Real Madrid's loss to Nottingham Forest was not considered an upset. It was normal for the two teams to defeat each other. After all, the Forest team's strength was there for all to see.
The next night, Tang En took the team to watch the game between AC Milan and FC Lokomotiv Moscow to observe their opponents in the final. Although it was only an invitational tournament, Tang En decided to take it seriously.
Because the host team was participating, the popularity of the game was guaranteed. The stands were full of people, most of whom were fans of FC Lokomotiv Moscow from Russia. There were only a handful of AC Milan fans.
Despite the small number of people, they were generally optimistic and thought that their team would not have a problem defeating FC Lokomotiv Moscow. But that was the case. Compared to the other three teams, the host team was not strong.
But would they be eliminated for sure?
A football was round. Who knew what the result would be until the end of the game?
At the eighty-fifth minute, Tang En stood up in the stands and stretched. "Go back and rest, guys. There's nothing to see in this game. "
At this time, the score on the big screen was "2: 0."
The home team was in front, and the away team was behind.
Yes, AC Milan was behind.
Ancelotti did not send out all of their main players. FC Lokomotiv Moscow sent out their strongest lineup. One side wanted to train their players, and the other side wanted glory. The result could be imagined.
In the end, AC Milan lost to FC Lokomotiv Moscow. A week later, FC Lokomotiv Moscow would compete with Nottingham Forest for the Russian Railways Cup, while AC Milan would play a game against Real Madrid to determine third place.
This result disappointed many people. Originally, they wanted to see a replay of the Champions League final in Moscow. Who would have thought that AC Milan would lose in the first round?
A week later, Nottingham Forest defeated their opponent with a score of 3: 1 at the Lokomotiv Moscow Stadium and picked up the first championship trophy of the season.
Even though it was only an invitational tournament championship, it was enough to boost morale. After just picking up the Champions League trophy, the Forest players at the award ceremony still looked excited.
Beckham assisted his teammates twice in the final to complete goals. He was chosen as the best player in the final.
For David Beckham, he did not have to worry about integrating into the team. After these two games, he was already completely "one of their own."
Beckham's performance in the invitational tournament had also shut some people's mouths.
Previously, there were voices that said Beckham could no longer achieve any success, and that his career had entered the end early because of frequent business activities. Real Madrid's choice to drive him away was absolutely correct, because his championship in his final season was just the final radiance of a setting sun. He only won one title in four years in a league like Spain. If he went to the English Premier League, where the pace was faster and the competition was more intense, it would be a miracle if Beckham could achieve anything with his constantly injured body.
Beckham had been a controversial player since his debut. He himself had a deep understanding of this, so no matter what the outside world said about him, he only cared about training every day and then displayed his level in the competition.
Tang En did not buy him to help sell jerseys. He valued Beckham's right flank passing and accurate long passes from the middle and back fields. These were all technical characteristics that complemented Forest Team's counterattacks. With Albertini gone, the Forest team lacked a player with accurate long passes in the midfield. Van der Vaart's short passes were very creative, but his long passes were far from good. In this regard, Beckham's ability was unparalleled. When he was at Real Madrid, he used countless long passes of more than 50 meters from the back field to accurately send the football to the feet of his teammates.
In the past, the Forest Team's two flanks relied on speed to win, but once the opponent compressed the defensive space, the Forest Team's flanks would be blocked. Now that they had Beckham, who was good at long passes, the Forest Team's flanks were more varied, making it difficult for the opponent to defend.
In addition, thanks to his four years at Real Madrid, Tang En could also let Beckham make a guest appearance as a defensive midfielder, using long passes to directly launch an attack, which was much faster than dribbling the ball up.
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Nottingham Forest, who won the first title of the new season, ended their training in Russia and flew back to the United Kingdom to prepare for the English Premier League that was about to begin.
