On June 1, Beijing time, the U23 Asian Cup will be held in Uzbekistan . Japan, South Korea, Iran , Saudi and other Asian football traditional powers, as well as Thailand, Vietnam and others, but there is no Chinese team among the 16 participating teams.
In October last year, Chinese Football Association announced: Due to epidemic prevention and control and flight restrictions, the Chinese U22 national men's football team was unable to go to Tajikistan as planned to participate in the 2022 AFC U23 Asian Cup qualifiers and had to withdraw from this competition. In the U23 Asian preliminaries, the Chinese team was separated from the Australian team, Indonesian team and Brunei team in Group G. The qualifiers were originally scheduled to be held on Indonesian from October 23 to 31, 2021, but were later moved to Tajikistan due to local epidemic reasons. If the Chinese team fails to participate in the 2021 qualifiers, they will automatically lose the qualification to participate in this year's U23 Asian Cup finals.
The Chinese team has participated in the U23 Asian Cup 4 times, but the record is very bleak. They have only won one victory and have never qualified in the group. In 2016, the Chinese team lost three consecutive games in the group stage, losing to Qatar , Iran and Syria ; in 2018, they missed qualifying for 1 win and 2 losses in the group stage, only defeating Oman and losing to Uzbekistan and Qatar; in 2020, they lost three consecutive games in the group stage, losing to South Korea, Uzbekistan and Iran in succession. Some analysts also believe that the withdrawal of the U23 Asian Cup is related to its poor record in the past, so as not to be embarrassed.
Of course, it is certain that the epidemic and the conflict with the domestic league time were the main reasons why Football Association decided to withdraw the team from the U23 Asian qualifiers. Last year, Beijing Guoan sent a team to Uzbekistan to participate in the AFC Champions League. As a result, some members of the players and accompanying staff tested positive for nucleic acid test, and the whole team had to be isolated on the spot. After 157 days of waiting, all the personnel participating in the AFC Champions League in Beijing returned to China. In addition, if the team is sent to participate in the U23 Asian qualifiers, it will have certain conflicts with the domestic league. Last year, Chinese Super League has made huge concessions and sacrifices for Chinese national football team to participate in the World Cup qualifiers.
In addition, the Chinese Football Association originally used Asian Games as the most important competition task for the U23 national football team this year. Head coach Yangovic even said that he would strive for the gold medal, but the Asian Games has been postponed due to the epidemic, so the U23 national football team will have only East Asian Cup for the time being.
Due to the fact that the Chinese team failed to qualify in the U23 Asian Cup in previous years, this U23 Asian Cup withdrew early. In the next U23 Asian Cup, the Chinese team may be listed as the fourth team, thus separating some Asian strong teams in the same group, increasing the difficulty of the group stage. The UAE Football Association has decided to bid for the 6th U23 Asian Cup in 2024. This competition is also the Asian qualifiers for the Paris Olympics, and the UAE has become the first country to bid for this event. Cheng Yaodong U21 National Youth Team will compete in the qualifiers of the Paris Olympics and strive to enter the Paris Olympics ticket.
