Defying All Odds, Road to the World Cup 2014: The 2011 National Team Thread.

Yu Hanchao 5-1

 

Yang Xu 6-1, lol at cameraman focusing on Laos player who got carded

 

was wondering when he would score!
players didnt take advantage to get on the scoresheet!
i know feng was!

 

OK Now I can watch Singapore v Malaysia in peace.

 

No no.
No Indonesia please. I know them too well. Playing in their Senayan Stadium is highly dangerous. Both for players and fans.
新加坡的马来人都怕， 何况华人。

 

According to FIFA, it wasn't yang zhi, but it was federico mancuelo

http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/preliminaries/asia/matches/round=257787/match=300165152/index.html

 

Looks like they finally changed it on FIFA at least..."In (+45'+1) Zhang LIE"

 

On a related note, China climbed two spots in the FIFA rankings update to 73 with their 10 points gained.

Slow but hopefully steady climb; at the very least better than that 100+ ranking eyesore just a few months ago.

 

China ranked 5 in Asia in July FIFA World ranking, they will be in pot 1 FIFA World Cup draw on Saturday.

Pot 1 is best seeded group.

 

Pot 1:
Japan
Australia
Korea Republic
Iran
China PR

Pot 2:
Uzbekistan
Qatar
Jordan
Saudi Arabia
Kuwait

Pot3:
Bahrain
Syria
Oman
Iraq
United Arab Emirates

Pot4:
Korea DPR
Thailand
Singapore
Indonesia
Lebanon

 

Countries in pot 2, 3, and 4 are all probably hoping and begging to be drawn with China...

 

Conversely, China probably praying for a team from Pot 4 only.

 

well, we'll have problems with Korea DPR, so even that pot won't help us.

So what is this? 5 groups of 4 teams and top two in each group advances to the final round? After that, it's 2 groups of 5 with top two in each group going to the world cup?

 

At least this time around China will avoid the big four in the penultimate round of qualifiers. Credit to Gao Hongbo for producing some good results to pull the team up the rankings. So who says ranking is not important.

From pot2 I say avoid Qatar which was twice party pooper in 1990 and 1998.
So here are my preferences starting with the most preferred group opponents.
1 Kuwait
2 Saudi Arabia
3 Uzbekistan
4 Jordan (which has some pretty impressive results lately)

From pot3 avoid Bahrain which China has not beaten for a long time.
1 Oman
2 Syria
3 Iraq
4 UAE

From pot4 avoid Indonesia because of security reasons as I have mentioned earlier and also possible match-fixing.
1 Lebanon
2 Thailand
3 N. Korea
4 Singapore

I put N. Korea ahead of Singapore not because I am from Singapore.
N. Korea is definitely the much stronger team but I have observed that for some strange reasons China actually play better against N. Korea than Singapore. I have seen so many games between China and Singapore where China just seemed to freeze. The last 2 games played in Singapore ended in draws.

There is also security issues though not as serious as in Indonesia. The national stadium has been demolished to make way for a new one which will be completed only in 2014 I think. The best stadium we have now seats only 6000 with sidelines pretty near to the stands. The area outside the stadium is also not conducive to crowd control with very narrow streets leading to the stadium. There is also match-fixing problem which may surprise some of you. Finally the fans here have become very hostile.


So my dream group will be
China
Kuwait
Oman
Lebanon

 

Anyone knows this guy？

http://www.goal.com/en/news/11/tran...uver-whitecaps-sign-long-tan-and-blake-wagner

 

Group A

China PR
Jordan
Iraq
Singapore

 

Hay everyone, I'm not sure if anyone is actually watching the draw but it's currently on the BBC website. Anyway here's the offical draw for all of Asia

ASIAN ZONE DRAW
Group A: China, Jordan, Iraq, Singapore
Group B: Korea Republic, Kuwait, UAE, Lebanon
Group C: Japan, Uzbekistan, Syria, Korea DPR
Group D: Australia, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Thailand
Group E: Iran, Qatar, Bahrain, Indonesia

 

For China, History results against Group A opponents

China W5 D3 Jordan
China W5 D2 L5 Iraq
China W7 D2 Singapore

So Basically a good draw for China