When you think of the legendary manager in the history of world football, who does you think of? Was it Klopp, who twice created a great reversal in the European war and finally achieved positive results in 2019? Was it Mourinho who led Porto and Inter to an incredible two Champions League victories? Was it Barca, who built six titles, and Guardiola, who led Manchester City to record-breaking records in the Premier League? Or Ferguson, who built Manchester United's two-decade dynasty? Or even Arsene Wenger, the godfather of Arsenal who created the myth of unbeaten victory this season? ......
Since the main theme of our discussion is the word "legendary", one person's name has to be mentioned, Otto Rehagel, the head coach known as "Otto the Great", in his coaching career, let us see the big counterattack that can only happen in fairy tales, and it is twice at first sight.
In the 1996-1997 season, Rehagel, who had just been swept out by Bundesliga giants Bayern Munich, resolutely chose to coach Kaiserslautern, who had just been relegated to the Second Division of German football, where after only one season, Rehagel brought Kaiserslautern back to the Bundesliga.
And our story has just begun from here, in the 1997-1998 season, Kaiserslautern's first opponent of the new season was Bayern Munich, just as the so-called narrow road was narrow, Rehagel's revenge battle, although not exciting enough, was enough to relieve the gas, 1-0 score, Bayern swallowed a defeat.
No one expected that this match would actually herald the trend of the two teams throughout the season, "to be able to beat Bayern Munich, to beat other opponents is not a problem", Kaiserslautern defender Schjung's words show great ambition and determination, although at that time the outside world did not care much about this sentence just to put it into a smile.
Kaiserslautern then burst out with great energy, and it was not until the eighth round against Bremen that he tasted the first defeat of the season, and then Kaiserslautern quickly recovered from the defeat, another seven-round unbeaten, and the team won the Bundesliga halfway title in advance.
Up to this point, almost everyone still thought that Kaiserslautern would definitely fall out of the team, bayern Munich has been chasing after the team, but Kaiserslautern withstood the pressure, in the most crucial round of the 32nd round, facing Borussia Mönchengladbach, they completed a 3-2 big reversal, the subsequent story, we all know, in the penultimate round, Kaiserslautern won 4-0 against Wolfsburg, an early round to lift the Bundesliga trophy.
Rehagel led a promotion horse to oust the Bundesliga giant Bayern Munich from the throne, creating a big sensation in world football at that time, and for a long time after that, people were praising the "Kaiserslautern miracle", but any weak team that played a good performance in the season would be compared with Kaiserslautern.
However, while the Kaiserslautern miracle was dreamy enough, what was even more unexpected was that a few years later, Rehagel led another team to make a comeback. This time, Rehagel led the Greek national team to the final stage of Euro 2004 for the first time in its history.
Like in Kaiserslautern, almost no one was optimistic about Rehagel's Greek team, this team is so unfamiliar with the European Championship arena that we can't even call out the name of any player in the Greek team before the game, the only thing that impressed me is that the Greek player's name has a "S" word after it.
However, it was this "S" army that we are not familiar with, but in the first game of the group stage, it beat the host Portugal team 2-1, and finally successfully squeezed out the Spanish team, and successfully qualified for the second place in the group, but even if this result gave everyone a small surprise, the Greek team at this time was still regarded as a fish belly team that ate dumplings.
The story that followed stunned us, in the quarter-finals, Greece eliminated the defending champions France 1-0; in the semi-finals, it was another 1-0, greece cut the Czech Republic with Nedved and Baros to reach the final; the opponents of the Greek final were the hosts they had defeated in the group stage, Portugal.
This time, everyone thought that Portugal would take advantage of the hosts' momentum to avenge the unexpected loss of the group stage, after all, this is Portugal with the golden generation of Figo and Rui Costa, but in fact, the Greeks humiliated Portugal once again with tough defense, and it was another 1-0, Greece scored 3 goals in the knockout round, and did not lose 1 goal of super efficiency to win the 2004 European Championship.
Our "Otto the Great" once again led a group of dicks to successfully counterattack, looking back at The Kaiserslautern led by Rehagel and the Greek national team, it is not difficult to find a characteristic, although the two teams do not have dazzling stars, but are disciplined, iron-clad teams.
The enlightenment that Rehagel brings to us is also here, under the premise that a team has enough solid basic skills as a prerequisite, what can reflect its combat effectiveness is not how dazzling it is in a certain position, but whether the team is playing as a whole.