champion light

Chapter 1127
After the Chinese team defeated Jordan, the other three quarter-finals were played one after another.

Japan defeated Uzbekistan 3:2, and their number one star Shinji Kagawa scored twice.

Australia beat Iraq 1-0 in overtime, and it was Kewell who scored the winning goal for Australia.

South Korea also defeated Iran 1-0 in overtime.

As a result, the Central and Western Asian teams in the semi-finals were wiped out, the East Asian teams occupied three seats, and Australia occupied a place.

The Asian Cup held in West Asia has almost turned into the East Asian semi-finals...

And the opponent of the Chinese team in the semi-finals has also been decided, and their opponent is Australia!

This time, because the Chinese team performed very well in the Asian Cup, it attracted the attention of many Chinese who usually don’t watch football at all. When they found out that the Chinese team’s opponent in the Asian Cup was Australia, they were all surprised——When did Australia become an Asian country?Isn't the Asian Cup a competition between Asian countries?
How did Australia come about?

But in fact, the geographical concept in football is different from the geographical concept that everyone is familiar with.

In football, the football associations of various countries can join the football federation of their own continent, but they can also apply to join the football federation of other continents.

For example, after the Japanese Football Association has improved its own level, it has been thinking about leaving Asia and entering Europe.Why would you want to join UEFA?
Because the Japanese Football Association believes that the level of Asian football is too low. If it goes on for a long time, it will be detrimental to the long-term development of Japanese football.If you want to improve your own level, you have to play with high-level countries. If you join UEFA, you can participate in the European Cup every four years, which is much better than participating in the Asian Cup.

However, this concept has never been implemented.

In Asia, there are other countries that have joined UEFA. For example, the Israeli Football Association, which is definitely Asia in terms of geography, has joined UEFA, and Kazakhstan from Central Asia has also joined UEFA.

The purpose of Australia's joining the AFC is the same as that of the Japan Football Association, which is to hope to compete in a relatively high-level region and improve their own strength, which will also help them enter the World Cup.

In the past, Australia was in the Oceania Football Federation. Except for them, it was New Zealand, and the others were all some island countries in the Pacific Ocean. The football teams of these countries were all amateur in nature and the level was very poor.

As a result, FIFA has given Oceania only half of the places to participate in the World Cup.

They must first break through the siege in the Oceania qualifiers and win the first place, and then compete with the No.5 team in the South American region, or with the No.4 and No.5 teams in the Asian region to compete for the place in the World Cup finals.

In order to be able to improve its own strength and participate in more World Cups, Australia decided to join the AFC.

They have also considered joining the AFC. In their opinion, the level of the AFC member countries is not bad except for Japan and South Korea.

This is better than going head-to-head with those strong teams in South America.

Australia's joining the AFC has a feeling of "going into the herd".

In fact, their strategy did work.

After officially joining the AFC on January 2006, 2010, Australia successfully qualified for the [-] World Cup finals in South Africa.

In the World Cup qualifiers in South Africa, they were in a group with China, Qatar, and Iraq in the top [-], and finally entered the top ten with three wins, one draw and two losses.In the top ten, they were in a group with Japan, Bahrain, Qatar, and Uzbekistan.

In the end, Australia won the first place in the group with an unbeaten record of six wins and two draws. Just as they had considered when they chose to join the AFC, they easily won the tickets for the South African World Cup finals.

Australian players have the physical fitness of European and American players. At the same time, because many international players play in European leagues and have good tactical skills, they really stand out in the Asian qualifiers.

Teams like Japan could have dominated Asia, but Australia can take advantage of their physical advantages against them.

In the South Africa World Cup Asian qualifier top ten match, Australia drew Japan 0:0 in the away game, and defeated the opponent 2:1 at home, taking the lead in the competition with Japan for the first place in the group, and finally won the first place in the group, easily qualifying.

The physical fitness of the Chinese players is better than that of the Japanese players, but it is still not enough for the Australian players.

Australia's weapon against the Chinese team is likely to be the body.

This semi-final will not be easy for the Chinese team.

※※※

The other semi-final is the East Asian derby between Japan and South Korea.

The game will be played at 25:25pm on January [-]th, and the match between the Chinese team and Australia will be held at [-]:[-]pm on January [-]th.

This arrangement is the same as the quarter-finals, obviously to take care of the audience in China, because this time happens to be 25:[-] p.m. on January [-]th, BJ's time.

