This afternoon, the Chinese Football Association officially announced the venue for the 2021 Chinese Football Association Cup final - Chengdu Phoenix Mountain Sports Park Professional Football Stadium.
The match will be played after the end of the season in the Chinese Super League, which is scheduled for January 9, 2022. The two sides of the competition are Shandong Taishan, who has basically locked up this year's Chinese Super League champions, and Shanghai Haigang, who has reached the final of the FA Cup for the second time.
The Chinese Football Association said that after preliminary investigation and research, the Chengdu Phoenix Mountain Football Stadium was finally selected as the venue for the final of the FA Cup, "At present, the football stadium is stepping up preparations to welcome the arrival of the 65th FA Cup final." ”
Chengdu Phoenix Mountain Football Stadium, part of Chengdu Phoenix Mountain Sports Park, has just passed the completion acceptance in early April this year. The FIFA standard professional football stadium, which has a capacity of 60,000 spectators, will host the Summer Universiade next June and is one of the venues for the Asian Cup to be held in China in 2023.
The brand new stadium will host a showdown between two Chinese super teams next month. In particular, Shandong Taishan, after the Chinese football career in 1994, they are already the 12th time to reach the final of the FA Cup. In the first 11 finals, Shandong Taishan has won the cup six times, and is the team that has won the most FA Cup titles.
And since the 2018 season, this is also the fourth consecutive year that Shandong Taishan has participated in the final of the FA Cup. In 2018 and 2019, they lost to Beijing Guoan and Shanghai Shenhua in the finals respectively, and last year, taking advantage of the opportunity of Guangzhou Evergrande, Shanghai Haigang, Shanghai Shenhua and Beijing Guoan first-team teams to participate in the AFC Champions League, Shandong Taishan, with a neat lineup, defeated Jiangsu Suning in the final of the FA Cup to win the championship.
Due to Shandong Taishan's strong performance in the Chinese Super League this season, they are still the biggest favorite to win the FA Cup final this year.
Relatively speaking, another team that participated in the final, Shanghai Harbor, their performance in the FA Cup was much more prosaic. The team's best result was runners-up in the 2017 season. In the two-legged decider, although the Harbor team drew 3:3 with derby opponent Shanghai Shenhua on aggregate, they lost the championship trophy because of the lack of away goals.
The last time Shanghai Harbour played Shandong Taishan in the FA Cup was in 2019, when the home team lost 0-2 to Shandong Taishan in a semi-final that was decided to win, missing the final.
Judging from the overall performance of these two teams this season, the strength is quite close, and Shandong Taishan, which has a neat lineup, has a slight advantage. However, under a winning and losing format, this final final is still full of suspense.