Doha, February 11 (Xinhua) -- On the 10th, with the whistle of the referee Ma Ning from China, the curtain of the Qatar men's football Asian Cup came to an end. The host Qatar team successfully defended its title, Iran, South Korea and Japan and other strong teams advanced to the quarterfinals, the West Asian teams represented by Jordan are rising, and the Chinese team has not won a game and scored a goal, setting the worst record in team history.
The host country successfully defended the title of the Chinese referee in the final
Hosts Qatar successfully defended their title at Lusail Stadium with a 3-1 win over Jordan thanks to three penalties from Afif.
In this tournament, the Qatar team passed all the way and won all three games in the group stage to advance. In the knockout round, Qatar defeated Palestine 2-1, then eliminated Uzbekistan on penalties, and then played bravely in the semi-finals, defeating three-time Asian Cup champion Iran 3-2 to advance to the final again after winning the championship in 2019. Qatari football has gradually moved from the second and third rate in Asia to the top of Asia. Afif scored eight goals, was named top scorer and was voted the Most Valuable Player, becoming the brightest star of the tournament.
The Jordan team became the biggest "dark horse" of this tournament, defeating the Malaysian team 4:0 in the first game of the group stage, drawing the South Korean team 2:2 in the second round, and losing to the Bahrain team 0:1 in the last round, and qualified as the third place in the best four groups. Jordan started to get into shape in the knockout stage, first scoring two goals in two minutes, beating 10-man Iraq 3:2, and then knocking out Tajikistan 1:0, and Jordan beat the favorite South Korea with two beautiful goals in the semi-finals, reaching the final for the first time in team history.
It is worth noting that this is the first time that the Chinese referee team has presided over the men's Asian Cup final. Ma Ning served as the chief referee, Zhou Fei and Zhang Cheng served as assistant referees, and Fu Ming served as video assistant referees.
The rise of football in West Asia, Japan and South Korea have been out of the tournament one after another
A total of 24 teams participated in this Asian Cup, 9 West Asian teams entered the knockout round, Japan and South Korea were eliminated in the knockout round, and Southeast Asian teams performed well, but the overall strength is still weak.
West Asian teams are on the rise at a rapid pace. After watching a number of games live, Li Bing, a member of the technical committee of the Chinese Football Association, was surprised by the progress of the West Asian team. "The vast majority of teams are now on the way up, and what we used to think of as 'third-rate teams', especially a few West Asian teams, showed strong upward momentum in this tournament," he said. ”
Japan have a strong passing ability, but they have always had problems in defence, conceding goals in every game. In the group stage, goalkeeper Ayaka Suzuki made two mistakes in a row, and the team conceded the goal due to the save. Facing a strong Iranian team in the knockout round, although they were the first to break the deadlock, defender Itakura's fatal mistake allowed Japan to exit early.
The South Korean team has a slightly single offensive means, and Tottenham captain Son Heung-min is "difficult to support alone". In the round of 16, it took extra time and a penalty shootout to defeat the Saudi team. In the quarterfinals, the team coached by the famous coach Klinsmann "killed" the Australian team through extra time. In the semi-finals against Jordan, South Korea had 0 shots on target, once again exposing the team's lack of offensive shortcomings.
Thanks to youth training and naturalization, Southeast Asian teams such as Vietnam and Indonesia, which were the former "fish belly", have made significant progress. In the group stage, the 19-year-old player of the Vietnamese team, Nguyen Dinh Bei, scored a header like "looking back at the moon", which was really eye-catching. Many of the naturalized players in the Indonesian team were born in Europe, and they no longer look like a traditional Southeast Asian team in terms of game content, physicality and intensity of confrontation.
The national football team did not qualify for the group and did not score a record
The national football team in this Asian Cup ended up in 18th place, setting the worst record in team history (2 draws, 1 loss, zero goals) to end the schedule. Compared with the strong Asian football teams, the gap between Chinese football is all-round.
In the first game against Tajikistan, Zhu Chenjie scored with a header, but was ruled invalid by the referee, and the national football team finally won a 0:0 draw. Facing the Lebanese team in the second game, Wu Lei missed a good opportunity to score in front of the goal, and the national football team once again exchanged blanks with the opponent. After the Chinese team lost 0:1 to the Qatar team in the final game, there was only a theoretical possibility of qualifying, but in the end, it did not wait for a miracle.
Throughout this Asian Cup, the second- and third-tier teams in Asia are making collective progress, reflecting the dilemma of Chinese football "if you don't advance, you will retreat". As Wei Shihao said: "Other teams are improving, only we are standing still. "The Asian Cup is over, and the Chinese team needs to find out the gap, get out of the haze, and play well in the next world preliminaries.
The loss of the Asian Cup, the Chinese men's football team with an average age of nearly 30 years old exposed the problem of serious aging, and replacement is imminent. Li Bing believes that the first thing is to find a suitable coach, grasp the cohesion of the team, so that the players can give full play to their level at the national team level. Jia Xiuquan, a former international player who won the title of "Best Player" in the 1984 Asian Cup, said that doing a good job in youth training is the key to the next step of development.