Chapter 327: Chapter 326 One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six
For a full five minutes, the Kaiserslautern players seemed unable to snap out of it.
They were like zombies on the pitch.
They ran after the football, but they didn’t actively anticipate or predict anything.
It wasn’t that they couldn’t, but rather they had no motivation left.
When a person suddenly loses hope and spirit, that kind of dejection is difficult to reverse by human effort.
The Kaiserslautern players needed time to digest all this.
It might be an off-season summer break, or it could be three to five matches.
But it certainly wasn’t something they could get over in thirty to fifty minutes, or even three to five minutes.
The match began in the ninth minute.
Feeling no pressure, Pepe passed the football from the center to Deng Kai on the right flank.
But the problem was that Deng Kai’s position was already very deep, and he was close to two Kaiserslautern players.
Such a pass carried a certain threat, but it also tested the ball handler’s ability to deal with it.
Indeed, even the players who hadn’t recovered knew to press when the opponent was very close.
The Kaiserslautern players rushed towards Deng Kai.
Two went for the tackle, one for the pincer move, and another ensured Deng Kai couldn’t pass forward by cutting off his route.
According to Deng Kai’s usual style of play, this was the moment to pass the ball.
And mostly it would be a forward pass that created a threat.
Cristiano Ronaldo, Drogba, and Quaresma all started positioning themselves, ready for the arrival of the football.
Kaiserslautern’s formation was compact; their backfield had enough hands, so these three couldn’t find any empty slots.
Deng Kai noticed this at a glance, so he didn’t force a pass. Instead, he raised his right foot in a feint pass followed by a true flick, spinning in place with the ball, performing the Marseille Turn against the pressing players while waiting for an opportunity.
After two rounds of spinning, Klose, seeing that his two teammates hadn’t taken the ball, also rushed towards Deng Kai, joining the range of tackle.
But it was his involvement that created a gap in what had been a relatively tight double-team.
Deng Kai pushed Klose with his hand, lifted the ball to accelerate, and successfully broke through.
The Kaiserslautern defensive midfielder, who was anticipating Deng Kai’s pass, faced Deng Kai directly. He didn’t expect Deng Kai to break out so elegantly, but his position allowed him to catch Deng Kai off-guard before he was fully adjusted.
Go for the tackle!
Boom!
Deng Kai didn’t adjust the football but instead stepped on the ball and pulled it, performing a Marseille Turn and brushing past the opponent.
He breezed past!
Adjusting is a common term in playing football, and many people don’t understand what it means.
Whether a player is passing, shooting, or dribbling, the football needs to be within their control range, which means maintaining a relatively fixed distance from their body.
This distance is determined by the player’s habits during regular training and is also closely related to the player’s leg length and chosen technique.
For almost all players, the process of dribbling is a gradual loss of control over the football.
The more capable the player, the longer they can delay the onset of football’s loss of control.
The most top-tier ball control players can even maintain control of the football under intense pressure. But such individuals are almost negligible, appearing perhaps once every few decades.
Therefore, for the vast majority of players, they need to adjust the football before it completely goes out of control, resetting the progress bar of losing control back to the start.
Especially between performing technical movements, shooting, or passing, they especially need to adjust.
One can understand that without adjustment, their subsequent movements will be greatly deformed, with shots flying off target, misplaced passes, or slips while dribbling, and so on.
But Deng Kai preemptively performed a series of technical movements, seamlessly transitioning from the Marseille Turn into another without any further adjustment.
Either it indicates that his dribbling skills were otherworldly, but that wasn’t quite like him, he lacked a certain flair similar to Ronaldinho’s.
Or it shows that his vision was extraordinary, as he anticipated this situation might occur, so the very moment he did the Marseille Turn and flicked the ball to break through, he was already half-pushing, half-adjusting the football.
Combining Deng Kai’s usual passing habits, the latter was closer to the truth.
Such vision, along with the thinking habit of connecting technical actions, is one of the prerequisite qualities of a midfield maestro.
"Speed up! Deng Kai has accelerated, and he has pushed the football near the edge of the penalty area. But Drogba is already surrounded, Ronaldo is in an offside position, and Quaresma is on the right flank, neither of them are good options to receive the ball."
"Kaiserslautern’s center-back is covering... Klose’s defense is spot-on, he has just failed to corner Deng Kai but persisted to run over, he’s quickly closing in on Deng Kai from behind, he has a chance to tackle unless Deng Kai has eyes on the back of his head, otherwise..."
Whoosh!
Deng Kai, swiftly dribbling towards the outer right of the penalty area, turned and flicked the ball to the left without a second of thought, attempting to avoid a head-on collision with the opposing center-back by moving sideways.
"Deng Kai’s idea is good, but doing so, he’s going to slip!"
Bang!
The commentator’s words hadn’t fallen when Klose, who was almost catching up to Deng Kai, crashed to the ground.
He slipped.
Deng Kai also fell almost at the same moment.
But he stretched out his left hand to brace himself on the turf, his feet swept under him, and after completing a ninety-degree sharp turn, he stood up again with a push.
Kaiserslautern’s center-back is chasing the football.
With that manual dribbling move, Deng Kai saved a lot of time, ensuring he would touch the football before his opponent.
Kaiserslautern’s center-back could only stretch his right leg as far as possible.
It was a risky move, very likely to result in a foul by Deng Kai deliberately.
But the center-back did so because his position had just stepped over the penalty area line, barely more than the length of half a foot.
Trading a yellow card and a dangerously placed free-kick for Deng Kai’s entry into the penalty area, he thought it was worth it.
Because at that moment in the penalty area, on the left there was Ronaldo, inside the small box was Drogba, with only one Kaiserslautern center-back by his side.
If Deng Kai further penetrated, creating a three against one situation inside the box, it would be anyone’s game.
Bang!
Deng Kai touched the ball first, poking it into the penalty area, and then with a small hop, he bypassed the center-back.
The center-back guarding Drogba had already reacted and rushed towards the penalty spot.
But he hadn’t expected Deng Kai’s poke to be so gently executed.
Controlling the final touch of the ball while moving at high speed is very difficult.
Normally, the thought would be to push it hard rather than pass it gently to Drogba...
But Deng Kai didn’t do so.
Instead, he used a delicate toe-poking technique.
The football flew out two meters then sharply decelerated, stopping at the penalty spot, waiting for him.
"Slide tackle! Kaiserslautern’s center-back slide tackles inside the penalty area! He knows he can’t outrun Deng Kai, so he’s taking a gamble, using the slide to extend his tackle range..."
"Fried Meatballs! My goodness! The moment Deng Kai’s left foot touched the ball, he completed a ’fried meatball’ maneuver. Oh! His left foot was kicked by Kaiserslautern’s center-back. He stumbled."
"Penalty, this is definitely a penalty!"
On both sides of the field, all the fans had already held their breath.
Many had faces flushed red, some even so breathless their faces turned pale.
It wasn’t that they had insufficient lung capacity, but from the moment Deng Kai executed the Marseille Turn, many fans’ hearts had been in their mouths, and Deng Kai, pushing forward with the ball, had not given them a chance to breathe.
"The referee has already put the whistle in his mouth, this is definitely a penalty, and it might even be a sending off!"
