From January 2018 to La Liga, Wu Lei is about to complete his third year in European football. At the end of the year, the Copa del Rey scored, finally breaking the 324-day club goal drought.
"Only by being able to gain a foothold abroad can Chinese football really improve." These are the words that Wu Lei wrote in Liu Yang's diary. He persevered and waited for the goal. Hopefully the first goal of the new season is a fresh start!
01. Score another goal without counting! Miss a single knife and run again
From the world's top scorer in the world qualifiers that amazed the Spanish media, to the club's alternative choice, this gap Wu Lei can only bear silently.
This season has only played 441 minutes so far, espanyol has a lot of good strikers in the team, and Wu Lei is facing too many difficulties. In particular, in La Liga, it took 12 appearances to play 293 minutes. Averaging 24 minutes per game, Wu Lei has not yet been able to make a score.
Fortunately, the Copa del Rey became the stage for him to prove himself, contributing assists in the first game and scoring goals in this round. However, in this game, Wu Lei's experience is like a microcosm of the past 1 year, which can be described as a bitter happiness.
In the first half, Wu Lei took advantage of the chaos created by his frontal partner Mo Long to score after entering the penalty area. However, because Mauron was slightly offside, the goal was cancelled.
In the second half of the game, Wu Lei also missed a one-handed opportunity. His starting speed, running position awareness, and ability to capture space are all commendable, but unfortunately it is the last shot that makes people sigh.
However, as Wu Lei wrote in his more than 140 articles on staying in The Week, staying in Europe is an opportunity to continue to improve himself. He chose to stick to it because here he would have the opportunity to make himself better.
02. Breaking the 342-day goal drought: Running position is his core competitiveness after all
From the statistics, it can be seen that Wu Lei lost all 5 one-on-one confrontations in this game, and wasted 1 excellent scoring opportunity. However, he scored 1 goal on 2 of 4 shots and also delivered 2 key passes for his teammates to bring in 2 shots.
Wu Lei's core competitiveness still lies in the awareness and speed of no-ball movement, and when this wave of attacks was launched, Wu Lei was still near the middle line at the far end. Seeing that his teammates successfully advanced with the ball, Wu Lei quickly inserted himself into the back point of the penalty area.
When Mo Long was ready to send out the cross, Wu Lei was still in a relatively external position. However, at the moment when the ball was sent out, Wu Lei killed the opponent in front of the goal.
This goal will show Wu Lei's running position and sense of grabbing points to the fullest, if when he first arrived in Europe, Wu Lei's goals are from the starting speed of running a single knife, then his biggest improvement in the past 3 years is to grab points in front of the goal.
So far, Wu Lei has scored a total of 12 goals from the Top 40 to the Round of 12, especially in the Round of 12 stage, scoring 4 goals to lead the top scorer list. Of these 4 goals, 3 came from grabbing points to score, which is what Wu Lei got in La Liga.
03. The current fourth striker in the team: Wu Lei is still trying to persevere
Despite breaking the goal drought, Wu Lei's current positioning in the team is still the fourth choice for the front. The team's top star is De Thomas, who has been selected for the Spanish national team, followed by local center Morón, who has had scandals with big clubs such as Barca, and Puado, a winger trained by espanyol's youth.
Especially in the last round of La Liga, Wu Lei's biggest rival Puado scored twice, becoming the key to the team's 4-3 victory over Levante. In that game, Wu Lei also sat on the bench for 90 minutes.
De Thomas's abilities are the strongest, and his position as the core of the team is unshakable. All Wu Lei has to do now is to compete with Puado and Moron to get a chance to partner de Tomas.
However, in terms of technical characteristics, Wu Lei is not very suitable for De Thomas, he does not have Morón's center back to take the ball, do the ball technology, nor is it like Puado is a winger debut, can stay on the side for a long time. Therefore, Wu Lei's current reduction to a substitute is also a reasonable result.
In the limited game time, Wu Lei still tried to prove himself. In this season's Catalan derby, Wu Lei, who came off the bench, almost helped the team complete the reversal. Unfortunately, this time Wu Lei sent a wonderful pass, and The unguarded Di Mata at the back point was actually deflected.
Wu Lei, who came to the age of establishment, is destined to be unable to match sun Xingyu's achievements, but he is still the golden sign of Chinese football. Humble, low-key and hardworking, Wu Lei is not strong enough, but he deserves respect.
Conclusion:
From this game, we can see the epitome of Wu Lei's stay in the Yang Road in this year. From Wu Lei's body, we can also see the epitome of current Chinese football.
Carrying the expectations of thousands of fans, the strength is indeed not strong enough, and it cannot meet the results that everyone hopes to see. However, Wu Lei continues to work hard and uses his way to give back to the fans who are willing to believe in and support him.