Muzi watching the tiger fight | The national football team has a profound lesson from 7 defenses and 4 goals conceded! Wu Lei and Tan Long have no matching characteristics

The 2026 World Cup is on the agenda, and the 8.5 places in Asia have become a reality.

As the perennial eighth and ninth place in Asia, the probability of qualifying for the World Cup is of course much greater than before, but the pressure is also greater, because when there are 4.5 places, you can also generously admit that your skills are not as good as others if you can't play the World Cup with 8.5 places, and if you can't play the World Cup with 8.5 places, then there is no objective reason to find it.

Especially after being in the same group as Thailand this time.

Therefore, during the round of 36, the biggest opponent of the national football team is the Thai team, and whether the dream of the World Cup can be realized, the Thai team is the first difficulty.

Of course, it is also the only way to save face.

In this context, before the away game against Thailand, Jankovic made some adjustments to the national football squad at the personnel level.

Wei Shihao, who played well during the international break in October, entered the starting 11 of this game, and on the right side, the veteran Fang Hao, who coached the national youth team, obviously failed to impress Jankovic, so in this game, the candidate for this position became Liu Binbin.

These two entered the starting line, and after adding the fixed Tan Long and Wu Lei, it looked like a 442 system, but after the opening, Jankovic's team still continued its three-guard mentality, and it will indeed stand at 442 without the ball:

But when there is the ball, after Zhang Linpeng stacks, Liu Binbin pulls the side, Li Lei inserts forward, and then sends Wei Shihao into the ribs, which is still the three-back system that Jankovic has been insisting on:

However, friendlies and official matches are never the same thing.

In the opening 10 minutes, the Thai team showed the Chinese team a strong desire to win in the midfield area, and they made the Chinese team feel the pressure through their physical and technical characteristics:

From this soon an offensive was formed, whether it was an attempt on the left rib in the stage of positional warfare:

Or two counterattack advances:

All of them have doubled the pressure on the Chinese team playing away.

During this time, the Chinese team showed signs of danger, not only was the opponent used to counterattack and advance, caught the problem of loose three lines, and when there was the ball, in the face of the Thai team's pressing and pressure, the midfielder could not complete the work from back to front, and it was difficult to connect the front and back ends smoothly:

This is a sign that you are about to fall into passivity.

So in the first half, the performance of the Chinese team was not good, not only in the midfield and the ball, but also in the defensive end of the frequent problems, the Thai team played a high-quality group offensive in the left half of the front, from the side, the ribs formed a variety of offensive routines:

And in the 23rd minute, he scored in a counterattack after defending from a set-piece.

In this defense, the Chinese players not only exposed their disadvantages in front of the Thai players, but also exposed their lack of awareness in high-intensity games.

Let the opponent fight back all the way to the goal, and be saved by Yan Junling:

In the face of the second attack of the Thai team, in the overall situation of seven defenses and four:

All six shrank into the narrow area from the horizontal line of the small penalty area to the penalty spot, and the six watched the whole time, ignoring the gaps on the line of the big penalty area and the opposing players, and thus the opponent scored a goal:

However, the Chinese team was not without performance in the first half, nor was it completely passive.

The opening stage was not good, but in the 13th minute, the Chinese team spelled a corner kick opportunity in front of the field and played the first threatening shot of the game for both sides:

In the 29th minute, Wei Shihao seized the backfield mistake of the Thai team and helped the national football team equalize with Wu Lei:

In the second half of the first half, during the attacking frenzy set off after the Thai team was equalized, the Chinese team was able to play some attacks with individual counterattacks and simple crosses:

Therefore, even if China and Thailand have officially become opponents who can wrestle their wrists together on the football field since 1-5 in 2013, the national football team still has a chance to play away from home.

The key is, how to use your strengths to make your chances bigger?

Compared to the Thai players, our players lack flexibility, explosiveness and delicacy under their feet, but the national players can still rely on their physical condition and the impact that comes from it.

This is where the Chinese team needs to carry forward in the second half.

The home team was equalized, and the Thai team was bound to carry out a more resolute forward pressure and a more fierce attack in the remaining games, even though the advantage of the Thai team was more reflected in the wing, and the outflanking of the center and the weak side in front of the goal did not create much threat, but the Chinese team still had to solve the threat in the front position.

