Chapter 103: Five Goals in a Single Game, Sweeping Away the Gloom!
After the team's loss, the atmosphere within the squad became quite solemn.
Players who used to goof around on the training ground were now much quieter.
Throughout Werder Bremen's squad, it seemed like a layer of dark clouds hung over them, unscattered by the wind and unbroken by the rain.
Lin Quan himself was in a bad mood, practicing shooting alone on the training ground.
Losing a game was acceptable, but losing at home to Leverkusen was something he found hard to accept.
Is Leverkusen stronger than Bayern Munich? They can even draw with Bayern, but they let Leverkusen score four goals! The head coach, Shauff, came to the sideline, seeing the players' emotional state, couldn't help but sigh: Just as he thought!
The team had been too smooth before, giving the players a false sense of strength.
But in reality, Werder Bremen isn't that strong!
Compared to last season, their lineup has only been strengthened by Lin Quan and De Bruyne in the attacking midfield.
In the midfield and defense, their strength hasn't improved, but has even weakened a bit.
Militz is a good goalkeeper, cheap and effective, but compared to last season's main goalkeeper, Wiese, he falls short in many aspects.
His timing in coming out isn't as good as Wiese's, and his coordination with teammates isn't as smooth.
More importantly, he lacks Wiese's dominance! Wiese's strong mental attributes can greatly inspire the team on the field, boosting the players' confidence.
The four defenders are average, except for Papastathopoulos, who is slightly stronger, the others are nothing special.
From the beginning of the season until now, Werder Bremen's selection of central defenders has almost never been consistent.
Players like Lukimya, Priedel, Schmidt, and Selassi, he tried them all one by one, but still wasn't very satisfied.
As for the defensive midfield position, this is actually the team's biggest weakness.
Although captain Fritz can attack and defend, he's not outstanding in any aspect, can't be the best, and can only be used as a utility player in the backline, playing as a full-back or defensive midfielder.
As for Junuzovic and Eggestein, these two are stronger in attack than defense, have some organizing and offensive abilities, but are weak in defense, causing Werder Bremen's defensive midfield to lack hardness, often being penetrated by opponents.
If Werder Bremen's midfield didn't have De Bruyne, Shauff could still tolerate the performances of these two.
After all, the team needs their organizing abilities.
But with De Bruyne already in the attacking midfield, Junuzovic and Eggestein's organizing abilities are redundant and no longer important.
On the contrary, the team needs them to provide defensive strength and hardness in the defensive midfield position to ensure that the team's defense won't be easily threatened by opponents.
And both of them obviously can't do this, which leads to opponents frequently easily breaking through their midfield, easily attacking into the thirty-meter area and even threatening the goal.
These positions need to be reinforced, but these aren't the most important things at the moment.
The most critical thing now is to appease the emotions of the team's core, Lin Quan. Since the loss, Shauff has seen that he is not as happy as before.
So, after training, he called Lin Quan to his office, intending to talk to him alone.
"Coach, do you need something from me?"
Lin Quan had just come down from the training ground, still sweaty, and didn't want to dirty the coach's office chair, so he stood up to speak.
"Yeah, sit down, don't worry about dirtying my leather sofa, if it gets dirty, I'll just deduct it from your salary."
Shauff joked with Lin Quan, who gave him face and smiled: "Coach, you can't deduct my salary, my salary and bonuses are all paid by Barça."
Shauff was taken aback for a moment, he hadn't paid attention to these, but hearing Lin Quan say that, his face suddenly became a little embarrassed:
So since Lin Quan joined the team, has Werder Bremen been freeloading the whole time, without paying a penny?
This seems a bit too much, no wonder this kid isn't interested in staying with the club!
It turns out the club is so stingy! No, I have to talk to Allofs about this, let him give Lin some bonuses.
Leaving aside other things, Lin Quan has scored so many goals for the team, not giving him any bonuses is too much.
"Ahem, I'll talk to Allofs about this, it doesn't matter if Barça pays your salary, but for bonuses, we'll take care of it here!"
Lin Quan's face showed a sincere smile: "Is it the same as the bonuses from Barça?"
Shauff didn't know how much bonus Lin Quan received from Barça, but he heard that he signed a contract with the youth team.
For young players like him, plus it's a contract with the youth team, the annual bonus probably isn't much, right?
Although Werder Bremen isn't a rich giant, they can still afford tens of thousands of euros in bonuses.
"Yes, I'll talk to Allofs about this, you just wait to receive your bonus!"
"Then thank you, Coach!"
Someone is giving him money, and not just a little bit, Lin Quan naturally won't refuse.
