Asia is changing
How does Chinese football respond?
The Chinese men's football team has fallen into a trough because it has once again missed the World Cup, facing the next cycle, what will Chinese football do? This is a question that many people who are still concerned about Chinese football are thinking about. Of course, when the new season of the Chinese Super League will start is still undecided, affected by the economic environment and the impact of the epidemic, the problem of wage arrears is becoming increasingly prominent, the downturn in Chinese football can be said to be unprecedented, and the development of the next domestic league can also be said to be difficult.
However, the development pace of the entire world football world and Asian football will not stop and wait for Chinese football because of the stagnation of Chinese football. On the contrary, with the imminent launch of a new cycle, the AFC has recently announced a series of new initiatives and new plans around the core of the competition. At the club level, the AFC Champions League will implement a cross-annual format next season, and the "5+1" will be implemented for foreign aid; the Asian Premier League (or Elite Championship) has been officially put on the agenda and feasibility studies have been carried out. At the national team level, youth tournaments (referring to the U17, U20, U23 Asian Cup) will no longer be divided into east and west regions from the qualifiers; the next World Cup qualifiers will also change from the last two round of 12 to the round of 18 and so on. All of these changes doom Asian football to enter a whole new cycle of development after the World Cup in Qatar at the end of this year.
The internal and external difficulties can be said to be the best description of the current Chinese football, because in addition to the difficulties faced by the domestic league, the performance of constantly refreshing the bottom line in the foreign war field is even more discouraging. But no matter how difficult it is, Chinese football still needs to develop, get out of the current predicament, and strive to catch up with the pace of development of Asian football. So, in the face of the next big adjustment of the AFC, what should Chinese football do?
1
It is even more necessary to stand at the height of Asian football
Over the years, Chinese football has been constantly tossing and turning internally, and the most typical and direct performance is: in a four-year cycle of impacting the Qatar World Cup (2019 to 2022), the men's national football team has changed different management models and mechanisms four times, and has changed five head coaches. In such a situation, why did the team rush to the World Cup and ask for qualification? Moreover, due to the habit of internal friction, but ignoring the changes and development of the outside world, resulting in the inability to concentrate all energy and thoughts on professionalism, focusing on technology and tactics themselves, resulting in their core competitiveness declining. Because Chinese football wants to step onto a higher stage and enter the World Cup, the first thing it needs to understand and pay attention to is the higher stage, the elements that must be possessed to step on this stage, and strive to have these elements. This is probably what we call the law every day. Unfortunately, some of our top managers are always self-centered and dream of letting this higher stage cater to themselves, and the result is bound to be a head-wrenching.
As far as the current Asian football is concerned, the reason why teams like South Korea, Japan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. can become regulars in the World Cup in Asia is simply not self-centered, not in accordance with the intention of the leadership, but in the premise of insight and familiarity with the development trend of Asian football, taking advantage of the situation, following the trend, and becoming the leader of Asian football. Just like the implementation of the cross-annual format of the AFC Champions League is led by Saudi Arabia; the increase in foreign aid quotas in the AFC Champions League is guided by saudi arabia, Japan and other national football associations. Therefore, for Chinese football, if it wants to develop in an all-round way again, it needs to have a broader vision and height, and it needs to have a higher pattern in order to guide Chinese football to develop towards the desired situation.
Therefore, it is necessary to study Asian football, analyze the motives, starting points and purposes of the AFC's major adjustment to the competition, and conduct in-depth discussions on the possible changes and impacts. Only in this way can we come up with corresponding countermeasures. For Chinese football, which is currently in a trough, what we need to consider should not only be limited to how the Chinese Super League will resume as soon as possible, how to deal with this year's Asian Games, etc., which are current and visible, but should also focus on all in the next cycle.
2
Remember the adjustments of 20 years ago?
Someone once joked: "The only lesson we have learned from history is that we have never learned from history!" The development process of Chinese football for so many years actually explains the meaning of this sentence very well. For example, many people remember the SARS event in the spring and summer of 2003, after which the AFC held a competition meeting in Kuala Lumpur on July 15, 2003, taking the opportunity to make a comprehensive adjustment to various competitions in Asia based on the many impacts of SARS on Asian football. One of the core changes is that in the future, all national team matches will be arranged in the FIFA designated national team competition window.
The impact of this change on Chinese football still exists today. The 2001 Round of 10 and the 1997 Round of 10 were scheduled for the AFC to be held on non-national team match days and were held continuously for three months. This is actually relatively beneficial to the Chinese national team, which is accustomed to long-term training practices. However, since the 2006 World Cup qualifiers in Germany, on the one hand, the game has been directly advanced from march 2005 to February 2004, resulting in a significant reduction in the preparation time of Chinese football, and there is also an Asian Cup at home during the period; on the other hand, one to two matches are arranged every month, that is, it has become a big league of "one or two matches in January for the national team". However, we, who are accustomed to long-term training, lack of adequate response to such changes, and lack of adequate preparation, coupled with the "G7 incident" before the crucial away match against Kuwait, which seriously distracted the players, and eventually led to our failure to even enter the final eight in the final stage of the World Cup qualifiers in Germany. However, at that time, we still only stayed in the discussion of "the manager is not ok", "the player is not good", etc., and did not discuss from a more critical and core technical level.
In fact, even in the whole process of impacting the Qatar World Preliminary Tournament, the Chinese men's football team is still stuck in "the longer the training time, the better", and the relevant parties also require "long-term training". This will inevitably lead to the professional league being washed out. Of course, the impact of the epidemic on professional leagues is needless to say.
