PS1: This is the update on Saturday, a little late. I hope that all book friends don’t care too much about the update time. I’ll guarantee that I won’t stop updating...

PS2: Let me talk about the book friends group here. The group numbers are three, seven, zero, five, four, nine, nine, one, nine, and the verification answer is NTR Knight, well, that's it.

PS3: Here I would like to thank the book friends "Fengyue Zheng", "Shura Xu Zhengyang", "Tianyuan Hanqi", and "Quiet Mad Dance".

It has entered the semi-finals for the first time since its founding, and has eliminated many strong teams including Manchester United and Juventus on the road to promotion. Villarreal this season has really given people a great surprise. Moreover, the extremely artistic tactical style and extremely smooth offensive cooperation of the Yellow Submarine have also brought great popularity to this small club. Many people believe that Villarreal this season has great hope of replicating the trajectory of the two dark horses, Chelsea and Monaco, in the 2003-04 season, and becoming another non-hero club that has successfully reached the Champions League final.

Villarreal was able to reach this point today with no people optimistic about it. The biggest contributor is undoubtedly their core on the court. Argentine star Juan Roman Riquelme, known as the "last classical midfielder", spent a nightmare season in Barcelona. He was scolded by Barcelona fans as a squash and even asserted by many experts and celebrities that Argentine midfielder, who was destined to be unable to gain a foothold in European football, burst out with amazing energy after coming to the Love Song Stadium (Villareal's home court)!

In his first season after joining Villarreal, Riquelme led the Yellow Submarine to get rid of the shadow of fighting for relegation every year, led a group of giant abandoned players (Jose Mali, Sony Anderson, etc.) to win the eighth place in La Liga, and also achieved good results in the quarterfinals in the UEFA Cup. Last season, he led the Yellow Submarine to make great progress, squeezed out strong opponents such as La Coruna and Valencia, and ranked first in Barcelona and Real Madrid, and won the third place in La Liga in the season.

The second hero of Villarreal's rise was joined in the summer of 2004. Chilean coach Pellegrini, nicknamed "engineer". After learning that the club had signed Riquelme as the abandoned player from Barcelona, ​​Pellegrini, who knew Riquelme's ability, immediately determined the team-building policy of building the team with the Argentine as the core and around Riquelme!

Therefore, under the planning of Pellegrini, players such as Juan Solin and Diego Fran who were not satisfied with the wealthy family due to injuries or disagreements, joined Villarreal and united by Riquelme, the midfield master, to form a united and energetic team!

In this way, with the joint efforts of Riquelme and Pellegrini, the Yellow Submarine went to a higher level in the 2004-05 season, and jumped from the mid-season club to become a La Liga powerhouse, and squeezed out the two strong opponents of Super Laco and Valencia, and successfully won the third place in La Liga this season - this is also the highest ranking Villarreal won in La Liga since its founding. At the same time, in this season, Riquelme also led Villarreal to defeat Barcelona three-to-zero at home, bringing him to European football, but refused to spend time to take a perfect revenge around his old club that formed the team!

In this season, although Villarreal's ranking in the league has declined compared to last season due to distracted from the European competition, it is still firmly in the European war zone, and it is basically no problem to get a place in the League Cup at the end of the season. In the Champions League field, Villarreal defeated Juventus, Glasgow Rangers, Benfica, Manchester United and other strong opponents to the semi-finals, becoming the biggest dark horse in the Champions League this season!

Since Juventus was eliminated by the yellow submarine in the quarterfinals because of few away goals, most people expressed a very cautious attitude towards the battle between Fiorentina and Villarreal. After all, in the previous quarterfinals, Villarreal proved their ability with practical actions and made the faces of those who were optimistic about Juventus' promotion swollen.

Although the outside world is extremely cautious about the outcome of the two teams, Mourinho does not think so. After analyzing the video of Villarreal's game this season, the Portuguese found that this team can be said to be completely Riquelme's team!

In other words, as long as he stares at Riquelme to death and prevents him from connecting the entire team with passes as usual, then Fiorentina has already secured the qualification to advance to the finals!

However, Mourinho also knew that it was not easy to keep an eye on Riquelme. Not to mention anything else, with the skills of Trapatoni and Ferguson, they must have seen that Riquelme is Villarreal's life gate, but why did they still not keep an eye on this Argentinian?

The reason is that Villarreal's head coach Pellegrini Riquelme's ability to have such a wonderful performance in Villarreal is inseparable from the tactics and lineup carefully created by the Chilean coach. Fran and Solin, who he introduced are all players with extremely excellent running skills. In addition, the original Marcos Senna and Aru Abarena in the team have made Riquelme have more than three teammates nearby to respond, allowing him to pass the ball smoothly.

With such a set of player configurations that can maximize Riquelme's technical characteristics, coupled with the Argentine's top-notch ability to get rid of it, Juventus, who shows signs of aging in the defense and Manchester United, who are in the blood exchange stage, will suffer from Villarreal. Because the running ability of these two teams is their weakness, this gives Villarreal an opportunity to take advantage of.

However, although Fiorentina's defensive system is not afraid of Villarreal's style of playing that relies on a large number of running to pull out the offensive space, it has also made many top midfielders, including Zidane, return in vain, but this does not mean that Purple Lily's defense is perfect. In fact, when Fiorentina faces classical midfielders such as Rui Costa, Miku, and Riquelme who are good at sending accurate passes in small spaces, Purple Lily's defensive pressure is often much greater than when dealing with midfielders such as Zidane, because such players are better at seizing fleeting opportunities and tearing open Fiorentina's defense with precise passes.

The final winner was Fiorentina, on the one hand, because Purple Lily's overall strength is stronger and creates more threats in the game. Miku and his teammates are often inferior in ability, and it is difficult to seize the opportunity they create. On the other hand, it is because the physical strength of this type of classical midfielder is generally not very good, and he often kicks under the high-intensity defense of Fiorentina and loses strength...

Therefore, in the first leg of the away game with Villarreal, Mourinho was still very careful to send all the main players. Just like when dealing with Arsenal, Mourinho chose to focus on steady defense and counterattack, as well as blocking the middle and letting go of the two wings, and defending by compressing the opponent's offensive space.
Chapter completed!