They had no way of participating in the FA Community Shield, and the English Premier League title was won by Manchester United. The FA Cup final was a meeting between Manchester United and Chelsea. The two sides fought to a 0: 0 draw within 120 minutes, and Chelsea won in the final penalty shootout. Therefore, the new season's FA Community Shield would repeat last season's FA Cup final — Manchester United versus Chelsea.
This game had nothing to do with the Forest Team. They were complete spectators. Their first major title of the new season was on August 31st, competing with the UEFA Europa League champion, Liverpool, for the UEFA Super Cup.
This opponent made Tang En lose interest. It was clearly the UEFA Super Cup. Because the opponent was a team from the same league, it felt like the "English Super Cup." There was no novelty at all.
He would have preferred to play against Sevilla.
But it was a pity that the best club team selected by FIFA last year wanted to defend their title, but they were defeated by Liverpool with one goal in the final and lost the title.
That was something that could not be helped. If they did not win a passable championship, Benítez might be dismissed. Apart from helping the team miraculously win the Champions League title in his first season at Liverpool, Benítez had been mediocre in the past few years. Benítez was not good at playing in the league tournament. With the sudden rise of the Forest Team, they lost the qualification to enter the Champions League for two years in a row, which made the club's directors and fans very unhappy.
If they lost the UEFA Europa League title game, Benítez could only take the blame and resign.
Fortunately, this championship saved his coaching career at Liverpool.
Liverpool recruited players for the new season and vowed to return to the ranks of competing for the title.
After the signing of the new Premier League television broadcast contract, it brought more money to the Premier League teams. According to the new broadcast contract, the Premier League champion team could get a bonus of 50 million pounds, and even the bottom team could get 30 million pounds — catching up with the bonus of the Premier League champions in previous seasons. No matter the level of the England national team, the Premier League was still the most profitable league in the world.
In this context, other than Nottingham Forest, who wanted to build a new stadium, the other clubs had only two choices: spend money or be left behind.
No one would choose the latter.
Liverpool spent 11.5 million pounds on Ryan Babel, five million pounds on Yossi P. Benayoun from West Ham, and five million pounds on a free transfer from Bayer Leverkusen. Their biggest move was to buy Torres from Atlético Madrid for 21.5 million pounds.
Just by looking at the money spent on these transfers, it was enough to show Liverpool's lofty ambitions. Of course, Twain had reason to believe that after spending so much money, if Liverpool still could not break into next season's Champions League, then he would have to choose to leave.
Life was always full of all kinds of surprises.
The Liverpool people would not so quickly forget the humiliation that Nottingham Forest gave them in the final moments of last season — kicking them to fifth in the league and losing the Champions League qualification for two years in a row.
Now the chance for revenge was here.
Benítez's team could snatch Nottingham Forest's first title of the new season at the Stade Louis II in Monaco. Didn't Twain always say, "He's a manager who pursues the championship?" Then snatching his championship trophy would be the best revenge for him.
Even the English Premier League had not started yet, and the Liverpool media were already hyping up the game on the last day of August. For many people in Merseyside, they had never been so eager to win a game — to defeat Nottingham Forest.
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According to the new season's schedule, the first round of games would be fully spread out on August 11th. In the last warm-up game before the start of the season, Manchester United and Chelsea once again tied in the FA Community Shield, relying on a penalty shootout to decide the winner.
This time, it was not Mourinho who had the last laugh, but Ferguson.
The two teams had played against each other for 30 times in the Premier League, with Manchester United at a slight disadvantage with 13 draws and 9 losses. They were tied at home with 4 wins, 7 draws and 4 losses. Mourinho contributed a lot. After he came to Chelsea, the team had good results against the strong teams in the Premier League, except for Liverpool.
Losing to Manchester United in the FA Community Shield was just a small part of the feud between the two men.
Mourinho congratulated Manchester United on winning the FA Community Shield, because that meant they would lose the league title and Chelsea would win it again.
Ferguson, on the other hand, ridiculed Mourinho for still talking about the past. The curse of the FA Community Shield was a thing of the past. He also said that even if Manchester United did not win the league title, Chelsea would not win the league title.
