On Tuesday night, the Chinese men's soccer team will face South Korea in the second round of the World Cup. Yesterday, the "Taiji Tigers" arrived at the venue of the match and caused some commotion at the airport.
Due to the outstanding performance in the European game, like Son Xingyu, Kim Min Ja, such as South Korean players in China have a lot of supporters. For the upcoming showdown, the fans of the national football team are generally more calm, "play flat as a win" has become the main attitude, if you can get all three points is even more unexpected. The reason for this situation is that the gap between the strength of the two sides is quite large. To address this issue, the South Korean coach Seo Jung-won, who led Chengdu Rongcheng to a double victory over newly crowned Super League champions Shanghai Seaport this season and remained undefeated in both home and away matches against Shanghai Shenhua, has pointed out the core of the problem - the experience of staying in the ocean.
Despite being the underdogs in their historical encounters, the Chinese men's soccer team used to be a headache for South Korea. In an interview, Seo Jung-won recalled the preparations leading up to the big match against South Korea in the qualifiers for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. "At that time, the Chinese team was a first-class Asian powerhouse and ranked very high, making it a tricky opponent." The powerful Chinese team Xu Zhengyuan refers to was coached by Xu Genbao and led by players such as Fan Zhiyi, Peng Weiguo and Hu Zhijun, with a practical style of play, distinctive features and a very strong fighting force. However, unfortunately, in the final round of the Olympic qualifying tournament, when as long as the draw can be out of the line, suffered South Korea launched the "black nine minutes", and the trip to Barcelona passed by. Seo Jung-won also scored a goal in that match.
Today is more than 30 years later, the gap between China and South Korea is getting wider and wider, Xu Zhengyuan also feel very sorry. In his opinion, the current problem of the national soccer team is that it has not yet found a suitable development path. "After the 2002 World Cup, we have investigated and researched, and concluded that in order to make progress in soccer, we have to learn from advanced soccer countries, and the most direct way is to send young players abroad." It was based on this guiding principle that saw the emergence of young players such as Son, who traveled to Germany as an exchange student to receive training, as well as Lee Gang-in, who joined the Valencia youth camp in Spain at the age of 10, and a group of young talents who performed well in the K-League and gradually opened the door to European players.
Xu Jung-Won said that during his years of coaching in China, he has witnessed a lot of outstanding young players, but unfortunately, most of them are not able to get a chance to play at a higher level. The potential of Chinese players is huge, and if coaches recognize their potential and train them hard, these players can go to Europe to play football. When they become the main players in Europe and then come back to the national team to help them improve, the national team will definitely improve a lot. The Chengdu Rongcheng manager said so.
Choi Kang-hee, who has participated in the World Qualifiers as both a player and a manager, once used a squad composed almost entirely of ethnic Chinese players and successfully brought Shenhua into the group of Chinese Super League title contenders. The veteran coach also made it clear that Chinese players are capable of playing well, but they are just used to relying on foreign aid and getting comfortable, which is not good for soccer development. In fact, foreign coaches who coached in the Chinese Super League in the past few years have also given similar advice, but unfortunately their words did not play a big role, and the strength and performance of the national team has gradually declined in the midst of one after another turmoil.
In the past, the China-South Korea men's soccer matches not only sparked a national debate, but fans also expected the national team to win and break the fear of South Korea. However, with the continuous improvement of hardware conditions, the level of the national team and the fans' requirements for the game have also changed, and now the goal is to strive for a draw even if it is a win, and minimizing the number of losses is also seen as a victory. The hardship and helplessness hidden behind the change in mentality of the national team players and fans, as well as the deeper problems reflected in this situation, may be more worthy of our consideration than the result of this World Cup qualifying match on Tuesday night.
