Among all kinds of competitive sports in China, the influence, attraction and attention of Chinese men's football are undoubtedly the largest and highest, and it is unknown how many of the 1.4 billion Chinese people like football, but so far, I am afraid that only football projects are "happy and worrying".
Like Xie Yalong, Nanyong, Yang Yimin, Lu Jun, Shen Si, Qi Hong and other officials, referees, international players of the former football association, only more than ten years have passed, and a group of Chinese football practitioners such as Li Tie, Chen Jiayuan, Liu Yi, Chen Yongliang, Wang Xiaoping, Huang Song, Jin Jingdao and other Chinese football practitioners have emerged in China, and have been investigated and dealt with one after another, so it is completely reasonable that the Chinese team did not participate in the 2022 World Cup, fell in the World Preliminary Round of 40 and Round of 12 for five consecutive times, and failed to qualify for the World Cup.
As we all know, the Chinese team still entered a World Cup more than 20 years ago, is the "magic coach" Milu brought the glory of Chinese football, although there are qualifiers lack of the 2002 World Cup hosts South Korea, Japan blocked the objective factors, but at that time the Asian region qualified 2 + 2.5 places (including the host 2 places), the key is that Milu's World Cup experience played a big role, the top 10 national football team results 6 wins, 1 draw and 1 loss, two rounds ahead of the qualification, advance to the World Cup finals.
Since then, from the 2006 World Cup to the 2022 World Cup, the national football team has been "Confucius moved - all books (lost)". Despite hiring world-class marshal Lippi, the "New Naturalization Policy" was launched.
However, under the scourge of Chen Jiayuan, Li Tie and a group of "black sheep" with selfish interests, secretly making bad calculations, the four naturalized international players such as Axon, Alan, Luo Guofu and Jiang Guangtai could not start at the same time and all went on the field.
Some "conspiracy tricks" have made the world-class coach "Silver Fox" also fall behind, and a national football selection team is made to play the irrelevant East Asian Cup, thus realizing the "forced palace" plan to put Li Tie on the top.
In the World Preliminary Round, China 0-0 Philippines obviously had international players who did not contribute, losing 1-2 to Syria, making the Italian feel powerless and could only resign for the second time.
At present, the Chinese team is ranked 80th in the world and 11th in Asia, according to the schedule determined by FIFA and AFC, the 2026 World Cup Asian qualifiers will start in October this year, and the national football team will participate in the round of 36 in November.
The 2026 World Cup is another big World Cup expansion by FIFA, with as many as 48 teams participating and the number of qualifying places in the Asian region increasing from 4.5 to 8.5.
However, the difficulty factor of the 2026 World Preliminary Round has also increased, and the Chinese team must first pass the first hurdle - the round of 36 (similar to the round of 40), 36 teams are divided into 9 groups, each group of 4 teams, the top 2 teams in the group advance; The second hurdle is the round of 18 (similar to the round of 12), where the 18 teams are divided into 3 groups of 6 teams, and the top 2 teams in the group directly qualify for the World Cup.
The 6 teams that finished 3rd and 4th in each of the 3 groups were drawn into two groups, with 3 teams in each group playing a single round-robin, with the first team in the two groups directly qualifying for the 2026 World Cup, and the 2nd team in the two groups deciding the winner through a play-off, with the winner representing Asia in the continental play-offs.
To be honest, it seems that there are more qualifying places, and there is a lot of hope, but judging from the results of the national football team in the round of 12 of the two World Preliminary Rounds in 2018 and 2022, although they are both fifth in the group, they have always been "downhill".
Lippi took over the national football team that year, with 6 wins, 3 wins, 2 draws and 1 loss in the round of 12, accumulating 11 points, and the final result was 10 wins, 3 wins, 3 draws and 4 losses, accumulating 12 points, 3 points less than the 2nd team in the group directly qualified South Korea, 1 point less than the third place Syria team who qualified for the play-offs, and 5 points more than Qatar, which was the bottom of the group.
Li Tie and Li Xiaopeng took turns coaching the Chinese team, and in the round of 12, they won 10 games, 1 win, 3 draws and 6 defeats, accumulating 6 points, 16 points less than the 2nd team of the group (22 points), 9 points less than the third-placed Australia team (15 points) who qualified for the play-offs, and only 2 points more than Vietnam, who finished bottom 1 in the group.
In fact, based on the "ceiling" of Li Xiaopeng, who is recognized as the best local coach in China, 1 draw, 3 losses, 1-3 defeat to the Vietnamese team, the Chinese Football Association confirmed that the decision of foreign foreign coaches to lead the national football team to the 2026 World Cup is completely correct.
However, the Chinese team challenged the New Zealand team to draw 1 and lose 1, and failed to pass, which makes people put a big question mark on the Serbian team to "go all out to impact the 2026 World Cup". There are three reasons for this:
The first is the two friendly matches between the Chinese national team and the New Zealand national team, which can be called a complete defeat from the process and result.