But the coach probably doesn't know how much bonus he gets from Barça, and when he knows that amount... Haha, just thinking about it makes it interesting!
"Alright, let's talk about the last game!"
After the small talk, Shauff finally got to the point.
As soon as Lin Quan heard Shauff talk about the game, he quieted down and listened attentively.
"We lost the last game, and I know you all feel bad!"
"But professional football is like this, there's no team that doesn't lose, even strong teams like Barça often stumble in La Liga, and Bayern has also been defeated by Leverkusen!"
"We will lose games, it's normal, don't treat it like it's the end of the world, don't think it's your fault!"
Shauff recalled his own appearance when he used to play, and said with deep emotion:
"Weak teams can also defeat strong opponents, relying on tenacious fighting spirit, excellent teamwork, defeating strong opponents, and enjoying the joy of victory, that's the charm of football.
At the beginning of the season, we were still a weak team, and no team paid attention to us.
With your and De Bruyne's excellent performances, we played smoothly.
But now we are ranked second in the standings, many teams in the league will study how to deal with us, how to limit your performance.
Therefore, we can no longer win easily like at the beginning of the season. At this time, the team's performance will fluctuate, or even fall into a low point, these are things you need to experience.
The path of life is not smooth sailing, there will inevitably be setbacks and obstacles, what you need to do is not to indulge in self-blame.
But to find ways to solve difficulties, help yourself and the team out of the low point."
Lin Quan nodded, although he knew the coach was giving him chicken soup, but after drinking it, he did feel better.
At least for now, his mood was much better.
Seeing Lin Quan's mood improve, Shauff breathed a sigh of relief.
Young players still lack experience, after they have experienced more of these things, they won't be so affected.
"Alright, now let's talk about the team's tactical approach for the next game!"
...
De Bruyne watched the team lose on TV at home, feeling very upset.
The next day, he came to the team and found Lin Quan on the training ground, chatting with him.
"I plan to make a comeback in the next away game against Hoffenheim, what do you think?"
Lin Quan glanced at him, confirming that he wasn't joking, so he raised his foot and pretended to kick towards his ankle.
"Hey, what are you doing? This is very dangerous, you know?"
De Bruyne was startled and quickly dodged his attack.
"Not bad, good reaction, good agility, it seems you're really recovered."
Lin Quan wasn't really going to kick De Bruyne, he was just testing his reaction.
"That's right, I've been obediently following the doctor's orders to recuperate these days. Basically, I haven't left home, so of course, I've recovered well!"
De Bruyne seemed to be feeling quite stifled from being at home all the time, so he was particularly talkative today.
It had been over two weeks since he had been resting from his injury, and De Bruyne himself felt good, thinking he could return to play.
However, for his own health, Lin Quan still refused him.
"Let's wait for the next game. Playing away is troublesome and tiring, and it might cause your injury to relapse!"
De Bruyne wanted to say something else, but Lin Quan directly cited the warning from the medical expert before.
De Bruyne finally relented completely, finally dispelling the decision to return to the game.
Upon careful consideration, what Lin Quan said actually made sense.
Hoffenheim was ranked second to last in the league, an easy opponent.
Even though it was an away game, Werder Bremen had enough ability to defeat them.
If De Bruyne wanted to return, it would be better to wait until the 16th round when Werder Bremen faced Frankfurt.
By then, it would have been almost a month since De Bruyne's injury, and he could return without any hidden risks.
Moreover, he had not trained with the team for over two weeks. Before officially returning, he needed to slowly recover his training and adapt to the rhythm of the game.
How could he just recover from an injury and immediately play in a match? It's very easy to get injured again!
...
December 2nd, the 15th round of the Bundesliga began.
Werder Bremen visited the Rhein-Neckar-Arena to face Hoffenheim.
Hoffenheim's performance this year was extremely poor. In the league up to the 15th round, they had only won three matches, lost eight, drawn three, and were ranked third from the bottom on the points table.
Corresponding to their poor performance, in the 14 rounds of matches, they had conceded 36 goals, averaging 2.57 goals per game, ranking last in the Bundesliga.
This conceding rate was 10 goals more than the second-placed team, showing how terrible their defense was this season.
Hoffenheim had obviously studied the footage of Werder Bremen's last loss and copied Leverkusen's tactics to deal with them.
It seemed they hoped to win the game this way!
But the gap between their strength and Leverkusen's was still too big, especially their terrible defense. After a few rounds, they were easily defeated by Werder Bremen.
This game quickly turned into Lin Quan's personal show!
Before the first half ended, he had already scored a hat-trick! Shauff's new tactics completely liberated Lin Quan's attacking ability, giving him more freedom to shoot, and Lin Quan repaid the coach with three goals!
