With the Chinese Super League coming to an end and the AFC Champions League on hiatus, our national team is in the midst of intense training, and fans' eyes are still following the pace of Chinese soccer. But recently, the national team's performance has once again caused disappointment. The National Olympic Team lost 0-1 against Malaysia, while the 08 National Junior Team's performance was equally disheartening, winning only one warm-up match against Japan, despite challenging a number of varsity teams, and even losing 0-4 to the Hing Kok High School U16 team. With only one win in five consecutive international matches, the future of the national team does not look promising!
It was in the warm-up match between the national Olympic team and the Malaysian U23 team that the team conceded a goal in the last minute and came back with a 0-1 defeat. The result had the Malaysian media ecstatic, as they had rarely won against the Chinese national soccer team before, and now they had made history. After the match, the low key attitude of the Malaysian manager seemed to suggest that even if they won, there was no need to be overly happy, after all, the Chinese men's soccer team's strength has declined significantly.
08 National Junior Team went to Japan to participate in a series of training and competitions, but due to the inability to warm up with high-level opponents, only with the Japanese college ladder team. Unfortunately, the performance in Japan was not ideal. The first game suffered a 0-1 loss, the second game with the Crawford University U15 team, but the chance of victory is slim. In the end, the U15 National Junior Team suffered another blow when they lost 0-4 to the U16 team of Kokoku University. Although the national junior varsity team turned back Osaka Sakura West U15 team 3-2 in the final match, the victory did not bring joy to the fans because the opponent was only a branch school team, and a 3-2 victory was hardly inspiring.
The losses of the National Olympic Team and the National Junior Team, coupled with the loss of the national men's soccer team to South Korea not too long ago, are signs that all of our national soccer teams are in the predicament of losing. The adult national men's soccer team is preparing for the Asian Cup, and its first warm-up opponent is a second division team from the Abu Dhabi region, ranked No. 8, against which even a win would not be enough to raise the team's level.
