Highlights of the Community Cup Soccer Tournament
On the afternoon of the 17th, a final of glory in the Tiantan Sports Center came to an end, Beijing's first community cup eight-a-side soccer tournament in Dongcheng District preliminaries came to an end. Stadium Road Street team won the first prize in the youth group, and the middle-aged team of Jianguomen Street had the last laugh. These two teams will represent Dongcheng District to fight for the municipal competition in May.
In the final of the youth group, the Stadium Road team and Longtan Street team had a fierce competition. In both teams, No. 10 Zhang Zhaohui of Stadium Road and No. 6 Xie Jun of Longtan Avenue are the star players. Zhang Zhaohui is a former 1989 age group player of Beijing Guoan, who started his career in 1989 in Guoan's ladder team, and was selected to the first team in 2011 by then Guoan manager Pacheco, playing alongside Yu Yang, Housen, Jiang Tao, and other teammates of the same age group. 2012, Zhang Zhaohui was transferred to the Chongqing team to fight in the Chinese Super League. Due to various reasons, he chose to retire a few years ago.
Zhang Zhaohui (first from right) Photo by Deng Fangjia
Like Zhang Zhaohui, Xie Jun, who was born in 1989, is also from Guoan's ladder team and started to receive soccer training at the age of six. He and Zhang Zhaohui were teammates when they played soccer together as children. After several years of playing eleven-a-side soccer, Xie Jun switched to indoor futsal, joining Shenzhen Nanling Iron Wolves, a veteran of the China Association's Indoor Futsal Super League, where he won several league championships with the team. He later moved to the Inner Mongolia Manchuria Snow Wolves and chose to retire in 2017.
These two players were certainly the talk of the game.
With the referee's whistle, the game officially started. At the beginning of the game, both sides were full of stamina and tight defense. Xie Jun's breakthrough was exceptionally sharp. In the 10th minute, Longtan Street team got a free kick opportunity, Xie Jun took the penalty and broke the goal with a "burst rod" for the team to take the lead. However, the stronger Stadium Road team gradually controlled the rhythm of the game, and Longtan Avenue team could only use most of their energy for defense. In the 17th minute, the Stadium Road team equalized the score with a wonderful inverted triangle.
Xie Jun (No. 6) cheers the whole team during the halftime break Photo by Deng Fangjia
In the second half, Stadium Road team continued to control the rhythm of the game, No. 10 Zhang Zhaohui completed a hat-trick by virtue of his flexibility, left and right. In particular, Zhang Zhaohui completed a toe poke and aerial side break at the end of the game, showing his superb skills. Xie Jun, the front pivot of Longtan Street team, also threatened the opponent's goal constantly with his excellent individual ability. In the second half, Xie Jun completed his personal breakthrough in front of the penalty area twice and scored with a left-footed shot, completing his personal hat-trick. With the outstanding performance of 17 goals in 4 matches, Xie Jun was awarded the best scorer of the youth group in the preliminaries of the first Community Cup Soccer Tournament in Dongcheng District.
Xie Jun (far right) breaks through in the penalty area Photo by Deng Fangjia
In the end, the stadium road street team with better strength won the championship by 7-3 over Longtan street team. After the game, the best scorer Xie Jun expressed his views: "I am a Beijinger, after I retired from the army, I went back to Beijing to join Dongfang Yuhong Building Repair Company, we have a soccer team in our company and we play soccer together on a regular basis. This Community Cup gave us a platform for formal, intense competition, and although we didn't win the championship in the end, it felt really good that we worked together."
