Putting aside the fact that the national Olympic team players enter the national team, the football grudges between China and Japan are actually very interesting.

More than 20 years ago, there was a popular saying among Chinese fans, about the legend of the Three East Asian football legend: China cannot beat South Korea, South Korea has no choice but to fight Japan, and Japan cannot win China, forming a perfect vicious cycle.

Now it seems that this is a joke that the Japanese team cannot win the Chinese team?

But in the distant 1980s, this was true. The most famous Chinese-Japanese football match in everyone's impression took place in the qualifiers of the Seoul Olympics in 1988. At that time, there was no such thing as FIFA restricting the age of players participating in the Olympics, so those participating in the Olympics were qualified national first teams, not national Olympic teams or national second teams.

The first time in history that the Chinese team entered the Olympic finals was when they defeated the Japanese team in that game.

The Chinese team's defeat against the South Korean team began in 1978. Later, after media exaggeration, it became "Korean phobia", but why haven't you heard of "Japanese phobia"?

Before the 1990s, Chinese football was also an important force that cannot be ignored in Asia. It is a famous strong team in the East Asian circle, so they can't help but encounter the Korean team that is more capable of running and has a stronger willpower, but they have completely gained the upper hand when facing the Japanese team.

Japanese football was not yet civilized at that time. In 1964, the first time the Japanese team participated in the Olympics was the Tokyo Olympics held in the local area, which made it into the first eight. Four years later, he won the third place in the Mexico City Olympics, which was also their best record in the history of the Olympics before the London Olympics. However, although the Japanese team at that time had good results, it could not last long because Japanese football adopted an elite training plan at that time. To put it bluntly, it was to train football as an elite sports. But there were also historical reasons at that time, because there were too few people playing football in Japan, and if they wanted to achieve results, they could only do this. Thirty or forty people were selected from all over the country. These people did nothing and did not need to work part-time, and only had professional training every day.

This is a bit like a national system with Japanese characteristics.

Of course, the players' level will improve quickly in this way, but it cannot last long, because the country cannot always hold dozens of people in captivity for training and competitions. If so, football, a grassroots football with a strong grassroots atmosphere, will not be able to survive in Japan.

So later, after a brief glory, Japanese football fell back to a low point.

After losing to China and missing the finals of the Seoul Olympics in 1988, the Japanese Football Association welcomed a key figure, which was former Japanese national team international Saburo Kawabuki. He began to plan to promote the professional football league in Japan. This was not only for Japan, but also for many other Asian countries, the professional league was a new thing. At that time, Japanese baseball was the largest sport, and football was an inconspicuous small role. However, with the efforts of Saburo Kawabuki, Japan's professional league was born in 1993.

However, Japanese football, which had just established a professional league, suffered a heavy blow at the beginning of its development. In the last game of the Asian qualifiers in the United States, as long as the Japanese team defeated Iraq, they could enter the World Cup finals for the first time. Unfortunately, the Japanese team was tied by Iraq before the end of the game, and the score of 2:2 made them miss the US World Cup.

This failure shocked Japanese football. Three years later, in 1996, Saburo Kawabuki launched an ambitious plan, which was the famous "Japan Football Centennial Plan".

Since then, Japanese football has begun to develop rapidly and finally reached the World Cup finals for the first time in 1998.

In 2005, the Japanese Football Association issued another "2005 Declaration" to create sports culture through football and create a healthy society. By popularizing football, integrate sports into people's lives and create a good living environment for everyone; increase efforts to strengthen football, so that the Japanese national team can perform well in the world competitions, give people courage, hope and touch; maintain the spirit of fair competition, maintain good relations with other countries, and contribute to the stability and peace of the international community.

The specific goal is: in 2015, the Japanese national team will rank among the top ten in the world, and the football population will increase to five million; before 2050, the football population will increase to 10 million, and Japan will hold the World Cup separately again, and the Japanese national team will win the World Cup championship.

These goals sound fantastic, and even attracted ridicule and sarcasm when they were first released.

But now it seems that the goals of Japanese football are all being achieved one by one. For example, winning the World Cup, the Japanese women's national football team has already achieved it. Not to mention that the Japanese women's national football team is not a national team, there is no limit on this century-old goal of Japan. Only the Japanese men's national football team won the World Cup to count.

In fact, if China wants to improve their football level, it doesn’t have to learn anything from Brazil, Spain, or Germany. There is a good partner around them to learn, that is Japan.

From the construction of the national team level, to the maintenance of the league, and to the most important campus football foundation, Japan has a complete set of mature experiences to learn.

Japanese football once had the practice of forcibly elevating the rules of football. Although it won the third place in the Olympics, it eventually fell into a far-reaching situation. No matter how much money, manpower and material resources are spent, there will be no good results.

When the Japanese began to develop their country's football in accordance with the rules of football, and they were united and the whole society participated, the achievements made by Japanese football came naturally and naturally.

When the Japanese team began to seriously build football, the power balance between Chinese and Japanese football was reversed. Since the 1990s, the Chinese team has lost more and won less when they meet Japanese teams again.

As of the qualifiers of this World Cup, the last time the Chinese team defeated the Japanese team was dated back to the East Asian semi-finals in 1998. At that time, Li Bin scored twice and helped Horton coach the Chinese team defeat the Japanese team led by Takeshi Okada 2-0.

After that game, the Chinese team was never able to defeat Japan in FIFA's A-level match again. The embarrassing record of "not defeating Japan" has lasted for fourteen years.

Originally, in the Asian Cup early last year, the Chinese team had hope of getting a squad with the Japanese team, and maybe it could end the embarrassing record of losing to Japan for 14 years.

