Chapter 278 Unexpected

Zhou Yi's world-class goal to pull one back for the team had a clear effect on boosting morale. In the subsequent play, Borussia Dortmund's morale was high, while Schalke 04 was clearly affected by the conceded goal. Problems cropped up in their passing game, with frequent errors.

Taking advantage of Schalke 04's mistakes, Borussia Dortmund launched a fierce attack on their goal, hoping to equalize as soon as possible. This would leave them with much more time, as they would only need to score one more goal in the remaining minutes.

During this period, Schalke 04's defenders were the busiest.

Yang Muge followed Zhou Yi almost every step of the way. As soon as Zhou Yi dared to cross the line, he would quickly stick to him, absolutely not allowing Zhou Yi any chance to calmly receive the ball and shoot.

However, due to Schalke 04's own mistakes, Borussia Dortmund still got some shooting opportunities.

Hildebrand had an extremely high exposure rate during this period, and he always appeared in the close-up shots of the TV broadcast.

Because of his saves.

This once-genius goalkeeper, who had created the Bundesliga's longest consecutive clean sheet record at Stuttgart, had once been highly anticipated and regarded as the successor to the goalkeeper god Kahn. But after Kahn, there was Lehmann, and Hildebrand had always been the third-choice goalkeeper in the German national team. In his club career, after leaving Stuttgart, he didn't fare very well either, wandering around Valencia, Hoffenheim, and Sporting Lisbon before joining Schalke 04 in the summer of 2011. But even last season at Schalke 04, he wasn't a starter.

It wasn't until this season that he began to play more and more games for Schalke 04.

"Hildebrand! His performance makes us seem to see him again as he was in the 2003-2004 season. At that time, he created a Bundesliga record of 884 consecutive minutes without conceding a goal, a record that no one has been able to break to this day..." Duan Xin was popularizing Hildebrand's glorious past for the Chinese TV audience. Don't look at Hildebrand now, unable to even enter the German national team, but back then he was a famous genius goalkeeper, highly anticipated.

But in the eyes of many Chinese fans who supported Borussia Dortmund, they were really unlucky. Hildebrand's form had been poor for the past few years, so why was he in such good form in this game?

With various high saves and blocks, he managed to keep the goal intact when Schalke 04 had just conceded a goal and their morale was unstable!

This thwarted Borussia Dortmund's desire to press their advantage.

After nearly ten minutes, Borussia Dortmund had to slow down and withdraw their offense, continuing to maneuver and stalemate with Schalke 04.

This brought a sigh of relief to the Schalke 04 fans in the stands and the Bayern Munich fans in front of the TV.

In any case, Schalke 04 was still in the lead. Once they survived Borussia Dortmund's initial onslaught, they would have a lot of room and leeway to maneuver.

And time would pass minute by minute in this maneuvering and stalemate. By the time Borussia Dortmund wanted to exert their strength again, there wouldn't be much time left for them.

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Not being able to score in a short period of time annoyed Klopp. He stood on the sidelines, biting his lip, his expression serious.

He knew what this meant.

Once the game returned to Schalke 04's rhythm, it would be troublesome.

The game on the field continued, and the match returned to an even state. Both sides seemed to have opportunities, but neither was able to score.

The game was developing in the direction that Schalke 04 supporters and Bayern Munich fans hoped for.

Zhou Yi was tightly缠 (chan - entangled) by Yang Muge, so tightly that he didn't even have time to adjust after receiving the ball and had to pass the ball out immediately.

As a result, the threat he could create was much smaller.

Zhou Yi knew he had to make some changes, otherwise things would get worse.

Yang Muge was a very rigid and stubborn player, full of tenacity in defense, but that didn't mean he had no weaknesses. There were no perfect players in this world, and no truly impenetrable defenses.

To deal with players like Yang Muge, who were tenacious but lacked flexibility, required more exaggerated imagination.

As the saying goes, nothing is impossible to do, only impossible to imagine.

Some people won't do things they can't imagine. Because they think such things are impossible.

People with big imaginations can always come up with many ideas that seem completely unrealistic. Of course, many of these ideas are impossible to realize, but some of them do have the potential to be realized.

Zhou Yi felt that to deal with Yang Muge, he had to take an unconventional approach.

So, when he was running off the ball again, he didn't continue to stay in the center, but went directly to the left wing.

He and Götze, who was originally here, made a cross-exchange. Götze went to the center, and Lewandowski, who was having a hard time getting the ball with his back to the goal, passed the ball to Götze.

At this time, Zhou Yi began to accelerate and insert forward along the wing.

His forward insertion attracted the attention of Schalke 04 players, but with Yang Muge following him, they didn't take it too seriously. Some people had statistically shown that Zhou Yi was most threatening in the center, where he could always send out very imaginative and threatening passes, while on the wing, his efficiency was lower. He even rarely crossed, because he didn't seem to be very good at crossing.

