Chapter 1 Many People Watching Live Games Will Be Impressed by a Situation on the Field

In Serie A and the Premier League, this situation is common.

Such a stadium is called a "yin-yang field."

The better the weather and the stronger the sunlight, the more common this situation becomes. This is due to the shadows cast by the stadium's stands and roof onto the field.

Generally speaking, stadiums should take this into account during construction. When players are competing, the glare of the sun can affect their vision and even cause momentary blindness.

Yin-yang fields are unavoidable, as football is an outdoor sport and it is impossible to always play with the stadium roof closed.

However, the direction of the shadows can be artificially adjusted when building a stadium.

For example, a north-south oriented stadium is better than an east-west oriented one.

This is because a north-south oriented stadium, when faced with a yin-yang field situation, will at most have half of it in shadow, with the other half not. This minimizes the impact of sunlight on players when attacking and defending. The east-west orientation is the opposite.

But the New Wembley Stadium, the venue for this final, is an east-west oriented stadium...

It doesn't seem like a problem now, but as the game progresses, it's hard to say.

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The Chinese team lost the coin toss and got the right to kick off, so the game will start with the Chinese team kicking off.

He Ying and Wu Lei stood in the center circle, with the football at their feet, and Zhou Yi stood outside the center circle.

Both teams were in their positions, waiting for the whistle.

The previously noisy stadium gradually quieted down, becoming so quiet that it was almost unsettling.

Even the commentator He Ping couldn't help but hold his breath.

The referee looked down at his watch and then blew the whistle sharply.

"The game begins!" He Ping shouted, "CCTV! CCTV! Viewers, welcome to the final of the 2012 London Olympics Men's Football! The two sides are the Chinese team in red jerseys and the Japanese team in blue jerseys. The game will be kicked off by the Chinese team!"

He Ying kicked the football to Wu Lei, who turned around and passed it back.

The football landed at Zhou Yi's feet.

In the time it took for those two passes, the Japanese players had already crossed the center line and charged forward. The first one was their forward, Kensuke Nagai, and it's normal for a forward to be in the lead.

But the second Japanese player to charge forward was their defensive midfielder, Hotaru Yamaguchi!

This defensive midfielder, whose position on the field should have been further back than Keigo Higashi, Yuki Otsu, and Hiroshi Kiyotake, was the second one to charge forward.

He rushed straight at Zhou Yi.

Zhou Yi didn't let the football stay at his feet for long. As soon as he received the ball, he turned around and kicked the football to center-back Guo Nu. After passing the ball, he drifted towards the wing.

Yamaguchi also adjusted his running direction, running towards his new position. He was like a guided missile locked onto a target; wherever Zhou Yi went, he went.

Seeing this scene from the sidelines, the coach of the Japanese Olympic team, Takashi Sekizuka, nodded, very satisfied with Yamaguchi's performance.

Zhou Yi passed the football back to the defensive line, but the Japanese forward Kensuke Nagai, who was in the lead, didn't stop either, instead chasing the football towards Guo Nu.

Besides him, the other Japanese players also continued to rush forward. Yuki Otsu, Keigo Higashi, Hiroshi Kiyotake...ran up from different directions.

But not all of them were rushing towards the football. If you looked closely, you would see that only Kensuke Nagai was doing that. The others all had their own targets, and these targets were not the football, but other players on the Chinese team. If Guo Nu wanted to take the ball, these people would target his passing options.

Guo Nu also noticed this after receiving the ball. When he wanted to pass the football forward, he suddenly realized that he didn't have many good choices, because Japanese players had already appeared near his passing targets. They were facing away from the direction of attack, and after taking the ball, they would likely be stuck by Japanese players who wouldn't even let them turn around, making it easy to lose possession.

Guo Nu, who had been trained in Serie A, didn't hesitate. He quickly turned around again and passed the football back to the goalkeeper, Sun Pan.

Kensuke Nagai ran past Guo Nu, continuing to chase the football, just like Kuafu chasing the sun. He ran towards goalkeeper Sun Pan.

Faced with Kensuke Nagai's high press, Sun Pan didn't immediately kick the football out. He seemed to have other ideas.

But at this moment, Zhou Yi, who had already run back to outside the penalty area, shouted at him, "Kick it long!"

Sun Pan heard Zhou Yi's shout and reluctantly kicked the football towards the front field.

But just as he finished this long kick, Kensuke Nagai had already run to a place only three or four meters away from him...

If he had hesitated any longer, he might not have had the chance to kick the football forward, and could only have kicked the football to the side.

Zhou Yi's reminder was very timely.

But Sun Pan was still a little unhappy, and he clicked his tongue.

As Zhou Yi turned and ran forward, he left Sun Pan with a word of advice: "Be careful, Panpan, the Japanese team isn't normal today!"

