From Monday, Hoffenheim forgot about the double, their unbeaten record, and the media hype, and they threw themselves into the preparation for the UEFA Cup final.

Although for Hoffenheim even if they lose in the UEFA Cup final, they have never detracted from their greatness this season, they have shocked fans all over the world, but Hoffenheim's general manager Rothouse said well, "We will not be satisfied with the double, if we can be satisfied easily, there will never be a double, we will win all the titles we can get." For Hoffenheim, our goal is to be the best club in the world, with the most modern stadiums, the best training equipment in the world, and the most promising players in the world. ”

In addition to the championship, Hoffenheim also has a knot, in the group stage of the League Cup, they once lost to Zenit 2-4 in St. Petersburg, which was Hoffenheim's first defeat this season, and Hoffenheim's biggest defeat, and Zenit also became the only team Hoffenheim has not beaten this season, this League Cup final is still a revenge battle for Hoffenheim.

But Hoffenheim is very clear up and down that this Zenit team is by no means a team to be messed with, they not only beat Hoffenheim 4:2 at home, but also swept Bayern Munich 4:0 at home, which is by no means an accidental score, which can only show that Zenit's strength is underestimated by the outside world.

Just as the Bundesliga and Serie A have gradually become non-mainstream leagues among the five major leagues, the picturesque Eastern European football is now far from the eyes of fans around the world, and their player strength and team style of play have been shrouded in a veil of mystery, and people know very little about them, and there is not much information.

However, as a team that has played against Zenit once, Hoffenheim is deeply aware of the strength of this team, with abundant physical strength, tacit two-on-one and two-by-two cooperation on the wing, clever straight ball behind him, and lightning-fast assault, all of which make Hoffenheim a little scared when he thinks about it now. It can be said that although the opponent had a certain home advantage at that time, even in Hoffenheim's home game, Hoffenheim did not have any certainty of winning.

Of course, the second encounter was different, and Hoffenheim's knowledge of Zenit St. Petersburg was second only to that of the abused Bayern, and since the elimination of Rangers, almost every member of the team has been thinking about revenge, how to beat the Eastern European Knights with dignity. And Zenit's research against his defeated opponents will certainly not be as serious and careful as Hoffenheim's.

Hoffenheim and Zenit are the two biggest dark horses in this season's UEFA Cup, in fact, Zenit's history is very similar to Hoffenheim's.

Before 2005, the Zenit team was relegated because of lack of funds, and four years later it was promoted to the Russian Premier League, which has always been relegation-based, but the situation was improved in 2005, and the owner of the Russian energy giant Gazprom Dykov funded the buyout of the Zenit team, and Zenit staged the miracle of the ugly duckling into a phoenix, becoming the most wealthy club in the Russian league, and after hiring the Dutch meritorious coach Advocaat in 06, the team won the Russian Premier League championship in one fell swoop.

In addition to the rich owner and talented coach, Zenit, like Hoffenheim, also has their own talented stars, the core of the team 06 Russian footballer Arshavin, he is a winger, a forward and a striker who can do everything, with lightning speed and scalpel-like passing, and is the absolute hero of Zenit's final.

But for Hoffenheim, it is absolutely impossible to put all the energy on defending Arshavin, Zenit is definitely not Arshavin's team alone, just like Hoffenheim is not Li Huan's team alone.

In the front line, although Zenit scored 11 goals Boglebnyak yellow card suspended, but Dani should not be underestimated, in the back, they have the captain of the offensive and defensive spiritual leader Timoshchuk, in Rangnick's opinion, Tymoshchuk is more important to Zenit than Arshavin, without Arshavin, Zenit cannot win, but without Timoshchuk, Zenit will face chaos and defeat. Zenit's head coach Advocaat shares the same sentiment as Rangnick, who once said, "Timoshchuk is a man who was born for captainship, and he simply can't live without an armband on his arm." ”

Against such a mature and tough team, Hoffenheim will have to come up with tactics to be able to defeat their opponents. This has also been the focus of research by Hoffenheim's coaching staff in recent times.

Through the study of the semi-finals between Zenit and Bayern, Rangnick and his coaching staff found that Bayern was completely dead on the opponent's counterattack, and the small range of short passes on the side of Zenit's players was too tacit, and Bayern's two sides were beaten to pieces, even Rahm was no exception. And Zenit often plays behind the ball by taking advantage of the weakness of the German defender's slow turn, and because the timing of the pass is very good, Lucio and Van Bitten in the middle of Bayern are tired of defending and can't defend, let alone assist.

