According to the established plan, China's men's soccer team is expected to gather in Shanghai around August 18 to prepare for the upcoming Qatar World Cup Qualifying Asian Zone 12 tournament, which will begin in early September. However, as of August 4, there has not been a clear answer as to the exact location where the main event of the 12-team tournament will be held. Given the recent intensification of the epidemic in some parts of the country, the global and domestic epidemic prevention situation remains severe, the CFA has not yet been able to confirm whether the home matches can be played on home soil, which makes the team's preparations for the tournament difficult, and even more challenging than the preparations for the 40-team tournament.
According to the schedule, the last four matches of the first phase of the Chinese Super League, which is the eighth round of the bye in Suzhou, will start on August 15th. Considering that the players need to rest after participating in the league consecutively, the coaching team of the national team plans to start the new training around August 18th to build up strength for the Top 12 tournament. The location of the new phase of training for the national team is initially set in Shanghai, mainly because Shanghai and Suzhou are close to each other, making it easy for the players of the clubs in the Guangzhou tournament to get there directly. In addition, Shanghai and Suzhou have also become the preferred and alternative cities for the CFA's preferred home matches for the 12-team tournament.
However, the recent rebound of the epidemic in some parts of the country, some cities in Jiangsu Province and Shanghai have also appeared in confirmed cases, which shows that the current situation of epidemic prevention in the country is still serious, and all places are on the alert. In this context, the above two cities are afraid that it is difficult to undertake the task of the national football team's games.
On the afternoon of August 4, an article in the Japanese media circulated on the Internet about "AFC has notified the teams of the 12-team tournament to get ready for the tournament system". The report pointed out that "due to the current environment, the AFC has issued a document to the football associations of the participating teams on August 3, asking the teams to prepare for the change of the schedule and tournament system." The media also analyzed that the AFC is considering a tournament system to hold the 12-team tournament.
However, according to the Beiqing-Beijing headline reporter verified that the CFA has not received this document. Regardless of what kind of system will be used in the final 12 matches, the CFA is still in accordance with the game using the home and away system to implement the national football team's various security work. The federation is also doing its best for the team "to protect the home field". But once the relevant environmental factors or conditions occur force majeure, the CFA does not rule out the start of other contingency plans, including the possibility of choosing a third-party member association neutral site as the national football alternate home venue.
Combining various factors, the challenges and difficulties of the preparation for the National Football League's Top 12 tournament clearly exceed those of the Top 40 tournament. On the one hand, the team is about to regroup, the home match venue and the plan for the first round away match against Australia is still unclear. How will the national football team refine the organization of the preparation schedule? When will they leave for the away game? These are all unknowns. On the other hand, since Li Tie took over the national football team at the beginning of last year, the team has not encountered any other real test, except for the hard battle with Syria in the final round of the 40-team tournament. 12-team tournament opponents are much stronger than the 40-team tournament opponents, and the national football team needs high-quality warm-up matches to adjust the state. But in the context of the epidemic, the team is difficult to carry out international warm-up matches before the start of the 12 strong match. The Chinese Super League teams on August 15 after the end of the first phase of the tournament, generally more tired, need to rest, the national football team in the domestic training period and the Chinese Super League team warm-up, but also need to be coordinated by all parties.
At present, the CFA work team is grasping the implementation of all the preparations for the preparation of the national football team for the 12th round of the tournament, including the home match program and alternative programs, and at the same time, combined with the actual situation of the international and domestic epidemic, continue to communicate with the AFC and the relevant member associations, in order to flexibly respond to a variety of situations.
