After beating defending champions Saudi Arabia in the second round of the group stage, the U20 national football team won one win and one loss in two matches, and really saw the hope of qualifying for the knockout round.
The national youth team has played in the World Youth Championship five times in 1983, 1985, 1997, 2001 and 2005, and ranked 7th in 1985, creating the best results of the World Youth Championship, and in the 2005 World Youth Championship, the national youth team won all three games in the group stage, but unfortunately stopped at the top 16, in these four games, the national youth team scored a total of 11 goals.
However, since the 2005 World Youth Championships, the national youth team has not been able to make it to the World Youth Championships. Not only that, the results of the national youth team in the Asian Youth Championship have also deteriorated, and in the four Asian Youth Championships since 2012, the national youth team has stopped the group stage three times, and in 2014 it stopped in the quarterfinals.
In fact, in October 2019, the national youth team did not perform well in the U20 Asian Cup qualifiers and failed to make it to the main stage, which was the first time in 30 years that the national youth team did not qualify for the Asian Youth Championship. However, the U20 Asian Cup was eventually cancelled.
In this year's U20 Asian Cup, the national football team was unlucky, and the two opponents in the group stage were the 2016 U20 Asian Cup champion Japan and the 2018 U20 Asian Cup champion Saudi Arabia. Shao Jiayi, the manager of the U20 national football team, said, "In terms of paper strength, we are not in the same grade as others, and it can even be said that the difference is more than one grade. ”
With this mentality, the U20 national football team almost upset in the first game, and although they lost 1-2 to Japan, the opponent's own goal allowed the U20 national team to break the curse that has not scored against Asia's top teams since 2014.
Against Saudi Arabia, the national football team still played extremely passively, and after the start of the second half, Saudi Arabia continued to storm, and Zeid hit the post with a strong kick. Instead, the U20 national team scored two goals on two counter-attacks in seven minutes.
Substitute Matarifu played a key role, first with a tackle in the middle of the penalty area and then an assist for Xu Bin, with Eiffelding also involved in two goals. After the victory over Saudi Arabia, the Chinese junior national football team broke the curse of not being able to beat Asia's top teams in official matches for nine years.
After two rounds of the group stage, the U20 national team and Saudi Arabia have also won and lost one, and in the final round, the U20 national team will face Kyrgyzstan, while Saudi Arabia will face the strongest team in the group, Japan, which means that the national team can hope to advance as long as they win.