Currently, Chengdu Rongcheng and Changchun Yatai lead the scoring charts in the Chinese Super League, while Shanghai Shenhua is at the bottom of the list. 27th, Chengdu Rongcheng will face Shanghai Shenhua under their own goal, and the match will be a sparkling one. Both teams are unbeaten this season, so who will be the first to break the myth of the unbeaten streak?
History in retrospect: Chengdu Hibiscus has achieved remarkable results, but the process was arduous.
Last season, Chengdu Rongcheng achieved a "double kill" against Shanghai Shenhua.
In the first round, Shanghai Shenhua only sent two foreigners to start. Despite going down 0-2 to Chengdu Rongcheng, they dominated the field and led in a number of key stats.
In the second round, Shanghai Shenhua played with a full Chinese squad and were almost overwhelmed and passive throughout the match. However, with goals from Han Chao and Yang Xu, Shenhua took the lead twice, but the follow up was weak and was eventually reversed by Chengdu Rongcheng.
From the two rounds of the match, Chengdu Rongcheng is full of bumps in the road, although the results are obvious. This season, Shanghai Shenhua's lineup has changed drastically, and their defensive counterattack is becoming more and more skillful. How will Chengdu Rongcheng respond?
Shenhua: lineup upgrade, new recruits getting better, veteran flair remains.
Shanghai Shenhua has a younger squad this season and a significantly deeper bench, with head coach Wu Jingui being more bold in his hiring.
In terms of the introduction of foreign aid, Shenhua ushered in four strong aiders this season, Yan Xinli, Teixeira, Amadou and Malelai. After several rounds of competition, the foreign aid form is gradually warming up. Mallet showed excellent form after his debut, contributing 3 goals and 2 assists. Yan Xinli's excellent round-trip ability is like an upgraded version of Qian Jie, which will bring great challenges to Chengdu Rongcheng's side.
It's worth noting that Shenhua's homegrown lineup is equally good. 36-year-old Yu Hanchao is getting more and more demonic with age, as if his age has been fixed. Long-distance running, breaking and shooting are still the top performances of domestic strikers. In addition, Shenhua's bench depth is also quite impressive. Young players such as Liu Ruofan and Zhang Wei are not bad.
Although Wu Jingui still focuses on defensive counter-attacks, he has significantly improved his strength. Shanghai Shenhua faced many strong opponents in the first eight rounds and only conceded 4 goals, making them the team that conceded the fewest goals. On the offensive side, they are no longer limited to long passes from the backfield, and their regular attacking means are also richer.
Hibiscus: How to respond? Getting the scale on offense and defense to improve defensive hardness.
Last season, Chengdu Rongcheng focused on defense (not pure defense) due to the lack of strikers and kept their defensive intensity quite high in every game. However, if they continue to do so this season, they might be able to get a good ranking, but it will be difficult for them to go further (into the AFC Champions League). Although Iverson has strengthened the team's forward line, he alone can't support the whole team, and the tactics need to be adjusted accordingly.
Therefore, in order to strengthen the team's overall offense, head coach Xu Zhengyuan made some compromises on defense, but the adjustment in place requires a process. In recent games, Chengdu Rongcheng was like "Cheng Bite Jin's three axes", but also learned a lot of lessons from it.
So how can Chengdu Rongcheng navigate through the game against Shanghai Shenhua's sharp defensive counterattack?
You can't put all the defensive burden on a few defenders, all players need to improve their defensive intensity. Especially after losing the ball, no matter who, no matter when or where, they need to step up their on-the-spot counterattacks and try not to let Shenhua players pass the ball easily, thus reducing the counterattack threat. In this regard, the team's performance in the previous matches was not satisfactory, which was the main reason for the draw.
Of course, we can't neglect the offense for the sake of defense. As long as we grasp the scale of offense and defense, coupled with the home field advantage, we can expect to break Shanghai Shenhua's undefeated golden body this season.
Typically, dealing with Shanghai Shenhua is no less difficult than Wuhan Sanzhen and Shandong Taishan, perhaps even more so. But this is also a litmus test for Chengdu Rongcheng. Once you cross this difficult hurdle, it's like breaking windowpaper. The game will get smoother and smoother after that.
