When the list of the semi-finals of the World Cup in the United States was released, in a manor belonging to the Groz family in Rome, several women stared at the latest statistics like they saw a dragon of treasure. Their current funds have changed from the initial $10 million to 40 million. Even if Zhuang Mingge's "commission" was deducted, these wealthy girls also made a net profit of $20 million!

Let's put these women with US dollars in their eyes aside, and in the World Cup semi-finals, Italy went to the Giant Stadium to compete with Bulgaria, the biggest dark horse of this World Cup.

FIFA also attaches great importance to this game. The experienced Joel Quiniou (Joel Quiniou, I don’t know if it should be translated like this) became the referee of this game. Interestingly, he had enforced the Italian game in 1986 and 1990 World Cups. Italy defeated Czechoslovakia and England in the two games he enforced the law by 2-0 and 2-1 respectively. Therefore, before the game, some public opinion believed that this was a sign that FIFA wanted to lead Italy to the final.

In the 20th minute of the game, Donadoni threw out the outbound ball, Robert Baggio let the ball pass, and then dribbled the ball over the defense of two Bulgarian defenders on the penalty area line, scoring with a curve ball to the far corner, 1-0;

Five minutes later, the Italian team made a comeback. Albertini made a pass and jumped into the penalty area. Baggio successfully counterattacked on the right side of the penalty area, pushed the ball directly into the far corner of the goal, and the score became 2-0;

As the first half approached the end of the year, Kostakuta, who had a foul in the penalty area, gave a penalty kick. Stoickov scored it in one go, 2-1.

The score was also maintained by the Italians until the end of the game. Italy reached the World Cup final for the fourth time after twelve years.

However, many people expressed strong dissatisfaction with Quinho's penalty in this game, accusing Costa Cuta, who had committed multiple fouls in the game, should have been sent off by a red card.

After the game, Bulgarian team captain Stoickov angrily replied when he accepted a question from reporters about his speech before the game, "God is Bulgarian": "God is still a Bulgarian, but the referee is French."

"I don't think it's a coincidence," said the forward with a hot personality.

In Zhuang Mingge's view, such a penalty result would be just a continuation of the Cold War mentality left over from the 1970s and 1980s.

In fact, before the end of the Cold War, this often happened in international competitions such as the World Cup and the Olympics. Take the 1986 World Cup as an example. At that time, the world was still in the Cold War period, and all competitions were marked with political imprints. In the quarter-finals of the World Cup, NATO's Belgium met the former Soviet team, and the referee was Frederickson from NATO. As a result, the former Soviet team was inexplicably scored two offside goals by Belgium and was eliminated in an uproar with a 3:4 run. After the game, world public opinion was in an uproar, and many fans publicly expressed their hope to donate money to the referee for treatment of "eye disease".

Let me briefly describe the experience of the "big brother" of communism - the elimination of previous competitions in the Soviet Union:

He reached the quarterfinals in the 1958 World Cup, but unfortunately he was unlucky and met the powerful Brazil and was eliminated;

In the 1962 World Cup knockout round, the host Chile took a free kick before the Soviet Union's man wall was arranged. The referee determined that the "sneak goal" was effective, and the Soviet Union was hacked out;

In the 1964 European Cup final, the host Spain was again, and the English referee blew the whistle and finally finished second;

In the semi-finals of the 1966 World Cup against West Germany, the opponent scored an offside goal and was hacked;

In the semi-finals of the 1968 European Cup, they tied 1:1 with Italy in two home and away rounds. Since there was no system for winning the penalty kick at that time, the referee decided to throw a coin to decide the winner and the Soviets were out of the game.

The cross from Chile in the 1970 World Cup knockout round was obviously out of the baseline before scoring a cross from Chile and was hacked;

Two good goals were blown away when they were against Brazil in the 1982 World Cup;

In the 1986 World Cup knockout match against Belgium, the Belgian kicked the Soviets out with two offside goals;

In the 1990 World Cup, first, a penalty was misjudged against Romania. Next, when facing Argentina, Maradona used his ultimate skill to block the ball from the goal line, which directly led to the defeat of both the first two games. He won 4 goals in the last game and then entered the quarterfinals. However, due to the tacit understanding between Romania and Argentina, he had to go home at the end of the group stage.

...

This can no longer be simply described with the words "blood and tears history". Even the persecution of godfathers in later generations is not the case. It is almost the same to say that the Soviet Union was the enemy of FIFA who killed his father.

The head coach of the Soviet team in the late 1980s was the legendary coach Lobanovsky. He was one of the first people to propose the concept of "all offense and all defense", but his all offense and all defense are different from the more famous "Michels-style" all offense and all defense. Michels emphasized ball control and pass, while Lobanovsky emphasized speed. Michels successively trained three European footballers, Cruyff, Gulit and Basten; Lobanovsky also trained

Bloshin (2012 European Cup Ukrainian head coach), Belanov and Shevchenko, three European footballers. In the late 1990s, Lobanovsky briefly returned to Dynamo Kiev and led the team to a good record in the Champions League semi-finals in the 1998-99 season. It can be said that if it weren't for the drastic changes in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Lobanovsky and his Dynamo Kiev would have been a "cosmic team" in Eastern Europe.

The most impressive thing about Lobanovsky is that he has a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, and he combines science and engineering knowledge with football well. He believes that the team is a well-functioning machine, and most of the situations on the court are foreseeable and prepared in advance. He also wrote a book with others, which talks about the relationship between football tactics and mathematical statistics.

...

A few years have passed since the drastic changes in Eastern Europe. Many people's thinking has not kept up with the pace of the times. They are still looking at teams from the "warfare agreement" system with the "campus" thinking. Naturally, all kinds of unintentional "misjudgments" will occur.

So in the next third-4 final, in order to express protests and dissatisfaction with the previous game, Bulgarian striker Stoickov, who had scored six goals and had great hope of breaking the "six-ball curse", did not appear. He let the Bulgarians go all out and lost to Sweden by zero to four, winning fourth place in the World Cup.
Chapter completed!