At 1:17 on January 19, Beijing time, the match between the national football team and the Lebanese team will be played at the Al Timama Stadium in Doha. For the national football team that barely drew with the new Tajikistan team in the first game and the Asian Cup finals and lost the initiative to qualify, the second game of the group stage is of great significance, if this game cannot get all 30 points, and the last game will face the host Qatar team, the prospect of the national football team qualifying from the group is not optimistic - 3 teams are divided into 24 groups for the group stage, and only 6 teams are eliminated before the round of 16 (the bottom team in each group and the two teams with the worst results in the third place) , but the chaotic state of the first game of the national football team still made the Chinese fans who were infatuated with helplessness.

To the deadline of the special reporter of China Youth Daily and China Youth Network in Doha, this Asian Cup has ended 4 matches in 6 groups, and among the 8 teams that appeared, Qatar, Australia, and Japan 3 World Cup teams have won smoothly, but what impressed fans is their opponents Lebanon, India, and Vietnam: In the confrontation with World Cup-level teams, the collective progress of the three Asian teams is obvious to all.

It was at the Athumama Stadium where the national football team was about to debut, that on January 1, local time, the Japanese team, which vowed to regain the Asian championship, easily defeated the Vietnamese team 14:4. Needless to say, the Japanese team that is the ceiling of Asian football: Ritsu Doan, Takuma Asano, and Hisashi Hisashi even sat on the bench, and the core of the midfield, Endo Hang, led the team to control the game like a high-quality training session - Chinese football is not comparable to Japanese football with the ultimate goal of the World Cup final or even the championship, but it can score two goals in a short period of time to overtake the score when facing the Japanese team when it is 2 goal behind. A horizontal comparison of the Vietnamese team, which practiced the concept of modern football for 1 minutes, shows that the national football team is lagging behind in terms of technical and tactical play.

"Japan is like a giant to Vietnam, we are different weight classes in boxing, so our idea in this fight is very realistic, although we can't get points, but 2:4 is better than 0:2, because our goal is to be the third place in the best group and make it out of the group stage. "I'm happy with the content of the game, the players executed the tactics I laid out before the game, they were very disciplined and stayed focused until the last minutes of the game, which made me firm in my desire to qualify from the group." ”

Troussier is the Japanese football meritorious coach who led the Japanese team to win the 2000 Asian Cup and reached the round of 2002 of the 16 World Cup (he also coached the Shenzhen team and the Hangzhou team in the Chinese Super League). In fact, from 2000 to the present, there has been no change in the style of Japanese football, but some details have been adjusted and revised with the development of modern football. Now Troussier has been in charge of the Vietnamese team for less than one year, and his technical and tactical style has been alive and well as a Japanese team in the initial stage. Troussier's effective overall transformation of the team and the promotion of young players are in stark contrast to the hesitation and twilight of Chinese football: the youngest players of the national football team, Zhu Chenjie and Wu Shaocong, are both 1 years old, the average age of the first 23 starters is 11.29 years old, 8 are veterans over 8 years old, the double strikers Wu Lei and Tan Long are 30 and 33 years old respectively, and the Vietnamese team's first game was entrusted with important tasks and played extremely well Forward Nguyen Dinh North is only 36 years old - last year's Hangzhou Asian Games, Nguyen Dinh North was in the Vietnamese team ( The U19 youth team started in the U20 tournament, and although the team failed to qualify for the knockout round, they lost two group games to Iran and Saudi Arabia, becoming the best support for Vietnam's young players to "level up". What's more, in the face of the defeat, Trussier still stressed the need for the team to stick to their own technical and tactical style of play, "possession of the ball is the result of intensive training and self-sacrifice".

Therefore, in this Asian Cup, in the face of Endo Hang and Morita Yingzheng's dexterous change of direction, the side through the crotch strong breakthrough Sugawara Yusei, the rapid counterattack to create a defensive yellow card, and the front point to receive a corner kick "Looking Back at the Moon", helping the team to score the "fairy ball", all show the progress of the Vietnamese team's forward "sharp knife" Nguyen Dinh Bei.

In addition to the 19-year-old Nguyen Dinh North, there are three other players of Olympic age (3 age group) in the starting line-up of the Vietnamese team, who are not afraid to rush the Japanese team on the field. Although it will be difficult for the team to qualify (there are also Iraq and Indonesia in this group), Vietnamese football can at least satisfy and look forward to the fans who support them.

The touching details also include the Vietnamese team's counterattack in the second half, Japanese defender Taniguchi Truong Go squeezed out of Nguyen Dinh North to get the ball, and after transitioning the ball to the midfield, Taniguchi Truong Go took the initiative to reach out and pat Nguyen Dinh North next to him to show encouragement, Nguyen Dinh North also reached out and responded in a friendly way - there is no doubt that the recognition from the top Asian teams will help the Vietnamese team gain rare self-confidence, and a "big defeat" that conceded 4 goals , not only will it not embarrass the Vietnamese team, but it will make this Asian third-tier team firmly believe in launching a strong attack on the second tier of Asia.

India's stubbornness in holding on to Australia's stubbornness and Lebanon's bravery in trying to challenge Qatar make their defeat more valuable, and even though a draw is a better outcome than a loss in football, the gains are very different for growing teams.

The enterprising attitude and collective progress of the second- and third-tier teams in Asia reflect the embarrassment of Chinese football's "if you don't advance, you will retreat" - even if the draw result of getting points in the first game and not conceding a goal is acceptable, but the quality of the game fans have their own conclusions, at least compared with the previous two cups, the performance of this national football team in the first game of this Asian Cup is difficult to say improved.

In the 2015 Asian Cup in Australia, there were 16 teams in the finals, and the group was the top 8. Perran's national football team defeated the Saudi Arabian team 1:0, reversed the Uzbekistan team 2:1, defeated the North Korean team 2:1, and won a record 3 consecutive wins to qualify as the first team in the group - that is the youngest team in the Asian Cup with an average age of less than 25 years old, even if the 1/4 finals lost to the Australian team, but the whole team is full of vitality, and the media and fans have affirmed it.

In 2019, the UAE Asian Cup was expanded, 24 teams entered the finals, and the national football team ranked first among the second-tier teams (the first-tier teams are the host United Arab Emirates, Iran, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia), Lippi led the team to qualify for the group stage with 2 wins and 1 loss (victory over Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, and loss to South Korea), and defeated the Thai team in the 1/8 finals, and the goal-scoring players were Wu Lei, Yu Dabao, Xiao Zhi, and Gao Lin. It's just that in the 1:4 loss to the Iranian team in the 0/3 finals, the player's many low-level mistakes made the old coach resign in anger, laying the groundwork that the next cycle may be extended to the next cycle, and Chinese football will retreat if it does not advance.

'We didn't do well in the first game and we need to do better in the future. There are three games in the group stage, and our final goal is clear, which is to try to complete the task of qualifying from the group after three games. Jankovic, who became the coach of the national football team in a special period, is under a lot of pressure, and the reversal victory against the Thai team in the world preliminary round does not guarantee that he will build the tactical style of the national football team for a long time, and the disadvantages of the aging team continue to appear, such as the recovery training on the morning of the second game of the first game, the veterans collectively stayed in the hotel to rest instead of going to the training ground with the team to adjust, Jankovic said: "In the second game against Lebanon, we will choose to rotate, choose the right players to play, and let the other players rest." In short, after the group stage, it will be known. ”

DOHA, January 1 --

China Youth Daily, China Youth Network Special Reporter Guo Jian Source: China Youth Daily