In February this year, the Chinese Super League teams are preparing for the tension, after the early physical reserves, the most important thing is to train the lineup, the team chooses to warm up the game, especially in the same winter training location, the warm up has become the normal state of winter training. Of course, some teams also choose to go to similar cities to play in order to improve the quality of warm-ups, especially with teams of the same level, which can better test the quality of the lineup. 2023 Super League Champion Harbour has completed three warm-up matches before, and under the leadership of the new coach Mouskat, Harbour has three consecutive warm-up matches, which have shown a good form.
Seaport's three warm-up matches were a 4-goal win over Xu Genbao-coached Shanghai's 2005-2006 National Games team, a 7-1 sweep of Shenzhen's youth team, and an 8-3 win over Qingdao's West Coast. Of course, the third warm-up match was four 120-minute periods, so the relative scores were very different, but it also reflected the huge difference in strength between the Chinese Super League newcomers and the champions, which is still the absence of international players. in early February, Seaport's current international players returned to the team one after another, and the new foreign aiders reported to the team one after another, so that the lineup was close to complete and the strength was further improved.
It is worth mentioning that Oscar, the core of Seaport, showed good competitive form in the three warm-up matches mentioned above, which is one of the strong guarantees for defending the title in the new season. After the winter training in Guangzhou, Seaport kept traveling to Haikou to start the second phase of the preparation tour. According to the arrangement of the coaching team, Seaport and Haikou Yatai had a Chinese Super League conversation on February 4. According to the agreement between the two sides, the game was played in 3 sections, each section was 45 minutes for a total of 135 minutes, the game was much more intense, but the two teams or the main and the substitutes took turns to give the young players more opportunities to exercise.
In the match, Harbour dominated the midfield possession from the start, which made Yatai more passive and tired of defending. After the return of the internationals, Muscat continued to try to switch between the 433 and 4231 formations with a clear strength advantage. A one-goal lead in the first period, both sides adjusted their lineups in the second period, with some substitutes coming on the field, and the game became more stalemated, with Seaport seizing their chances with great ability to extend their advantage to 2 goals.
In the third period, the young players were outnumbered and the struggle between the two sides became more intense, but neither of them scored a goal. In the end, Harbour beat Ateneo by 2 goals and had a strong attack in 4 consecutive warm-up matches in their 2024 debut. Ateneo had 2 wins, 1 draw and 3 losses in 6 warm-up matches, and coach Chen Yang needs to summarize and adjust more.
