Tiger made a straight pass in the midfield, and Lopez inserted from the left diagonally - looking down from the stands, Tiger's pass and Lopez's sprint cut through the waves and cut through the defense line of Barcelona, ​​instantly forming a single sword!

Facing Hesp who was attacking, Lopez was not in a hurry and rushed over Hesp with a beautiful change of line. For Lopez, who dribbled the ball at a very fast speed, this extraordinary method is the easiest and most effective.

Then, under the gaze of Valencia fans who had already stood up with their arms raised, Lopez easily kicked the ball into the empty goal!

The whole stand was filled with cheers of "cutting" burst out at the same time. Lopez opened his arms and rushed towards the stands a few steps, then turned around and ran directly towards Tiger.

After approaching Tiger, Lopez jumped up and jumped directly on Tiger. Tiger looked thin and now he was 1.81 meters tall, while Lopez was only 1.78 meters tall.

"Beautiful pass, Tiger!" Lopez said sincerely. Tiger's straight pass was tailor-made for his speed and running frequency. Before touching the ball, he could directly sprint out his highest speed to shake off two defenders who were much slower than him. At the first moment of touching the ball, he could make moves to get rid of goalkeeper Hesp who attacked. Lopez could feel that even if Hesp didn't attack, he could still grasp this single shot more easily. In short, Hesp would die if he didn't attack, and if he didn't attack...

"A little bit of luck." Tiger shrugged: "After all, I'm not very familiar with your running route. If you start a little late, I'm afraid the ball won't be able to get in."

Lopez looked at Tiger and laughed: "It's okay, there's still time to get familiar with it..."

"Beautiful cooperation! The straight pass in the midfield, Lopez inserted the diagonally and scored a goal alone! The cooperation between the passes and runs is extremely tacit. It is hard to imagine that this is the first time these two players cooperated in the official game... Tiger's straight pass is so beautiful. Lopez only needs to sprint forward comfortably, and the ball will appear in front of him. Defensive counterattack has always been considered a symbol of ugliness, but this quick counterattack is simply a pleasure!"

Valencia's live commentator began to praise the club's business so well and how excellent Tiger's performance was - it can be imagined that as a staff member of Valencia's club, he still received some instructions...

The goal was undoubtedly quite beautiful. Tiger and Lopez's cooperation was as tacit as their partner who had been with him for several years. However, what Tiger said was honestly - this assist had a certain amount of luck. Barcelona's oppressive offense left a huge flaw in the backcourt, and the lack of cooperation between De Poor and other Barcelona defenders also made Barcelona's defense even bigger. In addition, their innate speed defects caused this goal.

The next game explained this very well. After taking the lead, Barcelona was in a mess for a while. Valencia took the opportunity to suppress Barcelona and began to push Barcelona players to the point of attack. Valencia's positional offense has always been a weakness, so in the positional offense, the ball was more passed to Tiger's feet, and Tiger kept using it to dispatch the passes to organize the offense.

This kind of ball is concentrated in large quantities under his feet, and then constantly passes the ball out, constantly responding, using his own skills and running to drive the offensive work of the whole team. This is not the first time Tiger has done it. Although he rarely has such an opportunity at Manchester United, he has been playing this role on the court in the past two years at Preston, which is not unfamiliar to him.

But being familiar with it does not mean that the effect is good - such a core requires that teammates are familiar with his passing route and his running route. At the same time, teammates also have to trust him extremely and cooperate willingly to achieve the best effect.

Although Tiger had largely conquered his teammates in the training before the season, these players in Valencia have not yet reached the point where they were completely convinced by Tiger. Before at Preston, it was because the strength shown by Tiger at that time was indeed outstanding, and Preston was in a very dangerous situation at that time. Everyone could only let go of their prejudices and cooperate with Tiger. Valencia's situation was different from Preston. Without Tiger last season, they still qualified for the King's Cup and the Champions League, and naturally they also had their pride.

The cooperation between Tiger and his teammates is far from tacit understanding. If a player like Tiger wants him to quickly exert his strength, it is very easy. If you break through with the ball, it will definitely be a great threat. However, it is difficult to establish him as the core of the offensive. It requires a large number of games to cultivate teammates' trust and tacit understanding in him. This is not something that can be achieved overnight.

Tiger did not choose too many personal breakthroughs. He knew very clearly that if he wanted to achieve his goals, he had to take this more difficult path.

