Chapter 455: The undefeated golden body was broken, it was simply unethical
It is true that Ligue 1 teams are not strong in the Champions League, but the performance of the French national team is not weak at all.
Moreover, there are many players from Ligue 1 in the top five leagues. The reason why Ligue 1 ranks last among the top five leagues is actually related to their lack of a leader.
Except for Ligue 1, the other five major leagues have their own top giants, including the BIG4 in the Premier League, Barcelona and Real Madrid in La Liga, the two AC Milan clubs and Juventus in Serie A. Even the most dominant Bundesliga has top giants like Bayern.
With the support of top giants, they can gather popularity and attract more outstanding players to join. With the joining of outstanding players, their strength will be further enhanced, and they will be able to achieve better results in competitions such as the Champions League and the Europa League.
Before Paris Saint-Germain, Ligue 1 lacked such top clubs.
It sounds like a prosperous scene with a hundred flowers blooming, but the strength of the teams in the entire league is generally not strong. No one can stand out from other teams, and no giants can be born.
A league without giants cannot retain outstanding local players.
In order to pursue better treatment and a higher stage, these outstanding players will naturally choose to leave.
This has caused a serious loss of talent in Ligue 1, and Wenger has taken away many young talents from Ligue 1 over the years.
After Wenger, other giants also turned their attention to Ligue 1 teams, and players such as Benzema, Griezmann, Giroud, Nasri and Kante were poached one after another.
The French are obviously aware of this problem, so when Mbappe wants to transfer to Real Madrid in the future, the French government and even the president himself will intervene.
…
After returning to Manchester, Manchester City soon faced the challenge of league rivals Southampton.
The opponent was not strong and ranked in the middle of the league. In addition, more than half of Manchester City's main players did not participate in the previous Champions League games. After recuperating, they easily defeated the opponent 3:1 at home.
After this battle, Manchester City's lead in the standings expanded to 9 points.
Only a third of the season has passed and they have already opened up a gap of nearly 10 points with the second place.
Guardiola's team's performance in the league is really stable.
Everyone is no longer surprised by the fact that Manchester City is at the top of the standings.
After this round of matches, except for a few media that reported the results of Manchester City's match, most of the remaining media focused their spotlight on a dark horse - Ranieri's Leicester City! At the beginning of the season, Leicester City attracted a lot of attention with a wave of consecutive victories and was called a dark horse.
However, it is generally believed that Leicester City, with a relatively thin lineup and lacking big-name stars, will gradually lose its dark horse status and become a mediocre team in the middle of the season after other opponents figure out their characteristics.
Their grades will gradually return to normal range.
However, to everyone's surprise, Ranieri's Leicester City showed amazing resilience. Not only did they not return to mediocrity as everyone predicted, but they became more and more courageous.
Except for the loss to Arsenal in the seventh round of the league, they have achieved a record of 8 wins, 5 draws and 1 loss so far.
In this round of the league, Leicester City defeated the aggressive Manchester United 1:1 at home, consolidating its second place in the league.
Although the gap between them and Manchester City is huge and their hope of winning the Premier League title is slim, as long as they maintain their current form, it is highly likely that the Foxes will get a place in the Champions League next season.
As a team that has been playing in low-level leagues for a long time, they have never made it to the Champions League in their 132 years of existence.
As long as Ranieri can lead his disciples to accomplish this miracle, their names will surely be remembered in the history of Leicester City and forever remembered by Leicester City fans! The Premier League has always been dominated by traditional giants, with several giants taking turns to perform, leaving almost no chance for ordinary teams to perform.
So when Leicester City emerged this season, it immediately attracted a lot of attention from fans and media.
People seem to be a little tired of these top giants monopolizing the league championship and hope to see some spoilers come out to challenge them.
Manchester City played this role a few years ago, but Manchester City is a team invested by wealthy people in the Middle East, and the smell of money makes many fans dislike it.
Compared with Manchester City, Leicester City is a genuine grassroots team, and their current record is not based on lavish spending on buying players.
It is said that last summer, Leicester City's transfer budget was only more than 30 million euros, which was not even as much as the cost of a top team to buy a star.
The reason why they can achieve such outstanding results now is that their three armies are dedicated, the generals are united, and everyone works together and strives hard.
Such grassroots teams are obviously more likely to win the favor of fans.
After all, most people are just ordinary people, and they all hope to see stories about grassroots people counterattacking and becoming rich and handsome.
And this is the scenario that is happening in Leicester City.
Manchester City, Manchester United and other giants are naturally their targets for counterattack.
After Leicester City drew with Manchester United, fans can't wait to watch their game against Manchester City.
The match between the two teams was scheduled for the last game of the first half, which was also the second game of the Christmas Express!
There is still a whole month to the game, but the outside world has already started hyping it up in advance.
On December 2, at the press conference after Manchester City defeated Hull City 4-1 in the League Cup quarter-finals.
The most questions asked by reporters were not about the match between Manchester City and Hull City, but about their match with Leicester City.
"Coach Guardiola, what do you think of Ranieri and the Leicester City team he leads?"
"Ranieri is an excellent coach. He has an extraordinary vision and can always discover some amazing young players!"
Guardiola has been keeping an eye on Ranieri's team. There are several players in Leicester City that he is very optimistic about and even wants to sign.
These people can achieve such results thanks to Ranieri's promotion and training.
Ranieri always has a way to maximize the potential of a bunch of not-so-good cards, especially in building the foundation of the team, he has his own unique understanding and profound skills.
Even Guardiola admits that he is inferior to him in this regard. He has a clear self-awareness that his style of play requires extremely high standards from the players. Any club that is not a giant or even a super giant cannot play this style.
