The national soccer team has little hope of being seeded among the 36 teams in the second stage of 2026 World Cup qualifying, reports journalist Mads Xing.
Despite the fact that the Chinese Football Association (CFA) held a meeting of middle-level cadres on February 21 to study and deploy recent key soccer tasks, there has been at least no further news about the head coach of the Chinese men's national soccer team. However, a visit to New Zealand by the Chinese men's national soccer team to play two warm-up matches against the national team during the FIFA-designated national team window in late March is still on the cards. It must be said that the overall situation is currently developing in a way that is increasingly unfavorable to the Chinese men's soccer team itself.
According to the initial plan of the CFA, the arrangement of the two warm-up matches with New Zealand, in addition to bilateral sports exchanges, but also hope that through these two matches to improve the Chinese national team in the FIFA ranking, which involves the future Asian Cup finals as well as 2026 World Cup qualifiers in the group draw of the grading situation. If you can be among the first class to participate in the World Cup qualifiers, conducive to the team to reach the 18 rounds of the tournament; on the contrary, if you can only participate in the group draw as the second class, the same group of opponents is obviously much stronger, the difficulty of the line will also be greatly increased.
With the Chinese team's current ranking in FIFA and technical points, I am afraid that the prospect of the world ranking announced by FIFA on July 20 this year is quite slim. In the world ranking announced by FIFA on December 22 last year, the Chinese team ranked 11th in Asia, with a technical score of 1305.06 points.
China are 24.66 technical points away from Oman, who are ninth in Asia. While China will play New Zealand in March, the Oman Football Association has already announced that it will play a warm-up match against Lebanon and is currently discussing a second warm-up match. In other words, Oman has not given up the opportunity to earn FIFA technical points. Therefore, it is basically impossible for China to surpass Oman's chances and hopes of being seeded among the top 36 teams in the second phase of the 2026 World Cup qualifiers. Therefore, there is no substantial change in the fate of the Chinese men's national team.
