Chapter 240: 18th Birthday, Guardiola's Advice [Transition Chapter]

"Happy birthday!"

As soon as he returned to his home in Munich and opened the door, Lin Quan received a surprise.

It was already past midnight in Germany, but Guardiola, Serra and others were waiting for him at the door.

It turns out that he asked me to come here specially to celebrate his birthday!

Lin Quan scratched his head. He was so busy with work that he even forgot about his birthday.

"Lin, stop standing at the door and come in!"

Seeing Lin Quan still standing stupidly at the door, Sera quickly pulled him in.

"Brother, put this on!"

Twelve-year-old Maria stood on tiptoe and put her hat, which still had her warm body temperature, on his head.

"Thank you, Maria!"

Lin Quan was very moved. The moment he stepped into the house, he seemed to have unloaded all the pressure on his body and felt relaxed as if he had returned to a safe haven.

"You're welcome. Are you here alone?"

Maria stood on tiptoe and looked outside, as if looking for someone.

"Don't look, it's just me!"

Lin Quan closed the door, and the howling cold wind outside stopped abruptly. The warm air in the room filled in, giving him an indescribable feeling of comfort.

"Brother, come and make a wish, the candles are already lit!"

Marius sensibly took the things from Lin Quan's hand, put them aside, and pulled him to the table.

There was a cake on the table with the candles already lit. I took a quick look and saw there were exactly 18 candles.

"Um!"

Lin Quan sat down, closed his eyes, and silently made a wish in his heart.

"Brother, I want to eat the cake, the one with the most cream!"

When he opened his eyes, five-year-old Valentina climbed onto his lap and started yelling.

"Okay, okay, here you go. Be careful not to get the cream on yourself!"

Lin Quan lovingly cut a big piece of cake for her. The little girl cheered, quickly kissed Lin Quan's face, and couldn't wait to eat the cake.

By this time, the little girl must be really hungry.

"Go and rest after you finish your cake, it's getting late!"

Sera cut the cake deftly and put portions into the hands of the children one by one, not forgetting to remind them to brush their teeth after eating.

"Haha, I was planning to celebrate your birthday tomorrow, but your brothers and sisters were stubborn and wanted to wait for you. Before you came, Valentina was so sleepy that she was like a chicken pecking at rice. She almost couldn't stand it anymore!"

Guardiola sat opposite Lin Quan with a smile on his face, looking at his children with gentle eyes.

No matter what happened at work, every time he came home and saw these little angels, he felt all the stress disappear.

Guardiola has a harmonious family that many people envy. Serra is a good wife and a good mother, and he himself has never been involved in any scandals outside.

The children are not only smart, but also well-behaved and sensible. The eldest one is very promising. Whenever he is mentioned, Guardiola can't help but raise his head with pride:

Did you see the boy who plays like Messi? That's my son! "Let me guess, you are in such a good mood, maybe it's because we beat Chelsea at home?"

Lin Quan came back in a hurry and went to the airport as soon as the game ended. He didn't have time to find out about the other Champions League matches.

"Is the expression on my face that obvious?"

Guardiola stroked his chin and couldn't help but feel surprised.

"Of course, only defeating Mourinho can make you so happy!"

Just like Messi and Ronaldo, in the football world, people always compare Mourinho and Guardiola.

Both of them are outstanding coaches among the Mesozoic era, and they reached the peak as soon as they debuted. One led Barcelona to create the Dream Three Dynasty.

A man who led a team that is not in the top five leagues to perform a miracle and win the Champions League!

Coupled with the grievances between the two, the media always likes to hype them together.

This reached its peak after Mourinho joined Real Madrid.

Speaking of which, in addition to Rosell's relationship, there is another big reason why Guardiola left Barcelona, ​​and that is Mourinho.

In the 2011-2012 season, Mourinho's Real Madrid reversed its previous decline in the league and slowly began to gain an advantage over Barcelona.

No matter how the outside world criticizes Mourinho's football for being full of utilitarianism, for Guardiola, he felt very frustrated that the passing and controlling tactics he had painstakingly studied were seen through and restricted by the opponent.

So, after leaving Barcelona, ​​Guardiola has been studying how to improve his passing tactics to deal with Mourinho's defensive counterattacks.

After two encounters in the European Super Cup in the past year and this time in the Champions League, Guardiola's team won a complete victory.

Guardiola was delighted to have won against Mourinho, especially as Bayern were not at their best.

"What's the score?"

Lin Quan took out his mobile phone curiously and searched the results online while asking.

"3:0!"

While hearing Guardiola's answer, he also saw the score on the Internet.

This score surprised Lin Quan. Chelsea was not a weak team and was always known for its strong defensive capabilities.

How could such a defensive team be beaten 3:0 by Bayern? Lin Quan curiously found the highlights of the game and watched them. In this game, Bayern's formation was very strange. Guardiola played a 3331 formation.

He changed Javi Martinez from defensive midfielder to center back, and changed the center back to full back.

