After losing to Vietnam, who will the national football team lose next? If you don't work hard, you may really lose to Laos, which is currently ranked 187th in the world and is a recognized fish belly team in Asia. But unexpectedly, in a recent Southeast Asian U23 Championship, Laos actually upset Malaysia 2-1. You know, the latter can be described as one of the strong asian teams in the U23 age group, which once defeated the South Korean team at the Asian Games in Indonesia 4 years ago, and its strength is not bad at all.
As Southeast Asian rivals, Laos and Malaysia actually met in the group stage of last year's U23 Asian Cup preliminaries, when Malaysia won only 1-0 after 90 minutes of hard fighting. In this match against Laos, Malaysia also played very hard. In the first half of stoppage time, Malaysia only took the lead with Servan's goal, and in the second half, Laos relied on a sharp counterattack to win two goals in the 56th and 69th minutes respectively, and finally won 2-1.
Laos, especially the U23 team, have improved by leaps and bounds in recent years, mainly because they have brought in a suitable head coach - Wes. For Wies, everyone may not be impressed, but for Clauschen, Chinese fans must be very familiar. At the 2005 World Youth Championships, it was Clauschen who led the Chinese U20 national youth team to perform well, winning all three games in the group stage, and only losing 2-3 to Germany in the knockout round. And Weiss, who was Klauchen's assistant who coached China's national youth, can be said to be very familiar with Chinese players.
As for Malaysia, its strength is not bad at all, 4 years ago at the Indonesian Asian Games, the team once beat the South Korean team, is the south Korean team's bitter master. As for the Malaysian team, Zhu Chenjie, who has become the main force of the national football team, must still remember it vividly. In the group stage of the 2020 U23 Asian Cup preliminaries, China fell behind 1-2 in the first 80 minutes. In the 83rd minute, the Chinese team relied on Jiang Shenglong's header to finally draw 2-2 with the opponent, and eliminated the opponent with the advantage of goal difference and entered the final stage.
In fact, not only the last U23 Asian Cup, this U23 Asian Cup, Malaysia also performed well, has now advanced to the final stage, and the Chinese team has abandoned the final stage due to the epidemic, so it did not qualify for the final stage, of course, even if the team is sent to participate in the U23 Asian Cup preliminaries, they are unlikely to break through in the group with two strong opponents of Australia and Indonesia.
It can be seen that Malaysia has truly become a strong opponent of the Chinese team at present, and the Laos team is not willing to be left behind, and is currently rising rapidly, in time, it will become another strong opponent of the national football team.