As soon as the draw results came out, major media paid great attention to Hoffenheim. Although this was their first time participating in the European Champions League, the title of the Bundesliga champion was still very loud last season.

As a newly promoted team, they won the Bundesliga championship prize in their first season, which is eye-catching. Now the whole of Europe wants to see how good this dark horse is.

So after the draw of lots, Hoffenheim became the most mentioned word.

Manchester United coach Ferguson talked about Hoffenheim's high evaluation of this team afterwards, mainly because Hoffenheim has Chu Zhongtian who was very optimistic about at the time.

"...Hoffenheim is only a fourth-level team, but this is not a true reflection of their strength. I think the game against Hoffenheim will be very difficult."

"How much do you know about Hoffenheim, Sir Ferguson?" asked.

"I know there is a very outstanding player in their team - Chu. He is a dangerous person, and we must be very careful of him." Ferguson's evaluation of Chu Zhongtian is quite high. If it weren't for the fact that the Premier League labor certificate could not be solved, he would have taken Chu Zhongtian away from Metz long ago. No matter what, Manchester United's attractiveness would definitely exceed Hoffenheim, right?

What a pity. Now he is still looking for an excellent midfielder to replace Roy. Keane's leave, but he has never found the gap left by him. In his opinion, Chu Zhongtian is simply the perfect successor. Now looking at Chu Zhongtian's achievements in Hoffenheim, he is more convinced of his original opinion. He can win the Bundesliga championship in a small team like Hoffenheim. So if Manchester United comes, isn't it a Premier League champion or a Champions League champion?

In the Champions League final last season, Manchester United met Barcelona as the defending champion. In that final, except for the beginning, the game completely fell into the rhythm of Barcelona. Barcelona's midfielder was too strong, with Xavi and Iniesta, two of Europe's best midfielders, who played Manchester United in a row.

Sadly, Manchester United can't come up with a solution at all. Ronaldo is a very good player, but he is not the kind of player who can lead the whole team to perform well alone. What he needs is the sacrifice of the whole team to make him perform well alone. Such football is fine to deal with weaker opponents, but it won't work if it's good at playing and controlling the ball. The rhythm is not at all on Manchester United's side, and there is no way to cooperate with Ronaldo.

Ferguson, who was commanding the game on the coach's bench at the Rome Olympic Stadium, was thinking, how great it would be if he had Chu Zhongtian.

Everyone is fighting each other to control the rhythm. He believes that Chu Zhongtian is not inferior to Xavi and Iniesta in this regard. If Chu Zhongtian is available, Manchester United will become the first team to successfully defend the title after the reform of the Champions League.

※※In the TV program after the lottery, the British BBC5 host specially took a super large German map for the audience to find out where Hoffenheim is.

On that very detailed map, the host looked for a magnifying glass for a long time and poked the map, signaling the camera to pull it over, and then he said: "This is Hoffenheim!"

The word that appears on the TV screen is "hockenheim".

The host did not realize that he had pointed out the wrong point. He pointed at Hoganheim and began to talk about his situation in Hoffenheim: "This is a small village with a permanent population of only 3,300 people. German media call Hoffenheim the 'country team'. But it is this small team that created the biggest miracle in German football history. They are even more magical than Kaiserslautern! Because their population is less than Kaiserslautern. The team supported by more than 3,000 people defeated Bayern Munich, Wolfsburg and Schalke 04 and won the German championship prize plate. This is amazing!"

From this missed introduction, we can see that the host actually didn't know Hoffenheim at all. He just found some information, glanced at it and came on the show.

But he can't be blamed. Before Hoffenheim rises like the Rockets, many Germans were not very familiar with "Hoffenheim". If it weren't for the German media's carpet bombing report in the past year, how many people would still not be optimistic?

In fact, Hoffenheim and Hoganheim are two places, but these two places are not far apart, and unfamiliar people are indeed prone to confusion. With Heidelberg, the famous university town in Germany, as the center, the two places are in the southeast and southwest of Heidelberg, respectively, and the two places are twenty-five kilometers apart.

Hoffenheim has become famous for football in the past year, but Hoganheim is more famous than Hoffenheim because there is a track for F1 Germany. Originally, this was a racing stadium specially built for Mercedes-Benz. It has hosted the German F1 Grand Prix since 1986 and is the home court of McLaren.

The host can confuse the two, perhaps not everyone will do this, but it is enough to prove how unfamiliar Hoffenheim is to the whole of Europe. Although more than 150 countries around the world broadcast the match between Hoffenheim and Bayern Munich last season, more of them are Asia, America and Eastern Europe. Even if Hoffenheim won the Bundesliga championship, German football is gradually declining on the European continent, and other European countries are not very interested in the football of this country, especially the United Kingdom, which is famous for its arrogance.

