In 2002, the Chinese team scored the World Cup for the first time in its history, but unfortunately, it was divided into the group of deaths, and finally lost 0-2 to Costa Rica in the group stage, 0-4 to Brazil, 0-3 to Turkey, all three games, 0 goals and 9 goals conceded, after returning to China, the national football team was scolded to be complete, and the head coach Milu also left office.
But frankly speaking, although the level of the national football team to get the World Cup field, it is indeed a fish belly, but at the Asian level, the national football team at that time was the first class team in Asia, and although there was a little gap with the level of Japan and South Korea, the gap was not large. Now in Asian football, there is a saying of Japan, South Korea, Iaosha, and at that time, it can also be said to be Japan, South Korea, Iran, and China.
After the 2002 World Cup, Fan Zhiyi, Yang Chen, Qi Hong, Jiang Jin, Ma Mingyu and others began to fade out of the national team, but Zheng Zhi's supplement was good news for the national football team. There were 4.5 places in the Asian region of the 2006 World Cup, and the Chinese team had the possibility of competing for the top four, even if it did not compete for the top four, it was also the biggest favorite of the fifth place, but the final result was a big surprise.
After two rounds of qualifiers, the Asian zone produced the final 32 teams, and the 32 teams were divided into eight groups, each with four teams, and the group was the first to qualify. The eight teams that qualify are divided into two groups for the quarter-finals, with each group of 4 teams, with the top two qualifying directly and the third team playing the play-offs.
As a seeded team, the group opponents are Kuwait, Malaysia and Hong Kong, China, and from the perspective of paper strength, it seems that the Chinese team has a very easy qualification. In the first round of China's home game against Kuwait, the Chinese team had the advantage, 18 feet on goal Kuwait 0 shots, but only 1 goal (another good goal was misjudged, if there is no such misjudgment directly out of the line), the final result is 1-0. In the second round of away games against Hong Kong, China, it was only a small 1-0 win. In the third round of home games against Malaysia, the winner was finally 4-0. However, in the fourth round of away games against Malaysia, with Li Jinyu's kill, the difficult 1-0 victory over the opponent, more importantly, Zheng Zhi got a yellow card and will miss the next round of key battles.
In the fifth round of away games against Kuwait, as long as the draw will be ahead of the round, but the embarrassing thing is that the victory is a nightmare for Chinese football. West Asia away game, has been difficult to play, coupled with Zheng Zhi's absence, Ali Han's most dependent Li Weifeng + Zheng Zhi center-back combination, can only be demolished, with 23-year-old Zhang Yaokun to represent Zheng Zhi, left-back is 22-year-old Sun Xiang, and finally the young Sun Xiang hastily tackled the mistake, resulting in the loss of the ball, and finally the Chinese team lost 0-1 to the opponent.
In the last round, Kuwait played at home against Malaysia, and the Chinese team played at home against Hong Kong, China, at this time Kuwait accumulated 12 points, 9 goals and 1 goal conceded 8 goals per goal difference, and the Chinese team also accumulated 12 points, but 7 goals and 1 goal conceded 6 goals per goal difference, and the Chinese team scored 2 fewer goals than Kuwait.
Before the game, CCTV and major media analysis paid attention to the goal difference, because of the gap in strength, there was no problem with the victory of the Chinese team and the Kuwaiti team, and the final comparison "can only be" the goal difference.
The final round of matches started at the same time, and in the first half, the Chinese team scored several goals in a row, and Kuwait actually played 1-1 with Malaysia. In the second half, the Hong Kong team of China was very cooperative with the delay of 5 minutes (more than 5 minutes will be severely punished), so that the Chinese team will end the game later, and kuwait has begun to have a story, the net is broken, it takes a lot of time to repair the net, the stoppage time can be longer, the Malaysian player was sent off with a red card, and Kuwait began to score goals.
In the end, Kuwait won 6-1, then the final points were 15 points, the goal difference was 12, and the Chinese team led 7-0, and the points were also 15 points to win 12 goals, and the Chinese players began to slow down.
Even a host of CCTV is saying that we can play a play-off with Kuwait, and at that time, the strength of the Chinese team is still superior to Kuwait, so we are not afraid to play the play-offs... Another host suddenly woke up, he shouted: "No, the goal difference is the same, but Kuwait conceded 1 goal in this game, they scored 15 Chinese teams scored 14 goals, will be eliminated because of the number of goals."
The coaching staff on the field also suddenly found this problem, but there is little time left, the final result is 7-0, the Chinese team was eliminated because of the number of goals missing, in the pre-match preparation and prediction, no one thought of the number of goals, and the Kuwaiti thought, although they are all playing fake balls, but the Chinese team is not skilled in playing fake balls, sadly. And the luck is indeed bad to explode, accumulating 15 points to score 14 goals and conceding 1 goal, 6 wins 5 games only lost 1 ball actually eliminated, it is really tragic, if you want to do such a 12-round tournament now, the Chinese team will be the best group second to advance.