The Asian Youth Football Championship has made a strong comeback after a four-year hiatus, and today it has entered the knockout stage of the group stage of the competition, which is in full swing. In yesterday's quarter-finals, our youth soccer team lost to Japan by one goal, regrettably missing out on the semi-finals.
Fourteen teams gathered in this Asian Youth Championship, and our team was in Group A with Indonesia and Vietnam. In the group stage, our team defeated Vietnam with a 5-0 record, but lost to Indonesia with a score of 1-4, advancing to the last eight as the second place in the group.
In the 8-4 match which started at 10:00am today, our team met with the Japanese team. After a fierce battle, Zhu Yijun/Huang Kexin took the first step in the mixed doubles match, but then the women's singles and men's singles matches were drawn 1-1, and finally lost to Japan with a total score of 1-3.
In the other quarterfinals, Chinese Taipei beat South Korea 3-0, Thailand swept Malaysia 3-0 and Indonesia narrowly beat India 3-1. The semifinals will begin at 5 p.m. today with Thailand taking on Indonesia and Japan battling Chinese Taipei, with the final to be played tomorrow.
In this Asian Youth Championship, the lineup of our youth team has changed quite a lot compared to last year's World Youth Championship. Many of the main players lacked experience in big games, which led to a lot of mistakes in the games. Especially in the group stage against Indonesia and today's match with Japan, our team failed to seize the opportunity at the critical moment.
Faced with such a situation, the Chinese team needs to adjust its mentality and condition in time to cope with the upcoming individual competitions.