In this way, when Martinez leaves the defense line, his teammates on the wing can fill in and keep the defense line intact at all times.

When attacking, Hammar's investment meant that Bayern had more people on the attack, more options for passing the ball, and greater difficulty in defending.

The most important thing is that Hama's position is too far back, and the opponent's pressing can hardly threaten him.

When Hammar was advancing with the ball, Bayern's formation was two inverted triangles, which amplified the offensive threat from the flanks.

After receiving a lot of support, Ribery and Robben frequently launched attacks from the flanks and scored two goals in the first half using two quick counterattack opportunities.

However, Chelsea's counterattacks were blocked by Bayern's defense before they could even reach the front of the penalty area because of the presence of Bayern's two diamonds.

And because of the two extra wing midfielders on the flanks, Chelsea's attack was simply blocked.

After replacing Mandzukic in the second half, Guardiola's team scored another goal in positional warfare, breaking Chelsea's goal in two different ways.

The score of 3:0 basically confirmed that Bayern would advance to the quarterfinals.

Chelsea is notoriously weak in attack, and it is too difficult for them to score three goals at home.

What's more, they didn't score a single goal away from home, and they had to prevent the opponent from scoring a goal when they returned to their home court.

If Bayern scored a goal at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea could just walk away.

Guardiola not only defeated Mourinho, but also ended the suspense of the game in the first round.

"You can also use Bayern's tactics. I saw Kroos moved back a little during the game. This is a good choice. In fact, the best result is to let Fernandinho start and withdraw Yaya Toure. After Bayern has Kroos and De Bruyne, they don't need an all-around midfielder like Yaya Toure."

Guardiola pointed out the problems of Manchester City and gave his own opinions.

Lin Quan nodded. Mourinho also talked about this issue. Both top coaches think Fernandinho is very important to Manchester City, but Manchester City has its own team sentiment. Coach Pellegrini has such a bad relationship with Fernandinho that it is impossible to expect him to use Fernandinho in a short time.

"It's not a bad thing that you lost to Chelsea. If a team remains unbeaten, it will cause great psychological pressure on the players."

Guardiola is speaking from experience. Bayern has now created a 45-game unbeaten streak across seasons.

This result is currently the fourth unbeaten record in the top five leagues, very close to Arsenal and Juventus' 49 unbeaten games, and not far from AC Milan's 58 unbeaten games.

With their current momentum in the Bundesliga, the outside world is optimistic that they will challenge the record set by AC Milan 21 years ago.

But as Bayern's head coach, Guardiola knows better than anyone how difficult it is to remain unbeaten.

Every time the unbeaten streak continues, the whole team feels like they have an extra layer of shackles, and the players will pay special attention to the unbeaten results and records.

Because it is so difficult to create these records, they really hope to engrave their names in the history of the five major leagues.

But the more you care about these things, the greater the impact on the court and the more unstable your performance will be.

Fortunately, this is Guardiola's team. Because of the tactical play, his team's record in the league is very stable.

Bayern, the dominant team in the Bundesliga, had a hard time playing when facing an unbeaten record. In a fiercely competitive league like the Premier League, it will be even more difficult for Manchester City, which has no foundation, to continue its unbeaten record.

Therefore, in Guardiola's view, it is definitely a good thing that Manchester City's unbeaten streak has been broken.

Lin Quan basically agrees with this statement. In fact, before the winter break, Manchester City had shown the signs that Guardiola mentioned, and they were lucky enough to continue their unbeaten streak on those occasions thanks to his winning goals.

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Now that the team is no longer burdened by its unbeaten record, they can play more relaxed.

…

Because Manchester City had a game to play in two days, Lin Quan did not stay in Munich for too long.

After a night's rest, he took a flight back to Manchester the next day.

The results of the first leg of the Champions League quarter-finals have now been announced.

Except for Manchester City which defeated its opponent by a large margin, the other three teams in this round of the Premier League semi-finals all failed to win.

Arsenal lost 1:4 to Barcelona at home and basically lost hope of advancing. Wenger's team once again fell in the round of 16.

Mourinho's Chelsea lost 0:3 to Bayern and was almost eliminated like Arsenal.

Manchester United, ranked 7th in the league, was tied by Galatasaray away from home, but they scored an away goal and their promotion situation is better than Chelsea and Arsenal.

Compared with the miserable performance of the four Premier League teams, the performance of La Liga is very outstanding.

Barcelona 4:1 Arsenal, Real Madrid 6:1 Olympiacos, Atletico Madrid 1:0 AC Milan.

All three teams that advanced won, and all of them were away wins.

The bleak performance of the Premier League and the glory of La Liga have reignited the debate over which league is the top one.

If we simply look at the Champions League results in recent years, La Liga is undoubtedly the world's number one league.

No Premier League team made it to the quarterfinals last year, and this year there will be at most two teams in the quarterfinals, and Manchester United may not even make it.

Moreover, given the current form of the two Manchester giants, the outside world is not optimistic about their ability to win the Champions League.

