Summary of National Football Asian Cup： One goal is not scored, and one win is hard to find. Has China football reached its lowest point？

　　With Hellbing helping Syria score a goal against India, China’s trip to the Asian Cup officially came to an end. Ranked third in a group that is not strong in overall strength, and third in the group with the worst performance among the six groups, China team has faded out of the top 16 in Asia.

　　The Asian Cup is just a microcosm. In recent years, China’s national teams of all ages have been absent from various world competitions and are struggling in Asian competitions. In the upcoming U23 Asian Cup and Olympic qualifiers, China was even placed in the fourth team.We have to admit that the China men’s soccer team has now become a third-rate team in Asia.

　　Look at the present: the building has fallen from bad to worse.

　　In three group matches, two draws and one loss, one goal failed, and the group was third out, setting a new record for the national football team to participate in the Asian Cup.In this Asian Cup, the problems began to appear from the first match against Tajikistan. In jankovic’s tactics, offense and defense are two different positions. Such tactics are not uncommon in today’s football world, but such real-time position switching requires players’ certain tactical literacy and athletic ability as a guarantee. But it turns out that in today’s China team, many people don’t have this ability.The accuracy of passing the ball is not enough, and the change of ball rights is constantly appearing, which makes this formation change more frequent, which makes the players with insufficient ability more and more exhausted. The loss of power in midfield and the loopholes in defense are the direct results of the mismatch between tactics and players’ abilities.

　　Jankovic tried to solve the problem by changing the array. In the match against Lebanon, jankovic first introduced the 532 formation. But at the beginning of the big list, it seems that it was not selected according to the formation of the five defenders. Such a temporary change is tantamount to robbing Peter to pay Paul, which makes up for the original loopholes to some extent, but it also brings new problems, which is not conducive to the players to play their best level on the court.

　　In the first 45 minutes of the final round against Qatar, the national football team played the best half game of this Asian Cup, but still failed to score. This inevitably reminds people of the last round of the Asian World Cup qualifiers in 2017. In the case of last stand, Qatar, which had no pressure and sent a large number of non-main players, took the lead in the first half but lacked the skills to score.

　　But the difference is that Qatar at that time was a team that failed to qualify at the bottom of the group and even had few home audiences. Now they have transformed themselves into defending champions who qualified early. The identity change between China and Qatar is also a microcosm of the overall development of Asian football in recent years. As Wei Shihao said after the third game,China’s men’s soccer team has fallen behind in all directions, Asian teams are making progress, and we are standing still.

　　Recalling the past: Rome wasn’t built in a day.

　　Looking at the top scorer list of the Super League in 2023, there are only two domestic players, Lei Wu and Tan Long, and only Wang Ziming and Daniel F. Akerson are in the top 20, and the rest are occupied by foreign aid.Over the years, many domestic players have formed the habit of giving the ball to foreign aid in the middle and front court to solve the problem.Once this dependence is formed, over time, they also lose their sense of smell for finding flaws and their spirit of attacking the city and pulling out the village.

　　A few years ago, the Super League and even China A introduced strong foreign aid crazily, and the ball market was hot. The Guangzhou team also won two AFC Champions trophies.However, the false prosperity of football manufacturing in Jinyuan is not sustainable after all. In recent seasons, we have witnessed the demise of one old club after another.And these bubbles are reflected in the national team level, that is, the World Cup, the Asian Cup and other major competitions, without exception, do not end in disappointing results.

　　This is just the tip of the iceberg of the problems existing in the development of China football over the years. According to industry insiders,China’s football development plan has long been out of touch with international advanced concepts, and this disconnection has even lasted for 20 years.For example, the selection, training and competition of high-level players, etc., only when these contents are carried out in the case of high confrontation can ensure that players can adapt to the high-level game rhythm in major events.

　　It’s not that the Football Association didn’t learn advanced cases in the past, but it only learned the surface and the fur. For example, the implementation of the U23 policy is nothing more than driving ducks to the shelves and pushing players who are not capable of competing on such a stage to the stadium, which has created one joke after another with extremely short playing time. Correspondingly,The average age of the national football team is in this Asian Cup.24Ranked the second highest among the participating teams.There are old faces on the court, but few future stars and fresh blood.

