Vol 4 Chapter 138: Winter break

Regardless of whether Zhou Yi's holiday is "hard" or comfortable, his "winter vacation" is actually not too long.
On January 3, Dortmund is about to begin their winter training camp.
This means that Zhou Yi will have to leave China on the second day after the New Year's Day on January 1 at home and return to Germany to reinvest in heavy training.
And the time for him to return home is only the 26th of December... so when he is full, he has no time at home for a week.
However, Zhou Yi should still be lucky. If he is playing in the Premier League, he has no time to go home one day, and he can only go home every year during the summer vacation.
Because there is no winter break for the Premier League.
The winter break is not a rare thing in European football. Basically, there are winter breaks in various leagues. The only exception is the Premier League. There is no winter break at all.
Generally speaking, the Europa League is now divided into two categories. One is the league that ends the entire schedule in a natural year like China, such as Iceland, Sweden and Norway. The other category is the New Year's season, where a league is divided into two years.
The Nordic countries arranged the league in one year because they had a long cold winter of almost half a year, which was not suitable for outdoor sports. Although other countries do not have such a perverted cold winter in Northern Europe, they will still encounter winter during the New Year and will be affected by the cold climate of winter. In order to avoid this effect, or to minimize this effect, setting the winter break is a reasonable choice.
Different countries have different winter breaks, and even the time varies from year to year. They will be fine-tuned according to the schedule and weather conditions. Generally speaking, the warmer the south of the country, the shorter the winter break of the league. For example, Spain has only 14 days of winter break, and Serie A is also 14 days. France is more north than Italy and Spain, so their winter break is three weeks and twenty-one days. What about the Bundesliga? The winter break of the Bundesliga this season is as long as 33 days, more than a month.
Doesn’t it sound long?
But in fact, it is not the longest. The country with the longest winter break in Europe should be Russia, followed by Ukraine. It is surprising that the National League in such an alpine region of Russia is also cross-year. Their winter break can sing close to ninety days, while Ukraine is simply more than ninety days of winter break.
In the history of the Bundesliga, the winter break this season is far from the longest, and it can't even be said to be long. The longest Bundesliga winter break is seventy-seven days, two and a half months!
When it comes to the winter break, it is actually a very controversial topic. Some people agree and some people support it. Within Germany, the length of the winter break is also endlessly debated, and Beckenbauer has repeatedly stated: "Among the top five European leagues, Germany has the largest population and the fewest teams. There is still such a luxurious winter break. I I don’t think it’s necessary to interrupt the players’ status like this.

Beckenbauer has always been a staunch supporter of the reduction of the winter break, but the football emperor also made a more exaggerated proposal than shortening the winter break, that is, to completely cancel the summer holiday, imitate the Nordic countries, let Germany The season is held in a natural year, starting from March to December every year. When this proposal was made at the time, Beckenbauer was also the head coach of the German national team. His proposal naturally considered the interests of the German national team. His reason was: "Major international events are generally during the summer. This approach will keep the players in a high level of competition in international competitions, because that time was exactly the middle of the season."
At the time, such a proposal was even approved by many Bundesliga coaches.
Fortunately, the German Football Association did not listen to Beckenbauer. Otherwise, for more and more German teams in Europe, Beckenbauer originally proposed that it was simply a trouble making machine-the knockout games of European wars are generally in Beginning in the middle and late February, the Bundesliga team at that time may have just begun pre-season training. Season, which affects their performance throughout the season.
Those who oppose the winter break have their reasons and considerations, and those who support the winter break also have their considerations and reasons.
The main reason is to provide enough rest time for the team in the cold.
In fact, there was no such thing as a winter break at the beginning of the Bundesliga. At that time, the football game will only stop during the holidays. Whether in December or January, the football game will continue as usual, similar to today's Premier League.
For example, on January 1, 1928, Bayern Munich and Frankfurt played a key game. On January 3, 1954, the two teams played an important game in the Southern State League in Offenbach-an important game in West Germany at that time, no less than the Bundesliga today-January 1966 On the second day, Bayern Munich and Dortmund played an important cup match.
Until the winter of 1969, things began to change. The next year, that is, the World Cup held in Mexico in 1970 started very early, on May 31. Therefore, the German Football Association announced the schedule in late June 1969, which included only the first half of the league. "If the national team is qualified for the finals of the Mexico World Cup, the league can only end at the beginning of May, otherwise the end date is May 30." The announcement said so.