It is precisely because of this that the AFC has once again made major adjustments to the competition, including the implementation of the cross-annual format of the AFC Champions League, the increase in the number of foreign aid, the fact that the qualifiers are no longer divided into East Asia and West Asia, etc., all of which require the management of Chinese football to calm down, seriously study these changes, and assess the possible impact and impact on Chinese football, not only the construction and preparation of the national team, but also how professional clubs can effectively respond. Because Chinese Super League clubs still need to compete in the AFC Champions League in the future, they still hope to impact the AFC Champions League.
3
Does the Chinese Super League need to change the annual format?
The reason why the AFC Has changed the AFC Champions League to a cross-annual format is first of all to be fully integrated with the European format, because a very realistic situation is that a series of formats, schedules and even rules formulated by FIFA are basically based on UEFA, and even the arrangement of the "national team competition window" is also based on the premise of maximizing the interests of European football. Therefore, if Asian football wants to catch up with the pace of European football and compete with European football in the future, it needs to develop in accordance with the model of European football. Moreover, at present, almost all countries and regions in West Asia are cross-annual competition formats.
In contrast, the East Asian region implements a year-round format (i.e. starting in February and March and ending in late November or early December). As early as a few years ago, there were many discussions in Japanese football about whether the Japanese professional league should be changed to a cross-annual format, but because the AFC Champions League and the like are all year-round formats, the results of several discussions have ended in vain. But after the AFC decided to change the AFC Champions League to a cross-annual format, the Japanese Professional League has made it clear that it will restart discussions. As an attempt, Japan's newly created professional women's football league (WE League) has implemented a cross-annual format, and the 2021-22 season will end on May 21 this year. Affected by the epidemic, the Thai professional league has been directly adjusted to a cross-annual format since last season. This is also the time of the Southeast Asian Games in Vietnam in May, when the Thai Football Association needs to discuss with the Thai Professional League Committee and relevant professional clubs to adjust the final stage of the league schedule.
According to the AFC vision, in the 2023-24 AFC Champions League season, the qualifying or play-offs will be held in August 2023, the group stage will be held in September, two rounds will be arranged every month, the group stage will end in November and the qualifying teams will be produced, and the draw will be held in December. The knockout rounds will begin at the end of January or early February 2024. If the Chinese Super League is still in the year-round format, the club is still on holiday at the end of January and the beginning of February every year or has just been re-concentrated, if it plays in the knockout rounds of the AFC Champions League, it is impossible to have a good competitive state. So, why do Chinese Super League teams strive to achieve good results in the AFC Champions League? Of course, some people may say: look at the performance of Chinese Super League players in the AFC Champions League now, do you still want to qualify? At this stage, the impact of the epidemic has indeed had a great adverse impact on the Chinese Super League teams to compete in the AFC Champions League, but this does not represent the future.
Taking it a step further, the AFC has already submitted a draft of the expanded 2026 Fifa World Cup qualifier competition, waiting for FIFA to submit the 2025-2028 schedule. One possibility is that in the event that the "national team match window" is not enough to complete the Asian qualifiers, the AFC may apply to FIFA separately to increase the "national team match window", as during this epidemic. Therefore, in the future, it is also possible to increase the possibility of "national team competition window" at the end of January and early February, as in this round of 12, and arrange the World Preliminary Round. So, how will the Chinese national team respond to that time?
There is such a simple statistic, that is, from 2003, until the end of January to the beginning of February this year, the Japanese team and Vietnam have lost consecutively, and the Chinese men's national football team does not consider the official competition system of the Asian Cup in the past 20 years, only counting the main matches such as the World Preliminary Round (including the Round of 12), the Asian Cup Qualifiers, etc., a total of 11 official qualifiers have been held, with a total of 4 wins, 2 draws and 5 losses, including the 2-1 away win over Vietnam in the Asian Cup qualifiers (January 14, 2010), They beat Vietnam 6–1 at home (21 January 2009), Palestine 2–2 (22 February 2006) and Kuwait 1–0 at home (18 February 2004), while the two draws were a 1–1 draw with Iraq in the United Arab Emirates on 6 February 2008 and an Asian Cup qualifier group match between 6 January 2010 and a 0–0 draw between Syria in Hangzhou. All other games were lost, including this year's two Round of 12 matches and the Group Stage of the Asian Cup Qualifiers against Saudi Arabia on 6 February 2013.
So, how to improve the results of the Chinese national team in January and February? This involves a technical issue because we are in a truce or preparation period, and neither physically nor competitively is in the best form. The West Asian opponents are naturally more favorable because they are in the middle of the league and are in the best condition in all aspects.
However, if the Chinese Super League changes the annual format, the first problem involved is that the northern part of the mainland has been affected by the weather since late October, especially in Changchun, which is not suitable for outdoor football matches. However, due to the impact of the epidemic, the Chinese Super League in the past two years was still played in Dalian in December. How many clubs are not suitable for play? Is it possible to consider laying geothermal equipment on the pitch, similar to the way Russian clubs participate in the Champions League? Or is it like the bundesliga stadium? All of this needs to be studied. Of course, matters such as the construction of geothermal stadiums are no longer decided by clubs or football associations, and local government departments need to coordinate and solve them.
Frankly speaking, there are many technical issues such as whether to change to a cross-annual format, including how to better prepare for the national teams at all levels in China after the youth tournament qualifiers are no longer divided, etc., all of which require special personnel to calm down to discuss, analyze the pros and cons, and come up with corresponding countermeasures. This is "the professional thing that professionals should do", not to help design and realize the idea of leadership according to the wishes of the leader.