The Chinese men's soccer team departed Shanghai this afternoon and flew to Dubai, UAE, where they are expected to arrive at around 7:15 p.m. local time on the 18th before heading to Abu Dhabi to begin preparations for the Asian Cup.
During their training in Abu Dhabi, the national soccer team will play a warm-up match against Oman and two teaching matches against local teams in the UAE. The scheduled warm-up match against India may be canceled due to a change in the opponent's schedule and the national soccer team will look for another opponent. The national soccer team is scheduled to travel to Qatar on January 7 for the final sprint. While the national soccer team's preparation plan is in order, China's fellow opponents are also making moves.
Tajikistan have assembled in the UAE and they will play warm-up matches against a number of teams including Vietnam at this stage. Looking at Tajikistan's training roster, only three are over the age of 30 and 12 players are under 23, eight of whom are under 21. Croatian coach Šegot has had a clear impact on the team's youthfulness.
Last Monday, the Lebanese Football Association (LFA) announced that he coached the Lebanese national team from 2015-2019 and led Radulovic, who advanced to the Asian Cup qualifiers for the first time, to be the head coach of the national team once again. Coach Montenegro then held a three-day meeting with the Lebanese Football Association stakeholders to discuss and finalize the Asian Cup training roster.
According to local media reports, Lebanon's training will take place from December 19-28 with 29 names on the roster, eight of whom are playing in the Asian Cup in 2019 alongside Radulovic.
However, there is still a possibility that Radulovic could tweak the roster after this stage of training. For example, Ayoub and Darwish, key players in the US-Canada-Mexico World Cup Asian Qualifiers 36, are likely to join the squad after recovering from injuries.
In addition, Radulovic asked the Lebanese Football Association to purchase player data software to understand players through big data analysis.
Hosts Qatar are also in the same group as the national soccer team. As the Qatar League scheduled its 12th round from December 20-22, Qatar's head coach Marques had to organize his players into training after this round. The Qatar Football Association (QFA) has scheduled a warm-up match against Cambodia on Dec. 31 and another warm-up match on Jan. 12 before taking on Lebanon. After that, Marks will adjust the team roster.
According to the Asian Cup system, the 24 teams are divided into six groups during the group stage, with the top two teams and the four best-performing teams advancing to the round of 16.