Seeing these three goals, Coach Shauff breathed a sigh of relief.
It seemed that this game was stable. After winning against Hoffenheim, they could still maintain their second position on the points table without dropping down.
Hoffenheim's players were almost disheartened by the opponents' continuous goals, each of them looking dispirited, unable to attack or defend.
This made Hoffenheim's coach very angry. Before the first half ended, he made two consecutive substitutions in the 37th minute.
No. 22, Firmino, came on for No. 40, Stiefen.
No. 32, Grifo, came on for No. 9, Skuplock.
Unfortunately, this substitution didn't have much effect. Until the end of the first half, Hoffenheim's state still hadn't improved.
When the second half began, it seemed like Hoffenheim's head coach had turned up the heat in the dressing room. Their players seemed to be woken up by the scolding.
After the start, they played much more positively than in the first half, and the game became more exciting.
With a huge lead, Werder Bremen didn't play conservatively; they continued to attack, threatening Hoffenheim's goal time and time again.
And with Hoffenheim trailing by three goals, being conservative was useless, so they also let loose and attacked aggressively.
Both teams played attacking football, making the game very exciting.
Just five minutes into the second half, after a series of combinations, Hoffenheim's Salihovic finally broke the deadlock, changing the score to 1:3.
But this score wasn't enough; they were still behind by two goals. To win the game, they needed to score at least three more goals.
Football is round, and with the second half just beginning, they had just scored a goal, morale was high, and they had plenty of time to turn things around.
After all, back in Istanbul, Liverpool scored three goals in just seven minutes, equalizing the score.
They had over 40 minutes, which was plenty of time!
Hoffenheim seemed to be treating themselves like Liverpool, hoping to create a miracle, but Werder Bremen on the other side wasn't AC Milan, who would celebrate prematurely at halftime.
They didn't celebrate in the dressing room; instead, they maintained a strong fighting spirit.
The players wanted to use a big win to dispel the gloom that hung over the team after losing at home.
So, just three minutes after Hoffenheim scored, Lin Quan scored directly from a free kick, changing the score to 1:4!
And it didn't end there. In the 71st minute of the game, Peterson's shot hit the post, and the ball fell to Lin Quan, who headed it into the goal with a somewhat awkward posture.
The score became 1:5, and Lin Quan completed an incredible feat of scoring five goals in a single Bundesliga match, a one-man show of five goals!
After he scored this goal, Hoffenheim's morale completely collapsed.
Their opponents had superhuman monsters in their lineup, while they were just ordinary people. How could they compete?
Their morale plummeted, and they couldn't muster any fight in the final moments of the game, accepting the fate of being slaughtered at their home ground by their opponents.
And after this round of matches, Lin Quan's lead on the Bundesliga top scorer list had greatly increased to 9 goals. The Bundesliga Golden Boot seemed to be firmly in his hands, and no one could take it away from him.
This victory brought smiles back to the faces of Werder Bremen's players.
The gloom that had hung over the team after losing at home was gone.
What's more, De Bruyne's injury had completely healed, and he officially began training with the team.
If nothing unexpected happened, he would return in the next home game against Frankfurt.
Frankfurt was the biggest dark horse of the Bundesliga this season. At the beginning of the season, they had a winning streak and closely followed the league leaders, Bayern Munich.
At that time, many people even thought they would create a new Kaiserslautern miracle!
Although they fell behind later, no one dared to underestimate them.
Currently, Frankfurt was ranked fifth in the Bundesliga, and after half a season of matches, their strength was recognized by the outside world.
They were a team with strong fighting spirit and tough play. No matter who faced them, the game would be difficult.
In such a crucial match, De Bruyne's return undoubtedly added a lot of chances for Werder Bremen.
The first half of the Bundesliga season was coming to an end. After the game against Frankfurt, Werder Bremen only had one league match and one German Cup match left.
In these three matches, except for the home game against Frankfurt, the other two were away games.
Especially the last German Cup match, they would go to Bayern Munich's home ground to challenge the Bundesliga champions.
This game was very important for Werder Bremen. Whether they could get a ticket to European competition through the cup match depended on whether they could win at the Allianz Arena.
"Don't think too much for now; let's focus on playing the current game well first!"
Coach Shauff reminded the team in the pre-match locker room speech to stay vigilant, not to be complacent because the opponent was ranked lower, and not to think victory would come easily because De Bruyne was returning!
"Don't underestimate Frankfurt; don't make the same mistakes as against Leverkusen before!"
"We can't accept continuous losses at home to the opponents. The fans at Weser Stadium can't accept it either, so, in this game, I want you to give it your all, without holding back, and crush them!"
(End of this chapter)