After a fierce attack by Valencia, Barcelona launched a counterattack. However, it was very difficult to break through Valencia's goal. Last season, Valencia's defense was second in La Liga, conceding only eight more goals than Mallorca. After Cooper coached Valencia, he also did not give up on Valencia's characteristics. Under the foundation laid by Ranieri, he pushed the defense to the point where he reached the pinnacle!

Valencia has maintained a lot of integrity in the main defense line last season. The defender and midfield line only replaced two players, among which Kili is more offensive, while Pellegrino is a typical tall defender rather than a defender who organizes the defense line. As long as such a player exerts his abilities, there will not be too many cooperation problems - his situation is exactly the opposite of De Boer. A defender like Pellegrino is a fight, but he will not improve the defense line too many players with overall strength in the later stage. However, De Boer needs to form a tacit understanding with his defenders. At first, some loopholes will appear. After forming a tacit understanding, players can improve the team's defensive level!

But no matter what, Valencia's defense lacks the existence of Barcelona, ​​which is hard to shake, is Valdo's number one offensive player.

When the whistle to the end of the first half sounded, Valencia withstood Barcelona's fierce attack and maintained the one-goal lead created by Tiger until the end of the first half.

Valencia fans welcomed Valencia players who walked out with applause. They took the lead in the first half. Although Valencia was still passively beaten most of the time, but for Valencia, who has been used to becoming more and more like Italian teams in the past two seasons, what is this? People often say that in Spain, coaches who don’t play well will be fired even if they win. However, in fact, this statement should be that for fans of Real Madrid and Barcelona, ​​other La Liga teams care about survival and honor, not for gorgeous scenes.

If Ranieri is still in Valencia, he will also feel that Valencia is becoming more and more in line with the existence of a perfect team in his mind - a solid defense, reducing the opponent's offensive threat to the weakest, basically not making mistakes, a tenacious midfielder, winning advantages through large-scale running, and efficient counterattacking forward. Tiger performed like a standard Italian shadow forward in the first half. What Valencia does not have now is just a top Italian center, but this kind of center does not often appear in Italy.

"I played well in the first half. I'm very happy to see you maintain the perfect defensive ability last season. This is very important for our next league and Champions League trip. In the counterattack, we also remained efficient as always. Although we still don't have many ways in positional battles, for us, this is something we can take it slowly. Tiger's organization in the first half was very good, but our cooperation in the frontcourt was not very tacit.

There is no need to worry at all. We still have a lot of time to establish tacit understanding. What we need to do now is to play our best level in every game to gradually establish tacit understanding. Barcelona may launch a more intense offense in the second half, and still focus on defense. After getting the ball, they will hand it over to Tiger as soon as possible. If they have the opportunity, they will counterattack quickly. If they can't fight back, they will follow the trend and move into positional battles. This will be our main tactic for the next few seasons."

Cooper first praised the players' performance in the first half in the locker room, and then vaguely pointed out his shortcomings in the offense - he had nothing to be picky about in defense. Valencia's defense was already quite outstanding, and he also performed well in the first half. Cooper did not force them to perform well immediately on the offense, so Tiger didn't feel so angry when he heard it.

In fact, Tiger's withdrawn mentality at that time was closely related to the pressure Lin Danda put on him. After losing the pressure of threatening life, Tiger's mood gradually began to relax, at least not becoming more and more extreme.

Cooper is an iron-fisted coach, but his iron-fisted does not mean that he can only communicate with the players. If he only knows this, he will not be the head coach of a professional team. He is very accurate in this regard. Tiger is just a straight-forward and has to follow his hair. Although he doesn't know that Tiger refused to play at Manchester United at that time, he ignored Keegan and let Cooper know that after Tiger was substituted in the England national team, maybe what this guy can't tolerate is that the coach underestimates his abilities and does not trust his performance.

Those who can become professional coaches are not fools, not to mention that Tiger is a player Cooper strongly advocates introducing, so he will naturally be more tolerant and indulgent.

*********************************************

After the second half, Barcelona began to fight back. However, Barcelona is indeed not the best Barcelona. Rivaldo's absence has a great impact on them. However, the reason why they performed in this game is more because the players are not in shape - because they do not need to play in the Champions League knockout round, their team concentrates one week later than Valencia, which makes the physical condition of Barcelona players not very good compared to that of Valencia.

When he was used to handing the ball to Rivaldo more, Litmanin, who replaced Rivaldo to play the left winger, got a lot of passes. However, Finland and Iceland were not as good as they were two or three years ago. He suffered a serious injury last season and had not been recovering for a while. Under the collision of Angueroma, a big black man, who was still in a slight sense of charm, Litmanin, who was still injuring the injury, was more likely to dodge, which also greatly affected Barcelona's offense.

