U16 national soccer team prepares for Asian Junior Championship qualifiers
On September 4, Yang Chen, the head coach who will lead the U16 national football team to the Asian Junior Championship qualifiers, detailed the team's preparations in an interview with Football Night.
--Travel arrangements
After a training session in Yuxi, Yunnan, China's U16 men's soccer team has returned to Beijing and will take a flight to Australia on September 5th. During its stay in Beijing, the team will play a warm-up match against Guoan. The FA has given strong support to the team by not restricting the number of participants, with the competition entry limited to 23, but considering factors such as the epidemic, the team may carry 26-28 people. The original plan was to play four practice matches in Osaka, Japan, but due to the serious epidemic in Japan, the trip to Japan was canceled to ensure the safety of the players and was agreed by the association's leadership. The tournament will start on October 5, about 3-5 days ahead of schedule into the tournament area, so the warm-up game planned for Japan will be played in Australia instead.
--Talking about opponents
Cambodia and Australia are the team's main opponents. Although they participated in the Southeast Asia U16 Championship in July and August, it was not entirely representative of their strengths. The Australian team used a selection team for the tournament and then changed their head coach after the tournament to rework their preparation process. Therefore, our team can only refer to this information and cannot be viewed entirely in terms of the tournament. Cambodia's team style is similar to Myanmar's and Vietnam's, with a Japanese head coach who incorporates these philosophies, and the team will also be looking in detail at their recent preparations. The situation of the Northern Mariana Islands, the weakest team in the group, is also being collected, and many people believe that our U16 should take more clean sheets from them, but Yang Chen emphasized that the players can't have the idea of taking the enemy lightly, and still have to go all out for the victory.
--Team coverage status
For this tournament, our U16 has also invited excellent mental experts, who will provide psychological guidance to the players during the tournament, especially to relieve the psychological pressure of the competition and enhance the belief of winning.
--Mindset of the current players
Taking the World Cup as an example, Yang Chen encouraged the players to compete for more chances from the group preliminaries and expected to adjust their mentality for preparation in this way. The whole team has a unified mindset, from coaches, staff to players, the goal is to compete for the first place in the group, without considering other factors, with clear goals and joint efforts.
With our U16 qualifier schedule:
October 5 vs. Cambodia
Oct. 7 vs. Northern Marianas
October 9 vs. Australia
With the exception of hosts Australia, 10 group winners and five group seconds advanced to the main round of the Asian Junior Championships.
