http://tinyurl.com/n5bor 温格这次谈了很多关於球队心理面的事，挺有趣的。 The Dangerous Outsider By Patrick Barclay (Filed: 14/05/2006) When Arsene Wenger asked if we had been in Eindhoven, he was not inquiring out of genuine interest in our lives; the Arsenal manager, relaxed in the glorious sunshine of Friday lunchtime at the club's Hertfordshire training ground, had a message to impart (as usual, for Wenger never goes naked into the press conference chamber) and it was a very positive one. To paraphrase, it was that his team would approach Barcelona in the Champions League final free of the psychological handicap that had caused Middlesbrough to be humbled by Sevilla in the UEFA Cup. Perhaps it was the dramatic licence journalists are apt to grant themselves, but I could have sworn Wenger's face bore less stress than at any time this season as he argued that Arsenal's securing of an opportunity to qualify for the Champions League at the start of their new era in the Emirates Stadium - earned last weekend when they beat Wigan while an illness-affected Tottenham were losing at West Ham - had transformed their prospects for the Stade de France on Wednesday. "This,'' he explained, "is because there will be 100 per cent less negative pressure. The biggest problem you always face in football is the question of what happens if you fail. And I thought Middlesbrough played a little bit with the idea that, if they did not win the final, they would be out of Europe next season. They played with the handbrake on, as if they couldn't afford to lose, and really had a go at Sevilla only when they had no choice.'' But for last weekend's events, Arsenal would have encountered similar difficulties against Barcelona. "I'm sure of it. Especially when you think back to the second leg of our semi-final at Villarreal, where I think our team just refused to play because they had the idea that they wanted to hang on to the 1-0 lead we'd established at Highbury. No matter what you tell players, the facts of the situation have a stronger effect - it's part of the psychology of football.'' （教授这样说挺难捉摸的，反正心理面这种东西，看说得人如何去解释） Brilliant. So it would be a fair contest now with Barcelona, who will go straight into the group stage of next season's Champions League after winning the Spanish championship about as comfortably as it could be won. The trouble is that a fair contest with this Barcelona, a team fashioned in the irresistible image of Ronaldinho and expertly supervised by Frank Rijkaard, is apt to end in tears for the other side. But Wenger did not seem too bothered as he assessed Arsenal's pre-match status as that of a 'dangerous outsider' with an authentic chance. His job over the next few days was to prepare the team to play their natural game. "If we do that, if we have a real go, I am convinced we will win.'' He has always been positive. "Very early we were out of the Premiership race,'' said Wenger, "and somehow I always felt the team had chosen this competition, subconsciously maybe.'' Gone, since the defeat at Bayern Munich's hands last season, are Patrick Vieira and Edu. Relegated are Lauren and Pascal Cygan, whose places have gone to Emmanuel Eboue and a restored Sol Campbell. Fit again is Ashley Cole, whose left-back duties have been so splendidly performed by Mathieu Flamini. But this has been a season of surprises for Arsenal and their manager, who, after nearly a decade in England, stands on the threshold of European fulfilment. Wenger, though, could hardly be much more excited than the rest of us about a final from the aesthete's dreams. Not since 1994, when Barcelona, having overcome Wenger's Monaco, went to Athens to take on Milan can the culmination of the European club season have been anticipated with such relish. We were not let down then. Not by Fabio Capello's Milan anyway: they gave one of the greatest performances I have ever seen and deserved each of their four unanswered goals, especially memorable ones coming from Marcel Desailly - a midfielder at that stage, he surged and drove - and Dejan Savicevic, Silvio Berlusconi's beloved genio, who lobbed sumptuously from near the touchline. It was a victory for tactics as well as technique and Johan Cruyff's Barcelona were all but strangled, cutting off the supply to Romario and Hristo Stoichkov. But Wenger implied that he was more interested in making Catalonia's representatives defend than in quelling their celebrated attack. "More and more,'' he said, "I am convinced that the outcome will depend more on the way we go at them than the way we stop them.'' He disclosed that the 4-5-1 system which has served Arsenal so well in Europe was not a consequence of some mistaken belief that they had deserved their victory over Manchester United in last season's FA Cup final, when he introduced it. Wenger smiled. "I must tell you something. I came back to work in the middle of my holiday last summer to watch the tape again because I still could not understand, one month later, how we could have been so bad. OK, we won, but it was the biggest miracle since I came to England. So for me that was more dissuasive than convincing. But I did think that in the Premiership we had suffered with an offensive 4-4-2 that lacked physical power and felt that in Europe, while I didn't want to lose offensive players, I did want to have a bit more security by adding one in central midfield.'' Despite the superb contribution of young Cesc Fabregas there, it is the one up front in whom most Arsenal hope will be invested. Wenger insisted that he expected Thierry Henry to stay in London next season - even if the Barcelona dressing-room and the Camp Nou socios clearly believe otherwise - and uttered yet one more paean to the serial Footballer Of The Year, agreeing with a questioner that the Frenchman deserved Ronaldinho's title as the top player in the world: "Every year Thierry has made a step forward and now he has matured into a team player and leader as well as an exceptional striker.'' He was not worried about what Henry might decide after Wednesday night because the occasion itself was so important. And that was good to hear. Every now and again, news and speculation and politicking and even money have to take their places in the boot of the ceremonial coach because football is king. Here are two teams who pass the ball as prettily as any pair in Europe; as Wenger fairly claimed, Arsenal had established an edge in defence over the course of the campaign, while Barcelona's attack was probably peerless. So would it be the anticipated extravaganza? "It's difficult to predict,'' he said, "but I just feel that, like many finals, it will remain locked, and perhaps disappointing from that point of view, until somebody scores. Once there is a goal, it will certainly be an open and a crazy game.'' So let there be one, nice and early - and a night of magnificent madness in Paris. -- "Our target is to defend better than we did last year - but without losing what makes us Arsenal. We play our style, the football we love, and try to be faithful to that." -- Arsene Wenger on the 05-06 season --

※ 发信站: 批踢踢实业坊(ptt.cc) ◆ From: 80.229.140.103