So after the start of the second half, the restrictions of the Chinese team's central defenders on the Thai players in front of them became more direct:

This is obviously a new directive from Jankovic, and it can be seen from this change that Jankovic does not want the Chinese team to fall into the same predicament as in the first half.

But that alone is not enough to salvage the situation.

In the first half of the second half, although the Thai team began to come under more pressure than in the first half as they advanced and developed, they were able to play the attack as time went on, but not as easily as in the first half:

The real game-changer was the 60-minute interval.

The Chinese team can shrink, and in the case of not dominating the periphery, it is also an inevitable result to shrink into the penalty area, but if you want to shrink up without falling behind, you need the forward line to play at a high level.

In the first half of the game, the reason why the Chinese team's performance was poor, including the inability to continue to appear in the offensive threat, was because of the average performance on the offensive end. In front of the Thai players, Tan Long's advantage is not obvious:

And Wu Lei's problem reappeared:

What's more fatal is that when Tan Long can't support a single point and there is no player on the bench to replace, Wu Lei's characteristics determine that he can't help Tan Long, and he can't help most of the time.

This is what will make the Chinese team the most uncomfortable.

The forward line is average, but when the forward line is not replaced, you can only change the players on the perimeter. Replacing Xie Pengfei at half time may largely be an adjustment of Liu Binbin, who did not play in the first half, but replacing Wang Shangyuan and Liu Yang in the 60th minute is obviously the idea of using the midfield to help both ends.

So in the 64th minute, Wang Shangyuan, who had not been on the field for a long time, took the lead in defense:

2 minutes later, Jiang Shenglong stepped forward to regain the ball, thus holding up the midfield line and coming directly to the offensive position, Wu Xi sent an opportunity for Wu Lei who was offside:

In the 70th minute, Wu Xi, who is in his thirties, can still steal with his teammates in the front court, form an attack, and can also go all the way forward to try to make points:

In the absence of an essential improvement in the forward line, this is an example of the perimeter players helping the forward line and thus helping the team to play offensively.

In fact, in the first half, Wei Shihao's attack from the second-tier position was the same idea.

In the 74th minute, the Chinese team once again had a chance to counterattack, and Xie Pengfei and Wang Shangyuan, two substitutes on the field, scored the second goal together:

As soon as this goal was scored, the away team took the lead, the morale of the Chinese team was greatly boosted, and the Thai team began a fierce counterattack:

But with key players such as Songkrasin being replaced, Thailand's offensive efficiency will only drop visibly.

To put it bluntly, the strength of the Thai team has indeed made great progress, and the characteristics are clear, but in the case of good performance on the periphery, they still lack the real strength in the center position, which is the core reason why they can play opportunities in the positional battle stage, but they can't convert into threatening shots, and finally rely on counter-attacking goals.

It is precisely because of this that when the Chinese team, which played a back three, no longer competed with the Thai team for midfield in the second half, but instead exerted its strength in the two penalty areas, and responded to the Thai team with dense defense and impact attack, the latter would not be.

In the end, the Chinese team won a key victory away from home, making a good start for the journey of the round of 36.

It's obvious how crucial this game is. Unlike the other two opponents in the group, South Korea and Singapore, the two-legged match between China and Thailand is too important for each other.

South Korea don't need to increase their quota places in Asia, and they don't have to worry about entering the World Cup, and as for Singapore, they don't need to look forward to the future of the World Cup until the quota is further increased, but the Chinese team is the same as Thailand in that the Asian zone is increased to 8.5 places, and both teams have ideas.

Therefore, the away win gave the Chinese team an advantage in position.

Of course, the round of 36 as the third stage is just the beginning, and if you want to break into the United States, Canada and Mexico, there will be third, fourth and fifth stages of competition.

So, this is just the first step in a long march.

But in the current environment of thousands of horses, the Chinese team can win Thailand away from home, without becoming a laughing stock of the outside world, this is a perfect start to accumulate confidence, even if there is no dominance in performance, but by adjusting the defeat to win, it is still a feasible idea.

In this kind of competition, the result is always more important than the process.