"The kid number 47 is called Foden, right? He looks too young, is he really 18 years old?"
On the bench, several main players of Manchester City were pointing and talking about the young player on the field who had a baby face and looked like a child.
"Almost eighteen years old, I heard it was May of 2000, so he will be eighteen in a few months."
"This kid has good footwork and can occasionally make some eye-catching performances, but his physical confrontation is a bit lacking. However, his attitude is relatively positive and he runs very actively."
At the age of 18, Foden was not as good as he would be five or six years later.
Now he is still an immature rookie who needs to continue to hone his skills and accumulate more competition experience. Then, he can draw lessons from actual combat, find his shortcomings, identify his strengths, make up for his shortcomings, strengthen his strengths, and thus stand out from the fierce competition.
This cannot be done in a short period of time, especially for a player like him who wants to serve as the team's midfield commander or offensive core, he still has a long way to go.
"Well, what do you think of this kid?"
Lin Quan nudged De Bruyne, who was sitting next to him, with his arm and asked him.
Foden's position on the field is very similar to De Bruyne, but their styles are very different.
Foden's position is more forward, and he plays more like a false nine. He participates in more attacks and has fewer organizational tasks. His role on the field is actually a bit like Lin Quan.
"He's fast, has a strong ability to control the space on the court, and has good off-ball movement. His physical confrontation is a little lacking, but for a player of his age and physique, it's already pretty good."
De Bruyne is still optimistic about Foden. After all, he is a talent valued by the head coach. Those who can catch Guardiola's eyes are definitely not ordinary people.
Lin Quan basically agrees with De Bruyne's point of view. Foden cannot be the core of the organization, he is more like an offensive core.
Therefore, he is most likely to become his substitute in the future, considering that the age difference between the two is not that big, Lin Quan is only four years older than Foden.
Therefore, if Foden, the prince of Manchester City, wants to get promoted, he will probably have to wait for a long time.
…
Guardiola's anger did have an effect. After being scolded, the substitute players on the field immediately started to increase the intensity of their opponents.
In the 51st minute of the second half, after receiving a through ball from Gundogan, B Silva cut into the penalty area and shot from a small angle, making the score 2:1. But the opponent soon scored a goal. In the 71st minute, Foden made a mistake, Basel intercepted the ball and formed a quick counterattack in the frontcourt. Their forward leaned on the Manchester City defender on the penalty area line and knocked the ball back to the wing-back who volleyed the ball into the goal.
The score became 2:2. This time Guardiola did not curse anyone, but directly replaced Foden.
Foden was dejected when he left the field. He knew he had done something wrong, so he was worried and wondered if the coach would be disappointed in him because of his mistake.
"Don't worry, coaches don't usually swear!"
Seeing that Foden was anxious, Lin Quan spoke to comfort him.
"Well, unless you make a huge, huge mistake, and once the coach starts scolding you, he can't stop!"
Aguero on the side added another shot with an expressionless face, and the expression on Foden's face instantly fell.
That's it!
It was as if Foden had already seen the fate that awaited him.
After Foden left the field, the score on the field did not change. At the end of regular time, the score was still 2:2, and the two sides seemed to be shaking hands and making peace.
However, in the second minute of injury time, Laporte, the substitute central defender who had just transferred from Athletic Bilbao during the winter break, jumped high in a header in the penalty area, overpowered the opponent's defender and headed the ball into the goal, scoring his first goal after joining Manchester City.
With this goal, Manchester City finally defeated their opponent 3:2 in a thrilling way.
In this way, they eliminated Basel with a total score of 7:2 and successfully advanced to the quarterfinals.
The next day, as the last knockout match of the Champions League quarter-finals came to an end, the list of teams that had advanced to the quarter-finals was released.
They are Manchester City and Liverpool from the Premier League, and Real Madrid, Barcelona and Sevilla from La Liga.
Juventus and Roma from Serie A, Bayern Munich from the Bundesliga.
Although all five Premier League teams made it to the knockout stage, most of them lost after the first round of knockouts.
