15 o'clock on April 8, the Tokyo Olympic Games women's soccer qualifying round playoffs, China and South Korea's first round of the showdown will be passionately staged in South Korea's Goyang (CCTV sports synchronized live broadcast), the two sides will be competing for a valuable Olympic ticket and fight to the best of their ability.
Visualization of China Photo/Jia Xiuquan
In today's pre-match conference, China's women's soccer head coach Jia Xiuquan, facing the question of "outside the dish", confidently said that the strength of China and South Korea are similar to each other, after this period of intensive training, our team is ready to look forward to coaching to lead the team to win the ticket to the Tokyo Olympics.
Our team's preparation process remained mysterious until 4:30 p.m. on the 7th when the 20-man roster was announced.
Wang Frost leads our team, with Wang Shanshan, Tang Jiali, Xiao Yuyi and Yang Man in the front line, and Li Ying, who was absent from the training, did not appear in the list. The midfielders include Zhang Xin, Ma Jun, Yao Wei, Yao Lingwei, Li Moutong, and Shen Mengyu; the backline includes Li Mengwen, Lin Yuping, Lou Jiahui, Wu Haiyan, Wang Xiaoxue, and Luo Guiping; and the goalkeeper position has Zhu Yu, Peng Shimeng, and Ding Xuan.
Jia Xiuquan, who has been keeping a low profile since last year's Women's Super League, made another appearance after six months, attending the conference with captain Wu Haiyan, both wearing red masks in the same color as our team's uniforms.
Arrived at Incheon Airport, our team suffered a "dish", South Korea did not provide a special channel, the team spent two and a half hours to fill out forms, formalities, after six barriers to complete customs clearance, and the South Korean Football Association promised to land nucleic acid test has not been implemented, resulting in the team's original plan to reduce training time.
For this problem, Jia Xiuquan responded: this is the Korean government to the Korean people, our women's soccer team responsible performance, in the epidemic at the moment, our team can understand, and no complaints.
Visualize China Photo/Wang Frost
Regarding the journey to the away games, Jia Xiuquan doesn't think the traveling is a problem: "The rest time of the game, the arrangement of two games in a week is fair to us, so there is not too much difficulty for us."
Talking about the preparation for the game, Jia Xiuquan admitted that after such a long time of training has been well prepared, "we against the characteristics of the Korean team, the preparation has been done. The game has been postponed for such a long time, the players and I are very eager to win through hard work".
He also recalled that he had represented our country in the Olympics when he was a player, so he hoped even more to lead our women's soccer team to get a ticket to the Tokyo Olympics through his efforts as a head coach this time.
Some South Korean media believe that the strength of our team is above the South Korean team, and it is true that our team is three places higher than the South Korean team in terms of the world ranking, but Jia Xiuquan does not agree with this statement.
"In fact, fans and media who pay attention to the Asian women's soccer team know that in the past ten years, our country and South Korea in the FIFA rankings have been ahead of the time, I think the gap is not too big, each has their own characteristics. I take our team during the period and the Korean team had two encounters, the most impressive is the four countries invitational tournament in Meizhou, our team although won 1-0, but the Korean team still left a deep impression on me. The Korean women's soccer team is a strong team in Asia, they have the strength to compete with any of the strongest teams in Asia".
Jia Xiuquan believes that the South Korean side's opening up of some of the spectator stands with fans cheering is both an inspiration and a spur for our team. "We will do our best to finish these two matches according to our own methods and set guidelines".
The first foreign coach in the history of South Korean women's soccer, Colin Bell, said that in the face of the strength of the more advantageous China's team, will put more energy in the defense. Their approach is also to win the Olympic ticket, "we expect to make history, this is our motivation".
