At yesterday's Four Nations Invitational Tournament, the match between China U16 and Denmark U16 was full of twists and turns. This match was also the fifth game for Japanese head coach Ken Uemura in charge of the Chinese national youth team. In the game, the U16 national youth once led by three goals, but failed to keep the victory, and finally missed the victory with a score of 4-4.
At the beginning of the game, the U16 national youth showed a strong offensive. He scored first in the third minute of the first half and maintained the lead until half-time.
After the start of the second half, the national youth once again played an attacking wave, breaking the Danish team's goal in the 48th and 51st minutes to extend the score to 3-0. However, the Danes did not give up easily, and in the 56th minute, they seized on the negligence of the national youth and quickly counterattacked to rewrite the score to 3-1. Then, in the 72nd minute, Denmark scored another goal to make it 3-2.
However, the national youth team did not lose confidence and made a penalty in the 77th minute and successfully scored it to extend the score back to 4-2. However, after the game entered stoppage time, just as the national youth players were preparing to win, the situation on the field suddenly changed, and the Chinese team's back line suddenly opened the door, and within 2 minutes, the Danish team scored two goals in a row to tie the score, but in the end the two sides ended with a score of 4-4, and the Chinese team regrettably failed to win the first victory of the Four Nations Tournament.
In this four-nation tournament, the national youth team drew 1 and lost 1 in two games, and although they gained 1 point, they conceded 8 goals in a row. Considering the previous three warm-up matches in Stuttgart, since Kenichi Uemura took charge, the Chinese U16 national youth has only achieved 1 win, 1 draw and 3 losses in five official matches, conceding as many as 20 goals, and conceding an average of 4 per game, which is worrying.
You must know that the strength of China's U16 national youth team is not vulnerable. They drew with Japan and South Korea in the East Asian Cup Invitational Tournament last year, and finally won the championship by beating both teams. This is also the first championship of Chinese men's football in the past 13 years. For this reason, this team has been expected by fans. However, under Kenichi Uemura's leadership, the team's current performance is still unsatisfactory.
According to the data, Kenichi Uemura's coaching experience is relatively simple, and he has only coached Japanese low-level teams such as Sanuki Kama Yukai and Kumamoto Crimson U18 youth team. After that, he came to China to continue his coaching career, although he led Wuhan U18 and Wuhan Three Towns 05 teams to win the third place in the national youth competition. But the results are not outstanding.
On February 7, 2004, the Chinese Football Association officially announced that Kenichi Uemura became the head coach of the Chinese U16 national youth team in preparation for the 2024 U17 Asian Cup and the 2025 U17 World Cup.
At present, under the leadership of Kenichi Murakami, the national youth team has suffered a series of big defeats in the warm-up matches, and his coaching ability has also been challenged and questioned to a certain extent.
The starting point of this session of the national youth is not low, and whether Kenichi Murakami can lead the national youth to have a qualitative improvement needs further observation.