After the Chinese team defeated Jordan, the other three quarter-finals were also played.

Japan beat Uzbekistan 3-2 with their number one star Shinji Kagawa scoring twice.

Australia, on the other hand, beat Iraq 1-0 in extra time, and it was Colwill who scored the winning goal for Australia.

South Korea also beat Iran 1-0 in extra time.

As a result, the top four Central and Western Asian teams were all wiped out, with East Asian teams occupying three seats and Australia occupying one.

The Asian Cup in West Asia is about to become the semi-finals of East Asia......

And the opponent of the Chinese team in the semi-finals has also been decided, their opponent is Australia!

This time, because the Chinese team's performance in the Asian Cup is very good, it has attracted the attention of many Chinese people who usually don't watch the game at all, and when they found out that the Chinese team's opponent in the Asian Cup was Australia, they were quite surprised - when did Australia become an Asian country? Isn't the Asian Cup a competition between Asian countries?

How did Australia come about?

But in fact, the concept of geography in football is different from the concept of geography that everyone is familiar with.

In football, the football associations of various countries can join the football federation of their own continent, but they can also apply to join the football federation of other continents.

For example, after the Japanese Football Association improved its own level, it has been thinking about leaving Asia and entering Europe. Why did you want to join UEFA?

Because the Japanese Football Association believes that the level of Asian football is too low, and it will not be conducive to the long-term development of Japanese football for a long time. If you want to improve your level, you have to play with high-level countries, and if you join UEFA, you can play in the European Championship every four years, which is much better than playing in the Asian Cup.

However, this concept has not been implemented.

In Asia, there are other countries that have joined UEFA, such as the Israeli Football Federation, which is definitely Asian in terms of geographical concept, and Kazakhstan, which is from Central Asia, which has joined UEFA.

Australia's purpose in joining the AFC is the same as that of the Japanese Football Association, which is to play in a relatively high-level region and improve their strength, which will also help them reach the World Cup.

In the past, Australia was in the Oceania Football Confederation, except for them, that is, New Zealand, and the others were all island countries in the Pacific Ocean, and the football teams of these countries were all amateur and of a very poor level.

As a result, FIFA has given Oceania only half of the quota for the World Cup.

They will first compete in the Oceania qualifiers to finish first, and then compete with the fifth-placed teams in the South American zone, or the fourth- and fifth-placed teams in the Asian zone for a place in the World Cup finals.

In order to be able to improve their strength and participate in the World Cup more, Australia decided to join the AFC.

They have also considered choosing the AFC to join, in their opinion, the level of the AFC member countries is okay except for Japan and South Korea, and the strength of other countries is not strong, and they went to the AFC and have a better chance of qualifying for the World Cup.

It's better than going toe-to-toe with the big teams in South America.

Australia's entry into the AFC has a feeling of "tiger in the flock".

In fact, their strategy has worked.

After officially joining the AFC on 1 January 2006, Australia qualified for the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa.

In the World Cup qualifiers in South Africa, they were in a group with China, Qatar and Iraq in the top 20, and finally entered the top 10 with three wins, one draw and two losses. In the round of 10, they were in a group with Japan, Bahrain, Qatar and Uzbekistan.

In the end, Australia finished top of the group with an unbeaten record of six wins and two draws, and as they had originally chosen to join the AFC, they comfortably secured a ticket to the World Cup finals in South Africa.

The Australian players have the physical qualities of European and American players, and because many international players play in the European leagues and have good tactical literacy, they do stand out in the Asian qualifiers.

A team like Japan could have dominated Asia, but Australia could have taken advantage of their physical advantage by playing them.

In the top 10 of the Asian qualifiers for the World Cup in South Africa, Australia drew 0:0 with Japan away and defeated the opponent 2:1 at home, taking the lead in the competition for the first place in the group with Japan, and finally won the first place in the group and easily qualified.

The Chinese players are a little better than the Japanese players, but they are still not enough in front of the Australian players.

Australia's weapon against the Chinese team is likely to be the body.

This semi-final will not be easy for the Chinese team either.

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The other semi-final was the East Asian derby between Japan and South Korea.

The match will be played at 7:15 p.m. on January 25, while the match between China and Australia will be played at 4:15 p.m. on January 25.

This arrangement, as in the quarter-finals, is clearly designed to cater for the domestic audience in China, as it happens to be 9:15 p.m. Beijing time on January 25.

