On August 18, China's men's national soccer team assembled in Shanghai to prepare for the upcoming Top 12 tournament. As scheduled, the national players who finished the Chinese Super League Group A tournament were the first to complete the assembly, while the Suzhou players, who finished the tournament late due to the tail end of the league, enjoyed an extra day of vacation. The team will train for a week at the Shanghai Houpaier Football Park and depart for Doha, Qatar on the 26th, where the first two group matches are also expected to be played.
The first day of training was focused on recovering and waking up the body, and before the training, captain Zhang Linpeng accepted the media interview. He said he arrived in Shanghai early in the morning of the 18th to take advantage of his vacation to accompany his family, "After the preliminary league, the body is indeed a bit tired."
Talking about this 12-team tournament, Zhang Linpeng admitted that the schedule is very different from the past, "We may face a long time of closed training, for which we have been psychologically prepared, and this is also a brand new challenge for us."
In the most extreme case, the 26th from Shanghai, the national football team may be in West Asia for about 80 days of training and games before being able to return home. In this regard, Zhang Linpeng said: "We have long known the 80-day period, everyone is psychologically prepared, the epidemic situation is also helpless, we still try to do our job well and meet the challenge."
On the issue of not being able to spend time with his family for a long time, Zhang Linpeng said he has basically adapted to the two years of the tournament system league, "No matter where I go, I carry pictures of my wife and children and run through all the away matches in the hope that they can give me encouragement to help me to play at my best level."
This is Zhang Linpeng's second time in the Top 12, and as a veteran of the team, he said, "The Top 12 is a new starting point for me, and I hope to work hard with my teammates to do my best regardless of the outcome."
Compared to the last Top 12 tournament, Zhang Linpeng believes the biggest change is the epidemic. "Everything has changed under the epidemic conditions, in the past there was a distinction between home and away, this time we lost our home ground and our opponents may not play on their home ground, which is still different from the home and away system, we have to be psychologically prepared, which is more important."
Due to the impact of injuries, the national team's right back position of the personnel reserve has been greatly affected, Tang Miao, Mingzhi are absent from the current training session. In this regard, Zhang Linpeng said he is ready to play right back. "For so many years, I sometimes play center back, sometimes right back, there is no big problem in this regard."
