PS1: Continue to ask for recommendation votes here, free books don't need to spend money, and it should be okay to give more recommendation votes, right? Thank you here~

PS2: Let's talk about the book friend group here, the group number is three, seven, zero, five, four, nine, nine, one, nine, nine, verifies that the answer is NTR knight, well, that's it.

Due to a series of changes and butterfly effects caused by Zhuang Mingge's crossing, the two sides in the opening match of the World Cup between South Korea and Japan have changed from France and Senegal in the previous life to the current Italy, the defending champion of the World Cup, and the Croatian team, which is also from Europe and one of the souls of the Italians in the French World Cup.

Having Italy, the defending champion, play the opening game is what Zhuang Mingge wants to complain about the World Cup organizers the most, although there seems to be no problem with this schedule on the surface, but don't forget that Italy was placed in Group G during the World Cup group draw...... Has anyone ever been placed in such a lower group and only to have to go to the opener?

Let's talk about the complaints about the World Cup organizers for the time being, and now let's talk about the two teams that are fighting the pitch, Italy and Croatia.

The strength of the Italian national team, which has first-class stars such as Vieri, Inzaghi, Totti, Buffon, etc., does not need to be overstated, although the selection of the likes of Pierrot and Koko has caused some controversy, but in terms of the individual ability of the players and the overall strength of the team, the blue team under Zoff can still firmly suppress their opponent in the opening game, the bronze medallist Croatia in the last World Cup.

After all, unlike Italy, which has produced an endless stream of excellent players, Croatia, which has experienced two wars in the past ten years, has been completely exhausted by the endless war, and Tudjman and Mesic, who have been dizzy by the country's declining population and weak economy, simply do not have the extra financial resources and energy to develop football, which brings a great sense of pride to Croatians. In this situation, Croatia's feat of winning the World Cup in 1998 was as dazzling and short-lived as a flash in the pan. In the following four years, as the main players of the World Cup season army have aged, and there are few young talents who can take over, the current situation of green and yellow has made Croatia quickly withdraw from the ranks of first-class teams and fall to the point of second-rate in Europe.

Therefore, before the opening match, except for a few die-hard Croatian fans, the vast majority of fans were optimistic that the defending champions could break the curse of the World Cup opener, defeat Croatia in front of them, and win the opening of this World Cup.

At the outset, the game did go as these fans had hoped, with the dominant Italy quickly taking the initiative with more than a cut above their opponents, and in the 24th minute it was their ace centre-forward Vieri who opened the scoring line. The world's No. 1 center forward received Totti's through ball in the penalty area and directly used his anti-heaven power to squeeze away Robert Kovac, who was marking him, and then used a powerful turn and volley to break through the ten fingers of Croatian international Pletikosa, scoring the first goal since the opening of this World Cup, and also the first goal of the Italian national team in this World Cup!

However, as the game progressed, the situation on the field did not go as expected, and Italy, who took the lead, would take advantage of the victory in the subsequent time to completely finish Croatia as an opponent, but there was a development that surprised everyone!

Faced with the unfavorable situation of falling behind by one goal and being at a disadvantage on the field, the Croatians did not surrender in advance, nor did they shrink the defense out of fear of the great power of Vieri and others on the offensive end, but unexpectedly launched a ferocious counterattack in the subsequent time!

Although Davo Suker, who claims to be able to play the violin with his left foot, and Prosineski, the only remaining of the "Three Musketeers", are now dying, and Boban, the former midfield engine, has become a thing of the past, for Croatian football, which once raised many famous stars, no matter how talented it is, there are still some powerful players in their playing years.

Although in the current Croatian team, including the captain Sordo, no player can reach the first-class level in terms of individual ability, but its team has powerful players such as the Kovac brothers and Sordo, who have rich game experience and maintain good form, as well as Simic, Olic and Simunic and other rising stars who are not well-known and talented, but are down-to-earth and willing to work. Therefore, in response to this situation, Mirko Jokic (the current Croatian head coach) boldly changed the technical control style of play that he had adhered to from the Croatian golden generation after falling behind, replacing Davao Suker, a meritorious veteran, with Olic to strengthen the physical confrontation and midfield counter-attacking ability, forcing the Italian players to make mistakes in the game, so as to win them a chance to turn the tables.

As it turned out, Jokic's change of tactics was quite correct. In the face of the crazy encirclement of the Croatian players, Albertini, who was responsible for controlling the rhythm of the game, was disappointed, not only did not use his sharp pass to make the Croatians tired, but made frequent mistakes under the siege of the opponent, allowing the Croatian forwards to get a lot of shooting opportunities, and even made Olic help the Plaid Army to tie the score at 1-1 in the 73rd minute of the game!

In fact, Albertini is not to blame, although the Milan vice-president is collectively known as the four talents of the midfield in the 90s along with Pep Guardiola, Redondo and Paulo Sousa, but his advantage is that he can cover the entire midfield and long balls, rather than single-handedly fighting his way through the ranks like Ronaldo and Vieri.

Therefore, Zoff made a mistake from the start, he should not have pushed Totti up front and let Albertini control the pace of the game alone, so that although he could give full play to the scoring ability of the Roman prince, but it reduced Italy's ability to control the court by several notches.

Just three minutes after Olic equalized for Croatia, Italy, who had not recovered from the goal they had just conceded, were hit again: Albertini's through ball to Totti was intercepted by Nico Kovac, who then tucked the ball straight into the box for Olic who withdrew from the box, who took advantage of the gap left by Cannavaro to assist Lapaci to score and rewrite the score to 2-1!

In this way, after nearly an hour of unremitting efforts, Croatia, which was behind most of the half, finally completed the overtake of Italy before the end of the game and became the leading side in the score!

In the end, thanks to goals from Olic and Lapacz, Croatia completed a stunning comeback in the face of no favorites, and slashed the defending champion Italy in this World Cup opener!