Chapter 176 Opening of the Asian Cup

The warm-up match against Macedonia will be held in Guangzhou on December 23. This is the last game of the Chinese national team in 2010. After this game, the Chinese team will announce their final match for the Asian Cup in Qatar on the 23rd. National People's Congress list.

If there is no accident, Zhou Yi will definitely be in the squad, unless he suffered a serious injury in the warm-up match against Macedonia...

The probability of this happening is too low to be worth mentioning.

And there is no suspense in most national team rosters. Players who are often selected as Gao Jiajun and perform well should be in the big roster.

There are only some marginal international players who hope to use this last warm-up match to seize the time to express themselves, hoping to impress Gao Hongbo and catch the last train of the national team.

As the opponent in the warm-up match, Macedonia's head star is naturally Inter Milan striker Pandev.

He and Zhou Yi have just played against each other in the Champions League group stage, and Zhou Yi is probably the only Chinese international that Pandev can name.

At the pre-match press conference, Pandev said that Zhou Yi left him a very deep impression: "Although it is a warm-up match, we will still go all out. After all, the Chinese team has Zhou Yi."

These words really made the Chinese reporters and fans almost have a collective climax - to be able to get the evaluation of the striker who won the Triple Crown, everyone thinks that Zhou Yi is already a first-class player in Europe.

Macedonia’s performance in this game did not seem to be perfunctory. Before, people like Ma De, the famous national team reporter of "Sports Weekly", would always question Gao Hongbo’s performance of leading the team. Most of the varsity games are warm-up games.

Not to mention the uneven level of opponents in the warm-up match, they did not work hard.

But in today's warm-up match, Macedonia worked very hard.

Therefore, although the Chinese team is playing at home, it has been unable to open the situation for a long time.

In a FIFA ranking in July this year, the Macedonian national team ranked 61st. This ranking is actually not high, but for the Chinese team. Also a strong opponent.

Until the eighty-first minute. Zhou Yi was tripped by a Macedonian player in the penalty area and won a penalty for the Chinese team, and the game ushered in a turning point.

Deng Zhuoxiang made a penalty kick, which was considered a quasi-lore for Macedonia.

Although the process is a bit difficult.

But the Chinese team finally used a victory to end all their games in 2010. Their results this year can be refreshed-11 wins, four draws and three losses throughout the year, and their performance is very good.

Of course everyone knows. The Asian Cup in half a month is the most important thing. If the Asian Cup is not played well, all the wonderful performances of this year will be quickly forgotten. The highest 75th world ranking achieved will be worthless, and the joy brought by those victories will not be able to offset the anger and disappointment of the fans for the failure of the Asian Cup.

No matter how many times you say "sportsmanship", "participation is the most important thing", "heroes are not judged by success or failure", "the process is more important than the result", these high-sounding words. Nothing can change the fact that football is a utilitarian sport that only looks at results.

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One day after the game, the Chinese team announced their 23-man roster and submitted it to the AFC for registration.

Not surprisingly. Zhouyi is impressively listed.

Hao Junmin, as the second overseas returnee, basically didn't play much in Schalke 04. But he was still selected for the national team list. Can't play in Schalke 04, but for the Chinese team, he is still a very capable player.

There are basically no surprises in the other candidates. He performed well in the previous year's competition. All players who have been in good form recently have been selected.

After the final 23-man roster was announced, the unselected players left the training ground, and they could start the rest period after the league ended.

The remaining 23 people will continue to train in Guangzhou for a period of time, and will not leave for Qatar until December 30th.

This is the youngest national team to participate in a world-class competition in the history of Chinese football.

From this point alone, we can know that Gao Hongbo's Asian Cup training is really not a joke...

And the Chinese Football Association also expressed its support for Gao Hongbo when the turmoil was raging, saying that the Football Association did not arrange any specific tasks for Gao Hongbo and the Chinese team in the Asian Cup. The team is preparing for the World Cup Asian qualifiers in May.

In this way, the youngest national team in history left China and flew to Qatar with expectations and controversy.

What impact this team can have on Chinese football, whether it is positive or negative, is hard to say now.

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After the whole team arrived in Qatar, they played two more warm-up matches to further fine-tune the team's lineup.

Although Zhou Yi played as a defensive midfielder in Dortmund, in the national team, Gao Hongbo still put him in the midfielder position.

Because Zhou Yi still has to be closer to the goal to be more threatening. Moreover, in Dortmund, Zhou Yi played in the midfielder and Shinji Kagawa in the front midfielder, which can completely guarantee the offensive firepower. The Chinese team does not have such a good staffing in this regard.

Pushing Zhou Yi to the front midfielder position, while creating more shooting opportunities, he also has the opportunity to shoot himself and personally threaten the opponent's goal.

