The 24th round of the Chinese Super League (CSL) drew to a close after Wuhan Sanzhen held off Nantong Zhiyun 4-2 at home. With the dust settling from this victory, the Super League will take a half-month break to make way for the upcoming Asian Games and World Cup qualifiers. Compared to the Asian Games, the group stage of the World Cup qualifiers in November is undoubtedly more crucial. The results of these two matches will directly determine whether the national football team can be included in the Asian Top 10. For this reason, the national football team manager Jankovic has been frequently appearing in the Chinese Super League recently, observing the performance of the international players of each team in detail, and digging out a few hot young players from them.
However, Jankovic has not been in charge of the national soccer team for very long and has not been in charge of a Chinese Super League team, so it is not expected that there will be much change in the starting lineup for the latest edition of the national team. International players from Shandong Taishan, Beijing Guoan, Shanghai Harbor and Wuhan Sanzhen are still the mainstay of the national team. Players such as Wang Dalei, Liu Binbin and Chen Pu from Shandong Taishan; Li Lei and Wang Ziming from Beijing Guoan; Yan Junling, Zhang Lin, Jiang Guangtai and Wang Shenchao from Shanghai Seaport, as well as Liu Dianzuo, Gao Junyi and Xie Pengfei from Wuhan Sanzhen are expected to appear in the national football team's list for the warm-up matches in September. Of course, the new phase of the national football squad can not be unchanged. Jankovic's sights have been set on two of Guoan's midfielders - Zhang Xizhe and Li Ke. After the new coach Suarez's "cold shoulder", Zhang Xizhe recently returned to the starting lineup of Guoan, becoming the core of the team's offensive organization in the midfield. In the last three rounds of the league, Zhang Xizhe scored a goal and two assists, and also created an opponent's oolong goal. Jankovic has undoubtedly noticed his performance. Since July, naturalized player Li Ke has also returned to Guoan's starting back position. His aggressive running, strong physique and excellent defensive abilities have built a solid barrier for Guoan's defense. In the offensive end, Li Ke also showed the strength of the former Arsenal player, making his return to the national football team more and more calls. In addition to Li Ke, Shandong Taishan's naturalized player Fernando has also attracted a lot of attention. However, Fernando's current form has not fully recovered and can only reach 60% of his previous level at most. Due to physical problems, he can only play in the last 20 minutes of matches, a problem that may affect his selection for the national team. With the addition of "newcomers", some of the "old men" of the national soccer team may miss the new national team list. Wei Shihao of Wuhan Sanzhen is one of them, who was banned for six matches by the Football Association for his inappropriate behavior towards referee Maning during the league match, and according to the rules, he was excluded from the current national team list. Another international player, Tianjin Jinmen Tiger's Tomorrow, is also out for the whole season due to injury and will not be able to return to the national soccer team in the short term. Wei Shihao and tomorrow will be replaced by Shenhua's Wu Xi and Jinmen Tiger's Barton respectively. These two players have been impressive in the recent league matches. As it stands, Jankovic will be fine-tuning his national soccer team roster for September, deciding on the starting lineup and substitutes for November's preliminaries group stage matches by examining the form of the international players in the warm-up matches against Syria and Malaysia.