After watching the video of this game, Zeidler wiped the cold sweat on his forehead and said to Rangnick, "If we attack like in the league, the result will be miserable, Zenit's style of play is almost to restrain the Bundesliga team, Hoffenheim, Bayer Leverkusen, Bayern have all scored four goals by this team, although Hoffenheim is different from most Bundesliga teams, but the Bundesliga team has shortcomings, Hoffenheim also exists, such as the slow turn of the defender, the defense on the side is average." If we want to win against Zenit, we have to give up the attacking style of play and play their counter-attacks. ”

Even the sycophant Marco thinks that if Hoffenheim plays an attack, the result is unpredictable, and the opponent's counter-attacking pass is too fast and accurate, which will not give you a chance to set up a defense, let alone return to the defense. Moreover, Arshavin's individual ability is very outstanding, and he often single-handedly scores goals against the opponent's entire defense.

What the two assistant coaches can see, Rangnick certainly won't fail to see, although he is very stubborn, but he is by no means a fool, he will not try it knowing that he will die, he plays offensive football in the Bundesliga because the possibility of victory is very large, and occasional defeat is not a concern, but the result of playing offensive football with Zenit is likely to be slaughtered, even if he does not watch the fate of Bayern and Bayer Leverkusen, he can know it from his own personal experience.

So it's rare that there was no disagreement between Hoffenheim's coaching staff this time, and Rangnick and the two assistant coaches, including the strength and conditioning coach, the youth team coach and the goalkeeper coach, all agreed that playing defensive counter-attacks was the best tactic. Because they have three favorable conditions for the implementation of this tactic.

One is that Hoffenheim has played all offensive football before, and the unchanged 433, it is difficult for Zenit to think that they will suddenly change to defensive counter-attack.

The second is Zenit's top scorer, the one-meter-eighty-eight tall high school striker Boglebnyak is suspended, which makes Zenit's best side breakthrough one less of the most powerful contact points, without Boglebnyak, Zenit's attacking ability will drop a lot.

The second is that Hoffenheim lost to Zenit 2:4 in the group stage, this result will make Zenit despise Hoffenheim, and this mentality will make them take the offensive in the game, which is Hoffenheim has the opportunity to play defense, and there will be no two teams to play defense, and the final game becomes very ugly.

But now for Hoffenheim, the problem is how to ensure that they are not breached by Zenit, Hoffenheim's defense has not been very solid, even against the lower teams of the Bundesliga, they often lose points, if Zenit opens the first goal, as in this game against Bayern, the defensive counterattack becomes a joke.

In order to study the defensive formation, and to guard against the prying eyes of Russian football journalists, Hoffenheim's training has been held behind closed doors these days, and no reporters are allowed to interview them, including their local newspaper Rheinneckar, which has made the media and fans from all over the world who come to visit Hoffenheim very angry. "Rheinneckar" published an article criticizing that after winning the championship, Hoffenheim broke away from their original civilian route and set up a strong team, which is not conducive to the development of Hoffenheim, the reason why fans all over the world like Hoffenheim so much, tens of thousands of people come here every day to watch their training, is because they represent the grassroots, Hoffenheim must seriously consider the opinions of fans. Their roots are among the fans.

Fans who come from all over the world every day are also disappointed and angry that they can't see their favourite stars, and some even threaten to buy Hoffenheim members if the club doesn't train regularly.

Although Rangnick still ignored it, the two managers of the club couldn't bear the pressure anymore and discussed with Rangnick whether to open training twice before the game to meet the demands of fans and journalists.

Rangnick had no choice but to open a two-hour training session on Wednesday afternoon, but during this time, Hoffenheim mainly conducted group confrontation training, in training, Hoffenheim's players not only wore jerseys randomly, but also changed their positions a lot, Li Huan ran to play forward, Eduardo went to play back, Simunic went to the front line, and Gustavo acted as a forward midfielder.

Hoffenheim's training has left Russian reporters and fans scratching their heads, wondering if this is Hoffenheim's new tactic or deliberately disrupting it, and Russian reporters believe that if they really play like this in the final, the most hardcore Hoffenheim fans will not recognize this as Hoffenheim.

After the Hoffenheim training video was transmitted to St. Petersburg, Zenit's head coach Advocaat dismissed Rangnick's tricks, believing that Rangnick was deliberately trying to mess with his train of thought, and Hoffenheim would mostly play an attacking style in the final. And his Zenit is not afraid of Hoffenheim's full-court pressing, attacking and defending all the time, and is full of confidence in playing the Bundesliga team Advocaat.

Li Huan praised Rangnick's tactical changes before the final, and later in Li Huan's memoir "Defender with a Knife", Li Huan described the coach as follows: "This is a stubborn coach, he doesn't know how to be flexible, and is full of idealism, but if you think that Rangnick will always be the surname of the public, and it will never change, you are wrong, Germany is one of the most strategic countries in the world, and the other is China, so the world's greatest military books "The Art of War" and "On War" came from these two countries, In the game and in the war, the German's approach was in line with Sun Tzu's philosophy of winning with the right match, and Rangnick succeeded in confusing Advocaat before the game, allowing the Russians to misjudge our tactical play in the final, giving us an advantage in the opening game......"