　　It’s not that the Football Association hasn’t tried to remedy it, but it’s a temporary solution rather than a permanent cure. At the end of 2018, the national football team set off a wave of naturalization, but five years later, among this group of naturalized players, only Jiang Guangtai participated in this Asian Cup. Besides, there are only a handful of people who are still active in China football. They are destined to be passers-by in China’s football history. They came in a hurry and left in a hurry, but failed to lead the national football team to the World Cup or kill the quartet in the Asian Cup as expected.

　　After all,The meaning of domestication itself is to complete the puzzle, or to add icing on the cake, rather than taking them as the framework and cornerstone, otherwise it will be putting the cart before the horse.Naturally, we should not hope that the appearance of these naturalized players will make the national football team completely turn over.

　　As early as 2015, at the 10th meeting of the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reform, the Overall Plan for Football Reform and Development in China (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan") was reviewed and approved. It puts forward a "three-step strategy" for the development of football in China, that is, the short-term goal of "straightening out the football management system, formulating the medium-and long-term development plan of football and innovating the football management model with China characteristics", and the medium-term goal of "realizing a substantial increase in the youth football population, reaching the first-class level in Asia in the organization and competition of professional leagues, leading the national men’s soccer team in Asia, and returning the women’s soccer team to the ranks of the world’s top teams", and "enabling China to successfully bid for the World Cup, and the men’s soccer

　　But nearly nine years later, we are getting farther and farther away from this goal. In this regard,China Football Association has an unshirkable responsibility. Over the years, the overall design of China Football Association has been problematic from the top of the pyramid.,The separation of management and operation required by the "Program" has not been implemented.Some "moths" are even more selfish, ruthlessly trampling on the efforts of countless footballers day and night. Nowadays, the competitiveness of the league is declining, the clubs are tottering, and there is no successor to the national team … … All this is the result of years of accumulated evil.

　　Seek the future: the past is not admonished, and the future can be pursued.

　　The emergence of every football giant is not made out of nothing and achieved overnight, but has a process from zero to one and from weak to strong. What is done is done, and what happened in the past cannot be changed; But there are still countless possibilities for China football in the future.

　　If we want to develop healthily for a long time, we should rely on our own hematopoietic capacity.Youth training may be the only way out.The "Program" included football in the teaching content of physical education class in primary and secondary schools around the country, and the proportion of class hours increased.But until today, China’s "integration of sports and education" has failed to find that balance point, and the ideal "equal emphasis on learning and training" will inevitably lead to a "learning and training dilemma".

　　Today, our countrytwelveThere are quite a few football people under the age of 18, but many children are under the pressure of further studies.twelveAway from football at the age of 18.Even then they had made their mark on the pitch.How to make more children appear on the football field more permanently is an urgent problem to be solved in the integration of sports and education.

　　The appearance of every star is accidental, and it is by no means accidental. They are born with extraordinary talents, or they are successful step by step, but all of them are under a sound system, Bole’s discerning eyes know pearls, or the waves of the years wash sand. It is an inevitable process that quantitative change leads to qualitative change. No one can be destined to become a star at the age of 12, but "retiring at the age of 12" is doomed to be a star.

　　To change, we must start from youth training and start from the grassroots.Those grass-roots football seems to be far away from the profession and the national team, but this is the foundation for the survival and development of a national football. Only by truly sinking the focus of football development from the top league to the grass roots, exploring the football system suitable for our country, and establishing the path from school to club, from youth training to occupation, can China football develop continuously and gradually move towards a bright future.

　　At present, the first task is to make fundamental changes. All changes have painful periods,Some insiders believe that,The lowest point of China football may be in the future, so we should be prepared that it will be difficult for the national team to achieve excellent results for a long time to come.What China football needs now is to consolidate the foundation of the "football pyramid" seriously, to adjust its direction, to persist in the right path, not to toss about, not to be eager for quick success, to follow the objective laws of football and to move forward steadily.