The score was 0-0 in the first game, and the Chinese team played 10 from 11 players in the 64th minute, with 42% possession, 15 shots on goal, 8 shots on target, 82 attacks, 36 dangerous attacks, 5 corners, and scored no points, which shows that Jankovic did not solve the problems of weak forwards, low offensive efficiency and one-off kicks.
New Zealand has 58% possession, 11 shots on goal, 7 shots on target, 83 attacks, 34 dangerous attacks, 7 corners, 1 red and 1 yellow card; Jankovic was not happy with the draw after the match because he did not achieve his goal of making his debut.
The score was 1-2 in the second game, the Chinese team lagged behind in all aspects of statistics, with a possession rate of 40%, 9 shots on goal, 6 shots on target, 83 attacks, 28 dangerous attacks, 5 corner kicks, 2 yellow cards, and Sun Guowen assisted Barton to score 1 goal in stoppage time, achieving the minimum goal of at least one goal before the game.
New Zealand has 60% possession, 18 shots, 5 shots on target, 137 attacks, 59 dangerous attacks, 6 corners, 0 yellow cards, in addition to Zhu Chenjie's own goal, the team also scored a goal. The whole game was more embarrassing.
Second, the strength of the New Zealand team has been reserved, and the main center Chris Wood is absent.
Wood, the captain of New Zealand, is 1.91 meters tall, and the player who plays for Nottingham Forest in the Premier League, in the words of New Zealand interim manager Beazley: "Wood is a difficult player to replace"; He is New Zealand's most played player in international A competitions, scoring 33 goals in 70 games.
Taking the second game as an example, Wu Shaocong gave the opponent a penalty for a foul in the box in the 32nd minute, but fortunately Yan Junling confiscated the penalty kick taken by Gulliver; When Zhu Chenjie cleared the free-kick with a header in the 43rd minute, he swung his own goal.
If high school striker Wood can play, "Wei Zhen (1.89m) + Zhu Chenjie (1.85m)" and "Wu Shaocong (1.92m) + Zhu Chenjie", what kind of performance will these two pairs of central defenders have? Imagine that.
The three Chinese men's Asian Games teams lost both games against the New Zealand U23 team, 0-2, 1-2, scored 1 goal, conceded 4 goals, and saw no hope for growth and future.
The Chinese men's Asian Games team is actually big and small, this Asian Games team is the U24 national football team, at least players like Chen Guokang are 24 years old, and most other players will be 24 years old in the second half of the year.
Although Gyuljevic has been coaching the Asian Games team for less than a month and is not familiar with the players, the previous head coach of this team was Jankovic, who has been the head coach of the Chinese U19 national football team for four and a half years since September 2018 and has been the head coach of the national team at the age of 99 for four and a half years, and said in an interview with the media: "Through the inspection in China in the past few years, I am familiar with the players in the Chinese Super League and the Chinese Super League and the Second Division, and I have been in China for 28 of the past 30 months, so I basically grasp the information of the Chinese national team players." ”
From the perspective of age and the big national team, a considerable number of players in this Asian Games team will enter the Chinese national team coached by Jankovic after completing the competition tasks of this year's Hangzhou Asian Games, so what kind of competitiveness and combat effectiveness will the "Yang Family Army" formed by Yankovic himself be in Asian football, and the Oceania tour of the two national teams of the Chinese men's football team makes people have a lot of questions?
In fact, for Jankovic, the World Preliminary Round of 36 in November and the 2023 Asian Cup in Kata in January 2024 are the "big test".
Some people may say that Jankovic has only taken over the Chinese national team, and it will take time to see, but the current situation of Chinese football is that world-class coaches are needed to win games and boost morale, and champion coaches like Milu or Lippi who have "turned rot into magic".
For example, French coach Perrin was twice forced to draw 0-0 by Hong Kong; In the era of Gao Hongbo, the national football team lost 1 draw and 3 losses in the round of 12, and his life hung in the balance; The Italian Lippi took over the Chinese team for only 3 weeks, still the same group of players, Gao Hongbo arranged a 5-guard formation, played defensive counterattack tactics, and lost 2-3 to South Korea and drew 0-0 with Iran.
Lippi made his debut in an attacking formation like 433, 0-0 Qatar, 0-2 Iceland in the second China Cup, 1-1 Croatia in the third game, and 1-0 against South Korea in the round of 12. At that time, the European Icelandic team was ranked 21st in the world and 16th in Croatia, which shows that the world-class champion coach Lippi, who has seen big scenes, is different and has a "big heart".
To be honest, the Chinese men's football team has no future in terms of a mediocre coach who barely qualifies with his ability and level and likes to do things step by step, just like the previous coach Peilan, who led the national football team to a 1-1 draw with New Zealand in November 2014.
The Chinese men's football team needs world-class coaches like Milu or Lippi, to put it bluntly, Jankovic can see some progress of the national football team in the short term, which is stronger than the era of Li Tie and Li Xiaopeng, but it is definitely not a world-class coach who can lead the Chinese team to the World Cup, at least his resume and ability are not worth entrusting.