Sun Pan spat and said, "When have the Japs ever been normal?"

He was tough on the surface, but he was also a little puzzled in his heart. The Japanese team's press after the start of this game was really fierce...were they on drugs?

"The game has just started, and the Japanese team is already pressing very hard after China kicked off! Kensuke Nagai even went straight into China's penalty area..." Mark Lawrenson of the BBC also highlighted what the Japanese team showed after the kickoff.

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Zhou Yi was right, the Japanese team wasn't very normal today.

In the subsequent game, the Japanese players were constantly running and actively pressing.

As soon as a Chinese player got the ball, they would see Japanese players rushing up to surround them.

To be honest, this scene was quite strange. The commentator He Ping also felt strange and said, "The Japanese team players seem to have suddenly transformed into wolves today..."

The people watching the game felt strange, and the people playing the game felt even more so.

The Chinese Olympic team's players were very unaccustomed to the Japanese team's pressing. This was a situation they had not anticipated at all before the game - no one expected Japan to play with such aggression in the game...

The Japanese team's technical characteristics and playing style have always been very clear and obvious, and they have adhered to them for many years. That is a technical style, a possession-based style. In terms of aggression, they are far behind the South Korean team. This kind of active running, surrounding the opponent like a pack of wolves, is the hallmark of the South Korean team.

Since setting the goal of learning from Brazil, Japanese football has been working hard in this direction. Combining their own racial characteristics, they believe that delicate technique and control are the most suitable path for Japanese players.

They have persisted for so many years, almost like Barcelona persisting with tiki-taka, which has become a gene of Japanese football.

Because of the emphasis on controlling possession, Japanese football often produces very powerful Asian first-class midfielders. For example, Hidetoshi Nakata was the earliest, then his successor Shunsuke Nakamura, and then Shinji Kagawa today. These are all people who can occupy a place in European football. In addition to these three, there are many other excellent Japanese players who can play in European teams, and they are mostly midfielders.

For a while, there was a fairly popular view among Chinese fans that China didn't lack good forwards, nor did it lack good defenders, but it lacked good midfielders. And Japan didn't lack good midfielders, but it just didn't have any top Asian forwards. This shows the surplus of midfield talent in Japanese football.

However, nowadays, Japan's lead over Chinese football is already comprehensive. They not only have top Asian midfielders, but also have top Asian forwards.

This tactical style of Japanese football is not only reflected in their adult national team, but also includes national teams of all ages, and even high school teams.

In fact, the entire Japanese football system can be seen as an enlarged version of Barcelona Football Club. From youth training, they emphasize the unity of football style, so that their players can easily play in adult teams, maximizing the rate of success.

Chinese football is completely inferior to Japan in this regard, and the football style is erratic. More than twenty years ago, when people talked about the characteristics of Chinese football, it was "good headers" and "many fast horses". Crossing from the wings and heading in the middle was one of the magic weapons of the Chinese team's attack, so that it had the nickname of "Chinese Header Team". But as that group of athletes gradually retired, the characteristics of Chinese football became less and less distinct. At the national team level, they learn from whoever is strong, and the style is erratic, and there is never a fixed standard. This leads to the fact that many things in Chinese football cannot be continued, and there is no direction for youth training. Good results are just a matter of luck, but good luck cannot always be with you. What if the luck runs out?

Falling into the trough is not terrible, what is terrible is being in a dark place, and not knowing where to go.

The Japanese team knows what path they should take, and has formulated a "100-year plan", and will continue to follow it unswervingly.

This is the characteristic of the Japanese nation. They are more stubborn and abide by the rules. Sometimes the impression they leave on the world is rigid, but rigidity is not necessarily a derogatory term.

At least, in football, their stubbornness has allowed them to reap fruitful results.

But also because of stubbornness and rigidity, they leave many people with the impression of a delicate, possession-based style of play, and their physical confrontation ability is not good enough, forming a sharp contrast with the South Korean team.

This is a fixed impression, similar to labeling.

When many people mention Japanese football, they will think of these keywords, but none of these keywords are related to "pressing and surrounding".

But in this Olympic final, the Japanese team started to press and surround the Chinese team!

If it was the South Korean team playing against the Chinese team, then this would not be surprising. In the quarter-finals, the South Korean team played against the Chinese team in this way. When facing the South Korean team, the Chinese team will focus on how to deal with the South Korean team's pressing and surrounding during the preparation, so when the Koreans play like this, the Chinese team can cope with it relatively easily.

But when facing the Japanese team, they would never think that the Japanese team would be so aggressive, so naturally they would not make any targeted arrangements at all.

As a result, at the beginning of the game, the Chinese Olympic team was caught off guard!