The national football team is likely to go out to West Asia again, which will be Li Tie's last chance to redeem himself

The AFC officially confirmed two days ago that the 5th round of the 2022 Qatar World Cup Asian Preliminary Round of The 5th round of Australia's home game against Saudi Arabia will be played in Sydney, which means that the Australian men's football team has finally been given the opportunity to return to the home field after more than two years. This was originally the script that the Chinese Football Association hoped to see, but unfortunately the national football team still did not wait for the desired result.

Until the deadline last night, there is still no exact information about the location of the two rounds of the national football team in November, and if there is no accident, the Chinese Football Association will officially announce the "neutral home" of the Chinese men's football team against Australia today, and the team led by Li Tie will take a charter flight to Sharjah, the United Arab Emirates, around November 6 to carry out the final preparation and training.

Once again caught in the predicament of continuous "away", and facing two strong enemies in Oman and Australia, the difficulty of the national football team's trip to West Asia can be imagined.

Can two warm-up matches a day quench my thirst?

On October 28, the Chinese men's soccer team, which completed a 14-day epidemic quarantine in Suzhou, has moved to Shanghai to continue its seven-day community observation. Li Tie first gave the team members two days off, and then held their first training session after arriving in Shanghai on October 30.

For the national football players, there are many negative effects brought about by long-term closed training, especially the inability to systematically participate in high-intensity competitions, which is bound to make it difficult for players to maintain a good competitive state. It is reported that as early as the quarantine period in Suzhou, the Chinese men's football team began to contact the Chinese Super League and the Chinese First Division teams to seek the possibility of playing warm-up matches. In the end, the Shenzhen team, which has just been out of the FA Cup, and the Zhejiang team of the Chinese First Division, will become the warm-up opponents of the national football team.

As planned, both matches were scheduled to be held on November 3. The national football training squad currently has as many as 31 players, and it is more than enough to line up two sets of squads in one day to participate in two matches. At the same time, these two games are also enough for Li Tie to comprehensively examine the competitive status of the players, so as to provide a reference for choosing the final list of players. Of course, such an arrangement will also raise doubts, each national football player only participates in one warm-up match, obviously still can not effectively solve the problem of lack of games.

It is reported that the national football team will not recruit new players in this expedition to West Asia, and the 25 people who will eventually travel will be selected from the current training list, plus Wu Lei, who went directly from Spain to the United Arab Emirates to meet the team, these 26 people will form a big list for the national football team to participate in the two round of twelve matches in November. From 31 to 25, which players will lose will mainly refer to two points: one is the competitive state shown in the warm-up game, and the other is to refer to the appearance of the first four rounds of the round of the twelve. According to the data, there are nine players who have never appeared in the first four rounds of the national football team, namely Wang Shangyuan, Li Lei, Xu Xin, Wang Qiuming, Barton, Guo Tianyu, and three goalkeepers Liu Dianzuo, Wang Dalei and Dong Chunyu.

It is worth mentioning that in order to allow players to better find the feeling of the game through warm-up, the two warm-up matches held on the 3rd will all simulate the process of the top 12 matches. In order to ensure the quality of the two matches, the Shanghai Football Association also specially cooperated with the arrangement of international referee Shen Yinhao and national referee Chen Gang as the referee of the game.

The FA will not always support unconditionally

The battle against Oman on 11 November was no less important than the previous match against Vietnam. If the national football team wants to retain the hope of moving forward, it must beat Oman, and even a draw is meaningless. Although not too many people expect the national football team to break through from the top twelve, no one wants to see this team determine the role of accompanying the prince to study early.

In the four rounds of competition that have ended, the Chinese team ranked second to the bottom of Group B with 3 points, which was slightly better than the same period in the previous World Preliminary Tournament if the different levels of opponents were not taken into account. At that time, the national football team led by Gao Hongbo only scored 1 point in the first four rounds, but in the next two games, the national football team, which was changed to lippi to coach, opened a super level play mode, first drawing 0-0 with Qatar, and then beating the powerful South Korean team at home 1-0, these 4 points directly allowed the national football team to retain the hope of promotion.

Today's national football team certainly can't wait for a first-class coach like Lippi to lend a helping hand, but how to better use naturalized players may become a variable for the team to improve its competitive level. In fact, in front of the eyes, in the second half of the two battles against Japan and Saudi Arabia, the appearance of Luo Guofu and Alain made the national football team show different levels of competition and mental outlook, especially in the latter game, the change was particularly obvious. But unfortunately, the coaching staff of the national football team will insist on the use of naturalized players in the future, for two reasons that are clichéd - one is physical problems, and the other is that too many naturalized players may have an impact on the existing tactical system.

For Li Tie, whether he can play these two top twelve matches will also determine to a large extent whether he can continue to stay in the national football coaching position. Although as of now, the Chinese Football Association still supports Li Tie in all aspects, but once there is no improvement in the two games between Oman and Australia, changing the coach may become the only option for the Chinese Football Association. After all, after the two matches in November, the national football team will not continue to play in the top 12 until January 27 next year, and time is no longer a problem. (Photo: Chen Long)

Author: Chen Haixiang

Edit: Gu Miao