Fox in the Penalty Area

After Hu Lai trained under the hot summer sun for a month, the 18th Asian Cup in South Korea opened.

Twenty-four teams determined by the qualifiers gathered in South Korea. In the next month, they will decide the final champion in eight stadiums in six cities in this country.

After the World Cup qualifiers last year, the Chinese team underwent some changes. Many old players retired and some Mesozoic and young players were added.

In this Asian Cup, the average age of the Chinese team is 27 years old, neither the oldest nor the youngest among all 24 participating teams.

Before the game, the head coach of the Chinese team, Marcel Wilson, said in an interview that the task of the Chinese team in this Asian Cup is to reach the quarter-finals. In the last Asian Cup, the Chinese team finally reached the semi-finals. Many players from that Chinese team at that time are no longer in the national team. The two teams have different staffing and experience levels, so there is no way to make a simple comparison.

The quarter-finals can be regarded as a very pragmatic goal.

The Chinese team broke into the top 16 fairly smoothly, and then met the host South Korean team in the quarter-finals.

The match was scheduled for the Seoul World Cup Stadium.

For a while, the online marketing account began to circulate a saying that the Koreans did this deliberately, just to avenge the 0:3 loss to the Chinese team in the East Asian Cup at the beginning of the year.

Many Chinese fans followed and scolded the Korean stick for being narrow-minded.

But this time they really wronged the Koreans.

The schedule and the venue of the competition have been determined long ago, and it is not after the top 16 is released that the venue is temporarily arranged, so how to prepare for the game?

The South Korean team is the host, and their home stadium must be the World Cup Stadium in Seoul, where the opening ceremony of the World Cup was held.

In the end, who told the Chinese team to only get the second place in the group, so they can only go to the Seoul World Cup Stadium to face the South Korean team?

This is not a deliberate arrangement by the Koreans, but an arrangement of fate.

Three months ago, the South Korean Olympic team, bearing the name of the "Korean National Team", was defeated 0:3 by the Chinese Olympic Team, bearing the name of the "Chinese National Team".

Three months later, fate arranged for the real South Korean national team to avenge the real Chinese national team here.

Before the game, the South Korean media clamored, "Let them see the real South Korean national team!"

For this reason, the South Korean team put up the strongest lineup even when they were already superior in strength, and sent all the overseas players, including their number one star and main striker Park Sun-tae. The striker who plays for the traditional La Liga team Sevilla Navigator is currently one of the best stars in Asia.

In the Qatar World Cup that ended at the end of last year, he scored two goals for the South Korean team. Although he failed to help the South Korean team reach the knockout round, he is already the top scorer in the South Korean team.

Now at the age of 28, he is in his prime. He has participated in three World Cups, two of which were the main players. He has scored four goals in the World Cup, which is the second highest score in the World Cup finals in Korean football history. many players. Now the whole of South Korea has high hopes on him, hoping that he can lead the South Korean team to reproduce the brilliant results of the 2002 World Cup in the World Cup.

But to be honest, after knowing that there is such a No. 1 person, Hu Lai feels that unless the South Korean team hosts another World Cup, it is almost impossible for Park Chuntai to lead the South Korean team to reproduce the top four results of the South Korean team in the World Cup... After all That achievement is not based on the performance in the arena alone.

Of course, it may be difficult for Park Chun-tae to lead the South Korean team to repeat the semi-finals of the 2002 World Cup, but they are still a top-notch team in Asian football.

In the three games of the group stage, Park Chuntai scored three goals and currently leads the Asian Cup scorer list.

In this year's Asian Cup held in China, the South Korean team has one and only one goal, and that is to win the Asian Cup again after twelve years.

If they win the championship, all players in the team will be exempted from military service. Of course, Park Chun-tae doesn't need it, because he has already been exempted from military service by winning the Asian Games championship.

Compared with the star-studded South Korean team, the Chinese team's lineup is much poorer. Not only is there no overseas player, but after Qin Lin quit the national team, he also lacks a big brother who can support the scene.

After finishing the World Cup qualifiers and retiring a group of veterans, the current national team is dominated by Mesozoic players and very young players. There is no big boss like Qin Lin who can convince everyone with his promises. This makes them face When there is a South Korean team with players like Park Chuntae leading the way, it seems a bit vain and not very confident.

After all, the South Korean team brought up Park Chuntai before, and the Chinese team also had players like Qin Lin who had won the Asian Footballer of the Year.

And now...even the Chinese football media are very ashamed, what is the angle of their reporting "'Light of Asia' Pu Chuntai alone is worth more than the combined worth of all the players of the national football team"...

Before the game was played, morale was lost.

"Our media is also weird enough." Hu Lai complained to Wang Guangwei after seeing the news. "How can anyone use this method to boost others' prestige and destroy their own ambitions before the game? It's simply collaborating with the enemy and treason!"

The two of them watched this game in the restaurant of the training base.

