Dubai Cup 3rd place
Tuition for growing up
In the third and fourth place battle of the Dubai Cup that ended today (29th) evening, the Chinese 99-year-old U23 national football team lost to the UAE team 0-3, failing to achieve the "revenge" expected before the game, but suffered a more painful defeat than the 0-1 small loss in the first round. However, it has to be said that this is exactly the pain that these young players need to experience in the process of growing up, and high-level, high-quality international competitions like this are not about not participating, but about playing less! Young Chinese players need to learn "how to play" in this high confrontation.
1
How do I play with the ball?
Just watching the game, I believe many people will say that the Chinese U23 players "play too bad" because they lose more. But in fact, from the perspective of the whole game, the U23 national football team still adheres to the way of playing in the previous two games, whether it is the style of the game, the mental outlook, or the momentum that must be fought for every goal, it has been played normally. The problem is: there are problems with our chances in this kind of game. On the other hand, the UAE team, to some extent, has a similarity with the situation of the Chinese team in the last game against thais, that is, there are not many opportunities to create in front of the goal, but all of them are seized! In the previous game, the reason why the Chinese team was able to win 4-2 against the Thai team was precisely because they all seized the opportunities after creating opportunities. Therefore, the UAE team did not have many shots on goal, and the effective shot was actually 3 times, but it scored 3 goals! In contrast, the Chinese team shot a lot of shots, but it has never been able to shoot the ball into the goal frame.
From another point of view, the Chinese team and the UAE team have already met before, coupled with their respective participation in the second round of competition, this time to fight again, it can be said that the two sides have known each other, there is no secret to speak of. In this case, the Chinese team still adheres to its own playing style and technical and tactical play, and still implements high-level pressing, but the UAE team has changed its strategy, no longer like the first game, but chose to "avoid its sharp edge", no longer to play against the Chinese team, but to adopt a defensive counterattack strategy, giving more possession to the Chinese team. Because in the uae's view, the Chinese team is not ideal to pass and receive the ball after possession, and it is more likely to make mistakes, so they chose to wait for the Chinese team to make their own mistakes, and then grab the ball and then fight back. As a result, the Chinese team has more possession of the ball in the game.
But the bigger problem that the Chinese team exposed in this game is precisely this: when the ball is under their feet, how to turn the advantage into a winning momentum? How can I be more efficient in attack? Moreover, because several main players on the front line of this U23 team did not play with the team themselves, such as Tao Qianglong, Chen Guokang and other players in the attack of the power greatly reduced, relying on Fang Hao to play a characteristic in the attack, Fang Hao was injured in the 60th minute, so that the Chinese team lost the main offensive point in the attack. So, the offense was less efficient in the final 30 minutes.
From a warm-up perspective, a loss like this isn't scary, and the more problems it exposes, the better. Just like this game, it makes our players more clear: how to effectively improve the efficiency of the attack with more possession? This is a completely different subject from the previous two games, when we played without possession of the ball.
2
This is the tuition fee for growth
Of course, it has to be said that against the UAE team, in the first game, in the last minute, the Chinese team should have a penalty opportunity in the attack, which is somewhat disappointing. In this game, when facing the UAE team again, in the last moments, the Chinese players defended not a foul move, but the referee gave the UAE a penalty. This one in and one out actually affects the mentality of the players. It is precisely because of the loss of this second ball that the players began to lose concentration on the field, which eventually led to the third goal.
Frankly, this is actually the advantage of the host, after all, the Chinese team has played against the host team twice, and the referees are all the uae's own referees. How do our players react in this situation? Again, this is a subject. How do we deal with this series of disadvantages?
No one wants to lose, but we must not forget, what is the purpose of this visit to Dubai for the Dubai Cup? We're not simply chasing a game result, nor are we trying to win. Of course, winning is important, but the most important thing is that we have not experienced this kind of game for more than two years, and playing against Asian peers and warming up is probably first of all to expose our own problems, and only when the problems are exposed more and earlier will we have the time and opportunity to correct and improve. So, the score doesn't matter at all. And there's no need to stick to the fact that we lose more in the second meeting than in the first.
We should see: how many international matches have we played in over the past period of time, including other teams participating in the Dubai Cup this time? Leaving aside the warm-up match, in the fifth U23 Asian Cup qualifiers in October last year, we were unable to participate due to the epidemic, but all of them participated, and the fewest teams also participated in the two qualifier group stages. If you add a series of international competitions to participate in the qualifiers, their players will accumulate much more than the Chinese team.
For more than two years, our players have only been training in the country and warming up with domestic club teams. However, almost every player, when talking about the feelings of coming to Dubai this time, first emphasizes: "The pace is fast! "There is no such rhythm and quality competition in China." So, when our team has just played four international matches, the opponents may have played at least 10 or more. Moreover, the foundation and foundation of Chinese football itself are relatively thin, in this case, if you do not play this kind of international competition, and then expect to "make a blockbuster" and "put satellites" in the official competition, it is obviously a fool's whisper. Therefore, to be able to come to the UAE to participate in the Dubai Cup, the results and scores are not the most important, it is important to let the players return to the normal track, through this international competition, so that our players can at least re-recognize the current level and status of the Asian peer team, see their own gaps, expose their own problems.
Moreover, we must see that China's young players like this high-level, high-quality warm-up game is not to play less, but to play more, repeatedly, only in the continuous game "learn how to play", it is possible to truly improve the individual ability to play, and then can the combat effectiveness of the entire team! So, don't simply judge the team by the score.
Young players of the U23 national football team, don't get beaten down 0-3!