Chapter 17 World Preliminaries

After four rounds, the Manchester City duo occupy the top two of the table, but third and fourth places are not among the traditional top five in the Premier League.

Arsenal and Liverpool are both five and sixth in the table with seven points from two wins, one draw and one defeat.

Chelsea, on the other hand, are 13th – Jose Mourinho's side have just four points from four league games, just two points behind bottom-placed Sunderland.

After four rounds, Crystal Palace and Leicester City were the most surprising teams.

Crystal Palace have won three of their previous four league games, losing just one, and are third with nine points.

Leicester City have become one of the three unbeaten teams in the Premier League since the start of the new season, except for Manchester United and Manchester City, Leicester City have not lost so far - they have won two and drawn two in four Premier League games, and they have eight points and are in fourth place.

You know, Crystal Palace and Leicester City are relegation teams in people's eyes, and it is really surprising that they were able to grab so many points at the beginning of the season.

However, after four rounds of the English Super League, it is about to usher in the FIFA international break.

Carlo Ancelotti will not miss this day. Manchester United are all on the right side at the moment, and the FIFA international break will undoubtedly interrupt United's upward momentum.

Moreover, there are many internationals in Manchester United's squad, and it is unknown how many players will be affected when they return from the national team break. If a few more injuries are added, it will make Ancelotti even more headaches.

However, it is not possible to let the international players go to the national team, this is a FIFA rule, and Manchester United cannot violate it.

The biggest headache for Ancelotti is Li Qingshan. Because the other players are fine, like Juan Mata, he just needs to go back to Spain. As for Li Qingshan, he needs to fly half the world and return to China.

And Ancelotti couldn't think of any reason why Lippi wouldn't recruit Li Qingshan. In fact, before the start of the Premier League, the Chinese team played in the East Asian Cup, but because the East Asian Cup is not an important event, Ancelotti used his personal relationship with Lippi to allow Li Qingshan to spend a full pre-season warm-up match with Manchester United.

But this time is different, because this round of national team match day, the Chinese team's task is to qualify for the Asian region of the World Cup, and the Chinese team will participate in a series of qualifiers in the next two years, starting from the second stage of the top 40.

After winning the Asian Cup, domestic fans naturally have more expectations for whether the Chinese team can enter the World Cup again.

The Chinese team's grouping in the round of 40 looks quite optimistic. As the first team, the Chinese team was placed in Group C, in the same group as Qatar, Maldives, Bhutan, and Hong Kong, China.

Every time the lottery comes out, the domestic media inevitably analyzes it.

There is no doubt that on paper, the Chinese team is the strongest team in this group, and the only team that can pose a threat to the Chinese team is Qatar.

In the round of 40, the 40 teams are divided into five groups, and the top two teams in the group points and the third place in the two best groups directly advance to the round of 12.

The media cheered as soon as the draw results came out, and no one thought that the Chinese team would not be able to qualify in such a group.

No matter how bad it is, playing teams like Hong Kong, China, Maldives, and Bhutan, the Chinese team is still quite sure, and at most it will lose to Qatar and rank second in the group.

In the top 12, the Chinese team has been absent for three consecutive sessions, and it seems that this time, the Chinese team can finally enter the final qualifiers of the Asian region of the World Cup!

………

China's first match in the round of 40 qualifiers was played against Hong Kong, China.

Perhaps because of its own strength, the Chinese Football Association set the home of the game against the Hong Kong, China team in Shenzhen, which is across the river from Hong Kong. The Hong Kong, China team only needs to take a bus to get from Hong Kong to the competition venue in 40 minutes.

The Chinese Football Association has taken full care of Hong Kong compatriots and completely given up the home advantage.

Because if the home stadium is set in the northeast or northwest, the Hong Kong, China team will inevitably go through a long-distance flight, and the state will definitely not be as good as Shenzhen, which only needs to take a 40-minute bus ride to arrive.

The Hong Kong team can take a subway to the game, but the players of the Chinese team have to fly to Shenzhen.

I don't know what the Chinese Football Association is thinking about, anyway, the home stadium is in Shenzhen.

Fans in Shenzhen are still quite enthusiastic about the national team's matches, and tickets for Shenzhen Bao'an Stadium were sold out early. In addition to local fans in Shenzhen, Shenzhen also has high-speed rail connections to other cities in Guangdong, and fans in the neighboring Fujian region can also easily come to Shenzhen to watch football through high-speed rail.

But against the Hong Kong team, the first half of the game was destined to disappoint the fans.

Since the opponent was not strong, considering that Li Qingshan had just flown back home from England, Lippi did not choose Li Qingshan to start, but let him sit on the bench.

With the strength of the Chinese team, even without Li Qingshan, it stands to reason that it should be easy to win the Hong Kong, China team.

But after half-time, the bright red scoreboard at Bao'an Stadium reminded all the fans that the score was still 0-0.

In the first half of the game, although the Chinese team firmly controlled the situation on the field, the international players just couldn't shoot.

Yu Hanchao hit the goal beam twice, and Wu Lei hit two single shots in a row. In the final stage of the game, Yang Xu's close-range header actually hit the goalkeeper by mistake.

The Chinese team shot 19 shots on goal in the first half, but the score was... Zero to zero!

If it had been before, there might have been invective at the scene. But fortunately, there is still Li Qingshan on the bench, and the national team has just won the Asian Cup, which has also added a lot to the image of the international players, so that the fans can resist the urge to abuse.

Sure enough, before the start of the second half of the game, Li Qingshan put on his jersey and stood on the sidelines, ready to come on as a substitute.

He replaced Yang Xu, the starting center of the first half.

After Li Qingshan came on the field, he took the captain's armband from Feng Xiaoting and put it on his hand.

Li Qingshan himself does not actually have any leadership philosophy. But because of his own strength, when he comes on the pitch, even if he doesn't say anything, he can make his teammates feel at ease.

Sure enough, at the beginning of the second half of the game, Li Qingshan received the ball on the penalty line, and the naturalized central defender of the Hong Kong, China team easily completed the turn, followed by a direct right-footed shot. The goalkeeper of the Hong Kong team was helpless.

After piercing this layer of window paper, the rest of the game is easy to play.

Hong Kong's resistance crumbled, and their backline was crushed one after another under the onslaught of the Chinese team.

Six to zero!

After Li Qingshan came on the field, the Chinese team scored six goals in just 45 minutes of halftime!

In addition to Li Qingshan himself scoring three goals, Wu Lei, Yu Hanchao, and Feng Xiaoting, who played as a central defender in this game, all scored.

In the first game of the World Preliminaries, the Chinese team was thrilling and passed smoothly.

The second game was against the Maldives "away" in Shenyang.

The reason why it is said to be an away game is because the hardware conditions of the Maldives' own home stadium have not passed the review of the AFC, so they arranged for Shenyang as their temporary home stadium.

The Chinese team did not give the Maldives any chance in Shenyang, where the Chinese team defeated the Maldives 7-0, and Li Qingshan scored a hat-trick in the second consecutive World Preliminary Tournament.

After this game, Li Qingshan flew back to Manchester and threw himself into the Premier League again.

In the fifth round of the English Premier League, Manchester United will usher in a heavyweight match!