Recently, according to domestic soccer reporter Ma Xing reported, in October this year, the AFC meeting, AFC Deputy Secretary General South Korea Shen Wanji thanked the Qatar Football Association in the 2023 Asian Cup was abandoned to lend a helping hand, implying that the Chinese Football Association "irresponsible" to give up the continuation of the Asian Cup, the AFC's work has brought great difficulties.
In the recent AFC Champions League match between Wuhan Sanzhen and Urawa Red Diamonds, the referee has repeatedly been unfavorable to the Chinese Super League team Wuhan Sanzhen, with Deng Hanwen inexplicably punting the ball in the first half, and the opponent so obviously handballing in the penalty area in the second half that VAR intervention has confirmed, but the enforcement of the Saudi referee, Majid Mohammad al-Shamrani, has not been punted.
There have been some glaring miscues in previous World Cup qualifiers for the Asian 36, and the national soccer team has been a victim of these miscues. For example, during the national soccer team's match against South Korea, Hwang Si-Chan fell down in the Chinese penalty area when he was tripped by his teammate Cho Kyu-Sung. But how could Qatari referee Jassim miss such a great opportunity? He decisively decided the penalty kick.
In the second half, when the national soccer team counterattacked, Dai Weijun's pass hit Huang Renfan's back, Huang Renfan fell to the ground holding his head, seeing a once-in-a-lifetime chance for the national soccer team to counterattack, Jasim quickly stopped the game and signaled for the Korean doctor to enter Huang Renfan for treatment, Wu Lei expressed his dissatisfaction with the referee but was warned by a yellow card. Why was Wu Lei so excited? In the first half, Wei Shihao had been lying on the ground, but the referee turned a complete blind eye and allowed Korea to continue attacking. The ball then hit the arm of Korean player Jung Seung Hyun, such an obvious handball that Jasim pretended not to see it.
This is a reality that Chinese soccer must face, says journalist Ma Xing. The damage that China's abandonment of the Asian Cup has done to AFC and Asian soccer is incalculable, and the negative impact will not go away anytime soon. Chinese soccer today has no friends in the Asian soccer world, and similar unfair decisions will be the norm for some time to come.
Speaking of which, many Chinese fans may recall the massive mass brawl that ensued some time ago when Buriram United picked a fight at Zhejiang's home ground. Although the final result of AFC's punishment has not yet been given, I am afraid that the result is destined to heavily penalize Zhejiang and lightly penalize Buriram United due to AFC's frequent and intentional hacking of Chinese soccer recently.
In the face of such a situation of internal and external problems, where should Chinese soccer go from here? Obviously, it can't be like what Yao Ming, the president of the Chinese Basketball Association, said: "Rely on yourself!"
As the new president of the Chinese Football Association (CFA), Song Kai should restart soccer diplomacy and improve the status of Chinese soccer in the AFC through various means. In fact, there is now a certain foundation for this work; after all, we now have referees like Manning enforcing important AFC events, and we can take this opportunity to carry out some referee PR work to provide a fair enforcement environment for the future World Cup qualifying matches. In fact, this kind of work can even be said to be as important as youth training in Chinese soccer, and it is easier to solve than the problem of youth training.
We can recall that the reason why the national football team was able to keep the promotion suspense until the last round of the 2018 World Cup qualifying round of 12 in the Asian zone, in addition to the magical command of the head coach Lippi, the referee's law enforcement was relatively fair in a few key matches, and even made some decisions in favor of China, for example, in the match against Uzbekistan, the national football team formally relied on the penalty kicks to win the game. In this regard, former CFA president Cai Zhenhua can be said to have done a good job. If Song Kai doesn't know how to do this job, he can consult his predecessor.