It looks like Chu Zhongtian said, this season they will use their football to let the whole of Europe know where Hoffenheim is, so that they no longer need to use maps to find Hoffenheim, just like they did in Germany last season.

※※※The second day of the Champions League draw, the players saw Rangnick at the training ground. He had returned from Monaco. Facing the players, Rangnick said: "Everyone knows who our opponent in the Champions League is. I know you were very anxious about this some time ago. Now you can calm down, right?"

Some people laughed embarrassedly.

"The situation in this group is not particularly good for us, but it is not bad either. Our minimum goal is to qualify in the group, gentlemen. We must make greater efforts to do this. I want to remind you that the Champions League and the domestic league are completely different. Let's start training now."

After the training, many media gathered outside the training ground, waiting to interview the players.

As the team's number one star and captain, Chu Zhongtian was surrounded by Chinese and German media as soon as he came out. I want to hear what he thinks about the lottery group.

Chu Zhongtian's answer was neither humble nor arrogant: "We respect every opponent, but we are not afraid of them."

No matter what, Hoffenheim is the champion of the Bundesliga, so he should have such confidence.

Hoffenheim's first Champions League match in history will be held at home against CSKA Moscow on the evening of September 15.

Before that, there are two league games, against Hannover 96 and Bochum, and their opponents are not strong. Hoffenheim can free up his energy to prepare for the first Champions League game in the club's history.

On August 28, Hoffenheim defeated Hannover 96 2-0 away. Eduardo and Obasi scored two goals for the team, Salihovic and Chu Zhongtian completed one assist respectively. After four rounds of the league, Hoffenheim achieved an unbeaten record of three wins and one draw, but they still could only rank second, because Hamburg, which ranked first, also won and continued to rely on the advantage of goal difference to rank first.

There is bad news for Hoffenheim in this game, that is, after the main midfielder Weiss left the game, he was confirmed to have another injury on his left knee. In fact, this was an old injury. During the pre-season training camp, he recuperated for a while due to a knee injury. But Weiss is a very tenacious player. Even if he was injured, he chose to persist rather than surgery. Later, his knee was hit many times during the game and suffered occasional pain. This time, he finally couldn't hold on anymore.

He underwent endoscopic knee surgery on Monday, with some muscle folds removed and the knee cartilage smoothed. But after the operation, he would rest for four to six weeks. During this time Eduardo will replace him.

Weiss' injury was a blow to the team because he can not only attack but also defend on the right side, while Eduardo only attacks and contributes quite small in defense.

In the Champions League, Rangnick knew that defense is very important. Of course, he would not turn Hoffenheim into a conservative team that defended 1:0, but at least his defense line cannot be sieve by the opponent.

It seems that the tasks of Sana and Chu Zhongtian are getting heavier.

※※After playing against Hannover 96, it was the international match day, and everyone left the club and returned to their respective national teams to participate in the national team competition.

Chu Zhongtian did not return to China because the Chinese national team did not arrange any game on this game day. The Chinese national team went to November when they had games, which was the qualifiers for the Asian Cup.

Chu Zhongtian, who did not participate in the national team competition, stayed in the club with other teammates who also had no national team competitions to play, trained with the first and second teams, and then played two warm-up matches with local amateur teams, one 26:0 and the other 30:2, both of which were big wins. Playing warm-up matches with such opponents is basically not to find problems to fit the team, but to let everyone play and keep their form, so that they will not wait until other players come back to find that the game is gone.

Of course, Chu Zhongtian is not all in the team. He also took time to go to Paris. His "Great China" finally left the United States, rushed to Europe, and opened its first branch in Europe in Paris. Currently, there are ten Great China companies in his name, nine in North America, and one in Europe. At the same time, his management team is still planning whether to go back to China to open one.

Chu Zhongtian is a person with talent among players. Many players make a lot of money when playing football, but because they don’t know how to manage finances, they all handed over to their agents. As a result, after retiring, they found that they actually didn’t get much money, and even more money was eaten by economic people. Because agents have to take charge of the star’s financial power, many players would rather find their relatives to be agents, and the wealth is not to go to outsiders’ fields. Generally speaking, star financial management is to buy a property, and various real estate is a good choice.

Chu Zhongtian also bought real estate, but that was all in China. He was not interested in the luxury houses that cost millions abroad. Apart from living in himself, he basically would not buy luxury houses all over the world. He devoted more money to his business. In fact, in his annual income, the proportion of salary and bonuses paid by the club is already very small. Even if he doesn't play football, he can become a rich man by doing business. To be honest, playing football has become a hobby now.

