In this year's East Asian Cup, the Chinese men's soccer team has been given a slightly awkward name - the "Chinese Men's National Selection Team".
The name has a twisted origin. Initially, the CFA had planned to send the U23 men's soccer team to the East Asian Cup in order to use the tournament to train the team for the Hangzhou Asian Games, which was originally scheduled to be held in September this year. Despite the postponement of the Asian Games, the FA decided to send a young team, with Tan Long and Jiang Guangtai being the only two overage players.
The name "national football selection team" first appeared in October 2019. At that time, the national football team is participating in the Asian zone of the World Cup 40 strong match, the then head coach Lippi refused to lead the team to participate in the "can not be distracted" as the reason, and Li Tie took over, and the players recruited by the players failed to make the list of the 40 strong match.
However, by December 10th of that year, when the East Asian Cup list of participants was announced, Lippi has left from the national football position, Li Tie's "national football selection team" is also logical to become the "Chinese team". Soon after, Li Tie also officially took over the position of national football coach.
The "national football selection team" is the predecessor of the "national football training team".In March 2019, shortly after Lippi left his post for the first time, Cannavaro took the team to participate in the China Cup as the coach of the "national football training team". The outside world regarded it as an "interview". However, the experience ended after Cannavaro's team suffered back-to-back defeats.
Both the "selection team" and the "training team" reveal an air of uncertainty and lack of confidence. The coaches Li Tie and Cannavaro were only "temporary workers" at the time, and seemed to use "selection" or "training" to emphasize that the team was not an official national team, and that even if they lost the game, it would not affect the image of the national team. The image of the national team will not be affected even if the team loses.
However, this is perhaps an oversimplification. Both television broadcasts and FIFA records uniformly refer to these matches as "Team China". In the minds of the fans, the name of the team does not differentiate them from each other, and they are more concerned with the team's performance on the field. Therefore, the change of the name of the team does not mean the change of the nature of the team, but the important thing is the commitment and hard work of the players.
Today's Chinese men's soccer team has fallen out of the top ten in Asia in the international rankings, but every game is especially valuable. For these young players, whether or not the name of the team contains "Team China" is important, but more importantly, they have to hold themselves to the standards of current national football players, forget about the original purpose of "practicing", and give it their all.
Only in this way can the purpose of "practice" be truly realized.