The highly anticipated war of words between the two sides was staged before the league had even started, giving the Premier League the best publicity for the new season.
This was a brand new Premier League season, with new ways to sell television broadcasting rights, new television broadcasting contracts, new players, new teams, and … a new champion.
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On August 11th, Nottingham Forest would travel to Liverpool, but their opponent was not the "enraged" Liverpool, but Liverpool's city rival, Everton.
Moyes and Tang En had been friends for many years, so there would not be much tension in the game. What was special was that this was the first league game that the former Forest player, Arteta, played for Everton, and they met his old team, Nottingham Forest.
At the same time, the game was chosen by Sky TV as the round's live broadcast game. There were two reasons. One was because it was the first game of the new season for the UEFA Champions League; the other was because Beckham was back. This was Beckham's first game back in the Premier League after four years. It was bound to be watched closely, and the live broadcast of the game could also bring more advertising revenue to Sky TV.
When Beckham left Manchester United, there were economic experts who said it was not only Manchester United Football Club's loss, but also the Premier League's loss. There was even a more exaggerated saying at the time: Beckham's departure meant the decline of the most profitable Premier League, and the world's top league would become La Liga.
Before this season, the Premier League re-auctioned the Premier League's television broadcasting rights for the next three years. The broadcasting rights were divided into six parts, with each part containing 23 games. Four of the parts were sold to Sky TV for a price as high as 1.31 billion pounds! The broadcasting rights for all the Premier League's games for the next five years were shared by Sky TV and Ireland's Sentinel TV, with a total value of 1.7 billion pounds! And this money was only the broadcasting fees in the United Kingdom. It did not include the broadcasting rights fees that the league sold to foreign television broadcasting organizations. Television channels in more than 200 countries paid the Premier League 1.23 billion US dollars, or about 617 million pounds, to broadcast the Premier League for the next three years. This figure put the NBA to shame. Their annual overseas broadcasting income was only a mere 130 million US dollars, or more than 50 million pounds. It was just the bonus of a club that won the Premier League in the new season.
Here, it could not be said that it had nothing to do with Beckham's return. Beckham's return to the Premier League gave many big companies the confidence to continue investing in the Premier League, which was also conducive to the promotion of the Premier League to the world. It was believed that in the next five years, the Premier League's broadcasting rights would be offered a higher price because of the previous performance.
The player was brought back by Tony Twain, but the big cake of interests was divided among the twenty clubs.
It must be known that when Murdoch first bought the five-year broadcasting rights for the Premier League, it only cost 191 million pounds. Five years later, in 1997, it was 670 million pounds. In 2004, after the Serie A economic bubble burst and the Kirch Media Group went bankrupt, the Premier League's broadcasting rights were still sold for a sky-high price of 1.02 billion pounds. The Premier League was still the world's most profitable league.
Allan and Evan decided to eagerly start the new stadium construction plan this season. In addition to the Forest team's historic Champions League win after twenty-seven years, it was also because the new television broadcasting contract was successfully signed before this season. The twenty clubs had a large sum of money at their disposal. That 1.7 billion pounds was almost all distributed by the league to the Premier League teams. With this money, all the clubs could calmly plan and build their own future, including Nottingham Forest.
Twain and Allan might have a lot of small friction in their daily work. After all, they each had their own duties and policies. But on the matter of signing Beckham, Allan was so happy that he wanted to hug Twain and kiss him.
Because the Premier League's television broadcasting fee was not like the NFL (American professional football league), which was evenly distributed among the thirty-two teams. Instead, it was determined by the number of games that a team was broadcasted during the season and its final ranking. Teams with good results and more star players would get more live broadcast opportunities, and the dividends would be more.
As the European champions, they would get more television broadcasting opportunities. On this basis, because the team had a world-class star like Beckham, a public idol, their broadcast number would increase. Especially considering the large audience in Asia and America.
The fact that Sky TV chose to broadcast Nottingham Forest's games live in the new season was proof — the charm of business was unstoppable.
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