In the 2022 season, Chengdu Rongcheng Football Club's rise was as legendary as it was legendary, rising three levels in four years, from the Chinese Championship to the Chinese Super League, writing a new chapter for Chengdu's teams in the Chinese Super League.
Two young talents, Hu Huotao and Mutalifu, who are only 18 years old, have made a name for themselves in the team and their market value has risen from 25,000 euros to 450,000 euros for Hu Huotao and from 25,000 euros to 325,000 euros for Mutalifu. Not only were they selected for the national youth team, but they also made it to the last eight of the Asian Youth Championships with the team, but unfortunately failed to make it to the World Youth Championships.
However, Hu and Mutalifu have not appeared on the pitch after ten rounds of the new Chinese Super League season, as they have been transferred to Europe to train for the 2024 Paris Olympics qualifiers. Their return will take place at the Panda Cup International Youth Football Invitational Tournament in Chengdu in June.
Despite Chengdu Rongcheng's unbeaten season so far, the team is running smoothly and there are not many calls for the return of Mutalifu and Hu Hu Huotao.
However, it remains an open question as to whether long overseas training sessions are really beneficial for these two young players. After all, the history of "training teams" is full of failures.
Cheng Yaodong (1915-1989), Chinese-American physicist
As the Asian Cup came to an end in March 2023, Football Daily's interview with Mutalifu said, "Despite your first participation in such a tournament, you showed total confidence on the field."
"This was undoubtedly due to the amount of appearances we got in the league last year and it was these games that allowed us to gain valuable experience, especially after facing high level opposition, which further boosted our self-confidence."
However, at the age of 18 or 9, they were introduced to Olympic training by Cheng Yao Dong. From March 9 to June 8 this year, Croatia and Belgium will witness at least 27 warm-up matches for the Olympics.
The schedule includes 12 round-robin matches against Croatian second division teams, four warm-up matches against teams arranged by the Croatian Football Federation, and six warm-up matches against Belgian second and third division teams.
It is puzzling that such overseas training seems to make little sense when the young players in the National Olympic team, who are already able to rotate through the Chinese Super League, are not able to return to their home countries to play in the league.
They are temporarily unable to represent their respective teams in the league until the mid-season supplement on June 9, which is the 12th round of the Super League.
Just on the eve of training, on March 1 of this year, Beijing Youth Daily noted that the Olympics even aspired to play in the new season's first division due to a lack of international warm-up opportunities.
"As an age-appropriate Olympic team, the players are not young. Therefore, by playing in the league, the team will be able to gain more experience at a higher level of competition, which is more valuable for the development of young players."
Initially, the FA sent the entire national Olympic team to Croatia for training because most of the players lacked stable playing opportunities at their clubs and needed more exercise.
But for now, the three-month training results of the National Olympic Games are poor, in the known 17 games, the National Olympic Games only achieved 4 wins, 1 draw and 12 losses.
For young players, if a club's young players have potential but are not as strong as the first team for the time being, the usual practice is to loan them to a lower league for training. In order to play soccer, Zeng Cheng had no hesitation in loaning to the Indonesian league.
However, a few years ago, the new policy for young players was a farce, costing players who should have been working out in the lower leagues. Clubs were required to keep at least three to five young players on the bench, depriving those on the rise of workouts.
One has to admit that three months of training for the Olympics seemed like a pointless waste, facing an Olympic qualifier with little hope of advancing, but there are always those who dream of performing a miracle during their tenure and winning an almost impossible success.
training team
The backwardness of Chinese soccer is all-encompassing, but there are always some people who become a stumbling block to the progress of Chinese soccer.
In fact, the national youth and national junior teams at all levels have long been a tool for certain people to seize benefits. Accusations of narrow selection and insufficient numbers in youth training are all excuses to cover up the real situation.
Looking back at the experiences of Jiangsu Youth Army, Jixiang, Sun Ke and Zhou Yun, they became the mainstay of their clubs when they were in their early 20's, yet they were never selected for any level of the National Youth and National Junior Teams. Are the FA's choices really that narrow?
Huang Zichang refused to sign with Li Ming's agency and was therefore kicked out of the national youth team. Later, he performed well and was recruited by national teams at all levels. It is only in recent seasons that his form has improved.
At that time, Magath was ready to let 17-year-old Guo Tianyu join the first team. As a result, he was taken by the FA to train everywhere. Until Magatte left, he never saw Guo Tianyu again. It would have been very rare to have such a good chance to play in a professional league during the promotion period, but he was wasted by the FA.
A few years later, Guo Tianyu returned to China and finally had a solid game and scored a lot of goals. As a result, the FA decided to let him study abroad in a heartbeat.
It does not matter if you can not play, following the training of the European team will certainly improve the ball skills. Guo Tianyu watched the water fountain in Portugal for half a year, in addition to the weight rise, the ball skills did not improve at all, but rather a sharp decline.
Now twenty-four years old, Guo Tianyu can't play in Shandong and looks back on a career as almost an average player.
If a player is out of formal competition for a long period of time, his playing form will naturally drop drastically. A group of players with declining form who train together in combination for a long period of time is unlikely to achieve good results. This is what Chinese soccer history has proven countless times.
It is a common practice in all countries around the world to select players in good league form to enter the national team, and to hone the manager's tactical play through a moderate amount of warm-up matches and training, which is the best way to ensure that the national team has combat power in official matches.
No soccer powerhouse has made the same behind-closed-doors choices in decades, except for the National Football League, which is keen to train.
Thinking with a normal human mind, maybe there's a lot of oil and water in long term training, or else failing so many times with no results and sticking with it is unreasonable.
