Combine the Universality and Particularity of Contradictions!

At 7:30 the next morning, Chivu was the first to arrive at the training ground.

He didn't head to Mancini's office, nor the meeting room, and certainly not the training pitch.

Instead, he was rummaging through everything in the video analysis room!

After busying himself with the computer for a while, Chivu sat in his chair and scratched his head.

"I've been looking for ages, and I've only managed to dig up about ten minutes' worth. Where am I supposed to find a dozen hours of footage for Tang?"

Ten o'clock last night.

Chivu had been leaning against his bed reading a UEFA A-License coaching textbook, nearly falling asleep.

Who would have thought Tang Long would call out of the blue, asking for a highlight reel of Icardi.

Chivu was quite surprised at first!

Highlight reels of specific players were usually only used by coaches when studying tactics.

Why did Tang Long need this?

When he later heard that he wanted over a dozen hours of footage, Chivu felt even more overwhelmed.

Tang Long said he wanted to study Icardi's movement and ball-handling habits so he could feed him the ball more effectively.

Chivu had praised Tang Long over the phone, telling him he had ambition and to come find him at the training ground's video analysis room the next day.

But after searching all morning, he had only found about ten minutes of footage.

And the content was actually a compilation of Icardi's poor movement!

It was a negative example reel made during the tenure of the previous manager, Mazzarri, buried deep in the hard drive.

Right-clicking for properties showed the last time it was opened was December 2013.

Back then, Icardi had only been at Inter Milan for half a year, serving as a backup for Milito and Palacio.

At that time, Icardi hadn't yet risen to become a top-tier Serie A striker.

He suffered from many common flaws of young players; he wasn't mature enough and couldn't yet shoulder the responsibility of being an Inter Milan starter.

For this reason, Inter Milan's tactical analysts had specifically compiled a reel of his mistakes from over a dozen matches, analyzing the deficiencies in his movement and ball handling to show Icardi.

In the year and more since then.

The Inter Milan coaching staff had never made another official video analysis specifically targeting Icardi.

When Tang Long arrived full of anticipation, Chivu broke the news to him.

He couldn't help but feel a little disappointed!

It seemed the work of the Inter Milan coaching staff wasn't as thorough as he had imagined.

Why did Tang Long want Icardi's highlights?

His goal was to use AI big data analysis by watching dedicated footage of Icardi's movement, allowing him to automatically match the most suitable passing lanes and timing during matches.

Tang Long knew that as the league progressed.

Icardi would increasingly become an indispensable piece under Mancini.

If he wanted to remain invincible in his competition with Guarin for a starting spot, the key lay in completely opening up the connection between himself and Icardi.

After all, as a transmigrator, Tang Long knew that the Argentine striker would be promoted to first-team captain by Mancini next season, replacing Ranocchia's position.

From a strategic perspective, if you want to ride the coattails of success, you have to latch onto the biggest star on the team, or the one destined to become the biggest.

At this stage, Tang Long was still continuously feeding his AI System with match recordings.

He also frequently watched matches of world-class pairs.

But those matches weren't entirely applicable to Icardi!

Even though they were both great at movement, the habits of Inzaghi and Icardi were different.

Even though they were both masters of one-touch play, the passing angles Van Nistelrooy preferred were different from what Icardi liked.

Even the timing of when to wind up and when to exert force was a unique football language for every player.

For instance, in the previous match against Bologna, there was a golden opportunity where Tang Long and Icardi had a breakdown in coordination!

It was the 66th minute of the match, a counter-attacking opportunity for Inter Milan.

Tang Long drove forward with the ball, and at that moment, the AI System signaled that there was a perfect opening on the right flank; if he passed it, there was a high probability of creating a through-ball for a one-on-one!

Tang Long did indeed pass, but Icardi had made a run toward the left, and the ball went straight out of bounds.

In reality, it wasn't impossible for the Argentine striker to cut diagonally to the left; there was an opening there too, and he had indeed made the run.

The Argentine striker even turned back and clapped for Tang Long, signaling that his idea wasn't wrong either.

But it was precisely because of the inconsistency in their understanding of football that a deviation occurred in their passing and receiving!

In this world, every player is a unique existence.

It perfectly proves the saying: contradictions are universal, but they are also specific.

After watching over a thousand complex match recordings.

Tang Long's AI big data system was still a generalized system.

To combine the universality and particularity of contradictions and better cling to Icardi's coattails, Tang Long had to watch more of Icardi's matches.

Watching them one by one was too slow!

He had to make use of highlight reels.

After all, in a single match, Icardi, as a poacher-style center-forward, would only touch the ball about 30 times, make 20-odd passes, and take three or four shots.

Having only received a highlight reel of Icardi's mistakes from a year ago from Chivu, Tang Long was clearly not satisfied.

He decided to ask Icardi himself if he had collected any relevant data.

However, Icardi's answer made Tang Long feel even more disappointed.

"Hey! Even the coaching staff doesn't have that; where would I get a dozen hours of highlights? I'm not Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. Who would make such a long video for me to study? Tang, you're overthinking it!"

However.

Fortunately, hard work pays off!

A few days later, Icardi sent Tang Long a video link on his phone.

Clicking into it, it was exactly a highlight reel of Icardi's matches.

A full 15 hours!

Considering that the 22-year-old Icardi had only played seventy or eighty professional matches in his career and scored fewer than thirty goals, where did this 15-hour highlight reel come from?

Icardi replied to Tang Long in a message:

"Tang, I've been keeping an eye out since you mentioned it. Today, I accidentally found this on a video site. An Argentine fan is a fan of mine; he took recordings of every match I've played and edited them into this compilation.

I was stunned at first! There is actually someone in this world who would edit a dozen hours of video for me, and there are even videos of me playing in the U19 league at Sampdoria!

Some are very blurry, so you'll have to make do. This is definitely the most comprehensive video about me in the world. I hope it can help you."

This video had only been viewed about 90 times on YouTube, not even breaking a hundred.

Clearly, most people who stumbled upon this video were scared off by its fifteen-hour duration!

But for Tang Long, this was the fastest way to understand his strike partner.

This weekend, the first marquee matchup of Serie A kicked off at Stadio Giuseppe Meazza.

Inter Milan was at home against Juventus.

This was also known as the Derby d'Italia!

The intensity was in no way inferior to the Derby della Madonnina.

Over the past two years, due to the strong resurgence of Juventus, they had repeatedly bullied Inter Milan in the Derby d'Italia.

At this stage, Juventus sat at the top of the league, a frontrunner with an absolute advantage and the highest odds to win the title!

Inter Milan was 6th in the league, outside the UEFA Champions League spots.

This massive gap was the largest disparity seen in the Derby d'Italia in recent years.

At the pre-match press conference, Mancini used a sharp gaze and a firm tone to convey his confidence in victory.

"If Inter Milan wants to surpass itself, we must defeat a team like Juventus. I am not putting pressure on the players; on the contrary, I am instilling confidence in them!"