Chapter 1 When Zhou Yi was training long passes in the virtual system, the real world was also passing day by day. At the national team level, the Chinese team went to Japan to participate in the East Asian Four Nations Cup.

However, this time, Zhou Yi was not called up by Gao Hongbo. Gao Hongbo explained that Zhou Yi had heavy match tasks at the club. In the East Asian Four Nations Cup, no one recalled players playing overseas, so China naturally didn't need to recall Zhou Yi.

Chinese media also believed that Zhou Yi didn't need to come back to participate in the East Asian Four Nations Cup, which was not an international A-level event. Because these dispensable games would affect his future in Dortmund, it would be a loss outweighing the gain.

It should be noted that after Shaheen recovered from his injury, his performance was excellent, which had already given the Chinese media a sense of crisis. If he was called back to participate in the unimportant East Asian Four Nations Cup, leading to his main position in the club being taken away, it would be truly picking up sesame seeds and losing a watermelon.

There had been such precedents before.

After Yang Chen performed well in Frankfurt, he was frequently called back to participate in the national team's games, which eventually led to him losing his main position in Frankfurt. Such a tragedy must not be repeated on Zhou Yi.

At the same time, the national team without Zhou Yi gave the Chinese people a surprise. They tied the host Japan 0:0 in the first match, and then ended the "Korean phobia" of not winning against South Korea for thirty-two years with a 3:0 victory against the South Korean team! Letting the Chinese fans have dumplings during the New Year.

At the club level, the game between Dortmund and Bayern Munich at Bayern's home field was getting closer and closer.

However, Dortmund's preparation was not going smoothly—their main goalkeeper Weidenfeller was injured in training.

Goalkeepers are rarely injured, and it is even rarer to be injured in training.

But such a rare thing still happened to Dortmund.

Weidenfeller, as the team's main goalkeeper and the last line of defense, was very important to Dortmund.

His injury was definitely bad news.

So Klopp, who was on the sidelines of the training ground at the time, looked very unhappy.

It should be noted that the day before Weidenfeller was injured, the team's captain Sebastian Kehl was also injured.

Losing two people in a row, Dortmund's luck was really bad.

When Kehl was injured, Klopp's face was not as ugly as it was now.

After all, after Shaheen recovered from his injury, Kehl was no longer a starter. Moreover, Kehl had always been accompanied by injuries in recent years, and injuries had become commonplace. He didn't get injured during Shaheen's injury period, and his performance in time exceeded Klopp's expectations.

Weidenfeller's injury was definitely more impactful than Kehl's injury.

When Weidenfeller was injured, the entire team's training was suspended. Everyone watched from the sidelines as team doctor Dr. Kraun checked Weidenfeller, and they all frowned—they were also very clear about Weidenfeller's importance to the team.

Someone couldn't help but sigh.

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Weidenfeller was injured very suddenly, just the day before the team planned to set off for Munich.

In this way, Dortmund's starting goalkeeper could only be Ziegler, who had not played for a minute this season.

Then, with such a lineup, the entire Dortmund team flew to Munich.

With the main goalkeeper injured and the new tactics only practiced for a week, Dortmund didn't get any advantage on the road.

They eventually lost 1:3 to Bayern Munich.

Dortmund took the lead in the first five minutes, with Subotic scoring.

But it wasn't long before Bayern Munich scored three goals in a row.

Dortmund was beaten without any temper on the road.

This was the first time this season that Zhou Yi and Shaheen started at the same time. The two players, who were in good shape recently, were expected to perform well when they started for the first time.

When Shaheen returned from injury, some local media in Dortmund believed that Shaheen and Zhou Yi could coexist at the same time, which would greatly strengthen Dortmund's control and passing ability in the midfield.

But after the two started at the same time, the team lost the ball instead.

Moreover, in the game, they did not show the effect of one plus one being greater than two.

This seemed to be one of the reasons why the team lost to Bayern Munich on the road.

However, Klopp didn't think so. He said at the post-match press conference that the loss was due to the team's bad luck.

Such an explanation was obviously not accepted by the media.

"Bad luck? Dortmund took the lead in the first five minutes! If this is considered bad luck, then what is considered good luck?" The Munich local media ridiculed.

As for Zhou Yi and Shaheen's performance not being as good as everyone thought when they started at the same time, Klopp also felt it was normal: "You also said that this is the first time the two have started at the same time this season. It is normal for the two to have some lack of understanding. I don't think there is any need to pay special attention to this."

In fact, Klopp knew in his heart that Dortmund's loss to Bayern Munich had only one reason, and that was that Dortmund's strength was not strong enough compared to Bayern Munich.

But he couldn't publicly admit this, as it would be a blow to his team's morale—what would Dortmund's players think if they knew that their coach thought they were not as good as Bayern Munich's players? They would feel that such a coach was not worthy of their desperate efforts. By then, the foundation of trust between the players and the coach would be disintegrated.

