November 1, Japan's national team announced a list of 26 people to participate in the World Cup, 20 of them are European players, 13 of whom participated in the European top five leagues. Of the remaining six local players, only three have no experience of traveling to Europe, making Japan's World Cup squad "the most European" of the first edition. Going out to high-level leagues has become an important factor in Japan's steady progress. In contrast, the five major leagues have been zero Chinese soccer obviously still has a long way to go.
Last September 8, after the first round of the Asian 12 of the World Preliminary Round with Japan, Wu Lei returned to Barcelona alone. At the airport, he met almost the entire Japanese players, returning to Europe for the league. At that moment, Wu Lei expressed this feeling: "Happening to be right next to me, I saw almost the entire Japanese players, who returned to Europe under the leadership of the team leader, and then returned to the club. Seeing this scene, as a person with personal experience, I suddenly remembered mixed feelings. I had heard before that the Japanese team had a base camp in Europe. Despite the epidemic at the end of last year, Japanese overseas players formed a full team to play international friendlies in Europe, and even their leaders were stationed there."
Yes, while Japan and South Korea have tons of players traveling to major European leagues, China is supported by only Wu Lei on his own. Echoing this is the disparity between the national soccer team and the Japanese team on the soccer field. In China's 0-1 loss to Japan, the skillful, pressing and "overwhelming" stats of the Japanese players showed that they didn't even show the most power.
There was a time when China also had a large number of players trying to go out. Since Yang Chen's transfer to Bundesliga side Eintracht Frankfurt in July 1998, outstanding domestic players such as Fan Zhiyi, Sun Jihai, Ma Mingyu, Li Weifeng, Li Tie, Shao Jiayi, Zheng Zhi and many others have also appeared in the top five leagues, with some of them becoming starters. In recent years, many young and even underage Chinese players to Europe, Brazil and other places for further study, but these children are basically difficult to get a firm foothold abroad, resulting in them to get a firm foothold in foreign countries "to stay in the ocean" gradually become "gold-plated", "export to domestic sales", "export to domestic sales", "export to domestic sales", "export to domestic sales", "export to domestic sales". The phenomenon of "export to domestic sales" is widespread.
Now that Wu Lei is back, Chinese soccer still needs brave young men to go out boldly. Only then can they make real progress. Wu Lei said deeply, "I have called more than once for our players to come out to see and feel the soccer atmosphere and environment in Europe. As a matter of fact, I myself know very well that going abroad at my age will hardly bring a qualitative leap to the national team. But I hope that through my experience, to give more young players confidence, so that they have such a dream, but also the pursuit of such a dream, I also hope to see, learn, and feel to share with you, so that study abroad to learn to make progress in the process more meaningful."
