At 20:00 Beijing time on March 9, the third round of the U20 Asian Cup group stage, China vs Kyrgyzstan, which is a life and death battle in an absolute sense.
It was originally thought that facing the previous champion Saudi Arabia in the last round, the Chinese team might be out early with two consecutive defeats. But unexpectedly, the Chinese boys surprised the fans, they only had 24% possession and only half the shots on goal, and finally beat the opponent 2-0, and the qualification situation instantly became clear.
At present, Japan leads the group with six points, China and Saudi Arabia each have three points, and Kyrgyzstan is bottom with 0 points. Japan, who have won all 2 games, are also likely to be out, while Kyrgyzstan, who have 0 points in 2 games, are still likely to qualify, with 4 teams vying for the last 2 places in the last 8. The final round matches are Japan vs Saudi Arabia and China vs Kyrgyzstan.
In this group, there may be two situations where three teams are equally scored.
The three teams of China, Japan and Saudi Arabia shared 6 points
In this case of three teams sharing 6 points, two conditions must be met, that is, China defeats Kyrgyzstan and Japan loses to Saudi Arabia. In this case, the Chinese team can at least ensure that they qualify from the group, and in extreme cases, they can also qualify at the top of the group.
According to the ranking rules, the same score is counted as the score between each other, in which case the three teams score 3 points to each other, so the three teams cannot be determined by this condition.
That can only be compared to goal difference between teams with the same score. China lost by 1 goal to Japan in the first round, but won 2 goals against Saudi Arabia in the second round, so China's goal difference between the three teams is +1; while Saudi Arabia's goal difference between the three teams is temporarily -2, and Japan is temporarily +1, so no matter how many Saudi Arabia wins Japan in the final round, the Chinese team will at least have a higher goal difference between the three teams than Japan, and as long as Saudi Arabia has no more than 3 goals against Japan, the Chinese team can get the first place in the group.
Because South Korea won the first place in the group and Jordan ranked second in the group in Group C, if the Chinese team can get the first place in this group, they can avoid South Korea and face the relatively weak Jordan in the 1/4 final.
The three teams of China, Saudi Arabia and Kyrgyzstan shared three points
In this situation where three teams accumulate three points, two conditions must be met, that is, the Chinese team loses to Kyrgyzstan, and Japan defeats Saudi Arabia. In this case, the Chinese team may also qualify if they lose, but it depends on the face of Japan.
Saudi Arabia beat Kyrgyzstan 1-0 in the first round and lost 2-0 to China in the second round, so their goal difference between the three teams is -1. China's goal difference between the three teams is +2, while Kyrgyzstan is temporarily -1.
The Chinese team wanted to qualify, and in the final round of Kyrgyzstan, they could only accept a small loss of up to 1 goal. If the net loss is 2 goals or more, the Chinese team may lose to Kyrgyzstan due to mutual goal difference, or the number of goals scored by each other, or again.
The last time China qualified from the U20 Asian Cup was in 2014, nine years ago. At that time, the Chinese team was in the same group as Japan, South Korea and Vietnam, and in the end, the Chinese team qualified from the group with 1 win and 2 draws. The game that impressed the fans the most was surely Wei Shihao's two goals to lead the team to a 2-1 victory over Japan.