On May 22, the Argentine Football Association officially announced that it will start its Asian tour in June, Beijing on the 15th against Australia, and Jakarta against Indonesia on the 19th. Prior to this, on May 18, the Chinese Football Association issued an announcement: the Chinese team will participate in the International Tournament in Dalian, and play the Myanmar team on June 16 and the Palestinian team on June 20.
Along with these two announcements, it means that the match between the national football team and Argentina in Beijing on June 18 has been completely ruined. As we all know, Argentina team is the champion of the World Cup in Qatar last year, the team has a superstar like Messi, such a team not only has a huge market appeal, but also undoubtedly has considerable exercise value for the Chinese team, why in the face of the world champion team sent to the goal, the Chinese team chose to avoid fighting?
Argentina official announcement: Asia trip!
Regarding the reason why the match between the Chinese team and the Argentine team failed, the current popular saying is: the operator of this match has always been "entrusted to non-people" - before the Spring Festival, he went to Chen Yongliang, the minister of state management, and the other party had verbally agreed, and he was soon arrested; Later, he found Du Zhaocai, but not only was he directly vetoed by the other party, but the other party was also quickly arrested. Is that really the case? Judging from a request letter submitted by the tournament trader to the relevant high-level state department on March 31, the problem does not seem to be so simple.
Through the letter of request submitted by this company, called "China Hongqiao International Investment Co., Ltd.", it can be seen that although the Argentine Football Association has determined the location of the first overseas match as China after winning the World Cup last year, the real agreement between the two sides was signed on March 12 this year. It can be inferred from this that although the company must have communicated with the Chinese Football Association before, it must have been limited to words. In addition, Chen Yongliang has actually been "examined and investigated" as early as mid-January this year, so even if he once "agreed", it can only be a "personal opinion", and it is far from rising to the height of "the football association has agreed". At the same time, the time of reporting the letter of request was March 31, and Du Zhaocai had already been announced to be under "review and investigation" on April 1, so it is also debatable how much "obstruction" Du played in this process.
Trader company, hope to play the Chinese team
So, why did the national football team say no to Argentina? It should be said that to a large extent it is directly related to the attitude of the head coach Jankovic. For a long time, both foreign and local marshals actually have a considerable say in arranging the warm-up matches of the national team, so it is simple to attribute the "responsibility" entirely to the two imprisoners, but it is not necessarily the truth or normal logic. As we all know, at the end of March this year, the national football team went to New Zealand and played two warm-up matches against the New Zealand team, which was 25 places behind them in the world ranking, and the result was 0-0 and 1-2, which ushered in criticism from the outside world. Against such a backdrop, it should not be difficult to understand that Jankovic does not want to play a game that absolutely loses. It can be said that perhaps it was out of the desire to reshape the image of Chinese football through winning, that the national football team finally locked the opponents of the warm-up match as the obviously weak Myanmar and Palestine.
The national football manager does not want to lose
It is understood that the Argentine team originally planned to play two games in China, on June 18 at the Bird's Nest in Beijing and June 24 at the Olympic Sports Center in Xi'an, against China and Iran. Now, with the national football team's high exemption card, the match in Xi'an has also been declared to be in vain, replaced by Argentina's move to Jakarta on June 19 to play against Indonesia. However, Indonesian Football Federation executive member Arya Shinulinga said in an interview with local media: "Until it turns into black and white, we dare not say that [this game] will definitely become a reality." According to Indonesian media reports, in the context of the Argentine Football Federation's official announcement, the Indonesian Football Association's attitude is ambiguous because there is no final consensus on the specific match location (Jakarta or other cities) and whether Messi will participate. However, given that the Indonesian U22 football team has just won the Southeast Asian Games championship, and the whole country is in a high state of excitement for football, the Argentina team's trip to Indonesia should not change again.
Fight New Zealand, one draw and one loss
By the way, because the Chinese Football Association gave up and finally agreed to allow the Argentine team to come to China, it also became the Beijing Municipal Football Association, and the venue of the game was naturally turned into a rebuilt workers' stadium.
Interestingly, just before the match against Argentina, Indonesia will play a warm-up match against Palestine in Surabaya on June 14, and this opponent is also the warm-up of China after six days. For the Chinese team, it is a pity to miss the opportunity to play the world champion, but the two games that followed, to some extent, also seemed to test the real market appeal of Chinese football through the reaction of the fans...