According to reporter Ma Dexing, China's 99-age U24 Asian Games team went to a university soccer field in New Zealand for its second training session at 17:00 p.m. local time on March 19th. So far, all the players have shown very good condition in the training, ready for the first match against New Zealand U22 National Olympic Team in three days.
The U24 Asian Games is a direct flight from Dubai to Auckland, New Zealand on the morning of March 17 local time in the UAE, arriving in Auckland at noon on the 18th. New Zealand will co-host the Women's World Cup with Australia in July and August this year. Therefore, in order to ensure better use and preparation for the World Cup teams at that time, the New Zealand Football Association will close all China-related venues and maintain them. As a result, the AFC will only be able to use the University grounds upon arrival in Auckland.
As the venue used on the first day of training was not satisfactory, the delegation contacted the New Zealand Football Association (NZFA) with a view to providing a better venue. Eventually, the NZFA contacted another venue at Christine University. Although the quality of the grass at this soccer field was not top-notch, and nowhere near the grass used by the Asian Games team during the Dubai stretch run, it was still quite good compared to the previous day's grass.
Perhaps because of this, the players of the Asian Games team were visibly excited when they arrived at the practice court. Especially during the training period, when the coaching staff arranged the offensive set drills, many of the players were surprisingly accurate in their shooting. Fang Hao, Tao Qianglong, Dai Weijun, Xu Xuchen, Huang Jiahui and others had wonderful shots and goals, a few turn handles of the goalkeeper also sighed in the punt: "This shot ......" In fact, throughout the training, the coach and off-field staff also occasionally applauded.
During the training in Dubai, the Asian Games team probably suffered many injuries due to fatigue and other reasons, and the team had at least 15 or 16 players available for training. However, during the training session on the 19th, all 24 players from Dubai and Auckland took part in the training session, and Wu Shaocong, who is playing in Turkey, also arrived in Auckland at noon on the 19th to report to the team, but they did not participate in the training session with the team at the beginning until the end of the session when there was a team confrontation training session. This means that all 25 players are available for the next two warm-up matches against New Zealand in the Olympics.
Zhu Chenjie did not appear in the final warm-up match on March 15 in Dubai. However, it is understood that Zhu Chenjie has recovered from his injury, but he was given a rest to better prepare for the match against New Zealand. As a result, we couldn't see Zhu Chenjie injured during the training session, so we fully participated in the whole training session. Like center forward Zhang Wei, for example, who didn't play in the last three warm-up matches in a row during Dubai due to injury. However, during the training session in New Zealand, Zhang Wei not only participated in the whole session, but also had a great shot in the attacking set piece training, so he seems to be ready to play with New Zealand.
