Bang!
After Talista’s shot was saved, Sporting Lisbon immediately launched a counter-attack.
They have a player who is very adept at executing counter-attacking tactics.
Bang!
Sporting Lisbon’s midfielder seized the first drop point and then sent the ball forward again.
Averro, who just won the Golden Boy Award, sprinted down the field, cut inside after receiving the ball, and dribbled past the flustered Naji during his run.
Naji is too tall, with large strides, so Averro used a nutmeg dribbling technique on this play.
Naji knew the ball was going through his legs, but aside from watching Averro go by, he had no other options.
Big players have their advantages and disadvantages.
Later on, players like Salah became obsessed with nutmeg dribbling during running, due to the increasing number of tall central defenders.
This greatly improves the success rate of nutmeg dribbling during a run, and once past the opponent, they often cannot catch up.
Bang!
After Averro broke into the penalty area, he took a direct shot without waiting for Areola to rush out because he was confident in his shooting skills.
Areola was about to react, but the ball flew past him, leaving him rooted in place, also watching the ball hit the net.
The two players from San Remo’s defense line stood silently watching in succession.
Averro gladly accepted the opportunity.
One to zero!
Averro opened the scoring, leaving Miracle Stadium in silence!
"Wow! As expected from this year’s Golden Boy Award winner, Averro showed a hotter touch against San Remo than Lu Yang!"
"In contrast, the other Golden Boy Morici seems somewhat mediocre today. He can only pass the ball to Lu Yang; not because his technique is lacking, but because his emotions are off."
"Morici hopes Lu Yang will deliver better performances in response to the events following the Golden Ball Award. Though his intentions were good, he overlooked the fact that it instead places more pressure on Lu Yang."
"Moreover, this approach slightly damages San Remo’s overall attacking strategy. When San Remo’s engine deviates, it’s hard for the team’s overall attack to perform well."
Luo Cheng’s comments were quite fair.
Full support from teammates may not always be a good thing.
Especially since Lu Yang has been the secondary tactic beneficial to the team beyond their main strategies.
He is more accustomed to creating opportunities himself or seizing them, rather than having the whole team create opportunities for him.
Lu Yang’s strength lies in being able to maintain high efficiency in scoring and assisting without consuming team resources.
But when truly consuming a large amount of team resources, his efficiency may not be as high as the world-class forwards and midfielders.
Recently, his stats have reflected this as well.
Top-class forwards, when their shooting and goal data become abundant, you can see the overall trend; roughly five to seven shots can result in a goal.
An excellent striker can score a goal in about ten shots.
A top-class forward in peak condition can score a goal every two or three shots during a certain period.
For a long time, Lu Yang has been among the peak-condition category of forwards.
In the Italian D Division, Italian Third Division, Serie B, European Youth Championship, and Italian Cup, his scoring efficiency was extremely high!
High to a point of absurdity.
But once the team entered UEFA Europa League and European Cup, his efficiency declined to three, four or five shots per goal.
Yet still belonging to the top-level standard.
And in the recent three or four matches, although his number of goals appears higher, his number of shots has soared to a more outrageous level.
At this point, his efficiency has fallen to needing seven, eight, nine shots per goal.
To be sure, it’s still very high.
But compared to Lu Yang’s previous efficiency, it’s absolutely on another level, to say it’s plummeting would be accurate.
Moreover, previously Lu Yang did not consume the team’s shot opportunities.
Most of his shots were seized by himself - steals, interceptions, recovering lost balls, follow-up shots, etc.
These opportunities are essentially additional, you could interpret it as San Remo having an extra shooter.
These opportunities naturally have a strong element of surprise, combined with Lu Yang’s strong shooting foundation, hence his scoring rate remained high.
But now... Due to the advancement of his position and the team’s emphasis, with resources given to Lu Yang, he no longer needs to seize resources himself.
Without him seizing those resources, the team’s overall resources, just in terms of attacking and shot counts, have actually decreased.
The team is weakening.
On the other hand, because most opportunities are prepped by the opponent, lacking surprise factor, Lu Yang’s success rate in shooting has also begun to decline.
From shockingly accurate to normally very accurate.
With both sets of data on the decline, San Remo... wait, San Remo has surprisingly become stronger?
This isn’t scientific?
But this actually demonstrates Lu Yang’s extraordinary qualities.
Even with a diluted shooting and scoring rate, he still belongs to the top-tier, even the pinnacle level of forwards.
Coupled with his consistent state, if the team continues to feed him like this, he dares to continue scoring like this. Plus, the opponents’ strengths have been generally weak recently, leading to consecutive big wins, it’s understandable.
Continue this way, even on the highest level game stage, averaging a goal per match won’t be an issue.
This phenomenon has occurred before, there are teams willing to play this way.
But the problem is, their core often cannot last this long.
Six or seven shots per goal?
Some people can indeed achieve this occasionally.