Chapter 1 A Near Miss

Messi stood in the penalty area, the soccer ball already placed. The chaos and clamor behind him seemed to have nothing to do with him; he was just looking at the goal, as if in a daze.

Zhou Yi didn't go to the referee either, because he knew it was useless. The referee's decision was impossible to change.

He turned his gaze to Messi's back.

The Barcelona number ten stood with his hands on his hips in front of the ball, waiting to take the penalty kick.

If nothing unexpected happened, there was a high probability that this penalty kick would fly into the goal, and Dortmund would go from a tie to being behind.

To be honest, he had encountered this situation in virtual matches. After all, it was Barcelona's home stadium. It was only natural they would have some home-field advantage; a penalty kick was hardly a surprise.

However...

He carefully searched his memory. When Barcelona had been awarded a penalty kick and scored, Dortmund seemed to have never won the game afterward.

In other words, for Dortmund, Barcelona scoring a penalty kick in this game was a sure sign of defeat.

A large amount of data from previous encounters proved this point—although it was all virtual data, this virtual data was based on the analysis of real data. In other words, the results of this data analysis had a factual basis and weren't fabricated out of thin air.

Faced with such data, Zhou Yi had a different understanding.

He had always believed that data was something to be used as a reference, but it couldn't determine anything.

Because data is a summary of the past and cannot predict the future.

The probability of Dortmund losing to Barcelona away in the past was one hundred percent, but that didn't mean that the probability of Dortmund losing to Barcelona away in the future would still be one hundred percent.

Every future is completely new and random, and even if there is a lot of evidence to prove that Dortmund will lose to Barcelona away, it doesn't mean that this will necessarily happen.

So, under what circumstances would this happen?

In the case that you are scared into surrendering by the one hundred percent data of the past.

Zhou Yi didn't plan to surrender.

※※※

No matter how dissatisfied the Dortmund players were with the protest, they couldn't change the referee's decision.

After paying the price of coach Klopp being sent off and Subotić receiving a yellow card for protesting, they could only accept the result.

Both teams gathered outside the penalty area, watching Messi's back.

Weidenfeller was on high alert in front of the goal line.

With a whistle from the referee, Messi ran up and kicked the ball.

Weidenfeller lunged to the left, but the ball flew to the right, completely deceiving him.

Half a second later, the ball hit the net, and the Camp Nou stadium erupted in huge cheers.

"Messi!!! Barcelona takes the lead! 2:1! And now Dortmund is one man down!" goLtv's Hodson was climaxing again. "Scoring twice! Messi's performance in this game once again proves why he is the best player in the world! No matter what difficulties the team faces in the five rounds, he can always stand up and turn the tide!!"

It felt like he was about to cry...

※※※

After scoring, Messi and the Barcelona players excitedly ran towards the bottom of the stands, celebrating the goal with the Barcelona fans in the stands.

The Dortmund players, on the other hand, were a little dazed.

A score of 1:2 meant that their away goal was no longer much of an advantage.

"Barcelona took the lead with a penalty kick, and Dortmund is in trouble..." the Chinese commentator He Ping said in a low voice. Zhou Yi's luck was really too bad. Last year he encountered the strongly rising Real Madrid, and this year he encountered the defending champion Barcelona.

With Dortmund's strength, as long as they didn't encounter these two teams, they could definitely go further in the Champions League, but these two teams just happened to be their kryptonite, and they encountered them both.

※※※

After Barcelona finished celebrating, they returned to their own half. The television broadcast kept the close-up shots firmly focused on Messi, and goLtv's commentator Hodson was still praising Messi, all kinds of laudatory words tumbling out of his mouth, making listeners doubt how he could find so many words to praise people. Even Messi's fans felt a little embarrassed when they heard it. In front of this professional "Messi-flatterer," even die-hard fans felt inferior...

Marcel Reif was worried about Dortmund's fate: "With one less center back and a goal behind, Dortmund is in dire need of adjustment, but their coach has been sent to the stands, it's simply the end of the road..."

He was right, Dortmund was in chaos now. The players didn't know what to do.

Down by a goal, should we attack?

But if we attack, will Barcelona score more goals?

But if we defend, how can we equalize the score?

Now that we're missing a center back, who should temporarily fill in until we can make a substitution?

All kinds of questions appeared in everyone's minds, but there were no solutions.

At this moment, Zhou Yi suddenly spoke.

He ran up to Sven Bender, grabbed him and said, "Sven, you temporarily withdraw to cover the center back position."

Then he clapped his hands and shouted loudly to his players, "Don't defend passively, we must keep the ball at our feet!"

After the goal, the Camp Nou stadium erupted in huge cheers. Now the cheers were much smaller, after all, the Barcelona fans' throats also needed to rest.

And it was in this relatively quiet moment that Zhou Yi's voice appeared somewhat abruptly.

Except for goalkeeper Weidenfeller, who was too far away, the Dortmund players gathered near the center circle, preparing to kick off, heard Zhou Yi's voice. The Dortmund players, who were originally dejected and at a loss, looked up at Zhou Yi at this time.

