Chapter 145 Old Grudges Between China and Japan

Putting aside the matter of the national Olympic team players entering the national team, the football feud between China and Japan is actually quite interesting.

More than twenty years ago, there was a saying popular among Chinese fans, a story about the football rivalry of the three East Asian countries: China can't beat South Korea, South Korea can't beat Japan, and Japan can't beat China, forming a perfect dead loop.

Now it seems ridiculous—the Japanese team can't beat the Chinese team?

But back in the distant 1980s, that was really the case. The most famous Sino-Japanese football match in everyone's memory took place in the 1988 Seoul Olympics qualifiers. At that time, FIFA didn't restrict the age of players participating in the Olympics, so the teams participating in the Olympics were the first-tier national teams of qualified countries, not some national Olympic team or national second team.

China's first entry into the Olympic finals was by defeating Japan in that match.

And China's winless streak against South Korea started in 1978, which later became known as "Korean Fear Syndrome" after media hype, but why hasn't anyone heard of "Japan Fear Syndrome"?

Before the early 1990s, Chinese football was an important force in Asia, a well-known strong team in East Asia. They couldn't beat the more energetic and determined South Korean team, but they had the upper hand when facing the Japanese team.

Japanese football was still undeveloped at that time. Japan first participated in the Olympics in 1964, the Tokyo Olympics held on their home soil, and made it to the top eight. Four years later, at the Mexico City Olympics, they historically achieved third place, which was their best Olympic record before the London Olympics. However, although the Japanese team performed well at that time, it didn't last long because Japanese football adopted an elite training program, which was essentially treating football, a grassroots sport, as an elite sport. But there was also a historical reason for this, because there were too few people playing football in Japan, so to achieve results, they had to do this. They selected thirty or forty people from all over the country, who didn't do anything else, didn't need to work part-time, and just focused on professional training every day.

This was somewhat like a Japanese-style national system.

With this training method, the players' level certainly improved quickly, but it couldn't last long because the state couldn't always keep dozens of people in captivity for training and competition. If that were the case, football, a sport with strong grassroots appeal, would not be able to survive in Japan.

So, after a brief period of glory, Japanese football fell back into the doldrums.

After losing to China and failing to qualify for the 1988 Seoul Olympics finals, the Japanese Football Association welcomed a key figure, former Japanese national team player Saburo Kawabuchi. He began planning to promote a professional football league in Japan, which was a novelty not only for Japan but also for many other Asian countries. At that time, baseball was the number one sport in Japan, and football was an insignificant minor player. But with Kawabuchi's efforts, Japan's professional league was born in 1993.

However, Japanese football, which had just established a professional league, suffered a heavy blow at the beginning of its development—in the last match of the Asian qualifiers for the US World Cup, if the Japanese team defeated Iraq, they could historically qualify for the World Cup finals for the first time. But unfortunately, Japan was tied by Iraq before the end of the match, and the score of 2:2 kept them out of the US World Cup.

This failure greatly shocked Japanese football. Three years later, in 1996, Kawabuchi launched an ambitious plan, the famous "Japan Football Century Plan."

Since then, Japanese football has entered a period of rapid development, and finally qualified for the World Cup finals for the first time in 1998.

In 2005, the Japanese Football Association released a "2005 Declaration"—to create a sports culture through football and create a healthy society. By popularizing football, integrating sports into people's lives, and creating a good living environment for everyone; increasing efforts to strengthen football, so that the Japanese national team can perform well in world competitions, giving people courage, hope, and inspiration; maintaining a spirit of fair play, maintaining good relations with other countries, and contributing to the stability and peace of the international community.

The specific goals were: to have the Japanese national team ranked among the top ten in the world by 2015, and to increase the football population to five million; by 2050, to increase the football population to ten million, for Japan to host the World Cup again independently, and for the Japanese national team to win the World Cup championship.

These goals sounded very fantastical, and even attracted ridicule and sarcasm when they were first announced.

But now it seems that the goals of Japanese football are being achieved one by one. For example, winning the World Cup has already been achieved by the Japanese women's national football team—don't say that the Japanese women's national football team is not the national team, the Japanese's century-long goal doesn't specify that only the Japanese men's national football team winning the World Cup counts.

In fact, if China wants to improve their football level, they don't need to learn from Brazil, Spain, or Germany at all. They have a very good object to learn from right next to them, which is Japan.

From the construction of the national team level to the maintenance of the league, and the most important foundation of campus football, Japan has a complete and mature set of experiences to learn from.

Japanese football once had a practice of forcibly raising its level regardless of the laws of football. Although it won third place in the Olympics, it eventually fell into the abyss. Any behavior that doesn't develop football according to the laws of football will not have good results, no matter how much money and manpower are spent.

When the Japanese began to steadily develop their country's football in accordance with the laws of football, with the whole country united and the entire society participating, the achievements of Japanese football became natural and inevitable.