Yang Muge didn't give up following Zhou Yi just because Zhou Yi wasn't good at crossing. Even if Zhou Yi switched to the wing, he was still by Zhou Yi's side. At this time, stubbornness was his advantage. No matter how others evaluated Zhou Yi, he only acted according to the initially set plan, which was the task given to him by the coach - "Keep an eye on Zhou Yi."

So he was still following Zhou Yi, making Zhou Yi a little headache: How to get rid of this "shadow" and get a chance?

Yang Muge's close marking hardly gave him any time to think after getting the ball, so he had to solve this problem before getting the ball.

But his time without the ball wasn't very ample either.

Seeing that he was about to run to the front line, Götze might pass the ball to him if he saw this run.

Yang Muge was stuck on the inside line on his side, resolutely not allowing Zhou Yi any possibility of breaking through inwards.

In this situation, what should he do?

Many scenes flashed through Zhou Yi's mind, all of which were fragments of him simulating this game time after time in the virtual space. Finding solutions in the games that had already been played, this was called experience. And Zhou Yi was a very, very experienced player.

He suddenly thought of something.

And at this moment, Götze saw Zhou Yi's forward insertion, and he unhesitatingly passed the ball directly.

Zhou Yi was trustworthy at all times.

Zhou Yi looked back at the ball passed by Götze, and he slowed down. Yang Muge didn't rashly press forward, as that might instead be used by Zhou Yi to exploit the speed difference in the press and attack behind him. So he honestly stayed inside the penalty area, separated from Zhou Yi by only a white line of the large penalty area, neither too close nor too far, maintaining a very suitable distance.

This way, he could defend against Zhou Yi's breakthrough and also defend against Zhou Yi's pass.

It seemed to be a perfect defense.

Since Yang Muge didn't come up to press, Zhou Yi easily got the ball.

After getting the ball, Zhou Yi didn't dribble to break through, nor did he pass the ball directly. He dribbled the ball along the large penalty area line, not fast, and his footwork was also very slow. If he was a speed-type player, this would arouse the vigilance of the defenders, because some speed-type players like to play with this kind of change in rhythm, dribbling slowly at first, and then suddenly accelerating when you're not paying attention, using their speed advantage and the weakness of the defenders' slow turning to create a chance to score.

For example, He Ying scored a goal in this way in his first game after joining Paris Saint-Germain on loan.

But Zhou Yi was obviously not that kind of speed-type player. Even if he wanted to suddenly accelerate, the most likely result would be that he couldn't pick up the speed and was blocked by Yang Muge, losing possession.

So Zhou Yi wouldn't do that, so there was no need to worry about him having any speed changes while dribbling slowly.

This analysis was theoretically correct, but there were always exceptions.

Zhou Yi didn't have any intention of accelerating the dribble, or saying that he wanted to break through with a feint. Yang Muge was just stuck on the inside line and didn't make a move - in his opinion, there was still space ahead, so Zhou Yi wouldn't be in a hurry, and he didn't need to be in a hurry either. When he forced Zhou Yi close to the baseline, about to go out of bounds, Zhou Yi would be anxious, and when he was anxious, there would be flaws.

Yang Muge's strategy was to force Zhou Yi towards the baseline.

How could Zhou Yi not know Yang Muge's strategy?

But he also had a countermeasure.

In the seemingly unhurried dribbling, Zhou Yi's right foot, which was closer to the penalty area, should have continued to push the ball forward in theory. But when this foot swung over, he directly used his toe to flick the ball up!

A very casual movement, not obvious at all, and extremely fast. Yang Muge only saw Zhou Yi's foot kick towards the ball. By the time he realized it was actually a cross, the ball had already flown past him, and he was completely powerless to stop it!

He could only turn his head and follow the ball with his eyes, but he himself was completely helpless.

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"Zhou Yi... cross!?" Even Duan Xin was taken aback, not expecting Zhou Yi to suddenly send out a cross like this.

The Schalke 04 players in the penalty area didn't react either, but there was one person in front of the goal who did react, and that person was Lewandowski, who had inserted forward!

When Zhou Yi passed the ball into the penalty area, he came up with a diving header!

When his forehead solidly hit the ball, the Schalke 04 defenders around him, whether it was Höwedes or Matip... none of them reacted, not even goalkeeper Hildebrand, because the distance was too close. He was also unable to make any reaction to Lewandowski's powerful header, and just watched the ball fly into the goal he was guarding...

"Lewandowski--!! Robert Lewandowski!!" Marcel Reif screamed excitedly. "2:2!! He equalized for Borussia Dortmund!! Now Borussia Dortmund and Schalke 04 are tied!!"

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Yang Muge turned his head to look at Zhou Yi. He never expected that Zhou Yi could pass the ball out like this. This was also a change in rhythm, but not a dribbling rhythm, but a passing rhythm...

Zhou Yi winked at the surprised Yang Muge, and then ran towards Lewandowski, while Lewandowski had already run towards him. The two hugged each other right under Yang Muge's nose, and more Borussia Dortmund players rushed up and surrounded them, hugging together, recklessly celebrating on Schalke 04's territory.