However, the winning odds of these three La Liga teams are all in the top five, with Real Madrid and Barcelona ranking first and third respectively, and Atletico Madrid ranking fifth.

This caused the British media to wail: Who can stand up to defend the glory of the Premier League?

…

Lin Quan has no interest in defending the glory of the Premier League. He only cares about the performance of his own team.

On February 22, Manchester City faced Stoke City at home.

Before the game, Lin Quan showed Pellegrini the video of the match between Bayern and Chelsea, and Pellegrini was thoughtful after watching it.

In this game, he learned from Guardiola's tactical advantages at Bayern and made some adjustments to Manchester City's midfield.

The effect of the adjustment was excellent. Manchester City, playing at home, launched a vigorous offensive and defeated their opponent with a score of 3:0, sweeping away the gloom of the previous three rounds of defeats.

Compared with Manchester City, which is gradually emerging from the haze, Chelsea, which was completely defeated by Bayern in an away game, has begun to be in a slump.

The team that Mourinho can least accept losing to is Guardiola's team, but they were defeated by Guardiola away from home.

This had a significant impact on the madman's mentality, and the tactical arrangement of this game was also very abstract.

Until the 90th minute of the game, the score was still 0:0. If the game ended with this score, Manchester City's advantage would be expanded to 10 points again.

But unfortunately, in the injury time, Chelsea captain Terry stood up and scored a header to break Everton's goal, helping the team to complete the lore!

After defeating the Toffees, Chelsea managed to get 3 points with great difficulty, and the gap between them and Manchester City is still 8 points.

However, Mourinho did not have the time to engage in psychological warfare with Manchester City at this time. He was compared with Guardiola by reporters, which made him very annoyed.

"The Champions League game is not over yet, our team will win at home and advance!"

Mourinho will certainly not give up easily. He still insists that Chelsea can complete a stunning reversal.

However, the reporters were not optimistic about them. In the history of the Champions League, there was only one team that came back from three goals behind, and that was Super La Coruña. Of course, the match in which Milan opened champagne at halftime did not count, because Liverpool reversed them in just halftime...

Therefore, the outside world generally believes that Mourinho is just being stubborn! As for the fact that the team is about to be eliminated in the round of 16, Chelsea's owner Abramovich is also very angry.

Before inviting Mourinho back, the first person he contacted was actually Guardiola.

It was only after Guardiola rejected him that he had to find Mourinho.

Now Mourinho has been defeated by Guardiola again, which has further deepened Abramovich's impression that Mourinho is not as good as Guardiola.

In addition, Mourinho has always wanted to be Chelsea's football manager and take charge of all the power of Chelsea.

This made Abramovich already dissatisfied with him, and now he couldn't stand Mourinho anymore! Fortunately, Mourinho still has some opportunities, as the next game between Manchester City and Manchester United will be the Manchester derby.

In such a strong confrontation, as long as Manchester United can stop Manchester City at home, Chelsea will have the opportunity to narrow the score between the two teams.

As long as the points difference is reduced to 5 points, the chances of Chelsea winning the championship will be greatly increased! Chelsea has not won the championship for four years. If they can win the Premier League, then even if they are eliminated in the Champions League, Mourinho feels that he has completed his mission.

Not only Chelsea fans are paying close attention to the Manchester City derby, the entire Premier League is paying attention to this game.

For Manchester United, if they lose this game, their points will further slip to eighth place, and the points gap with the European war zone will widen to more than 11 points.

There are 10 games left in the league, and it will be too difficult to catch up with 11 points.

If Manchester United loses hope of qualifying for the Champions League, it will face the embarrassing situation of missing out on the Champions League for the first time in 18 years.

After losing the exposure of the Champions League, their commercial income and match bonuses will decrease, and Manchester United will then have to cut the players' wages.

Lowering the players' salaries and missing out on the Champions League will greatly weaken Manchester United's appeal to outstanding players and may even lead to dissatisfaction and departure of existing players.

This will undoubtedly seriously damage Manchester United's strength and put them into a death spiral!

It can be said that Manchester United is standing on the edge of a cliff, with no return possible.

And all this can be attributed to Moyes' poor leadership.

The fortune that Sir Alex Ferguson gave him was ruined by him in just one season.

This made the Red Devils fans very disappointed with Moyes, and the calls for a coaching change grew louder and louder.

This season, Manchester United has performed very poorly in the strong confrontations in the league. Apart from winning one game against Arsenal, they have no wins against other teams.

If they lose to Manchester City, they will be defeated both home and away by their opponents, and create the worst Manchester derby record since 1970.

It is said that Manchester United's owners, the Grayson family, have reached the limit of their patience with Moyes.

They will be present to supervise the game in person if Moyes fails to defend the Red Devils' dignity at Old Trafford and loses to Manchester City again.

Then Moye is very likely to be fired!

So, for Moyes and his Manchester United, they can't afford to lose this Manchester derby!

At 19:00 on the evening of March 1st, the much-anticipated Manchester derby kicked off at Old Trafford.

(End of this chapter)