The national football team, which is preparing for the round of 12 in Shanghai, is now close to departing for Japan. On the afternoon of January 19, the national football team held the second internal group practice match since the training camp in Shanghai, which was also the last full group practice match before going to Japan.
In this training, the national football team formed a huge teaching assistant team and recruited more than 40 people to conduct a large selection in Shanghai. For the national football team, the 5 naturalized international footballers do not participate in the Shanghai training camp, and from the current situation, it may be only Jiang Guangtai and Alan who can go to Japan to join the national football team.
A few days ago, when the national football team took the official makeup photo, the 41-year-old Zheng Zhi became the only one who took both the coach and the player two kinds of makeup photos, so many media speculated that Zheng Zhi may re-wear the national football jersey to participate. If Zheng Zhi participates, he will set a historical record for the oldest player to play in the World Preliminary Tournament of the National Football Team.
Many media believe that although Zheng Zhi is older, his competitive status and professionalism still maintain the top level of the local area, which is reflected in his ability to play in the Chinese Super League last season. In addition, at present, there is no better player in the back position of the national football team than Zheng Zhi, and the fans' call for the national football team to recall Zheng Zhi is also very high. However, although the wishes of the media and fans are good, in fact, Zheng Zhi's main job in joining the national football team this time is to assist Li Xiaopeng in selecting players. During the training camp in Shanghai, Zheng Zhi did not participate in the training and always appeared as Li Xiaopeng's assistant. It is reported that Zheng Zhi will follow the national football team to Japan, but he will still only work in the coaching team and will not re-wear as a player.
In addition, the AFC has decided that Jassim, a 35-year-old Qatari international referee, will serve as the referee of the round of 12 away match between China and Japan.
Judging from past law enforcement resumes, Jassim does not seem to be very "friendly" to Chinese teams. The data shows that since becoming an elite referee of the AFC in the 2014 season, Jassem has repeatedly enforced international matches between Chinese teams and Chinese Super League teams. In its intercontinental tournament enforcement work, the first two red cards were presented to Chinese players, namely Lu Wenjun from Shanghai Harbor (2016 AFC Champions League) and He Xi (2017 AFC Champions League). Jassem's most recent official match for the law enforcement team in China was the 2019 Asian Cup. At that time, he successively enforced the national football team against south Korea and Iran, and the result was that the national football team lost the opponent 0-2 and 0-3 respectively. Lippi, the then head coach of the national football team, also expressed dissatisfaction with his law enforcement.
It is understood that the reason why the Chinese Football Association arranged for the active professional league referees to enforce the team's internal teaching competition in the current Shanghai training of the national football team is also to hope that the players can adapt to the latest international football penalty rules and standards. The assistant referees who enforced the January 27 China-Japan match were also from Qatar, and they were all Candidates for the Qatar World Cup like referee Jassem.
Text/Guangzhou Daily, Xinhuacheng reporter Zhang Zhe