Recently, the Chinese Football Association confirmed that the U23 national team will travel to the United Arab Emirates to participate in the Dubai Cup U23 International Youth Championship. For the U23 national football team, which has not played in international high-level competitions for a long time, this is undoubtedly an excellent opportunity to train the team. However, it is quite surprising that this move of the U23 national football team has triggered some ridicule from foreign media.
In addition to the Chinese U23 national football team, there are Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Croatia, which can be described as a strong opponent. Therefore, previously, there were also domestic media bluntly said that the U23 national football team was likely to fail miserably to participate in the competition, and the Vietnamese media "SOHA" said bluntly that at the level of the Chinese team, it was best not to participate in this competition.
The media said: "The Chinese team is expected to take the opportunity of the Dubai Cup to complete the so-called revenge to the Vietnamese team." However, the Chinese media is very pessimistic about this. In the eyes of the media, China was very short of good players in the 1999 age group, and if it lost to Vietnam again in the Dubai Cup, then where would the face of Chinese football be? ”
In fact, at the 2018 Asian Youth Championship, the host Chinese team group was declared out, while the Vietnamese team reached the final. Indeed, at the level of the Chinese team, it is best not to participate in this Year's Dubai Cup, so as not to be humiliated again. Vietnamese media said.
In recent years, China's national youth team has indeed had a bad record in front of the Vietnamese team of the same level. The most recent was in 2019, when Hiddink's Olympic Games lost to Vietnam' national Olympics, causing an uproar in Chinese football. Since then, in fact, the balance between the strength and weakness of football between China and Vietnam has begun to shift, until the first defeat to Vietnam in the history of national football this year, which is not a particularly surprising result.
Of course, the Dubai Cup is obviously a very good exercise opportunity for the U23 national football team. Although from the perspective of strength, the U23 national football team is difficult to win whether it is against Qatar, Uzbekistan or Vietnam, but as the reserve force of the future national football team, this group of young players really need more opportunities to play with the master.