But Zhou Yi was suspended for accumulating yellow cards in the semi-finals and missed the Asian Cup final with the Japanese team.

In the final, the Japanese team defeated the Chinese team and won the championship.

This is also a new grudge between Chinese and Japanese football at the national team level. Now this World Cup qualifier is considered by the Chinese media to be a battle of revenge for the national team.

Some people say that the national Olympic team defeated the Japanese team. Yes, the national Olympic team did defeat the Japanese team, but that was an Olympic competition. The Olympic competition was not in FIFA's A-level events and had a low status. Messi won the gold medal in the Olympic football event, but his national team honors are still blank, because the Olympic gold medal is not a recognized national team honor.

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Every time the Sino-Japanese confrontation is a lot of stories, the preliminaries of the 1988 Seoul Olympics are one of them.

At that time, the Chinese team led by Gao Fengwen lost 0:1 at home in the qualifiers, which forced the Chinese team to a desperate situation. The away game was a back-to-earth battle and could not be lost. In the misty autumn rain in Tokyo, the Chinese team wore a red jersey to challenge the Japanese team wearing a white jacket. The Chinese team proposed the best game in 20 years, and the Japanese team had no power to fight back. The Chinese team had fifteen shots in the first half alone. In the end, with Liu Haiguang and Tang Yaodong's goals, the Chinese team defeated Japan 2:0 and stepped on the Japanese corpse into Seoul.

This game is the first time that this game has entered Asia and goes global, and it may be even more significant for Japanese football, because this failure directly gave birth to the later Japanese Football Association's efforts to suck their hair and strive for reform, which led to the current brilliant and powerful Japanese football.

In the 1996 Asian Cup group stage, the Chinese team and Japan team were a dark and ugly representative. At that time, the Chinese team lost 0:2 to Uzbekistan in the first game, and the second 3:0 victory over Syria regained confidence. In the third group stage, facing the Japanese team, which had a clear victory and was willing to give the Chinese team, the two sides could squeeze out the third place in another group in the South Korean team as long as they drew. In this case, the Chinese team and the Japanese team played a tacit understanding. In the ninety-minute game, they had more than half of the time in the backcourt. Everyone thought that the game would end with a score of 0:0. As a result, Japanese defender Naoki Naoki shot in the upper left corner of the penalty area, and the football flew into the Chinese team's goal. Not only the Chinese were stupid, but the Japanese were also stupid. In the end, the Chinese team relied on the results of the match between Syria and Uzbekistan, and saw that others had the right to qualify in the group.

That was the first time that China and Japan had tacit understanding and the last time. Later, the gap between China and Japan became increasingly larger, and the football teams of the two countries were no longer at the same level.

The 2004 Asian Cup was held in China. As the host, the Chinese team reached the finals and met their old rival Japanese team. They won the first game in that game, but the Chinese team then stubbornly equalized the score. The game was originally back to balance, but he didn't expect that the Japanese team's Koji Nakada scored the football into the Chinese team's goal in a corner kick, and the referee and the linebacker turned a blind eye to it, and the goal was valid. This concealed goal greatly affected the mood of Chinese players. In the end, the Chinese team lost 1:3 to the Japanese team at home, allowing the Japanese team to defend their title successfully, and he lost the opportunity to win the Asian Cup for the first time.

In fact, although that Asian Cup was held in China, the Japanese team received more referee benefits than the Chinese team. For example, the first time in history, the change of the goal in the middle of the penalty shootout occurred in Japan. At that time, the Japanese team missed consecutive penalty kicks, so they protested, believing that there was a problem with the penalty kick and applied to change to the opposite half. What is incredible is that this unreasonable request was actually recognized by the referee team! After changing the venue, the Japanese team finally eliminated Jordan... In addition, the ridiculous penalty for throw-in is offside also appeared on the opponents of the Japanese team.

So when it comes to that Asian Cup, there will definitely be many fans who have only used it and are unwilling to accept it.

In 2011, it was the Asian Cup again. The Chinese team reached the finals without being favored, but the core Zhou Yi was suspended for accumulating yellow cards and missed the peak showdown with the Japanese team. The loss of Zhou Yi greatly reduced the strength of the Chinese team. In the end, the Chinese team lost to Japan and missed the Asian Cup championship again.

This Asian Cup may make Chinese fans even more unwilling. Everyone will be able to speculate if Zhou Yi was not suspended and if he was in the final, would the Chinese team really win against Japan and end the embarrassing record of the Chinese team not defeating Japan in the international A-level event?

Fortunately, this time, Zhou Yi was not absent from the World Cup qualifiers.

He will lead the Chinese national team to challenge Japan, a Chinese old enemy, away.

A enthusiastic netizen on Weibo hand-drawn a picture. The Chinese national team players in the picture were all wearing the Eighth Route Army uniforms. The most obvious leader was Zhou Yi. He waved his big knife and shouted: "Comrades, come with me!"

Obviously, this is based on the success of Zhou Yi’s “anti-Japanese”.

After this picture came out, it caused some controversy, but the controversy had nothing to do with football, but it was related to the history of the Anti-Japanese War. It was nothing more than accusing the painter of asking the players to spread the Eighth Route Army uniforms, which was a distortion of history, because the main force of the Anti-Japanese War was ****, and if you want to wear them, you should wear **** military uniforms.

Such remarks attracted condemnation from others, and the two sides fought together, which affected the fish, making it impossible for fans to cheer for the Chinese team.

Under such circumstances, Zhou Yi's real-name authentication Weibo suddenly reposted the Weibo of this picture.

And he wrote: "Thank you, come on, and live up to your mission!"

Some debates continue, but more people can focus on football. (To be continued.)
Chapter completed!