Wherever Zhou Yi ran, there was always a Valencia player near him, not necessarily the same person. Sometimes it was forward Soldado or Mata, and sometimes it was midfielder Albelda or Joaquin…

He constantly changed his position on the field, and the defenders around him also kept changing, but what remained constant was that no matter what, someone was guarding him.

This wasn't man-marking, but zonal defense.

The advantage of this kind of defense is that it can maintain the team's overall formation and prevent it from becoming chaotic. It prevents situations where someone follows out, leaving a gap behind that the opponent can exploit.

For example, in Dortmund's first league game against Leverkusen, Heynckes used man-marking to deal with Zhou Yi. As a result, after Vidal was pulled out, Leverkusen's midfield and defense became unbalanced, and Dortmund took advantage to score.

Valencia's coach, Emery, adopted a zonal defense in this game to avoid such a situation.

However, zonal defense also has weaknesses—its weakness is that it doesn't mark players tightly, which can give the opponent more space and time.

Emery made some adjustments to the zonal defense. He made the team's formation more compact, especially in the center, so the flanks seemed more open, but the center was very tight and dense. As a result, the space Zhou Yi could get was greatly compressed.

Although this would leave more space on the flanks, Emery was more concerned with defending the center than limiting the flanks. In any case, he couldn't let Zhou Yi organize the attack easily.

From the current situation, Zhou Yi has to pass the ball out as soon as he receives it under such defense. Under such a tense atmosphere, it is difficult to organize any threatening attack.

“…Valencia must be hoping to use this kind of shrinking defense to limit Zhou Yi's performance, turning him into a pure passer…” Marcel Reif analyzed. "But I don't think Dortmund necessarily has to rely on Zhou Yi to organize the attack. Anyone can use such a big flank."

※※※

Although Zhou Yi seemed to be chased everywhere by Valencia's tight defense, unable to settle down, only able to ensure that the ball was not lost, and unable to pass out any threatening balls at all.

But in Zhou Yi's mind, although he was running non-stop, he could see both sides' movements on the field clearly, and a constantly changing overhead view was generated in his mind, just like looking at the weather with satellite cloud images. Everything was clear at a glance, and he could predict the future based on some rules, basically being accurate eight or nine times out of ten.

Through the overhead view, it can be clearly seen that Valencia's players are basically concentrated in the area between the two ribs of the court, with very few people on the flanks. At the same time, in order to keep the three or even four lines compact, they are also compressed very hard from front to back. This leads to the fact that there are still many areas on the court that Valencia cannot cover.

It's just that those places are a bit far away from him, and it's difficult to send the ball over there with ordinary short passes.

So don't use short passes, use long passes.

Thinking of this, Zhou Yi found that as he moved to the right side of the court, a relatively large gap appeared in the upper left corner.

Because everyone's focus and attention was attracted by the ball, that corner was the furthest place from the ball, and naturally the weakest place in the defense.

That's an opportunity.

All that's needed now is an accurate long pass.

During the observation and thought process, Zhou Yi continued to run to the right, looking like he was about to become a right midfielder.

By doing so, he squeezed Großkreutz forward, turning him into a winger.

The ball was passed over.

Dortmund's offensive focus seemed to be on this side, that's what everyone thought.

But after getting the ball, Zhou Yi suddenly turned around and passed the ball in the completely opposite direction—the upper left corner of the court!

There, Dortmund's left-back Schmelzer had already inserted at high speed. When he reached that gap, Zhou Yi's pass also arrived at its destination.

Schmelzer raised his foot and stopped Zhou Yi's pass, very calmly, because no one came up to press him at all.

"Schmelzer! Beautiful long pass! Zhou Yi!" Marcel Reif shouted excitedly.

Those Dortmund fans who had traveled with the team, though not many in number, also let out huge cheers, momentarily drowning out the cheers of Valencia fans in the Mestalla air.

After receiving the ball, Schmelzer took a step towards the penalty area and sent in a cross. Barrios made a run in the opposite direction, getting to the ball before Valencia defender Mathieu.

But unfortunately, the ball he headed went high over the bar!

"Aaaaaaah!" Marcel Reif regretted, holding his head in his hands. "Barrios! He wasted this excellent opportunity! Otherwise, Dortmund would be leading 1-0 on the road! And the game has only just started for three minutes! This is Dortmund's first shot of the game, but it's much more threatening than Alberto Costa's long shot just now!"

