When When the Chinese Football Association launched the U23 policy, someone joked that this policy would make Chinese football players who are still the main player before the age of 23 and retire after the age of 23.
This joke may be to use extreme situations to satirize this extreme policy. But what is unexpected is that such a player really appears in the real world now.
La Liga Espanyol was founded in 1900. Do you know who the first Chinese player in this club's 122-year history is? The answer is not Wu Lei , but a player named Xu Xu .
Xu Xu was born on January 13, 1998 in Suining, Sichuan. At the age of 7, he started his football career at Luneng Football School. When he was 15 years old, Xu's father brought his son to Barcelona, Spain. Xu Xu first tried out in the football holy land of La Macia for a period of time, and then joined the local Coneglia Club youth training camp. Three years later, the La Liga team of Barcelona Espanyol officially signed the newly-adult Xu Xu.
Xu Xu only stayed in Espanyol for a few months. He found that he could not play the main player in the team's echelon, so he chose to terminate the contract with the team. Espanyol, a Chinese-funded team, did not make things difficult for him. In October of the same year, Xu Xu joined the U19 echelon of Saint Andre.
also didn't stay for long in the St. Andre team Xu Xu. A few months later, it came to 2017. This year, the Chinese Football Association introduced the U23 policy, so another La Liga Chinese team, Granada, signed Xu Xu and immediately loaned it to Chongqing Dangdai Lifan, a Chinese Super League team under the same boss.
During his time in Spain, Xu Xu received high attention from domestic football and is known as "Sichuan Messi". Under the voice of fans, the head coach of the National Youth Team Li Ming flew to Spain for inspection for Xu Xu and was selected as the roster of the National Youth Team participating in the "Lisbon Cup". However, after some investigation, Li Ming did not have a high evaluation of Xu Xu, believing that his ability to integrate into the team's tactical system is weak.
Xu Xu's performance after returning to China verified Li Ming's view. Although he won the opportunity to represent Chongqing in several cup matches with his U23 policy, he never made a debut in the Chinese Super League. In the summer window of 2017, Xu Xu joined the Shaanxi Chang'an Athletics team. In this lower-level team, Xu Xu got more opportunities to play with the help of U23 policy, but after four and a half seasons, as a striker, he has never scored any goal for the team in the game.
According to the data, Xu Xu represented Shaanxi Changan Athletics as a U23 player in the 2019 season as a U23 player and started 10 times in the China League One; but after losing his U23 identity last season, Xu Xu only got three chances of making a substitute in the league.
Judging from Xu Xu's performance in the game, he is about 170cm tall and relatively thin. Although his feet are excellent, he is completely unable to withstand the physical confrontation of the China League One level, which makes him unable to gain a foothold in the China League One. Some fans believe that Spanish youth training pays more attention to technical training when players are underage, while strength training has to wait until after players become adults. However, not long after Xu Xu became an adult, he was "exported to domestic sales" because of the U23 policy, so that "Sichuan Messi" ended up with only his skills but no physical confrontation at all.
Xu Xu has made great efforts for his football career along the way. The situation in the domestic professional football market is very bad now. Xu Xu's ability cannot gain a foothold in the China League One level. In addition, at the age of 24, he is now the father of two children. These factors should be what prompted him to make a decision to give up football and make a living.
