scoring the fourth goal, Messi and other players of the Barcelona team walked towards the coaching bench to find their coach Guardiola.
"Thank you, Pep, these four goals are for you!"
Messi gave Guardiola a hug and spoke to him in his ear.
Guardiola patted Messi's back hard, his eyes were a little red and his nose felt a little sore.
"Thank you too, Leo, you deserve the cheers of 100,000 people at Camp Nou!"
At this moment, every detail of his four-year coaching career at Camp Nou came to his mind one by one, leaving him with mixed emotions.
He is a player from Barcelona's youth training system. He joined Barcelona at the age of 13 and played for Barcelona for a total of 17 years.
It can be said that most of his career was spent at Barcelona.
After retiring and becoming a coach, the first team he coached was Barcelona's B team.
It was precisely because of his outstanding coaching performance in Barcelona B team that he won the favor of Barcelona and was quickly promoted to head coach of the first team.
Subsequently, in his four-year coaching career with the first team, he won 3 league titles, 2 Champions League titles, 2 Copa del Rey titles, 3 Spanish Super Cup titles, 2 European Super Cup titles and 2 Club World Cup titles for Barcelona.
The four years during which he coached Barcelona were called the Dream Three Dynasty by Barcelona fans. It was the best period in Barcelona's history, bar none.
Such brilliant achievements not only made him have a very high status in the hearts of fans, but also won him the respect and love of the players.
There are many good players in their peak period, but there are not many players who meet a good coach, achieve a series of results, and win a lot of championship trophies at the peak of their career.
A number of Barcelona players, including Messi, especially those young players promoted from the youth training team by Guardiola, are very grateful to Guardiola.
Without him sending away big-name players such as Ibrahimovic and Eto'o, these young players might not have had a chance to succeed.
Without his passing and controlling tactics, Barcelona's record would not be so good.
Now, such a meritorious coach who led them to grow and achieve brilliant results is leaving.
Many young players are very nervous, as they worry that they will lose their place in the new coach's tactical system.
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Therefore, when they saw Guardiola's true feelings, they all plucked up the courage to persuade him to stay again:
"Stay, coach, Barcelona needs you!"
"Yeah, stay, boss, we need you too!"
Guardiola felt a little bitter. He had achieved glory at Barcelona and had so many excellent players under his command.
If conditions permit, he actually doesn't want to leave.
However, the club changed its chairman, Laporta left, and his replacement Rosell did not have a good relationship with him.
In particular, Rosell took drastic measures to eliminate dissidents in the name of reform, and even deprived the legendary Cruyff, who had made great contributions to the team, of the title of honorary chairman.
This made Guardiola very disgusted with Rosell, and as the head coach of the club, it would be very difficult for him to do his job well if he could not handle the relationship with the club chairman.
Such signs have already appeared this season, and some players, led by Pique, have gradually begun to slip away from his control.
This made Guardiola feel that this was a warning from Rosell through the players to force him to leave.
So, without negotiating a new club, Guardiola decided to leave Barcelona.
This is to show his attitude that he is not a traitor to Barcelona, but was forced to leave.
Therefore, when faced with the players' requests to stay, he could only smile bitterly and shake his head:
"Stop talking about this, kids. The game isn't over yet. Enjoy the game and the cheers from the fans!"
Perhaps Guardiola's refusal to retain the players had some impact on the players' mood, resulting in Barcelona not only failing to score a goal in the following game, but also committing fouls and receiving cards one after another.
Tello and captain Puyol received yellow cards within five minutes, and Messi also missed a one-on-one opportunity in the 87th minute. If he had scored this goal, he would have been able to perform the miracle of having five players succeed in the game.
If it were any other time, Guardiola would definitely express his dissatisfaction on the sidelines at this time, but this time, he chose to sit on the bench in the coaching seat and calmly drink water without leaving his seat.
It was already 4-0, with only one minute left in the game, and four minutes including injury time. There was no way the opponent could turn the tables.
As long as the players don't make low-level mistakes and get red cards, nothing else matters.
But it doesn't really matter even if they get a red card, because Barcelona missed the league title early this season, and they were 7 points behind Real Madrid in the standings. The win or loss of the last game would not affect the result at all.
For Barcelona, it is enough to just play casually in such a game without any desire or ambition.
Four minutes later, the referee blew the whistle to end the game.
Thanks to Messi's four goals, Barcelona defeated city rivals Espanyol 4-0 at home, ending all home games in La Liga this season.
(End of this chapter)