At 6 p.m. on August 24, 1997, players from Fiorentina and Barcelona appeared on time on the turf of the Louis II Stadium, quietly waiting for the referee to blow the opening whistle.

Although Ronaldo did not join Barcelona last season with the intervention of Zhuang Mingge, the time traveler, as history did, which gave the attack power of the Spanish giant a certain discount, Barcelona still defeated Paris Saint-Germain in the final last season with the courageous state of veteran Stoickov and the planning of Robson, last season, and won a European Cup Winners Championship.

Therefore, after Van Gaal took over Barcelona's coach this summer, the Dutch coach immediately made drastic reforms to the various problems existing in the team!

The first move was naturally the forward line supported by Stoickov alone. After all, Barcelona will face third-line battles this season, and it is obviously not enough to have a reliable forward.

Under Van Gaal's request, Brazilian attacker Rivaldo, who scored 21 goals in 41 games for La Coruña last season, came to Barcelona with a net worth of US$18 million. Van Gaal believes that the Brazilian's excellent scoring ability can greatly enhance the team's attack power; and Rivaldo, who also has excellent skills and overall view, can also help Guardiola and Figo undertake part of the team's organizational work.

At the same time, Van Gaal did not forget to support his Dutch fellow villagers: Hesp transferred from Roda JC Club, and the Dutch goalkeeper replaced the Portuguese Baia and became the main goalkeeper of Barcelona's new season; Bogarde and Rezig, who were frustrated in the Ross and Blacks, left Milan City under the call of their mentors and came to the capital of Catalonia for a package price of 4 million US dollars.

Along with the two Dutchmen is Christopher Duggarry, the French center hopes to get more opportunities to impress national team coach Jake, and thus get a ticket to participate in next year's World Cup in France.

After spending huge sums of money to introduce so many players, Van Gaal naturally needs to use a championship trophy to show his coaching ability and the results of the team's transformation to the club's senior management, and this time the European Super Cup is naturally a good stage.

Van Gaal is quite familiar with the team of Fiorentina. After all, after the arrival of the Boseman era, this Serie A team was the one who dealt with Ajax the most. Not to mention the frequent trading of players and the deep cooperation between the two teams, Ajax lost to the other side in last year's Champions League final, which was enough to make this Dutch coach remember Fiorentina for the rest of his life.

No matter from any perspective, Van Gaal must do his best to win this European Super Cup final: if he wins, he can not only further establish his prestige in Barcelona, ​​but also avenge a revenge a year ago; if he loses, although the club, including the fans, will not say much about it, they will inevitably mutter to the Dutch coach in their hearts.

Therefore, in this game, Van Gaal sent out his strongest lineup: the starting goalkeeper was Hesp, and the four defenders were Sergi Barjuan, Miguel Nadal, Fernando Couto and Ferrell. Considering that Bogard and Reziger have not played much formal games in the past year, it is still an unknown degree to which their state will recover, Van Gaal will naturally not let them deal with opponents of Fiorentina as soon as they come up.

In the midfield, Guardiola dragged the back and Serardes was protecting the team, and the all-round fighter Luis Enrique served as the front midfielder, while Rivaldo and Luis Figo, who had excellent skills, were separated from the left and right wings.

On the forward line, the newcomer Sony Anderson was the single arrow. Last season, Barcelona's top scorer Stoickov offended Van Gaal's authority because of some crutches in the summer training camp. As a result, the Bulgarians were caught up in the stands by the Dutch who was planning to kill the chicken to scare the monkeys, and they didn't even make the 18-man roster.

From the perspective of formation, Barcelona's starting lineup should be called 4231. Rivaldo and Figo on both wings can not only push the forward line to participate in the offense, but also withdraw and share the team's defensive pressure. Moreover, they and Luis Enrique are both versatile frontcourts, and can constantly switch positions in the game, making the opponent's defensive players tired of dealing with it.

Such a gorgeous starting lineup, coupled with Amor, Rezig, Bogard, de la Pena, Juan Pizzi... Judging from the book strength alone, Barcelona is not inferior to Fiorentina.

Therefore, before the game began, many pro-Barcelona media were waving the flag for Barcelona, ​​trying to create more pressure on Florence.

But is this really the case?

Indeed, for many teams, Barcelona, ​​one of the two La Liga champions, is a very difficult behemoth to deal with. However, for the Fiorentine players, they do not think that Barcelona, ​​the opponent in this final, is such a difficult role!

If you talk about psychological advantages, then almost all Serie A teams participating in European games have a huge psychological advantage when facing Spanish clubs. Since Barcelona, ​​which was in its heyday three years ago, was beaten by AC Milan, which lacked Bareci and Costacuta, the Spanish team often seem to be a little confident when facing Italians. The performance of Madrid's two-man Madrid in the past two years (Real Madrid was eliminated in the group stage, and Atletico Madrid was cleanly beaten by Juventus in the quarter-finals) is enough to prove this.

Therefore, in the face of the psychological warriors initiated by Barcelona, ​​the players in Fiorentina were a little disdainful of the opponent's tricks: Barcelona is not as good as the dream team of that year. Fiorentina's strength is much stronger than AC Milan at that time, not to mention that our head coach was Capello who gave you four to zero last time! Including so many factors that are beneficial to us, the one that should really worry about should be Barcelona, ​​right?!

As for overall strength, let alone Fiorentina's current player configuration, Capello can almost send two starting lineups with similar strength to deal with European and league games. Can Barcelona compare this?

"Since the Barcelona are so confident about their team's strength, let me give them another four-to-zero!" Before the game started, Capello said to the players in the locker room in Fiorentina. The unrestrained smile on his face made everyone feel a little surprised. He thought that his head coach was really dark-hearted. Didn't he just shouted like that before the game? He actually wanted to give Barcelona a second four-to-zero!
Chapter completed!