The semi-finals of the U23 Asian Cup were officially staged, although the National Olympics were out early, but the sudden rise of Indonesian U23 into the top 4 still attracted our attention, mainly because Indonesian football fully used the naturalization policy and ushered in a strong rise, and their development model is worthy of reference from Chinese football. So we have to look at an Asian fourth-rate team, relying on naturalization where their ceiling is, we, as an Asian third-rate team, can rely on the original basis, relying on a large number of naturalization to re-enter the World Cup stage.
Indonesia U23 ushered in a showdown with Uzbekistan U23, and South Korea's U23s, who were eliminated in the last game, were actually only a team composed of players from their domestic league, and because it was not an international break, the school-age players who played in Europe did not participate. Coupled with the fact that South Korea received two red cards in the last game, Indonesia was able to beat their opponents in a penalty shootout. Then this game against Uzbekistan is their real test, and the equal number of both sides can reflect the upper limit of this Indonesian naturalized army. Indonesia sent 3 naturalized players to the starting line-up in this game, and Uzbekistan also sent the strongest lineup.
After the start of the game, Indonesia U23 was strongly suppressed by Uzbekistan, and the gap between the two sides was reflected at the beginning of the game. Indonesia struggled to concede a goal in the first half but did not hold back in the second half, with Norchaev scoring for Uzbekistan in the 68th minute, before the Indonesian player was sent off for a red card and scored an own goal to give Uzbekistan a 2-0 victory. The match was an all-round success for Uzbekistan, beating their opponents and advancing to the final and reaching the Olympics for the first time in their history.
Returning to Indonesia's U23s, Japan beat Iraq 2-0 on the other side, so Indonesia will face Iraq for third place, with the third-place team going straight to the Olympics and the fourth-place team going through the play-offs against the African team. Indonesia's U23 loss to Uzbekistan has made Indonesian football take shape, and the national team can rely on full naturalization to achieve good results, but only 3 naturalized Indonesians still lost to Asia's second-rate Uzbekistan. The penalty shootout victory over the nine-man South Korean team is already the end of Indonesia's strong crossbow, and if it loses to Iraq next, then the ceiling of this Indonesian team with only a few naturalized players is not high.
The example of the Indonesian national team and the U23 tells us that naturalization requires large-scale naturalization, and only 2-3 places of naturalization will not improve much. The same is true for the national football team, if we were originally a little away from the World Cup, we could have entered the World Cup by relying on a few naturalized players, but now the distance is not a little bit, unless we use a large number of naturalizations, it is unlikely that we will qualify for the World Cup.