Today, let's focus on a warm-up match of the Chinese men's football team, which is not a warm-up match for our national team, but a warm-up match for the national Olympic team that is preparing for the U23 Asian Cup. In the end, the Chinese team defeated the Qatar team 2:0 and won the first victory in the West Asian warm-up match. The Qatar team is also the host of the U23 Asian Cup, and the world ranking is also very high, participated in the previous 2022 Qatar World Cup, and just won the Asian Cup. This time, our U23 Olympic team defeated the Qatar Olympic team, which is preparing for the U23 Asian Cup, which is indeed very difficult. This can be regarded as a relatively big upset in Asian football in the early hours of this morning.
The U23 Olympic team has played two warm-up games before, facing the favorite Saudi Arabia team, in fact, the Chinese team played okay, although the Chinese team did not score a goal in the two games, and all lost, but we lost 0:1 and 0:2 respectively, on the field, our defense is still very solid, but also created some opportunities for counterattack, this team from the current warm-up game three games of the state, than everyone expected the situation may be better.
The Chinese team is in a group with Japan, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates in the U23 Asian Cup, of which the UAE team has already played them once in the qualifiers, which is definitely a group of death. According to the rules of the U23 Asian Cup, the top two teams in each group can enter the final quarterfinals, and then the knockout round, the top four teams have a chance to impact the Paris Olympics, the top three are directly into the Paris Olympics finals, and the group has been formed, and the fourth place will compete with the Guinean team in the African zone to qualify. Therefore, for the Chinese men's football team, if it wants to enter the Olympic finals for the third time after the 1988 Seoul Olympics and the 2008 Beijing Olympics, we need to reach at least the semifinals in this competition, and the difficulty can be imagined.
The Chinese men's football team's results in the previous competitions of the U23 Asian Cup are very dismal, before this we have participated in four U23 Asian Cup matches, a total of 1 win and 11 losses, that is to say, we have never qualified for the group stage, and basically all of them are lost. Only in one tournament held on home soil. We beat Bahrain to win the Under-23 Asian Cup for the first time in history, but I think after watching these three warm-up games, we can expect a little bit from China's Under-23 men's team.
In fact, in the past year, the achievements of the Chinese youth team have been impressive. We won the championship in the U15 East Asian Cup last summer while beating Japan and South Korea, and in the U20 Asian Cup, we were also in the group of death, with the defending champion Saudi Arabia and the current champion Japan in a group, as a result, we lost to the Japanese team and defeated the Saudi team, pressing the defending champion to enter the knockout round with the second place in the group, and in the knockout round, we fought with the South Korean team for 90 minutes without a win, and was eliminated by the opponent in overtime. Therefore, the poor performance of the senior national team did not affect the results of the youth team.
In this game with the Qatar team, the U23 National Olympic team still lacks the three main forces, among which because of the goal shortage, there is only one goalkeeper Huang Zihao in the team, and he is still a sparring partner, and he can't enter the National Olympic team normally. In addition, Xie Wenneng on the side, Tao Qianglong also because of the competition for the Chinese Super League, there is no way to participate in this training camp, if these three positions are strengthened, the strength of the Chinese U23 men's football team is still very good.