As Lu Wenbin and Ibrahimovic were "admiring each other", soon it was evening and the game was about to begin.
There were a lot of Barcelona fans in this game.
Not only fans from Spain, but also many fans from Europe and even other continents of the world flocked to Monaco like a pilgrimage to watch Barcelona's live games.
Barcelona is a world-class powerhouse with countless fans, and the Spanish national derby with Real Madrid is the most watched football derby in the world.
Barcelona's beautiful football, artistic football, and last season's treble have once again won Barcelona countless fans around the world.
In addition, Barcelona has never lacked superstars. Cruyff, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Henry, Messi, etc. have brought countless foreign fans to Barcelona.
Therefore, in today's European Super Cup, although there were not many Spaniards coming from their country, there were indeed many fans from Morocco and other countries, so that Barcelona supporters accounted for at least half of the audience.
In comparison, Hoffenheim has much fewer fans.
Apart from the more than 10,000 German Hoffenheim fans who came from the country, there may be only a few thousand local and foreign fans.
The rest are purely neutral fans and a small number of political, business and celebrity figures, etc. who use this platform to conduct football diplomacy.
During the entrance ceremony before the game, Barcelona received much louder cheers than Hoffenheim.
A typical war in which a poor country boy challenges a wealthy aristocratic family.
When the two sides shook hands, all Hoffenheim players, including Lu Wenbin, followed Ralph's instructions and had no expression on their faces.
Only when shaking hands with Ibrahimovic did everyone deliberately increase the strength and smile to show their respect for Ibrahimovic.
This naturally greatly satisfied Ibrahimovic's vanity, and his heart was a little lifted.
Glancing at Messi, who is only 1.7 meters tall, Ibrahimovic said in his heart: "Look, even my opponents only respect and value me so much. It turns out that only I am worthy of being the core of Barcelona!"
At 20:30 on the evening of August 28th local time, with the referee's whistle, the 2009 European Super Cup kicked off at the Stade Saint Louis II in Monaco.
The two teams facing each other are 2008/2009 UEFA Champions League champions Barcelona and the last UEFA Cup champions Hoffenheim.
Although Barcelona's name and starting lineup put a lot of pressure on Ralph, after careful consideration, Ralph did not back down and still sent out a 433 offensive football formation.
On the one hand, Hoffenheim is more familiar with 433, and the players can easily perform better on the spot under this system.
On the other hand, Barcelona's football is difficult to be effective through general defensive counterattacks, otherwise Barcelona would not have won the treble last season.
It’s not that there are no teams that play defensive counterattacks against Barcelona, but most of them failed in the end, proving that such tactics are difficult to work against Barcelona.
Only Mourinho's Chelsea can compete with Barcelona, but Hoffenheim obviously does not have the muscular jungle player configuration like Chelsea.
In this case, why not use the offensive football tactics that we are best at to compete with Barcelona.
Anyway, Hoffenheim also has European Golden Boot winner Lu Wenbin, so they may not be unable to compete with Barcelona in terms of goal scoring.
After the game officially started, although the entire Hoffenheim team had anticipated the difficulty of the game, no one expected Hoffenheim to lose the ball in the first minute of the game.
The reason for the goal was that Barcelona attacked too quickly.
Barcelona got the right to kick off in this game.
After the referee blew the opening whistle, Ibrahimovic kicked the ball to Henry, Henry kicked it to Xavi behind him, and Xavi kicked it to Yaya Toure.
It looked like an ordinary back pass at the start of the game.
However, just when everyone, including Hoffenheim players, was thinking this, Yaya Toure passed the ball back to Xavi in the open space.
Lu Wenbin happened to be nearby, so he ran over to grab the ball.
However, Lu Wenbin had just started and was still several meters away from Xavi when Xavi suddenly raised his leg and kicked the ball towards the front court.
Lu Wenbin stopped and followed the ball kicked by Xavi, waiting for a teammate to intercept the ball and pass it to him.
However, the football passed through most of the field, but Salihovic, Gustavo and Nilsson along the way all failed to intercept the ball.
Then, as Hoffenheim's players and fans watched in increasing horror, Henry made the offside move, got behind Jancker and received Xavi's long pass.
After receiving the ball, Henry just adjusted his pace slightly, and then shot directly from the penalty area line.
Yaisle, who rushed over from the side, leaped up and made a flying tackle, but failed to stop the ball.
Henry's powerful shot flew past the fingertips of goalkeeper Ozcan and went into the goal.
The commentators, who hadn't even finished introducing the starting lineups for both teams, suddenly started yelling:
"Goooooooooooooooooooooal"
"Oh my god, the game just started and Barcelona scored a goal in no time!"
"Xavi's through pass was so terrifying, Hoffenheim didn't even touch the ball once before the goal was lost!"
"In the first minute of the game, Barcelona's midfield master Xavi assisted Henry to score a goal, and Hoffenheim fell behind!"
"The Hoffenheim miracle will come to an end here in Barcelona!"
On the field, all of Hoffenheim's players were stunned. Lu Wenbin felt like he had seen a god when he saw Xavi pass the ball which was more than 40 meters long.
It seemed unimaginable to him that a straight pass from such a distance could penetrate half of the field without being intercepted.
The giants are really different. No one in Hoffenheim can reach Xavi's level. Neither Salihovic, Eduardo or Copado can pass a through ball of more than 40 meters.
After scoring the goal, Henry and his teammates did not celebrate wildly. They simply high-fived and returned to their own half, as if they had scored an insignificant goal.
The Barcelona fans in the stands were not very excited either. On the one hand, they were a little slow to react to the goal in the first minute of the game, and on the other hand, they felt that the opponent was too weak.
The Hoffenheim miracle only increased Hoffenheim's popularity and aroused the curiosity of fans, but it would not make most people put them on the same level as the super giants.
It seemed natural to most people that Barcelona scored more goals than Hoffenheim and even defeated Hoffenheim to win the championship.
Although the lightning goal in the first minute was a bit unexpected, it didn't surprise anyone too much.