Tottenham, whose bench depth was slightly thin, lost 3:4 to Juventus in a tough battle and was unfortunately eliminated.
Chelsea was defeated 1:4 by Barcelona and was eliminated.
As for Manchester United, the draw with Sevilla, which was not very strong, was a good draw for them.
Moreover, they drew with their opponents away from home in the first round, and the situation seemed to be very good.
However, in the second leg at home, Manchester United lost 1:2 to Sevilla, and watched with frustration as their opponents stepped on their corpses and entered the quarterfinals.
In this way, the biggest winner in the quarter-finals is still La Liga.
Their three teams made it to the knockout stage and all advanced to the next round, which is an incredibly high advancement rate.
On the contrary, the final result of the Premier League, which was so powerful, was not satisfactory and somewhat disappointing.
However, after the list of the quarterfinals was released, no one had time to feel sorry for those teams that were eliminated. Everyone was concerned about the next round of matches.
Will UEFA arrange a match like Manchester City vs. Real Madrid?
In many previous Champions League matches, there have been rumors that UEFA was secretly manipulating the match arrangements.
To be honest, many matches between teams are actually scripts arranged in advance by UEFA.
The purpose is to attract attention, get more people involved in discussions, and then watch the Champions League games.
Real Madrid and Manchester City were the opponents in last year's Champions League final. If they were arranged to meet in the quarter-finals this year, it would be a classic battle of revenge.
This kind of strong dialogue that is almost at the level of the Champions League final, coupled with the revenge relationship between the two teams, makes this game full of gimmicks!
Even if you are not a fan of these two teams, it would be hard to refuse to watch such an exciting and exciting match, right? However, to their disappointment, UEFA did not arrange such a scenario.
They seemed to be worried that if the two strongest teams were to meet too early, the excitement of the upcoming semi-finals or even the finals and the fans' expectations would probably be affected.
This is very detrimental to the ratings and commercial value of the competition!
In the end, the quarterfinals matchup was as follows:
Real Madrid drew the Serie A champion Juventus. Real Madrid has a slight advantage in terms of hard power, but Juventus has made progress every year in recent years and is only slightly inferior to Real Madrid. The game is still very suspenseful, and the outside world believes that it is almost a 64-64 situation.
Bundesliga giant Bayern drew the weakest team among the quarterfinals, Sevilla. There should be no suspense in this game, and the outside world is unanimously optimistic that Bayern will advance to the semi-finals.
Barcelona drew the relatively weak Roma, which is considered a very good draw, so the outside world predicts that Barcelona will advance to the semi-finals.
As for Manchester City and Liverpool, a situation occurred that the two teams and even the entire Premier League fans least wanted to see - the two teams were drawn together.
Seeing this result, Liverpool coach Klopp, who came to attend the draw ceremony, couldn't help shaking his head and laughing.
Liverpool just had a tough battle with Manchester City in the league and didn't get any advantage. Now they have to face the opponent in the Champions League. This game is very dangerous for Liverpool.
Liverpool's luck is really bad. Among these eight teams, the one Liverpool least wants to meet is probably Manchester City.
Even letting them play Real Madrid is better than playing Manchester City.
At least Real Madrid has played against them relatively few times and doesn't quite understand their style and strength.
But Manchester City is not only a frequent opponent of theirs in the league, but also a very close neighbor. They know each other well and they have no secrets in front of Manchester City.
When faced with such an opponent, even if you want to use unexpected tactics, it will be difficult to succeed.
Compared to Klopp's wry smile, Guardiola was not in a good mood either.
Liverpool is a tough and stinky team, and they often explode. If they are not careful, they will show momentum and then it will be out of control.
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To be honest, they don't want to meet such an opponent.
However, drawing Liverpool is not entirely bad news. At least for Manchester City, it is very convenient to go to Liverpool and there is no need to travel long distances, which will consume much less physical energy for the players.
There is no situation where you go to an away game early and then are harassed by the home team fans and unable to rest.
After all, Liverpool is only a few dozen kilometers away from Manchester. They can take a bus there before the game starts, and the opposing fans can't make trouble even if they want to.
