190 The UEFA European Football Championship Part 1 (2/2)
On the plane to Lisbon, Portugal, Tang En also talked to Dunn about this problem, and expressed his opinion that the tactics employed by Greece were something that Nottingham Forest could emulate in their first Premier League season.
Compared to the other teams in the Premier League, Nottingham Forest had no advantage in terms of overall strength. Many teams would look down on their opponents when fighting against a team that had just been promoted, and often lacked understanding of their opponents. Nottingham Forest could deploy a tactic of counterattacking to stabilize its position in the Premier League.
Dunn was curious as to why Tang En would know so much about the national team of a country which Europe was not too familiar with. Tang En could only scratch his head and say that he preferred to pay more attention to small teams.
Bruce Pearce reached Portugal earlier than Tang En, but their targets of interest were different. In order to bring back news that readers cared about most, he had to follow the English team throughout their entire journey. He had to report everything back, regardless of whether they were important or trivial. Even the type of clothes worn by the wives of the players when they went out on street had become a topic of interest for reporters.
Before the matches started, practically all of the newspapers in England were filled with articles regarding the English team. The article in the Nottingham Evening Post, in which Tang En had written about Greece extensively, had been completely ignored by the readers.
In the end, after the opening matches were finished, Bruce's first reaction was to find a two-day-old copy of the Nottingham Evening Post, which had an article written by Tang En and published in his special column. Matching the words in the articles to the results of the opening matches, Bruce discovered that he perhaps had no choice but to admit that Tony was God.
The words that he had written two days ago were completely correct after checking them against the match results.
Bruce was not the only person who was shocked. Dunn, who had been inseparable from Tang En since the beginning, was surprised as well. The only difference was that Dunn's shock came much earlier, because he had watched the opening matches with Tang En. During the match, he and Tang En could not stop discussing the tactics used by Greece and Portugal.
When Karagounis scored the first goal, Tang En affirmatively said that Rehhagel's tactics could completely suppress Portugal. After watching the first half of the match, Dunn already completely believed the person next to him.
Scolari was a master tactician, but so was Rehhagel. Although the cards in Rehhagel's hands were not as good as those in Scolari's, Rehhagel managed to be in a more commanding position than Scolari. Perhaps in the eyes of the hosts and many fans, Greece's playing style was boring, as they made ten people defend and one person attack. However, from a manager's perspective, Dunn felt that all of this was quite normal.
The Greek team currently did not have the qualifications to dance the European Samba in front of the Portuguese. If they wanted to prove that they were stronger than the hosts, they only had one way of doing so: they had to defeat them, regardless of what tactics they used.
And Rehhagel managed to accomplish it. The results that nobody had expected prior to the match had become a reality. Despite him saying, ”This is the greatest victory in the history of Greece!” after the match, both Tang En and Dunn knew that Rehhagel did not let the victory get to his head. He was very clear about his goal for participating in the UEFA European Football Championship. It was not to win an opening match, or to score a goal, or to draw a match… He had a very noble goal, one that nobody knew.
Only Tang En knew.
In the remaining days, aside setting time aside to write articles for the Nottingham Evening Post, Tang En and Dunn spent most of their time on the bustling streets. They watched most of the matches live at the stadium, and they also watched the remaining matches which took place at the same time on the television, not forgetting to record them.
The reasons for Tang En going to Portugal to watch the matches live were firstly to assess the cheap yet useful football players. The second reason was to learn from the various outstanding managers' experiences. Regardless of whether those experiences were successes or failures, they would still be in Tang En and Dunn's list of things to analyze.
In terms of finding players for the team, this year's Championship League made Tang En feel slightly disappointed. Those who had been called the ”stars of hope for the European Football Championship” were all players who had been famous for quite some time. As a result, it was completely lacking in terms of novelty. Even if Nottingham Forest wanted to buy some of those players, they would be facing off against a lot of competitors; for instance, Wayne Rooney, who was still under Everton F.C, had been immensely sensationalized by the media, with various experts sharing the opinion that Rooney was the greatest reward the English team had in this year's UEFA European Football Championsip. However, Tang En knew that after the Champion's League, Wayne Rooney would be purchased by Manchester United at a high price. For Nottingham Forest to try to snatch a player from Manchester United? Fat chance!
As for the new star from Holland, Robben, the new Swedish player, Ibrahimovic, and the Czech Republic's young goalkeeper, Cech, all of them had already been famous for a long time. Robben and Cech were already reserved by Chelsea, and no matter how rich Evan Doughty was, how could he be richer than Abramovich? Furthermore, although Ibrahimovic rejected the Italian team for this year's European Football Championship, Italian Football Clubs were still very interested in him. If everything went smoothly, Juventus F.C should successfully snatch this young Swedish man, who had been nicknamed the ”second Baten” ever since Ajax's time.