In the late afternoon of the 17th, the Tiantan Sports Center witnessed the ultimate showdown in the Dongcheng District Preliminary Match of Beijing's first Community Cup 8-a-side Football Tournament. The youth team of Stadium Road Street and the middle-aged team of Jianguomen Street won the championship, and they will represent Dongcheng District in the municipal competition in May.
In the youth division's summit match, the Stadium Road Main Street team and the Longtan Main Street team met each other narrowly. The two teams' star players were No. 10 Zhang Zhaohui of Stadium Road and No. 6 Xie Jun of Longtan Avenue. Zhang Zhaohui, a former player in Beijing Guoan's 1989 age group, was selected by Pacheco to join Guoan's first-team squad in 2011, playing alongside teammates such as Yu Yang, Housen, and Jiang Tao, etc. He was transferred to Chongqing to play in the Chinese Super League in 2012, but chose to retire soon after due to a number of reasons.
Zhang Zhaohui (far right) has an equally exciting retired life, by Deng Fangjia
Xie Jun, captain of the Longtan Street team, who is the same age as Zhang Zhaohui, is also from the Guoan ladder team and has played soccer at the Dongcheng Gymnasium since the age of six, and was a childhood friend of Zhang Zhaohui. Xie Jun had made a big splash in indoor futsal, joining Shenzhen Nanling Iron Wolves, winning the championship many times, and then transferred to Inner Mongolia Manzhouli Snow Wolves, until 2017 when he chose to retire.
These two players were undoubtedly the focus of the match. With the referee's whistle, the game officially started. Soon after the start, both sides showed abundant physical strength and tight defense, Xie Jun's breakthrough is particularly sharp. In the 10th minute, Longtan Street team won a free kick in front of the field, Xie Jun a "burst bar" broke the goal, for the team lead. However, Stadium Road team gradually took control of the game with their superior strength, and Longtan Main Street could only play full defense. In the 17th minute, Stadium Road team equalized the score through a wonderful inverted triangle.
Stadium Road went from strength to strength, scoring two more goals in the remainder of the first half to take a 3-1 lead at halftime.
Xie Jun (No.6) motivates the whole team during the halftime break, photo by Deng Fangjia
In the second half, Gym Road continued to control the game, and Zhang Zhaohui completed his hat-trick with his nimble skills and left and right dashes. In particular, his toe-poke and aerial side-break at the end of the game demonstrated his superb ball skills. Xie Jun also completed his personal hat-trick with his outstanding individual ability, scoring twice after completing individual breakthroughs in front of the penalty area. Xie Jun scored 17 goals in 4 matches, and was awarded the best scorer of the youth group in the preliminaries of the first Community Cup soccer tournament in Dongcheng District.
Xie Jun (far right) breaks through in the penalty area, photo by Deng Fangjia
In the end, the Stadium Road Street team won the championship with a 7-3 victory over the Longtan Street team. After the match, top scorer Xie Jun said: "As a Beijinger, after retiring from the military, I returned to Beijing to join Dongfang Rainbow Building Repair Company, which has a soccer team and we play together regularly. This Community Cup provided us with a platform for a formal and intense match, and although we didn't win the championship, it felt really good that we worked together."