Rangnick couldn't help but succeed in confusing the Russians, even the German fans and journalists were confused, and Joseph, a veteran reporter and veteran commentator of the Bild newspaper, said worriedly, "Hoffenheim should not do these new tricks before the final, a team's tactics and style are not formed in a day, so they cannot change in a day, they should develop their own strengths, play what makes them successful, so that changing the style of play is likely to make their players not understand what they should do on the court." ”

The Kicker reporter said: "Coach Rangnick has never won the Bundesliga title and now it looks like he was carried away by the victory, and Rangnick explained after the game that he was putting players in different positions in the shoes of other players and it was very helpful for the players. But we don't see how that helps, because if a player can play in any position, there's no division of labor on the pitch. ”

As the game approaches, the two teams will have to work hard not only on how to deal with their opponents, but also on verbal attacks from opponents and opposition media, and a pre-match war of words will never be avoided, especially in two very tangled countries like Russia and Germany.

Bild concocted several jokes to ridicule Russian football, such as: "Russian teacher asks: Son, what does your dad do?"

The child replied: My father was a janitor in the Petersburg Academy.

The Russian teacher said: It's pitiful. Is he really doing this job?

The child said, "No, he played football, but they played so badly." So I'm embarrassed to say.

There is also a joke about why do Russians have big ears and red skin? Because they have been plucked by their parents since they were children, they said: Look at Germany, they have won three World Cup championships and four Champions Cups. “

Of course, the Russian media will not be polite, and Pravda immediately retaliated, "After the 02 World Cup." The Germans had to go through the technical stream, they ate Brazilian barbecue every day, listened to Brazilian dance music, and hoped to become the Brazilian team of Europe, but in the end they found that not only did they not learn to run, they could not even walk. ”

Hoffenheim's players and Zenit's players did not give up provocation to their opponents before the game, Zenit's left-back is Kim Dongjin from South Korea, and his main opponents are Obasi and Li Huan, which was hailed as an Asian derby by the South Korean and Chinese media before the game, although Li Huan's fame is much greater than that of Kim Dongjin, but the South Korean defender said: "Don't use Li Huan to scare me, I'm not afraid to fight with Li Huan." I know he's a great player, but that doesn't mean anything, I believe in myself! ”

Li Huanbin did not fight back against Kim Dongjin's words, but Obasi couldn't listen to it, he sarcastically said: "The left-backs all over the world say that they are not afraid of Li Huan, but I think they should come up with some facts to prove their words, although we lost to Zenit 2:4 in the last game, but Li Huan still scored two goals, if the South Korean defender can make Li Huan not score, I really convince him." But I think it's impossible, Li Huan and I will score goals in this game. “

Li Huan didn't say a word, and the Chinese media stopped doing it, "Weekly" reporter Jia Lei said in a comment, "In fact, the player in South Korea who can be compared with Li Huan is not Kim Dongjin, he is not qualified for this." So Li Huan is reluctant to deal with him, South Korea is being able to compare with Li Huan is Park Ji-sung, who has entered the Champions League, if Hoffenheim and Manchester United can win the championship as they wish, Li Huan will compete with Park Ji-sung to see which is the first person in Asia. “

Hoffenheim's left-back Ibertsberg also spoke about Arshavin, the most dangerous player against the opposition, before the game, Ibertsberg said: "Arshavin is very strong, the most difficult player I have come across, but I don't think I will let him score again in this game, I found a way to deal with him. “

Arshavin did not specifically refute Ibertsberg in his pre-match speech, he just said that Zenit is very eager to become the European champion, and he hopes to be able to win the Bertoni Cup back to Russia for the fans, of course, if he can score in the final, it is nothing, as long as Zenit can win.

Head coach Advocaat talked about the League Cup final in an interview with the Dutch media, saying: "This season's League Cup is a dark horse Cup, Hoffenheim and Zenit are dark horses, because the white horses have been killed by us, in fact, we and Hoffenheim are very similar to the two teams, both are not short of financial support, both have talented players, and even the style of play is very similar, Rangnick's team is very similar to the Dutch team, full attack and defense, and Zenit is the same." We also play 433 and the two teams are playing against the same style of team, and the outcome is unpredictable, but before that we have to forget about the previous win, the quality of the opponent is very different from when it was in the group stage. “

Rangnick continued to pour [***] soup into the opponent before the game, showing weakness before the game: "Zenit is very strong, otherwise it would never be possible to win Bayern by four goals, but it can't be said that we don't have a chance at all, the football game is round, anything can happen on the field, we will accept the lesson of the last loss to Zenit, and strive to win the third title of the season." This trophy belongs to the Bundesliga ......"

(To be continued)