It is well-known that since the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Japan and South Korea, the Chinese national football team has not been able to qualify for this stage again. The main reason for this result is the lack of reserve talents, which means that the youth training in the past 20 years has not been good enough to cultivate batches of talents to serve the national team.
Since 2002, the Chinese national team has not qualified for the World Cup, and our national youth team has not made it to the World Youth Championship since 2005. It is even harder for the youth teams to compete when they cannot defeat opponents at the youth level, let alone at the senior level. Therefore, only when our national youth and junior teams become stronger will the national team have a more promising future.
In February of next year, a new edition of the U20 Asian Cup (Asian Youth Championship) will take place, with the U20 national team (national youth team) playing at home. For this edition of the Asian Youth Championship, the national youth team has set a clear goal: to strive to return to the World Youth Championship stage after 20 years. In addition to the home advantage in next year's competition, the group draw for the national youth team is also relatively favorable. In Group A, the other three teams are Australia, Kyrgyzstan, and Qatar. According to the rule that the top two teams from each group advance, as long as the national youth team performs normally, there should be no major issues with advancing from the group.
Regarding the schedule, on February 12th of next year, the national youth team will face the weakest team in the group, Qatar's national youth team, at home, which is also the opening match of this Asian Youth Championship. Honestly, starting with the weakest team in the group is better than starting with the strongest team in the group, such as Australia. This way, the national youth team has a higher margin for error! As the head coach of the team, Djordjevic, following his leadership of the U23 national team at last year's Hangzhou Asian Games, will once again lead the U20 national team in a match. It can be seen that the Football Association has great trust in him, and we also hope that Djordjevic will not disappoint this trust and strive to lead the national youth team to a successful victory in the opening match of next year's Asian Youth Championship!