As Barrios headed the ball high, a huge exclamation erupted in the air above Mestalla. It was the terrified shouts of Valencia fans and the long sigh after escaping from death.

In front of Dortmund's bench and coaching area, there was also a group of people holding their heads in their hands and sighing to the sky. They were not rejoicing at Valencia's escape, on the contrary, they were regretting that they had not been able to score first!

"Barrios! Barrios! Barrios—!" Klopp grabbed his hair, repeating Barrios's surname in frustration and anger. "Damn it!"

"Wow! Zhou Yi's transfer was really beautiful!" In the group, Yang Mu Ge also exclaimed.

"That Barrios is too bad, isn't he? I wouldn't have headed it high if I were him!" Sun Pan felt sorry that Zhou Yi's pass was wasted like that.

"It seems that Zhou Yi's long passes have really been practiced..." Guo Nu said. "His progress is really visible to the naked eye..."

He Ying didn't speak, just stared at the TV screen, his phone was next to him, but he didn't pick it up.

Although he didn't see what everyone was chatting about, his feelings were the same as Guo Nu's, that is, Zhou Yi's progress was too obvious... Now, thinking back to that rookie high school student who had just joined the team, he was completely different from the current Zhou Yi.

※※※

"Barrios! It's simply a crime!" Zhou Jianliang slapped his thigh in frustration, startling Li Cuiyun next to him.

She glared at her husband, but obviously he was completely immersed in the game at this time and didn't notice her at all.

※※※

After the game restarted, Valencia took possession of the ball and launched a new round of offensive towards Dortmund's penalty area using the flanks.

In the end, Joaquin's cross also created a threatening shot. Soldado's shot was saved and held in his arms by Weidenfeller.

It was considered a response to Barrios's header just now.

Then the two sides began a fierce head-to-head attack.

Yes, it was a head-to-head attack.

Dortmund did not shrink their defense and play conservatively just because they were playing away from home.

Similarly, Valencia, playing at home, had no reason to play conservatively.

The head coaches of the two teams are both passionate young representatives, and it would be difficult for the game to be boring when these two teams meet.

So the game continued at a fast pace and with high physical confrontation.

Fast pace means that the speed of offensive and defensive transitions in the two sides' attacks is very fast.

And high confrontation naturally means that this game is not a polite exchange of greetings between gentlemen, but a clash of bodies and splashing sweat.

As Dortmund's midfield core, Zhou Yi naturally became the focus of Valencia's marking.

Emery knew very well that if he wanted to paralyze the entire Dortmund, Zhou Yi was the one who absolutely could not be let go.

So he adopted that kind of zonal defense, specifically targeting Zhou Yi's characteristic of constantly changing positions in the game.

It can be seen that Emery had studied Zhou Yi and put in a lot of effort.

However, as the game progressed, Emery gradually frowned.

Because he found that Zhou Yi was not quite the same as he had expected.

Before this game, Zhou Yi had not participated in any Champions League games, so it was not easy to get Zhou Yi's game footage in the Champions League. He could only study Zhou Yi's performance in the league.

After research and analysis, he grasped some of Zhou Yi's characteristics in the league and designed his own defensive tactics accordingly.

There was one premise for this set of defensive tactics, that is, Zhou Yi's performance was the same as in the league.

This was not a problem originally.

But the problem was that the Bundesliga and the Champions League are different.

The difference between the Champions League and the Bundesliga can be clearly expressed with just one piece of data—the speed of passing in the Champions League is ten to fifteen percentage points faster than in the Bundesliga.

This is the feeling that Zhou Yi experienced in the virtual game.

Such a large increase in speed may cause inexperienced players to be unaccustomed.

Emery believed that Zhou Yi would definitely be unaccustomed. After all, he was very young, only nineteen years old this year. Being so young and lacking sufficient experience, his performance would fluctuate when he encountered situations that were different from what he expected.

At this time, putting some pressure on him would be enough to make him collapse.

But after watching ten minutes of the game on the sidelines, Emery felt that Zhou Yi showed no signs of collapsing at all. Instead, he was more like a veteran with rich experience in the Champions League…

This is not scientific!

Where did this kid come from?