Zhou Yi raised his voice and continued to shout: "Pass the ball around! Pass the ball quickly! Think about how we've been training these days! Everyone run! Anyway, there are only twenty minutes left, use up all your stamina!"

Hearing his words, many Dortmund players had a light shining in their eyes.

That's right, how could we forget that?

Why did we practice in the "small black room" for almost a month?

Remember what Klopp said?

——This is the secret weapon to defeat Barcelona!

※※※

After Klopp was sent to the stands, the person in charge of directing the team became assistant coach Željko Buvač.

He knew that he should make a substitution immediately, and he made such an adjustment. Before the penalty kick was taken, he had already asked Felipe Santana to hurry up and warm up.

But Buvač couldn't make up his mind on who to substitute.

With a center back being sent off, he shouldn't replace any defensive players in order to strengthen the defense. In that case, what would be the point of replacing a defensive player when he was bringing on a center back? Under normal circumstances, he would replace an attacking player at this time, sacrificing the attack to stabilize the defense.

But the current situation couldn't be handled so simply. Because replacing an attacking player would weaken the offensive power. And now Dortmund was still behind by a goal, what was the difference between weakening the offensive power and committing suicide?

But if he didn't replace an attacking player and maintained the attacking power, but replaced a defensive player, what if they conceded another goal before equalizing the score?

Buvač couldn't make up his mind.

In the past, the person who made the decisions was coach Klopp. He was the one who made the choices. If Dortmund won as a result, he enjoyed the praise, and if they failed as a result, he had to bear all the criticism.

※※※

While Buvač was hesitating, changes had already taken place on the field. Sven Bender had retreated to the center back position, filling in as a defender.

In the midfield, Zhou Yi and Gündoğan formed the defensive midfielder pairing.

Logically speaking, the defensive hardness of this defensive midfielder combination was not as good as the partnership between Sven Bender and Gündoğan. As long as Barcelona strengthened their offensive, they would be able to break through this midfield defensive combination.

After Barcelona attacked, they faced a Dortmund that had shrunk back across the board. Once possession changed hands, according to usual practice, Barcelona would not retreat to their own half, but would directly launch an aggressive counter-press in the frontcourt.

This counter-press, combined with the momentum of their recent goal, was enough to make Dortmund panic and be unable to take care of themselves, thus making mistakes. And they would use Dortmund's mistakes to directly threaten Dortmund's goal.

But when possession really changed hands, everyone found that the situation was not quite what they had imagined.

Messi, who was in good form, took a cold shot outside the penalty area, and the ball flew out of the baseline past the outside of the goalpost. Goalkeeper Weidenfeller was unable to touch the ball.

Dortmund got a goal kick.

Goalkeeper Weidenfeller did not kick the ball directly to the front with a big foot—many teams would do this when facing Barcelona, ​​on the one hand, they hoped to launch an attack directly in front of the goal and avoid getting entangled with Barcelona's most powerful midfield. On the other hand, they also considered that even if the attack failed, kicking the ball directly could keep the ball away from their own goal, which would be safer.

But this time Dortmund didn't do that.

They chose what was considered the most unwise approach—short passes.

Anyone who knew that Barcelona was good at pressing in the frontcourt would not think that it was a good thing for the goalkeeper to use short passes to kick off.

But now Dortmund did just that.

The ball was quickly passed to Zhou Yi's feet.

As the core of Dortmund, Zhou Yi would naturally receive special attention from Barcelona. As soon as the ball reached his feet, Barcelona's players pressed up.

However, the ball had just reached his feet and was passed out again by him.

This was normal, Zhou Yi often played like this, he did this to avoid the habits of playing on the field formed by defensive players.

But next, what was a little abnormal was the other players of Dortmund.

After receiving Zhou Yi's ball, they would also quickly pass the ball out at the first time. The speed was very fast, and the key was that it was also very accurate!

This was quite different from the previous situation.

The speed and accuracy of passing are inversely proportional. The faster the passing speed, the lower the accuracy. This is not only true for Dortmund, but for almost any team. This is also why Guardiola's Barcelona caused such a sensation after they came out, because Barcelona could pass the ball quickly and accurately.

Of course, this also had a lot to do with the fact that their passing distance was usually no more than fifteen meters. The shorter the distance, the higher the accuracy of the pass.

Barcelona's ability to pass the ball so smoothly and freely was based on their football philosophy that they had adhered to for more than twenty years. So they could do it.

But what could Dortmund rely on?

When Barcelona's players counter-pressed in the frontcourt according to their original plan, they found it difficult to win the ball back.

Although many of Dortmund's passes were short passes without any difficulty.

But they could ensure that they kept the ball under their control through passing, which was really surprising.

Facing Barcelona's counter-press, Dortmund's players did not look like they had just conceded a goal. They were calm and composed, and led Barcelona by the nose with back-and-forth passing.

And no matter how much Barcelona's players counter-pressed, it was difficult for them to win the ball.

This scene really left many people dumbfounded.

This included Dortmund's assistant coach Buvač on the sidelines.