In addition to them, there are all the players of the youth team, Xia Xiaoyu is among them-this is a special request from the youth training director Shi Jisheng, asking everyone to stay in the restaurant after dinner at night and wait to watch the live broadcast of the game.

With Hu Lai and Wang Guangwei as the core, everyone sat around behind them and watched the Sino-Korean war through the projection in the restaurant.

"It's just habitual complaints about the national football team. It may not be as serious as you said..." Wang Guangwei shook his head.

"Gao Chen is on the bench..." When the TV broadcast swept across the Chinese team's bench, Xia Xiaoyu recognized one of them.

Hu Lai froze for a moment before remembering the story behind the name.

He was injured by the Koreans on this court. After I was shoveled by Sun Haomin, domestic public opinion repeatedly mentioned this matter.

And what was the name of the person who shoveled Gao Chen back then... whoring?

While Hu Lai was searching for the name in his mind, Wang Guangwei next to him said, "Park Sung-hing is the starter for this game..."

There was a commotion among the youth team players: "He still has the face to start!"

"Maybe Bangzi did it on purpose? He intentionally disgusted us and affected Gao Chen's state..."

"That's why Wilson didn't let Gao Chen start..."

"It's useless to start. Gao Chen was tortured by that serious injury a long time ago. Hey, he was also a promising forward, but..."

Hearing everyone's indignant discussion, Wang Guangwei said to Hu Lai beside him: "Looking at it now, Hu Lai, you were lucky at the beginning. If Sun Haomin really hurt you, then all your performances after this season will be nothing. gone."

Hu Lai nodded: "Yes, I'm really lucky..."

He sincerely thanked the salted fish system once in his heart.

The [Broken Giant Bear Legguards] also entered the official mall after using it. Hu Lai went in and looked at it later, and found that the legguards needed 30,000 points to buy again. Compared with [Lover's Red String] which only cost 10,000, 30,000 points is not cheap. But compared with his future career, 30,000 points are definitely not expensive.

Hu Lai even felt that as long as he had enough points, he should buy one and keep it safe.

So after he received the East Asian Cup task reward, he found that the point system alone had rewarded as much as 100,000. He immediately used 30,000 points to buy a [broken giant bear leg guard] and put it in the warehouse for backup at any time. .

Then he went into the system space from time to time to take a look, as long as he saw the leg guards with the giant bear pattern neatly placed in the system space, he felt extremely safe as if he saw his bank account balance had an eight-figure balance.

※※※

Back to the game itself, the strength of the Chinese team is completely behind the South Korean team, and this is the home court of the South Korean team, and some people know how to operate and it is normal.

So although the players of the Chinese team are very hard-working, this fighting spirit is still difficult to shorten the gap between them and South Korean football.

In the end, amidst the deafening cheers and boos of the South Korean fans, the Chinese team lost to their opponents 0:2. They were eliminated just after reaching the first round of the knockout round, ending their journey in this Asian Cup.

After the game, the downcast players of the Chinese team sat on the court and looked at the cheering and celebrating South Korean players with lost eyes.

CCTV commentator He Feng is saying: "... Chinese football has owed too much debt in the past. Although we have started to reform and catch up, because the debt we owed in the early stage is too huge, the catch-up in the past few years It's not enough for us to catch up with opponents like Japan and South Korea...but after the failure, please let us have a glimmer of hope for the future...Think about the East Asian Cup in March, how did the boys of our Olympic team The Korean Olympic team was defeated on this field. Those young people...they are the future of Chinese football, and their victory makes me believe that Chinese football should be on the right path this time..."

Listening to the commentator's voice, the players of the Shining Star Youth Team in the restaurant turned their attention to Hu Lai and Wang Guangwei, and of course they mainly focused on Hu Lai. Because the protagonist of that 3:0 victory was right in front of their eyes!

While everyone was looking at Hu Lai, Xia Xiaoyu puffed out his chest and sat upright, proud of Team Hu.

Shi Jisheng, the head of the club's youth training, stood up and slapped his hands: "Okay, okay, if you lose, you lose. There is nothing to say... What if your skills are not as good as others? Practice! Go back and rest now, and train normally tomorrow morning!"

Everyone left the restaurant one after another. When they walked to the youth team dormitory, they still couldn't help talking.

"...If Hu Lai was here, maybe the result would be different?"

"Hey, the gap between our national team and the South Korean team can't be made up by a single trick? It's an all-round backwardness..."

Someone cast their eyes on Xia Xiaoyu: "Xiaoyu, aren't you familiar with Hu Lai the most? What do you think?"

"Ah? Me? I don't know..." Xia Xiaoyu said, "And it's meaningless to discuss this topic. Let's train hard. The national team is too far away."

"Xiaoyu is right, it's good if we can do our own thing well."

"That's right, you guys, I'm so impatient! Didn't the narrator say everything? We owe too much, and we have to pay it back little by little. It's not that fast...Is it, Xiaoyu?"

"Yeah." Xia Xiaoyu nodded, but clenched his fists where no one else saw.

Only one year... only one year!