2023 is a big year for soccer, with the U20 Asian Cup currently in full swing and the U20 World Cup set to begin officially in two months. In addition, the Asian Games will open this September, when China's Asian Games will make its official debut in Hangzhou.
So the Chinese men's soccer team of all ages has been busy lately. The national youth team is playing the U20 Asian Cup. The adult national team will fly to New Zealand for overseas training and two warm-up matches against the New Zealand national team in the near future.
The Chinese Asian Games team is also currently training in West Asia and recently played a warm-up match against United Sports Dubai of the United Arab Emirates. In this match, the Chinese Asian Games team beat their opponents 1-0, relying on a goal from Tao Qianglong, a young player from Wuhan Sanzhen.
As you know, former U24 China Asian Games head coach Jankovic was recently promoted to head coach of the adult national team. Since then, Jankovic recommended his compatriot Djurdjevic as the head coach of the U23 Asian Games. Although he has just taken over the team, Djurdjevic has brought a new twist to the Chinese Asian Games.
In the last warm-up match, the Chinese Asian Games team led by Djurdjevic drew 1-1 with UAE Peninsula FC's U21 team. In this warm-up match, Djurdjevic still lined up a 433 formation that focuses on offense. Core players such as Fang Hao, Dai Weijun and Tao Qianglong performed quite well in the match. Tao Qianglong even scored a goal, and the Chinese Asian Games team had their first win in their West Asia tour.
In the past group stage of the U20 Asian Cup, the national youth beat the powerful West Asian powerhouse Saudi Arabia 2-0, thus escaping from the previous unfavorable situation and regaining the initiative to get out of the group, which is a double happiness for Chinese soccer.
Over the past year, Chinese soccer has hit an unprecedented low. A series of wrongdoings by managers of the National Football League (NFL) and the Football Association (FA), such as Chen Xuyuan, Li Tie, Liu Yi and Chen Yongliang, greatly affected the performance of the Chinese men's soccer team in the international arena. Not only were they eliminated early in the preliminaries, they also lost to a Vietnamese team we had never lost to before.
After the successive fall of Li Tie, Liu Yi and Chen Xuyuan, Chinese soccer soon ushered in a new atmosphere, and the environment of domestic soccer began to gradually turn warm. Against this backdrop, the U20 national team and the U24 Asian Games team have also recently gone on to become popular in Asia, which has undoubtedly injected new vitality into Chinese soccer, especially the Chinese men's football team, and allowed fans to see the hope of a revival of Chinese soccer.
From this perspective, the fall of the black sheep of Chinese soccer such as Li Tie, Chen Xuyuan and Liu Yi has helped Chinese soccer bottom out and bounce back. It will be interesting to see what the adult national team led by Jankovic can do next in the warm-up match against New Zealand.
Here, we also hope that under the leadership of the brand-new FA, the Chinese team can get back on track as soon as possible, and work their way back to the pinnacle of Asian soccer in just a few years, from Asia's third-rate level back to Asia's second-rate level!