After that, West Germany defeated Scotland and qualified for the World Cup finals. The German Football Association announced the second half of the schedule in early November 1969. The second half starts on January 10, 1970. The quarter-finals of the German Cup is scheduled for late March, the semi-finals are on April 8, and the finals are on May 12 or 16. .
In this way, after the final German Cup final, the German national team still has half a month to prepare for the World Cup.
The plan is very good, but the plan is not as good as change. The purpose of the best plan is to be changed.
In the winter of that year, central Europe experienced an extremely hungry winter. On New Year's Eve, the temperature in Berlin fell to minus 17 degrees Celsius, and six days later, the city was covered with 31 centimeters of snow. At ten o'clock on the evening of Thursday, January 8, the German Football Association staff responsible for the schedule Walter Barrezer finally decided to cancel the first round of the second half of the game. A week later, he announced the cancellation of six games.
Barrezell said at the beginning: "The worst thing is that we must end the season before May 2. We can't delay for the World Cup. What should we do now? The real winter has just begun..."
His words later proved to be prescient, because in the following days, the intermittent snowfall in Berlin continued until mid-March, and 37 Bundesliga leagues were canceled in January alone.
Several adjustments to the schedule have led to some rather strange arrangements. In the nine days of mid-April, the Red and White Essen team will play four league games at their home court. The reason that the league was able to end on time was completely because the German game was completely disrupted-the final of the German Cup in the 1969-1970 season was played after the start of the 1970-1971 season. The final winner was Orfin The Bach Kickers team, although this team has entered the Bundesliga on August 29, 1970 to the finals, but in theory it is still considered a second-tier team.
Sounds messy?
This fully illustrates how chaotic the football organization has been.
After such a chaotic season, many people have realized the importance of a prolonged winter break, but this did not bring about changes at that time. The mainstream view at the time was still this: "... We don’t think that the Bundesliga needs the longer holiday that the public now requires, because no one can know exactly when the weather conditions in winter will affect the game. Maybe it’s November, or it may be between March and April. We What is most needed is a flexible schedule and a certain amount of spare game days to arrange for delays due to various reasons."
So the German Football Association did not make any changes. Four years later, because of the local World Cup, the league needs to end early again. In this way, the first game of the second half was scheduled for January 5, this time they did not encounter the extreme weather of four years ago.
It was not until the 1980s that the Bundesliga players really had a "winter break", not the so-called extended Christmas holiday. In the 1982-1983 season, the length of the winter break exceeded 40 days for the first time. Two years later, in the 1984-1985 season, the length of the winter break broke through fifty days, extending for the first time to two months. After that, this time exceeded seventy days.
In Germany, the reason for the winter break is because the cold weather in winter will disrupt the rhythm of the league. In the past Bundesliga, the technical level at that time was relatively low. When the weather was too cold, the stadium turf would freeze. Football is also difficult to see clearly, and the climate is even white in the event of heavy snow.
But now, these are no longer a problem. Starting from the 2008-2009 season, all the Bundesliga and Bundesliga teams have implemented a geothermal system at home, and some C-level teams also have such facilities.
However, as a tradition, the winter break has been completely cancelled, and it is only possible to adjust the length.
There is no one in the German club who thinks that the winter break is not good~EbookFREE.me~ Especially after the reference object of the Premier League. There is a view that the German national team performs better than the English national team in international competitions, because the Bundesliga has a winter break, which allows more German internationals to get enough rest opportunities and reduce the chance of injury. The England national team was dragged down by the long and dense Premier League game. When the season ended, when the national team game came, all the international players were exhausted, and it was impossible to show any good performance in important international competitions.
If today's winter break can last as long as seventy days, Zhou Yi can spend the Spring Festival at home.
But unfortunately, the winter break is basically only more than thirty days.
If there is a World Cup, the European Cup or something, it will be shorter.
After returning to Germany, he will go south with his teammates to go to warm Spain for training and prepare for the second half of the season there.
That feeling is like starting a new season. (To be continued) If you like this work, you are welcome to come to the starting point, and your support is my biggest motivation. For mobile phone users, please read. )