On the afternoon of February 17, Beijing time, the AFC held a U23 Asian Cup group drawing ceremony, and 16 participating teams were placed, but there was no Chinese team in it. Not because the U23 national team is poor and ineligible, they withdrew from the U23 Asian Cup qualifiers 4 months ago due to the impact of the epidemic.
On June 26, they traveled to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, to compete, and when they finished their game and were preparing to return home, they were found to have a virus in the team after a nucleic acid test. To this end, the whole team postponed the trip and was quarantined in Tashkent. The team then returned to China in batches, and it was not until November 22 that the last group of players and staff returned to Beijing. From the expedition to the time they returned home, they experienced a total of 157 days!
According to the schedule, the U22 national team should go to Tajikistan in late October last year to participate in the U23 Asian Cup budget match, but considering the epidemic prevention situation and the forced stay of the Guoan team after going to Uzbekistan to compete, the Chinese football team announced on October 11 last year that the U22 national team withdrew from the U23 Asian Cup qualifiers.
Because I did not participate in the qualifiers, I naturally did not qualify for the main tournament now. The absence of the U23 national team from the Asian Cup has nothing to do with strength, and the only reason is to consider the problem of epidemic prevention. Now, because of the absence of the U23 national team, mocking Chinese football and belittling the Chinese Football Association are all wrong and unfounded. In fact, the withdrawal decision made by the Chinese Football Association 4 months ago is very correct, safety first, the importance of the U23 Asian Cup is relatively poor after all.
The U23 national team has made it clear that the task of the game is to participate in the Hangzhou Asian Games. However, the Chinese Football Association can actually arrange one more match for them, that is, to replace the national team to participate in the East Asian Cup held in late July. At present, the Japanese Football Association has announced that it will send the U21 national team to participate in the East Asian Cup, and South Korea will send the U23 national team to participate in this competition. In this case, if the Chinese Football Association also sends a national team to participate, it will not make much sense. It is more appropriate to reassign the U23 national team to compete with Japan and South Korea at the same level.
The 2022 Uzbekistan Asian Cup will be held from June 1 to 19, with South Korea in the same group as C and Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. A month later, the team will compete in the East Asian Cup.