This is Gao Hongbo's plan.

And Zhou Yi himself has no opinion on playing the midfielder in the national team. Anyway, he is not a fixed midfielder in Dortmund. He often runs forward and participates in the attack. At this time, he is no different from a midfielder. .

In fact, it is not uncommon for a player to be unable to get a position in the club and the national team.

For example, Park Ji-sung played in the midfield at Manchester United, a role player, but in the South Korean national team, he plays in the middle and is a core.

There is no live TV broadcast of the two warm-up matches, so if domestic fans want to know the information of these two warm-up matches, they can only use text reports from the domestic media.

In fact, the domestic media mainly focused on other players of the national team, not Zhou Yi.

Because there is nothing to say about Zhou Yi's performance, it can be summed up in one sentence - "Zhou Yi plays a stable role in the midfielder."

Zhou Yi's level is of course no problem, but can the other international players cooperate with him?

This is what everyone cares about.

Judging from these two warm-up matches, the players of the national team actually performed quite well. After all, it has been a year since Zhou Yi was selected for the national team. Although he didn’t have much training time for the national team, he is no stranger to this team. his special ability.

Although the Chinese team did not rely on a penalty kick until the last moment in the match against Macedonia. The performance is not very satisfying. But these two warm-up matches after coming to Qatar. On the contrary, the Chinese journalists watching the game somewhat regained some confidence—if this is the case, there should be a chance for the group to qualify.

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With some anticipation and anxiety, the Asian Cup kicked off.

At 0:15 am on January 8, Beijing time, the host Qatar took the lead in making an appearance. This is the opening game of this Asian Cup.

However, the host's first volume was not very satisfactory-they lost 0:2 at home to Uzbekistan, the second-ranked team in this group.

For the Chinese team, this is not good news. Because this means that Qatar, as the host, must beat the Chinese team in the second game if they want to qualify for the group.

And this is on their home turf. The West Asians are particularly good at playing outside tricks, which can't help but make people think...

In this regard, Gao Hongbo said at the pre-match press conference the next day that he didn't care about his opponent. What the Chinese team should do now is not to inertia others, but to play their own game well.

Because there is still one hour before the Chinese team will make its debut in this Asian Cup. Their opponent is Kuwait, the weakest team in this group.

Kuwait is not a very strong team, and the strength of the Chinese team has also improved with Zhou Yi. The two teams met and China quickly gained the upper hand.

Under Zhou Yi's dispatch and command, the Chinese team firmly controlled the situation on the court.

The narrator mentioned Zhouyi again and again. Praise Zhou Yi's performance.

Zhou Jianliang in front of the TV shook his head when he heard it, and Li Cuiyun asked after seeing it, "Are you proud?"

Zhou Jianliang coughed and said sternly, "Why? Isn't this the normal behavior he should have?"

Although the situation was under control in the first half, there were no goals.

The first goal of the Chinese team came in the 50th minute. The player who scored was full-back Zhang Linpeng, and the goal was passed by Zhou Yi.

At that time, Zhou Yi took the ball on the left side of the center, and the Chinese team continued to attack on the left side, looking for opportunities, so Kuwait's defensive focus was also adjusted to this side to prevent the Chinese team from attacking. Zhou Yi was also looking to the left, as if he really wanted to pass the football.

But after attracting Kuwait's defensive attention to the left, he suddenly kicked the football to the right.

After receiving the ball, Zhang Linpeng, who cut in from the right back at high speed, took a long shot directly on the penalty area line. The football drew an arc, bypassed the Kuwaiti goalkeeper, and flew into the goal!

"1:0!! Zhang Linpeng! Beautiful long shot! This is the first goal of the Chinese team in this Asian Cup! An assist from Zhou Yi!"

After scoring the goal, Zhang Linpeng ran to Zhou Yi who assisted him, and directly hugged Zhou Yi, and other teammates rushed up to celebrate the goal together.

As everyone mentioned in the interviews before the game, that is, the internal atmosphere of this national team is really top-notch. There is no chauvinism and factionalism that have been criticized before. Same. This is what Gao Hongbo has been pursuing.

In China's Jianghu society, the national team is also a small Jianghu. Where there are Jianghu, there are troubles that cannot be explained clearly.

And these troubles are not conducive to the team's pursuit of good results. So not long after Gao Hongbo took office, he resolutely excluded veterans with such outstanding achievements as Zheng Zhi and Li Weifeng.

This naturally caused dissatisfaction among many people. But Gao Hongbo insisted on doing so.

If his performance in leading the team is good, there will be fewer and fewer people who oppose him. On the contrary, if he leads the team with poor grades, then everything he does is the reason for his dismissal.

Gao Hongbo was actually under tremendous pressure. (To be continued.) Enable new URL