After the match against Athletic Bilbao, Zhao Yang rushed back to China early the next morning to prepare for the World Cup qualifier against the Maldives.
The match time between Espanyol and Athletic Bilbao is 7 pm local time on the 20th and 2 am China time on the 21st.
The match between the Chinese national team and the Maldives will be at 7:35 pm on the 24th.
This also means that Zhao Yang arrives in China with less than two days before the competition.
Zhao Yang didn't have time to go home and take a look, so he got off the plane and rushed directly to the venue of the World Cup qualifying match, Jiangcheng, the capital of E Province.
The Maldives is well-known in tourism circles, but in football circles, it is unknown.
The Maldives is ranked only 153rd in the world and is a typical weak team.
Even for such a team, the Chinese team does not dare to be careless. They are already standing on the edge of the cliff. If they still want to maintain the hope of being first in the group, they must ensure victory in this game and get more wins.
ball and wait for the Qataris to make mistakes.
Because of this, during the critical period when the Spaniards were competing for a Champions League spot, the Chinese Football Association still called back Zhao Yang, the talisman.
It cannot be said that the Chinese Football Association is too cautious. Judging from the historical results, the Maldives is not a team that can be ravaged by others, and it still has a certain fighting capacity.
From a historical perspective, the national football team has played against the Maldives four times, winning all four games, scoring 14 goals and conceding only one goal. In the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup qualifiers, the national football team defeated the Maldives 10-1 at home and 1-0 away.
In this top 40 match, the national football team only defeated the Maldives 3-0 in an away game.
In the 2006 World Cup qualifiers in Germany, the Korean national team, which was fully equipped with all its main players, was held to a 0-0 draw by the Maldives in an away game, which caused a public outcry in South Korea and led to the direct dismissal of the then head coach Coelho.
In this world preliminaries, the Maldives' performance was not bad.
Qatar, ranked first in Group C, faced off against the Maldives, and it was only with the help of the referee that they won a difficult away game.
After the game, Qatari players also came under tremendous pressure from public opinion.
However, because there was no hope of qualifying, the Chinese team became extremely vigorous after Zhao Yang returned. In this away game against the Chinese team, the Maldives were basically ready to give up.
The entire Maldives team has only one professional player, defender Ali.
However, because he was dissatisfied with the formation of coach Herbert, Ali was abandoned when he came to China to play in the qualifiers.
In addition, captain Ashfaq, forward Abdullah and main goalkeeper Imran did not come to China with the team and were unable to participate in the World Cup preliminaries on the 24th.
Originally, the strength of the Maldives was far weaker than that of the Chinese team. Without the four main players,
It can even be said that there is no suspense for the Chinese team to win. The only thing the fans care about is how many goals the Chinese team can win in this game.
The highlight of this round of World Cup qualifiers in Group C is not the Chinese team vs. the Maldives, but the other match in this group, Qatar vs. Hong Kong.
Qatar performed well in the second round of the Asian group stage of the World Cup qualifiers. After defeating Bhutan in the last round of the game, the team currently leads Group C with six wins, ahead of the second-placed Chinese team.
Five points.
As long as the Qatar team draws with the Hong Kong team at home in this game, they can qualify one round ahead of schedule.
Qatar has planned a group of players with African origins such as Cazorla, Aboukkar and Alang, which has made Qatar's combat effectiveness improve rapidly. This year, there are a total of 7 home games in various competitions, and Qatar has won 6 games.
Coming to Hong Kong, China, there is no great suspense for Qatar to win 7 consecutive games.
Of course, the China Provincial and Hong Kong teams are not weak either.
The performance of the provincial and Hong Kong teams in this World Cup qualifier can even be described as eye-catching.
After 7 rounds of group matches, the Hong Kong team is temporarily ranked third in Group C with 4 wins, 1 draw and 2 losses. It still has a chance to compete for second place in the group with the best results, provided that it wins this game away from Qatar.
However, after losing at home in the first round, the prospect of the Hong Kong team's expedition is not optimistic. After all, the reason why they were able to score one point against the national team in the two rounds of the group stage relied more on the whole team.
The team tightened up and defended like a steel barrel.
When Zhao Yang returned, the national football team had a strong front line. The national football team's defense collapsed like an avalanche in the first-round draw, conceding a record-breaking 8 goals.
During the first six rounds, Qatar scored 27 goals and only conceded 2 goals. It performed well on both offense and defense. Moreover, the team currently has 11 different players scoring goals, showing many features on the offensive end.
Qatar's offensive power is so strong, and Hong Kong, China, can only maintain the possibility of promotion by winning in this game. The game will be very open, so the Hong Kong team's defense line with average personal ability will inevitably expose its weaknesses. If you want to keep the goal without losing,
Too difficult.
In the last round, the Chinese team and the Hong Kong team were still life-or-death enemies and even had a historic score, but this round, the two teams have become brothers again.
Just after arriving in the competition area, Zhao Yang said in an interview with reporters that he is a fan of the Hong Kong team in this round and he fully supports the Hong Kong team to defeat Qatar.
The national football players also expressed that they are all fans of the Hong Kong team today and they firmly support the Hong Kong team.
On Internet forums, domestic fans also launched a relay action to support the Hong Kong team's victory over Qatar.
In order for the national football team to qualify, on this day, all Chinese fans are fans of the Hong Kong team.
The national football team, Hong Kong team, and Qatar are all racking their brains to qualify for the group. At this time, the Maldives has become a tourist team and a fans team.
Before Zhao Yang arrived in Jiangcheng, the Maldives had been sightseeing nearby. After Zhao Yang arrived, the Maldives players living in the New Hotel on Hangkong Road collectively turned into star-struck fans. They couldn't wait for the game and took a taxi directly to the National Football Team's hotel.
Sheraton Hotel, asked Zhao Yang for an autograph and a photo.
Of course, there were more Chinese fans looking for photos with Zhao Yang. The Chinese fans didn’t know the Maldivian players and thought they were Zhao Yang’s foreign fans. At first they competed with them for position, but later they heard they were from the Maldives team, the opponent in this game.
The players happily gave the opportunity to them and told them to be careful on the court and not to hurt their idols.
The coaching staff of the Chinese national team did not expect that Zhao Yang would have such a strong influence in Asia. Even the opponent's players asked him to sign autographs and take photos, and even thought that the Maldives came to spy on military affairs.
Zhao Yang was also surprised, but after enjoying the enthusiasm of his opponents, Zhao Yang felt that facing such an informed opponent, there was no need to be as ruthless as the one against Bhutan. After all, they already had enough