However, South Korea and Japan are also East Asian countries, and their time zone is even one hour earlier than China. However, the Asian Cup did not arrange their game in the first game. That is because the combined audience of Japan and South Korea watching the semi-finals is not as many as that of China...

This time after the game against Jordan, Gao Hongbo did not give the team a day off, he only gave the team half a day off, allowing them to sleep in on the second day after the game, have lunch at noon, and start training after the lunch break.

Of course, this time Gao Hongbo met Rong Guang again in the restaurant at [-]:[-].

Rong Guang still looked like he was sweating profusely just after training.

Gao Hongbo didn't chat with him this time, but just nodded and greeted him.

※※※

During the entire Asian Cup, the training of the Chinese team has only one content, which is to let the whole team keep up with Rongguang's rhythm and speed as much as possible. Although Rongguang will inevitably slow down its own rhythm during the game to allow teammates to keep up, there is no such setting in training.

Rong Guang acted like he was on the hook during training, abusing and torturing his national team teammates to his heart's content.

This is specifically requested by Gao Hongbo, so that Rongguang can bring out his best in training, which is tantamount to a benchmark, a standard, and other Chinese players must work hard to approach this standard in training.

This kind of training is actually not prepared for the Asian Cup, because the training content is not targeted.

It was the same with Jordan in the last game, and it is the same with Australia this time. Gao Hongbo did not let the players practice against their opponents.

The Chinese team's training during the Asian Cup was all closed, and reporters were not allowed to interview, take pictures or video during the whole process.

Otherwise, if the media finds out that the Chinese team trains like this, it may cause an uproar...

They actually killed all the way here!
It makes no sense at all!
The Chinese team has always played their own football in the Asian Cup. At the beginning, they relied on Rongguang's personal ability. In the last two games, they tried to integrate Rongguang with the whole team. They did not change their style of play because of the opponent's characteristics.

In fact, Gao Hongbo and Rongguang have a tacit understanding, that is, they regard the Asian Cup as a warm-up for the World Cup qualifiers.

In other words, the Asian Cup is just a leveling dungeon before the World Cup qualifiers. The Chinese team cut monsters and upgraded in the original dungeon, improved their equipment, and improved themselves.

Then after coming out of the dungeon, go to the PVP battlefield of the World Cup qualifiers to fight other players, that is the real essence.

In this way, it seems to conflict with Rongguang's previous goal of winning the Asian Cup?

No, in fact, there is no conflict at all. There is no conflict between leveling up monsters and winning the championship, or even the same goal by different routes.

Leveling and spawning monsters does not prevent you from winning a championship in the end, and winning a championship does not necessarily mean that you cannot practice leveling and spawning monsters.

Rong Guang has full confidence in himself, so he doesn't think there is any incompatibility between the two.

In the fill-in-the-blank question of "____ leveling and spawning monsters, ____ champion".

Glory filled in "Both...and...", not "I would rather...nor...", or "For...don't...".

I believe that after this Asian Cup, the tacit understanding between the other players of the Chinese team and Rongguang will improve, and they will be able to cooperate with Rongguang better.

And different from the warm-up match, every game in the Asian Cup is a real battle, and the opponent will try their best, so the effect of training the team in the Asian Cup will be better than the warm-up match.

In the past, Gao Hongbo led the Chinese team to play warm-up matches and friendly matches. They performed well in the friendly matches, but they stumbled in the official matches.Therefore, some Chinese media and fans ridiculed Gao Hongbo's Chinese team as the "king of friendly matches".

In fact, it means that his team can only play well in warm-up matches and friendly matches, and it will be over as soon as the official game comes.

Gao Hongbo was also quite helpless about this.

But now it’s all right, with Glory, this problem no longer exists, and the Chinese team can also use games like the Asian Cup to train the team!
It's unbelievable to say it - when did the Chinese team use the Asian Cup to run the team?

Of course, everyone doesn't know about this now. Except for Rong Guang, Gao Hongbo, and Fu Bo, no one else thinks that they are training for the Asian Cup.

Even for the players of the Chinese national team, they feel that the training content is not targeted at all, and they have never wondered why this is the case.They are very serious in training and try their best during the game. They are not preparing for the World Cup qualifiers, but really want to win the game and win the Asian Cup.

I believe that even if they exhaust their imagination, they will never think of that.

(End of this chapter)