However, South Korea and Japan are also East Asian countries, and even their time zones are an hour ahead of China, but the Asian Cup did not schedule their first game, and that is because Japan and South Korea did not have as many spectators as China alone to watch the semi-finals......

This time, after the game with Jordan, Gao Hongbo did not give the whole team a day off, he only gave the team half a day off, allowing them to sleep lazily the next day after the game, eat at noon, and start training after the lunch break.

Of course, this time Gao Hongbo met the glory in the restaurant at 8:20.

Glory is still sweating profusely, just trained.

Gao Hongbo didn't chat with him this time, just nodded and said hello to him.

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During the entire Asian Cup, the training of the Chinese team has only one content, which is to let the whole team keep up with the rhythm and speed of Rongguang as much as possible, although Rongguang will inevitably slow down his pace in the game in order to let his teammates keep up, but in training, there is no such setting.

Rong Guang was like a hanger in training, abusing and torturing his national team teammates to the fullest.

This is Gao Hongbo's special request, so that Rongguang can give full play to his best state in training, which is tantamount to a benchmark, a standard, and other Chinese team players must strive to get close to this standard in training.

This kind of training is not actually prepared for the Asian Cup, because the training content is not targeted.

This was the case with Jordan last time out, and the same was true against Australia this time, with Gao not letting his players practice against their opponents.

The training of the Chinese team during the Asian Cup was all closed, and reporters were not allowed to interview, take photos and videos during the whole process.

Otherwise, if the media knows that the Chinese team trains like this, I am afraid it will cause an uproar......

That's how they came all the way!

It doesn't make sense at all!

The Chinese team has always played their own football in the Asian Cup, relying on Rongguang's personal ability at the beginning, and the last two games have begun to try to integrate Rongguang with the whole team, and they have not changed their style of play because of the characteristics of their opponents.

In fact, Gao Hongbo and Rongguang have a tacit understanding, that is, to take the Asian Cup as a warm-up for the World Cup qualifiers.

Or to put it this way, the Asian Cup is just a leveling copy before the World Cup qualifiers, and the Chinese team is slashing monsters and upgrading, playing equipment, and improving themselves in the main copy.

Then after coming out of the dungeon, go to the PVP battlefield of the World Cup Qualifiers to play against other players, that is the real essence.

In this way, it seems to conflict with Rongguang's previous purpose of wanting to win the Asian Cup?

No, in fact, there is no conflict at all, leveling up and farming monsters and winning the championship are not at all conflicting, or even the same way.

Leveling up monster farming does not prevent you from winning a championship in the end, and winning a championship does not necessarily mean that you can't level up monster farming.

Glory has full confidence in himself, so he doesn't think there is anything incompatible between the two.

In the fill-in-the-blank question "____ leveling and farming, ____ champion".

Glory fills in the "both...... also ......" rather than "rather...... Don't ...... either, or "for...... Don't ......".

I believe that after this Asian Cup, the tacit understanding between other players of the Chinese team and Rongguang will be improved, and they will be more able to cooperate with Rongguang.

And unlike the warm-up match, every game in the Asian Cup is a real battle, and the opponent will do their best, so the effect of training the team in the Asian Cup will be better than the warm-up game.

In the past, Gao Hongbo led the Chinese team to play warm-up matches and friendly matches, and he performed well in the friendly matches, but when it came to the official game, he stumbled. Therefore, some Chinese media and fans ridiculed Gao Hongbo's Chinese team as the "king of friendly matches".

In fact, it means that his team can only play a good warm-up game and a friendly match, and it will be over as soon as the official game arrives.

Gao Hongbo was also quite helpless about this.

But now, after the glory, such a problem no longer exists, and the Chinese team can also use a game like the Asian Cup to train the team!

It's unbelievable to say - when will the Chinese team be able to use the Asian Cup to run in the team?

Of course, everyone doesn't know about this now, except for Rongguang, Gao Hongbo, and Fu Bo, no one else thinks that they are training for the Asian Cup.

Even the players of the Chinese national team, they felt that the training content was not targeted at all, and they did not doubt why this was so. They are very serious in training and they give their best when they play, not to prepare for the World Cup qualifiers, but to really want to win the game and win the Asian Cup.

I believe that even if they exhaust their imagination, they will never think of that.