Seeing that the situation on the left was not open, Barcelona was unwilling to hit Valencia's solid middle defense line and bloody. Then Barcelona's attack began to focus on the right. Although Figo was more famous in La Liga than in the entire Europe and even the whole world, his strength was almost at its peak. His breakthrough and cross on the right had posed a huge threat to Valencia's defense line.

However, on this side, Figo still hit a piece of iron.

Caboni is undoubtedly a very excellent defensive player. The defensive ability of Italian players in this era is the best in the world. When they start defending wholeheartedly, their strength is terrifying. Although Caboni is not young, his full-time defense is still extremely stable. In addition, Kili in front of him is also a wide player with strong defensive ability - at least he can run and his ability to fight is not bad - under the joint efforts of these two people, Figo can only choose to cross rather than break through. Although there is the high point of Cruivette in the penalty area, the offensive efficiency is still very low.

While tenaciously resisting Barcelona's attack and not giving them too many opportunities, Valencia also launched counterattacks frequently. Tiger took a lot of balls, and his ball also effectively restrained Barcelona's three midfielders from the attack - Lopez had the advantage of speed, and Tiger was able to send a beautiful straight pass. To resist this counterattack, the only way was to interfere with Tiger as much as possible before he got the ball, which made Cocu, Guardiola and even Luis Enrique unable to participate in the attack wholeheartedly.

However, after Barcelona's midfielder began to pay attention to defending Tiger, it was not easy for Tiger to launch a counterattack smoothly. Cooperation is a problem, and Barcelona's advantage in the midfield is also a problem.

While gaining the advantage of the offensive, there was no good way to score, while trying to counterattack, they were repeatedly disturbed. The scene continued like this.

Neither the head coaches of both sides want to take the initiative to break the current deadlock - this situation is often easy to occur in two rounds of games, and both sides are more willing to keep the victory in the second round - especially in the current situation, the home team leading one goal is unwilling to push the offensive and lead to the opponent scoring away goals, while the away team falling behind one goal seems to be able to understand the result of this zero-to-one. Only one goal away game will be lost, and it is easy to win back when returning to the home court...

In the 21st minute of the second half, Van Gaal made his first substitution of the season. Litmanin, who performed mediocrely, was replaced. Another new player, Ronald Debord. After he came on the court, Luis Enrique's position was retreated, while Koku topped up to play the left winger - Koku himself is a rare versatile player. He can play in any position except center and goalkeeper...

Cooper also replaced a newly introduced player, short forward Juan Sanchez was replaced and Lopez, who scored a goal.

However, neither of these two substitutions had any effect. Ronald Debord is a player who is good at organizing. However, although his experience is more abundant than Tiger, he faces the same problem as Tiger, that is, cooperation with his teammates. After he played, he took the ball several times, but he did not have much effect. Sanchez was very active in running after he came on the court, but he was unable to create any opportunities...

During the next period, Tiger began to swim more to the wings to participate in the offense. His breakthrough created several opportunities, but he repeatedly failed because of the lack of pickup players in the middle. Barcelona's offense slowed down. Facing an iron barrel formation, they were a little tired...

In the 81st minute, Cooper replaced Tiger with Angulo. This substitution had the intention of strengthening defense. Tiger received warm cheers from Valencia fans when he left the court. Although Tiger's performance was not particularly outstanding in this game, the assist allowed Valencia fans to see his ability to shoot the ball. Last season, Valencia's goals were not particularly many, and most of the goals were scored by counterattacks. Obviously, after having such a player who can pass a beautiful straight pass in the field, whether it is counterattack or positional battles, the offensive efficiency will be greatly improved.

"Performed well, have a good rest. There is still a Champions League qualifier in three days." Cooper patted Tiger on the shoulder and said to Tiger.

Tiger nodded, then hugged Cooper, then walked towards the bench, took a towel from the staff and sat down while wiping sweat.

"I was also replaced in the middle, Tiger is very calm this time..." The commentator of Spanish TV station teased Tiger. It seems that many people already know about his refusal to shake hands with Keegan in the national team last time...

Five minutes later, Cooper used the third substitution place. He replaced Herad, who was slightly injured by a young player Alberda, who was promoted from the second team, and was ready to keep the advantage of one goal leading until the end of the game. Cooper was extremely bold in using new players.

Seeing this situation, Barcelona launched a attack, but Valencia's defense was not affected, and their defense was still intact - Cooper might give up the attack, but he could not give up the defense.
Chapter completed!