So Klopp could only push all the responsibility for the loss to bad luck.

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In fact, in the years when Dortmund had good results, they were strong challengers to Bayern Munich.

However, as Dortmund's performance declined and their financial situation deteriorated, the gap between Dortmund and Bayern Munich widened.

Instead, some other teams took over the banner of "Bayern Munich Challenger."

Such as Werder Bremen, Stuttgart, and Schalke 04.

But before this game, Dortmund's momentum was very strong, making everyone full of expectations for this game between Dortmund and Bayern Munich. Seeing whether Dortmund could once again become a challenger to Bayern Munich.

However, reality gave those who fantasized about it a blow to the head.

After the game, some media commented that although Dortmund's performance was much better than at the beginning of the season, they still had a long way to go to threaten Bayern Munich.

Other media disagreed with Klopp's view that the loss was due to bad luck, believing that Klopp should be responsible for the team's loss to Bayern Munich.

The successive injuries of Weidenfeller and Kehl were the responsibility of Klopp's excessive training intensity.

Because these two people were injured in training.

Even Shaheen's injury was blamed on Klopp. They believed that Shaheen was over-fatigued in training, which led to him not being able to better protect himself in the game.

However, Klopp did not respond to this kind of voice.

Some media also believed that Klopp's "double core" tactical theory of wanting Shaheen and Zhou Yi to coexist looked "beautiful" in theory, but there were many difficulties in actual operation, and it was not as promising as imagined.

"...Double cores are not so easy to play with. The England national team should be a lesson for Klopp. Gerrard and Lampard are both well-deserved cores in their respective clubs, but the England team, which has these two world-class midfielders, has a very chaotic midfield and performs poorly in international competitions. This is because the two cores conflict with each other, the division of labor is not clear, and the responsibilities are chaotic... Now Dortmund is facing the same problem as the England team... The chaotic situation in the cooperation between Shaheen and Zhou Yi has already been reflected in the game against Bayern Munich..."

Klopp did not defend against the doubts about the new tactics either.

No matter what the outside world said, he now only wanted to make his new tactics take shape as soon as possible.

In the game against Bayern Munich, it could be seen that there were still some problems in the cooperation between Shaheen and Zhou Yi.

For example, in theory, the two should maintain contact in the game, have a clear division of labor, and can also switch positions.

This requirement is actually very vague.

How can we maintain contact and have a clear division of labor? Is the clear division of labor and mutual switching of positions contradictory? When should we have a clear division of labor, and when can we switch positions?

These are difficult to figure out in one game. Only through continuous training and cooperation can we cultivate enough understanding.

This requires time and patience.

Klopp was very patient with this. He was willing to give these two young men enough time, and he also believed that these two young men would not let down the patience and expectations he gave them.

But not everyone has this patience.

Zhou Yi actually didn't have it.

He was very patient while waiting for a chance to play in the first team.

Because this was something he couldn't decide, he had to wait patiently.

But now, he hoped to reduce some of the waiting time through his own efforts.

Especially after losing to Bayern Munich.

Originally, Zhou Yi was not in a hurry. He had been focusing on long passes that week. But after experiencing the game against Bayern Munich on the road, he realized that long passes needed time to slowly improve. One week of hard training had limited improvement. His short passes had been practiced non-stop for a year to achieve the current results.

Now it seemed that his cooperation with Shaheen in the midfield was more urgent.

So Zhou Yi adjusted the proportion of training in the virtual system. He still practiced long passes every day, but not only long passes like last week. He now spent one-third of his time training long passes and short passes, and the remaining two-thirds of his training time was used to practice the entire team's offense and defense with Shaheen.

The main goal was to improve the tacit understanding with Shaheen in the new tactical system. Specifically, it was to explore the timing and degree of "maintaining contact, having a clear division of labor, and switching positions" in continuous repetitive training.

In fact, this was not Zhou Yi's business alone, after all, it was a dual core.

Zhou Yi's training could only improve his familiarity with the new tactics, and could not improve Shaheen's proficiency with this style of play.

So it seemed that Zhou Yi's special training was actually useless.

After training for a day, Zhou Yi also had such doubts.

Because no matter how he trained in the virtual world, everything seemed to be no different from before his special training in the real training the next day. If it had improved, the improvement was also very, very small...

This couldn't go on, but he couldn't just let it go. He had to think of a solution, right?

After pondering for ten minutes, Zhou Yi came up with a solution.

Since he couldn't give Shaheen special training, and could only train himself, then let Shaheen continue to play in his familiar way, and he would cooperate with Shaheen.

In this way, he only needed to train himself.

This was currently the most obvious and fastest way to improve the effectiveness of the dual-core tactics.

It was also the only feasible special training method.