It has been less than a month since the opening of the Asian Cup finals held in Qatar, and the national football team led by Jankovic is about to assemble the team to kick off the preparations. With the defeat of Exxon and Fernando, the national football team completely gave up the naturalized internationals without blood, and this time only recruited Jiang Guangtai and Li Ke, two naturalized internationals, and still worked hard to achieve the goal of entering the top 8.
Originally, the Asian Cup was held in China this summer, but it failed to happen, and the AFC subsequently handed over the hosting rights to Qatar, which is also the second consecutive Asian Cup to be held in winter.
There are a total of 24 teams in the Asian Cup, divided into 6 groups of 4 teams each, with the top two teams in each group and the best third place in the four groups, with a total of 16 teams advancing to the knockout round. For the national football team, the third place in the group can also qualify, which increases the chance of advancing to the knockout round, but this will meet the strong team earlier, which is not conducive to advancing to the top 8 stage.
According to the grouping, the national football team is in Group A with the new champions of the Asian Cup, Qatar, Lebanon, and Tajikistan, which are considered to be drawn, because they avoided Japan, Iran, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Australia, the favorites to win the championship, and drew Qatar, the weakest of the six seeded teams, increasing the hope of competing for the top spot in the group.
According to statistics, the national football team has played against 3 opponents in the group in recent years, and the overall record will not be at a disadvantage, such as the first game of the national football team against Tajikistan, the national football team won 2 wins and 1 draw to remain undefeated, and the second round against Lebanon, the national football team also won 2 wins and 1 draw, including a 2-0 victory in the Asian Cup qualifiers, a final round against the host Qatar, and a 2-1 and 2-0 victory in the national football world preliminaries.
Therefore, there is still hope for the national football team to win 3 consecutive wins in the group stage and win the top spot in the group, perhaps many fans think that this is an overestimation of the strength of the national football team.
Regardless of whether this is the case or not, the national football team must aim for this ranking, because after entering the round of 16 knockouts, the opponents of the first group, the second in the group, and the third in the group have different strengths, and the first group can meet other weaker teams in the group, for example, the 1/8 final opponent of the first group A may be the third in Group C, the third in Group D, and the third team in Group E, and the second opponent in Group A is the second team in Group C, the United Arab Emirates, Palestine is likely, and the opponent who is third in Group A may be the first in Group B (with a high probability of Australia) and the first in Group C (with a high probability of Iran).
Only winning the first place in Group A, the probability of the national football team advancing to the top 8 of the Asian Cup is higher, and if it encounters a strong team like Iran or Australia, it will be even more difficult. Therefore, the national football team needs to go all out to win the group stage and prepare for the knockout round in advance.