Xinhua News Agency, Chongqing, June 10 (Reporters Zhao Jiantong and Gu Xun) With Wang Yudong’s penalty kick, the Chinese men’s football team’s 2026 US-Canada-Mexico World Cup Asian Qualifiers Tour officially ended on the 10th. The bitter fruit of missing the promotion has been swallowed one round ahead of schedule. The key question now is, what experiences and lessons can another failure in the World Cup bring to Chinese football? Where is the hope for the future?
The 18-18 stumbled all the way. When the Singapore team “helped” the national football team to advance, many fans shouted: “The 18th round is our World Cup!” After losing to the Indonesian team away, facing the bleak reality of being eliminated, more people still felt uneasy.
From full of expectations to disappointment, why do the fans’ strong enthusiasm always turn into helpless sadness, and why do frustration always linger in Chinese football!
Analysis from the tactical and strategic levels, the head coach selects and employs people, and tactical matching. The players’ technical deformation under high pressure. The disadvantage of the schedule is to go away and then home… The details that can be reviewed and summarized in this World Cup qualifier can be “a basket of details”.
But in essence, this team does not have enough strength, and the ecology of Chinese football is still not enough to support the national football team to stand out from the fierce competition.
The pyramid of the national team has always been eye-catching. After 2002, the complex and futile carvings of the past six sessions have finally lost again and again on the unstable foundation. Instead of relying on the “big bet” of changing some local factors and improving the national team’s performance in the short term, Chinese football should pursue the “natural” approach to step into the World Cup stage by establishing a comprehensive and scientific football development system.
AFC Secretary-General Windsor John once gave a tip to Chinese football: “If you want an excellent national team, you have to start from the grassroots level. Laying a good foundation for youth training, plus good youth training academies and coaches, then you need to build a strong and competitive league to further train players and clubs. This is the way to improve the level of the national team.”
The league is the foundation of the national team. In recent seasons, the earth’s cities such as Beijing, Dalian, and Chengdu have continued to be popular, and the performance of young players has become a hot topic many times, but our professional league is still far from being “strong and fierce competition”: problems such as slow pace, short net game time, and weak confrontationality still need to be solved for a period of time; making way for the national team training, the schedule has become fragmented and has been criticized. In addition, the reality of the decline in competitiveness of Chinese Super League clubs in the AFC Champions League is obvious to all. The reduction in mobile phone visits with top Asian clubs has further restricted domestic players’ ability to improve their high-intensity games.
The hope of the future lies in young people. In this World Cup qualifier, a group of young players such as Wang Yudong and Liu Chengyu made their mark, which is a valuable gain from the national team. In addition, there are also a large number of young players in professional leagues at all levels who are starting to get more and more playing time. There are currently many players over 30 years old in the national football team, and their hopes of continuing to compete for the World Cup in the future are slim. Therefore, no matter who serves as the head coach of the national football team in the future, we must firmly resolve to renew and give young people more opportunities to grow and become successful.
The Uzbekistan team, which also participated in the Asian qualifiers of the World Cup, entered the World Cup finals for the first time for historicity. Their success once again verified the significance of attaching importance to youth training. In the past three years, their U17, U20, and U23 youth troops have been invincible in Asia. Moreover, two main players in Uzbekistan’s “golden generation” have gained a foothold in the Premier League and Serie A giant clubs. Behind these breakthroughs are more than 300 sports schools, 36 boarding football schools, more than 100 football clubs and 100,000 young people participating in football established by Uzbekistan in the past 20 years…
It is gratifying that in the top 18 games, China’s five home courts have achieved success at the hosting level, the venue facilities have been used, and the fan watching craze has risen, which is a great boost to the confidence of the football market and football-related practitioners, and has also played an important role in driving the football industry and revitalizing the event economy.
As a supplement to the professional league, the amateur league also brings some joy and expectations to the Chinese people in another dimension. As the high attention of “village superstars” and “supervision superstars” has successively developed into phenomenal events, a practical problem is also between the Chinese Football Association and relevant departments in various places, that is, how to connect professional football and amateur football more effectively in the future, so that more players with football dreams can obtain a stable competitive environment.
The popularity of amateur football and community football may be a signal that the soil of Chinese football has begun to change. When the development of football atmosphere and football culture reaches a peak, I hope that football can become the lifestyle of more Chinese people and influence more young people to go to the green field, thereby promoting the evolution of the entire football ecology.
Tonight is over, and the Chinese men’s football team will start the next World Cup cycle.
Will the national football team get better in the next four years?
This question is difficult to explain clearly. But instead of falling into the dilemma of “calculating the scores and sufferings of each other”, Chinese football practitioners should put aside the short-term utilitarian idea, look at the long-term, firmly build the foundation of football, and pursue the natural way of success that is natural.
(Xinhua News Agency)