At the April 21 draw for the grouping of soccer events at the Tokyo Olympics, the
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The fate of the team has attracted a lot of attention. Although the men's soccer game has little to do with us, our country's
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The result of the grouping is worth savoring. Our country's third-ranked team was drawn into the top group containing the world's top-ranked Netherlands, second-ranked Brazil and fourth-ranked Zambia, which are the weakest teams in their respective brackets in terms of world rankings and past performance, thus showing that our country's luck in the signing of the lottery has been quite good.
Following the same draw rules as previous soccer tournaments, teams from the same continental soccer federation need to follow the principle of avoidance. For example, although Australia joined the AFC, it was the Asian rather than Oceania teams that needed to be avoided, and in the end, Australia also ended up in the same group as New Zealand. For our country
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For example, following this principle complicates predictions: we can only choose between the United States and the Netherlands, the highest-ranked of the three brackets. If we are grouped with the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom, ranked fifth and sixth in the world in the second bracket, will automatically be avoided, leaving Brazil.
Such a combination is undoubtedly the weakest combination of opponents our team could theoretically encounter. The Netherlands are just one place behind the United States in the world rankings but lost 0-2 to the USA in the 2019 World Cup final, while Brazil are ranked seventh but also behind Sweden and Great Britain. Zambia, in the fourth slot, has the lowest world ranking of all the Olympic teams at 104. From this perspective, the draw for Group F, where our team is based, is a happy one for all - we are happy to have drawn such opponents, and our opponents are probably celebrating for the same reason.
According to the rules of the Olympics, the top two finishers in each group will advance directly, and the two best third-place finishers from the three groups advance to the last eight. According to the regular calculation, our
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The minimum goal is to beat Zambia and then try to get as many points as possible on Brazil and the Netherlands - beating those two teams will be difficult, but a draw is to be expected.
However, there could be some challenges behind this strategy. Firstly, there is Zambia, who despite their low ranking, are not necessarily outclassed, with the team's star center forward Barbara Banda having an outstanding season in the Chinese Women's Super League in Shanghai last season, winning the league's Golden Boot with 18 goals. She is very fast, and in the match against Wuhan Jiangda
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The team also scored many times with their speed in the game. Wuhan used a tactic called Tui Zi, with Wang Shanshan dropping back to specialize in Barbara, and the overall effect was quite good. The question now is whether Zambia's overall strength will be able to support Barbara as well as Shanghai's - if there are Barbara's all over the place, it will be a huge test for our defense.
Brazil is also the country's
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of old rivals, in the last Rio Olympics, the country
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A 0-3 defeat in the group stage, but Brazil was the host then and the situation was different from now - not to mention that even on that occasion, our country
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It also managed to make it to the last eight and even had a chance to beat Germany to the quarterfinals.
