How will China fare in its World Cup qualifiers?
- By Bejan Siavoshy
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E-mail CRI, April 22, 2015
However, three of those four losses the Qataris suffered were during their lackluster showing at this year's Asian Cup, where they crashed out in the group stage. China, on the other hand, topped their group.
The other interesting opponent for China will be the Hong Kong team.
The football team has represented Hong Kong in international football before 1997, when it was still a British colony. Although it is now a special administrative region of the PRC, under the "one country, two systems" agreement, Hong Kong maintains its own teams for global competition - in this case, in football.
China drawing Hong Kong re-ignites an old on-pitch rivalry that came to a crescendo in 1985. In that year's World Cup qualifier, Hong Kong needed to beat China to advance, while China only needed a draw to go on to the next round. Hong Kong earned a 2-1 upset victory over a Chinese squad that was heavily favored in their group. Fans in Beijing rioted after the match and the day was remembered as one of the darkest moments in Chinese soccer history.
China wouldn't get closer to qualifying for a World Cup tournament until their first in 2002.
However, that huge upset has not been the norm when the two teams subsequently met on the pitch. In the two sides' most recent meetings, China took back to back wins over Hong Kong, 1-0 on the island, and a whopping 7-0 in Guangzhou - Hong Kong's worst defeat to an Asian team to date.
The other two teams China will face are minnows Maldives and Bhutan.
Bhutan has become something of a Cinderella story; they are literally the worst team in the world, being ranked dead last in FIFA. However, Bhutan made it into the qualifiers after an unprecedented victory run against Sri Lanka.
The Maldives' biggest win came in 2008, when they beat India 1-0 in the SAFF final, but have a pretty unimpressive record against competition outside of Asia. Their other notable showing is a 0-0 tie against South Korea in the second round of qualifiers for the 2006 World Cup.
With China's improved quality of play as of late, Team Dragon is just on another level compared to teams from Bhutan, the Maldives and Hong Kong - China should be able to handle all three of these teams with ease.
It's the Qataris that China has to worry about; but with a coach that has an intimate knowledge of Qatar's football talent and style, like China has in Perrin, Team Dragon could be the team with the edge in that matchup.
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