Emily's mother Miranda was very satisfied with this. At least Chu Zhongtian was gradually meeting the standards of Emily's husband in her mind - she was young and rich, and had a special relationship. She has even begun to consider whether to let Chu Zhongtian come to Hollywood to develop. After watching it for a long time, she felt that this Chinese boy was also quite handsome, at least not ugly. Hollywood movies are not just handsome men and beautiful women.

Of course, Emily and Chu Zhongtian didn't know about Miranda's idea. If Chu Zhongtian knew, I really didn't know how he would feel - he never had the idea of ​​entering the film and television industry, even if he shot a few advertisements...※※After the national team match day, the players gathered again to prepare for the fifth round of the league, at home against Bochum.

On September 11, Hoffenheim ushered in a match against Bochum at his home court.

At this time a season ago, Hoffenheim might regard Bochum as a very important opponent, but now they can deal with Bochum with a very relaxed attitude.

Actually it's really easy.

Hoffenheim defeated Bochum 3-0 at home, and Chu Zhongtian scored his second goal of the season in the game. It was not a signature long shot, but a header in a corner kick.

"Chu scored a goal! This is his second goal this season! It seems that his condition is very good! I believe this must be good news for Rangnick. When the Champions League game is about to begin, Chu's condition is the guarantee of Hoffenheim's progress!"

Chu Zhongtian scored the first goal for Hoffenheim. Ten minutes later, Hoffenheim scored another goal, and the person who scored this time was Ibissevic. He also scored his second goal, and assisted him... Sana Sana finally showed that he was not only able to defend.

In the 79th minute, Salihovic took a free kick in the frontcourt, and the unmarked central defender Simonic headed the ball in the small penalty area, freezing the score at 3:0. This is also his first goal for his new club.

Hoffenheim won a big victory in this game and no one was injured. The whole team was in good shape, which was indeed good news for Rangnick.

Another good news is that after this round, Hoffenheim finally successfully reached the top and took the top deal in the league. Like Hamburg's points, they won four wins and one draw in five leagues, all of which were thirteen points, but Hoffenheim surpassed Hamburg's seven with eight goals, thus surpassing Hamburg in ranking.

Hamburg scored fifteen goals and conceded eight in five rounds of the league, while Hoffenheim scored nine goals and conceded only one. On the offense, Hoffenheim was not as crazy as at the beginning of last season, but Rangnick's efforts in defense received rewards. They only conceded goals in the game against Bayern Munich, and did not concede the ball next, whether it was Schalke 04 or Leverkusen.

Simonic is the main central defender. He performed well in air defense, but his speed was full. For this reason, Rangnick did not match him with Metzeld, but Compan. The young Companker could still make up for Simonic's speed. Metzeld and Companker competed for work, and sometimes Rangnick could also play rotation. Another main reason for the better defense was Sana, who was a midfielder who focused on defense. His existence added a barrier to Hoffenheim's back line. Once Chu Zhongtian went up last season, Hoffenheim's defense line would directly face the opponent's forward and forward. Once the opponent made a quick counterattack and Chu Zhongtian was in front, he did not run fast without the flying football... As a result, he was naturally torn apart by the opponent's two or three kicks.

Now with Sana, the opponent will not be able to break into the penalty area so easily. Most of the time, Sana moves sideways, runs from the left side of the court to the right side, and sweeps, and the opponent's attack is over. When necessary, he can also suddenly step forward and participate in the attack, but there are too few opportunities like this. Most of the time, he passes the football to Chu Zhongtian, and then follows Chu Zhongtian, maintaining a suitable distance. If Chu Zhongtian loses the ball, he is ready to grab it at any time, grab the football and hand it over to Chu Zhongtian. This is what is called

"Protect space when defending, and protect football when attacking". Of course, most of the time, he has no chance to perform, because Chu Zhongtian rarely concedes the ball. Even if he concedes the ball, he has super defensive ability. He is not the kind of player who is squeezed by the opponent and then after conceding the ball, he only knows to spread his hands and complain that the referee does not protect the attack. People only see Chu Zhongtian sending the ball to dangerous areas again and again, praising his offensive talent, but forgets that he is also a very dangerous defender. Sana has a deep understanding of this.

He remained unbeaten in the league and squeezed Hamburg out of his goal difference to top the list. Chu Zhongtian and Ibicevic both scored goals... Hoffenheim's recent form is amazing.

This state also made the team full of confidence in their first Champions League game. The opponent was not very strong, and the CSKA Moscow was never an influential team in Europe. Such an opponent was really suitable for Hoffenheim to make the first step in history.

The title "Rhine-Neca" played three days before the Champions League match day revealed the voice of the Hoffenheim people.

“Our first step!”
Chapter completed!