It's impossible for a large group of Liverpool fans to come to Manchester and cause trouble, right?
Do you really think that Manchester City fans are vegetarians? There is still about a month until the Champions League quarter-finals, and both sides have plenty of time to prepare.
The most important thing for both sides now is to get as many points as possible in the league.
One wants to win the championship ahead of time, and the other wants to maintain its top four position in the league and secure a place in the Champions League next season.
…
On March 13, Manchester City returned to the Premier League and beat Stoke City 2-0 away, extending their winning streak to 7 games.
Liverpool was very unlucky. In the away derby against Manchester United, they lost 1:2 to Manchester United. Not only did they fail to expand their lead over Chelsea, but Chelsea caught up with three points.
Liverpool is now only 4 points ahead of Chelsea, and with 8 rounds left in the league, their situation is quite dangerous.
In the 31st round, Manchester City continued to advance, beating Brighton 3:1 at home and winning eight consecutive games.
Manchester United was blocked by the Hammers away from home and the game ended in a 0:0 draw, which once again widened the gap between the two sides.
After 31 rounds of competition, Manchester City has 29 wins, 2 draws and zero losses, accumulating 89 points.
Manchester United has 20 wins, 6 draws and 5 losses, with only 66 points.
With only seven rounds left in the league, Manchester City's lead has reached 23 points.
This also means that Manchester City has won the championship 7 rounds in advance.
It’s a pity that Manchester United’s game time is later than Manchester City’s, otherwise they would be able to lift the championship trophy at home today.
April 1, Everton Goodison Park.
Everton players stood on both sides of the stadium entrance, lining up to welcome the new Premier League champions Manchester City.
This is a tradition in the Premier League. When a team wins the championship early, the home team needs to line up to welcome the visiting team.
Everton's relationship with Manchester City is neither good nor bad, so when their players were doing this, some of them truly admired Manchester City's feat of winning the championship seven rounds in advance.
Some people are envious and jealous of Manchester City for winning the league title again. After all, it has been more than 30 years since Everton's last league title.
They haven't tasted the taste of championship for more than 30 years, and they are almost going crazy wanting to win the championship.
On the other hand, Manchester City has won four league titles in the past five years, and all they are missing is having the words "Manchester City Exclusive" engraved on the Premier League championship trophy.
It's really a case of drought to death and flood to death! If the behavior of Everton's players is still normal, then the fans in the stands are very disrespectful.
From the moment Manchester City entered the stadium, they kept booing, almost non-stop.
This made the Manchester City players feel angry, and then Everton was in trouble.
Only 20 minutes into the first half, the score was already 0:3, with the home team in front and the away team behind.
Mbappe scored the first goal in the fourth minute, Aguero scored another goal in the seventh minute, and in the seventeenth minute, Lin Quan scored directly from a free kick, extending the score to 3:0. The boos at Goodison Park finally stopped, and the Everton fans in the stands were stunned.
Oh my god, am I dreaming? I seemed to dream that our team was being treated like pigs by the other team, and we were beaten so badly that we had no chance to fight back.
However, this dream was so real that they couldn't help but start to doubt whether it was a dream or reality.
They had no doubt that if they continued to play in this manner, a tragedy would definitely happen today.
The 33-year-old Rooney put his hands on his hips, breathing heavily, and looked at the numbers on the scoreboard with a blank face.
He was a little confused. When he was playing for Manchester United, Manchester City next door was just a small fry.
How did it grow to this point in just a few years?
The world is changing so fast that he can no longer keep up with the pace.
Thinking of this, Rooney suddenly had the idea of retiring.
His body was hollowed out by alcohol and sex, and he was increasingly unable to cope with the intensity of Premier League games.
Instead of continuing to waste time like this, it would be better to be decisive and retire.
Rooney is also a very proud person. After all, he once stood on the top of a mountain.
Seeing how well the players performed, Guardiola was worried that they would consume too much energy in the game, so he urged them to control the pace and reduce consumption.
They still have many tough battles to fight, and since the outcome of this match has already been decided, there is no need to continue wasting time. (End of this chapter)