Southeast Asian football is improving at a speed visible to the naked eye, and Chinese football must have a sense of distress!
Former national team captain Fan Zhiyi's sentence after losing 1-5 to Thailand in a warm-up match played by the Chinese men's national football team in Hefei, Anhui Province, has become the "most reasonable quote" for today's Chinese society to comprehensively squeeze the Chinese men's football team. From Fan Zhiyi's point of view, perhaps it was just an angry sentence at the time, but it has to be said that the current development of Southeast Asian football is far beyond the imagination of Chinese footballers and even Chinese society. No, in the ongoing Southeast Asia U23 Championship, Laos beat Malaysia and Vietnam beat Singapore 7-0, which was considered impossible two or three years ago, and now it has become a reality!
The Southeast Asia U23 Championship, hosted by SOUTHEAST ASIAN FOOTBALL Federation, is currently being played in Cambodia, the first youth tournament hosted by ALA since the 2020 pandemic and the second regional tournament to be hosted after the 13th Southeast Asian Championships in Singapore from the end of November to the end of December last year. In this tournament, Laos, which has always been the second and third from the bottom in Southeast Asia, actually defeated Malaysia in a 2-1 reversal, which has never happened in so many years.
Although the Malaysian team has a number of overseas players of the right age who have not returned to the team, Malaysia, whether it is a youth team or a national team, is considered to be the southeast Asian football team that can wrench the wrist with teams including Thailand, Vietnam and even Indonesia, and it is also a team that can compete for the championship. Lost to Laos? To some extent, it is like the recent 1-3 loss of the Chinese men's football team to Vietnam, which triggered a shock in Southeast Asian football, whether it is Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia or Malaysia's media, directly using "earthquake" to describe Laos beating Malaysia, which shows its impact.
Vietnam's victory over Singapore was originally a perfectly normal result, but the reason why it attracted so much attention is that the Vietnamese team participated in this time is not a 99-age team, and the Vietnam Football Association selected the 2001 age group to play in the Southeast Asia U23 Championship in order to focus on the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. The team's previous head coach was The Frenchman Trussier. After the outbreak, Trussier chose to leave. While formulating development plans for the next few years and aiming at the 2026 World Cup, the Vietnam Football Association pays more attention to the construction of youth national teams at all levels. This time, the 01 age group competed in the Southeast Asia U23 Championship, and the purpose was to exercise. And in order to give this age group more opportunities, the Hangzhou Asian Games in September this year will also select this age group to play.
Singapore sent a 99-year-old team this time, and the Singapore 99-year-old team members are basically from the Cubs, that is, the teams that participate in Singapore's domestic professional league. Facing a team two years younger than himself, Singapore actually lost by seven goals! This is in any case something that no one could have imagined before the game. On the one hand, the weakness of Singaporean football is evident from this; on the other hand, how much progress and progress has Vietnamese football made? Maybe we can feel it further.
Three years ago, in March 2019, the Chinese 01 age group U19 national youth team was invited to Nha Trang, Vietnam, to participate in a four-country competition. Liu Zhurun, Liu Junxian, Hou Yu, Su Bi, Yi Xianlong, Chen Yuhao, etc., who are currently participating in the training of the 01 age group U21 national youth team in Shanghai, all went to Vietnam with the team, and as a result, China lost to Vietnam 0-1. At that time, No. 7 Chen Mengqiong, who scored the only goal of the game for Vietnam, was still in the team, but because he was tested positive before the game against Singapore, he could not play, and the other Vietnamese players were basically still there.
In the future, what will be the scene when the Teams of this age group in China and Vietnam fight again? Unpredictable. But this is not the main problem that the reporter wants to say, the real problem is that when Southeast Asian countries and regions are walking wider and wider on the elite road, and the direction is becoming clearer and clearer, Chinese football is still constantly arguing, and the management is constantly struggling. Moreover, Chinese football youth teams at all levels have not participated in an international competition in the past two years, "entertaining themselves" behind closed doors, completely unaware of the progress of the opponents around us. Therefore, Chinese football can only be thrown farther and farther away by the opponent. In the future, when Chinese teams at all levels go abroad to participate in international competitions, the gap may become more and more obvious. I am afraid that this is not a reporter who is worrying about the sky!
Wen | Ma Dexing
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