Sino-Vietnamese Battle
Bahrain referee!
The Chinese men's national football team will re-raise the flag in Shanghai on the 10th of this month, and the new head coach Li Xiaopeng will lead the team to prepare for the seventh and eighth rounds of the round of 12 later this month and the first day of the Chinese New Year. Among them, the most concerned by Chinese fans is undoubtedly the traditional Chinese New Year festival that is, the game against Vietnam on February 1, can the Chinese team withdraw from the Mei Dinh Stadium in Hanoi? The author learned from FIFA and the AFC that the referee who will enforce this game will be the Bahraini referee Shuklar Nawaf, who is familiar to Chinese fans.
Shuklara, who is 45 years old this year, has so far participated in two consecutive world cup enforcement efforts in 2014 and 2018, and is also one of the popular referees selected to enforce the 2022 Qatar World Cup. During the World Cup qualifiers in the Asian Round of 40, although he only enforced two matches, he has already enforced four matches in the first six rounds of the round of 12, which is one of the three referees who have played the most in the round of 12, like Manin of China and Jassim of Qatar.
The four round-of-12 matches include China's "home" match against Japan in Doha on September 7 last year, and the other three include South Korea's home game against Iraq on September 2, Australia's 3-1 home win over Oman on October 7, and Iraq's 1-1 home draw with Syria on November 11.
In the two rounds of the seventh and eighth rounds, Shuklala will first travel to Saudi Arabia's Jeddah referee Saudi Arabia's home game against Oman on January 27, and then fly non-stop from Saudi Arabia to Hanoi, Vietnam, to enforce the February 1 vietnam team's home game against China.
Chinese fans are familiar with Shuklara, mainly because he has repeatedly enforced the Chinese Super League clubs to play in the AFC Champions League, and when Guangzhou won the AFC Champions League in 2013, he was the referee of the 1-1 home match against Seoul FC. Moreover, in 2018 and 2019, Shuklala was invited to participate in some of the law enforcement work of the Chinese Super League consecutively. The match between the Vietnamese team and the Chinese team will be the third Time Shuklala has enforced the World Cup qualifiers for the Chinese team. In addition to the Sino-Japanese battle in this round of 12, when the national football team visited Hong Kong on November 17, 2015, he served as the referee, when the national team was forced to draw 0-0 by the Chinese Hong Kong team, yu Dabao had a shot that had crossed the opponent's goal line, but was not judged to have a valid goal. However, this was not on Shuklara's intentions.
At the same time, this is also the second time that Shuklala has arrived in Hanoi to enforce the World Cup qualifiers for Vietnam, and on October 13, 2015, he had directed a group match in the Asian Qualifiers of the World Cup in Russia, where Vietnam lost 3-0 at home to Thailand. This time to enforce the Vietnamese home game again, what was the result? Noteworthy.
Shukrala will be assisted by Salman Jafar Mohammed and Abdullah Muhsin from Bahrain, also from Bahrain, and Qasim Sarre from Iraq, the fourth referee. The assistant video referee will be Taki from Singapore, who is also familiar with chinese fans, and he is the referee of the Chinese team's last 3-1 victory over Syria in the round of 40. In addition, the competition supervision of the Battle of Vietnam and China came from South Korea, while the referee supervision came from Malaysia.
Vietnam's previous home games against Australia, Japan and Saudi Arabia have all caused controversy because of referees' penalties, and Vietnam has played the role of "victim", so the Vietnam Football Association has protested to the AFC and FIFA. This match with China will be the fourth home match, what will happen to Shuklala's law enforcement? Noteworthy.