Let him lead a civilian team like Ranieri, to be honest, Guardiola feels that it is difficult for him to even avoid relegation! "Do you think Leicester City will pose a threat to Manchester City?"
Another reporter saw Guardiola's high opinion of Ranieri and asked further questions.
"Of course, any team can pose a threat to Manchester City. After all, we are not invincible!"
"But Manchester City has remained unbeaten so far, whether in the league or cup competitions, or even in the Champions League!"
The reporter scoffed at Guardiola's words, saying that Manchester City has not lost a game on any front this season.
"Haha, you know, anything can happen on the court. Even though we are still undefeated so far, maybe we will lose the next game?"
Guardiola's words were perfunctory. Manchester City's next opponent is Stoke City.
The opponent is currently ranked 14th in the league and doesn’t look like they can beat Manchester City. Who would believe that Manchester City will lose to them?
However, to everyone's surprise, Stoke City actually won! On December 5, the 15th round of the Premier League, the first game between Stoke City and Manchester City.
Stoke City, playing at home, hit the careless Manchester City hard at the beginning of the game. They scored a goal just 2 minutes into the game.
While Manchester City was angry and launched a massive attack, they launched a quick counterattack in the eighth minute and scored another goal, changing the score to 2:0. The Britannia Stadium was boiling instantly. Not to mention Manchester City, even Stoke City fans themselves did not expect their team to have such a dream start!
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This scene is very similar to the previous match between Liverpool and Manchester City, the difference is that Stoke City's head coach is very pragmatic.
After the team took a two-goal lead, they decisively chose to retreat and parked the bus in front of their own goal.
In the next eighty minutes, Manchester City used various methods and launched attack on the opponent's goal again and again, but all failed.
In the end, Manchester City lost 0:2 to Stoke City away and lost their first game of the season.
This result surprised everyone, and many people thought of what Guardiola said in an interview with reporters before.
I didn't expect that the words I said casually at the time would actually come true.
Just when Manchester City suffered their first defeat of the season, in another match, Leicester City beat Swansea 3-0 away, successfully narrowing the gap between them and Manchester City to 6 points.
When the difference between the two teams was 9 points, few people thought that Leicester City could challenge Manchester City for the league title.
However, when Manchester City's unbeaten streak was broken by a mid-to-lower-level team, and Leicester City took the opportunity to narrow the gap between the two teams, the outside world's expectations for Leicester City to win the championship suddenly increased a lot!
"Are we really going to see a dark horse comeback miracle in the Premier League?"
"How many years has it been? How many years has it been since we saw a non-top team win the championship on the stage of the top league?"
"If I remember correctly, the last non-top team to win the Premier League was Ben Black in the 1994-95 season. It has been more than 20 years so far!"
"I really hope Leicester City can beat Manchester City and win the championship. I really don't want to see Manchester City and other top teams monopolizing the league championship!"
“+1 to the above, I also want to see the dark horse’s comeback!”
“Haha, if Leicester City really succeeds, we will be lucky enough to witness the miracle!”
"Let me pour some cold water on you first. Manchester City is very strong. Although other giants have failed this season, Manchester City's foundation still looks very stable. It will be very difficult for Leicester City to make a comeback and win the championship!"
"Yes, after all, the opponent is currently one of the world's top teams. The team is full of stars, and has a top coach and the best players. To beat them, you really need very good luck!"
"That's right. If Leicester City really wants to get past Manchester City, then they must win the game on December 28. That is a crucial battle worth six points. Whoever wins will have the upper hand on the road to winning the championship!"
…
The outside hype did not seem to bring any pressure to Guardiola and Manchester City. On the contrary, the whole team felt relieved because of the loss.
An unbeaten record is good, but they are thinking about maintaining it in every game, which makes playing very tiring.
It is not a good thing for the players if this situation continues, because it will continue to put psychological pressure on them and make them move forward under a heavy burden.
Although losing to Stoke City was somewhat surprising, it had little impact on Manchester City's championship prospects because they still had a big lead.
As long as they don't keep failing, it'll be fine! December 9th, the last game of the Champions League group stage.
Manchester City faces the challenge of Borussia Mönchengladbach at home.
This game means nothing to Manchester City, but for the other three teams, it concerns their fate.
So before the game started, Juventus and Sevilla both sent people to the Etihad Stadium in advance to report the battle situation in real time so that the team could get the latest information at the first time.
Even Morata, who has a close relationship with Lin Quan, called Lin Quan for help, hoping that he could teach Borussia Mönchengladbach a good lesson at home and give them a crushing defeat.
Considering that he did not get a chance to play in the last game, Lin Quan was not sure whether he could play in this game.
So he just said that if he has the opportunity, he will try his best, but everything depends on the coach's arrangement.
The head coach of Borussia Mönchengladbach praised Guardiola highly before the game, saying that he is young and promising, a good coach and has outstanding abilities.
It seems that he wants to let the other team go this way! Manchester City sent out substitutes in the last game, so they should also send out substitutes in this game, right? After all, the Christmas Express of the Premier League is coming soon, and Guardiola probably doesn't want his team to consume too much energy at this time? Although Monchengladbach is not a match for Manchester City's main players, if Manchester City really sends out a team of substitutes, then he feels that they still have a chance.
Borussia Mönchengladbach now has 5 points. If they can win this game, their chances of qualifying will be very great.
However, when seeing Manchester City's starting lineup, the coach of Monchengladbach was dumbfounded! Aguero, Lin Quan, De Bruyne...
Where is the substitute lineup that was promised?
It's totally unethical!
(End of this chapter)