Chinanews.com, Beijing, February 27th. Question: Three questions about Jankovic's new national football team: Why is the lineup mainly stable for the time being?

　　Reporter Bian Liqun

　　After a lot of calls, the new training list of the national football team was finally released on the evening of the 27th. Among them are old faces such as Wu Lei and Exxon, as well as newcomers who have performed well in the league such as Lin Liangming and Sun Guowen.

　　On March 1, the national football team, which will gather again after a lapse of nearly a year, can be regarded as officially setting sail in a new cycle.

Question mark 1: The new national football team is not young?

　　Jankovic, who previously led the U24 national football team to prepare for the Asian Games, has one of the advantages of being promoted to the national football coach because he understands young players. In addition, the national football team has reached a point where it must be updated. One of his major tasks is to make the national football team younger.

　　But from the perspective of average age, the new roster of the national football team is not as young as expected. The average age of this 24-man roster is 29.67 years old, which is not much different from the previous coaching period of Li Xiaopeng and Li Tie.

Data map: The national football team is training.

Photo by Zhang Hengwei

　　Tan Long, the oldest player on the list, is about to turn 35 years old, central defender Ren Hang, who was re-selected into the national football team, is 34 years old, and naturalized player Exon is 33 years old.

Lin Liangming, who was selected for the national football team for the first time, is the youngest at 25 years old.

　　Of course, the current national football lineup is too old, which is related to the injuries of Dai Weijun and Zhang Yuning, and the fact that young players such as Zhu Chenjie are preparing for the Asian Games in the U24 national football team.

Wu Lei (right) in the game.

Question mark 2: Is stability the main priority for the time being?

　　As the first training list of the national football coach Jankovic, it still has a certain symbolic significance.

This somewhat "old-fashioned" national football list reveals that Jankovic, who has just taken office, still wants to seek stability.

　　However, such seeking for stability may be meaningful at the moment, but it is meaningless for the next Asian Cup and World Preliminaries.

National football coach Yankovic.

Image source: Visual China

　　Looking at this list, the Chinese Super League champions Wuhan Three Towns, Shandong Taishan and Shanghai Haigang are the big players in the international football team. Among them, SIPG has the most players, reaching 7 players.

Wuhan and Shandong have 6 and 4 people respectively.

　　There are only 3 rookies selected for the national football team for the first time. They are Lin Liangming and Sun Guowen, who played well in the Dalianers last season, and Chen Pu, who also performed well in the Shandong Taishan team.

　　The remaining "newcomers" are all players who have returned to the national team, such as Liu Yiming, He Chao, Li Shuai, Wang Shangyuan, and even the 34-year-old Ren Hang.

　　Among the limited "newcomers", you can also see some of Jankovic's ideas, such as Sun Guowen, Lin Liangming, Li Shuai, Wang Shangyuan, Liu Binbin, etc., are all players with relatively strong running ability.

Data map: Lin Liangming celebrates the goal.

Image source: IC photo

Question mark 3: Will Jankovic "smash" the first test?

　　According to the arrangement, the national football team will officially gather in Haikou on March 1, and then go to New Zealand for a friendly match on March 23. This is the first time the national football team has played in an international A-level event in three and a half years.

The last time dates back to the warm-up match with Tajikistan after Lippi's "second entry into the palace"...

　　The long-lost warm-up match is very precious, and coach Jankovic obviously does not want to mess up his national football coaching debut.

　　With the blessing of so many veterans, there should be no collapse, but it is also foreseeable that there will not be much new ideas.

　　I still look forward to the steady start of the national football team under Jankovic in the new cycle, and it can bring some new ideas and surprises while completing the update in the follow-up.

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