After the Japanese team started to seriously engage in football construction, the balance of power between Chinese and Japanese football was reversed. Since the 1990s, the Chinese team has lost more than it has won when encountering the Japanese team.

As of before this World Cup qualifier, the last time the Chinese team beat the Japanese team was back in the 1998 East Asian Four Nations Tournament. At that time, Li Bing's brace helped the Chinese team, coached by Horton, defeat the Japanese team led by Takeshi Okada 2:0.

After that match, the Chinese team has never been able to defeat the Japanese team in a FIFA-recognized A-level match. The embarrassing record of "not winning against Japan" has lasted for fourteen years.

Originally, at the Asian Cup at the beginning of last year, the Chinese team had a chance to compete with the Japanese team, and maybe they could end the embarrassing fourteen-year winless record against Japan.

But Zhou Yi was suspended in the semi-finals due to accumulated yellow cards and missed the Asian Cup final against Japan.

In the final, the Japanese team defeated the Chinese team and won the championship.

This is also a new grudge between Chinese and Japanese football at the national team level. Now this World Cup qualifier is regarded by the Chinese media as a revenge battle for the national team.

Some people say that the national Olympic team defeated the Japanese team. That's right, the national Olympic team did defeat the Japanese team, but that was an Olympic match. And the Olympic match is not in FIFA's A-level events, and its status is not high. Messi has won a gold medal in the Olympic football event, but his national team honors are still blank because the Olympic gold medal is not a recognized national team honor.

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Every Sino-Japanese clash creates many stories. The 1988 Seoul Olympics qualifier is one of them.

At that time, the Chinese team led by Gao Fengwen unexpectedly lost to Japan 0:1 at home in the qualifiers, which put the Chinese team in a desperate situation. The away game can be described as a do-or-die battle, allowing no mistakes. In the misty autumn rain in Tokyo, the Chinese team, wearing red jerseys, challenged the Japanese team, wearing white jerseys. The Chinese team played their best game in twenty years, leaving the Japanese team with no chance to fight back. In the first half alone, the Chinese team had fifteen shots. In the end, with goals from Liu Haiguang and Tang Yaodong, the Chinese team defeated Japan 2:0, stepping on Japan's corpse to advance to Seoul.

The significance of this match for Chinese football was that it broke out of Asia and went to the world for the first time, and the significance for Japanese football may be even greater, because this failure directly led to the Japanese Football Association's determination to work hard and reform, which led to the glorious and prosperous Japanese football we have today.

A match between the Chinese team and the Japanese team in the 1996 Asian Cup group stage was a representative of darkness and ugliness. At that time, the Chinese team lost 0:2 to Uzbekistan in the first match, and then regained confidence with a 3:0 victory over Syria in the second match. In the third group match against the Japanese team, which had won all previous matches and was willing to let China win, the two sides only needed a draw to squeeze out South Korea, another third-place team in the group. In this case, the Chinese team and the Japanese team played a tacit game. For more than half of the ninety-minute match, they were passing the ball back and forth in the backfield. Everyone thought the match would end with a score of 0:0, but as a result, Japanese defender Naoki Soma took a shot from the upper left corner of the penalty area, and the ball flew into the Chinese team's goal. Not only the Chinese were dumbfounded, but the Japanese were also dumbfounded. In the end, the Chinese team relied on the results of the match between Syria and Uzbekistan to advance to the group stage by relying on others' faces.

That was the first and last time in the history of Sino-Japanese relations that the two sides played a tacit game. Later, the gap between Chinese and Japanese football became larger and larger, and the two countries' football was no longer at the same level.

The 2004 Asian Cup was held in China. As the host, the Chinese team made it all the way to the final, where they met their old rival, the Japanese team. The Chinese team scored first, but then tenaciously tied the score. The match was back to even, but then Japan's Koji Nakata used his hand to put the ball into the Chinese team's goal during a corner kick, and the referee and linesman turned a blind eye to this and ruled the goal valid. This goal greatly affected the emotions of the Chinese players, and in the end, the Chinese team lost to Japan 1:3 at home, allowing the Japanese team to successfully defend their title, while they lost the opportunity to lift the Asian Cup for the first time.

In fact, in that Asian Cup, although it was held in China, the referee's preferential treatment for the Japanese team was even greater than that for the Chinese team. For example, the first-ever change of goalposts in the middle of a penalty shootout happened to Japan. At that time, the Japanese team missed several penalty kicks in a row, so they protested, arguing that there was a problem with the penalty kick site, and applied to change to the opposite half. Incredibly, this unreasonable request was actually approved by the referee team! After changing the venue, the Japanese team finally eliminated Jordan in the penalty shootout... In addition, the ridiculous ruling of throwing an out-of-bounds ball being counted as offside also appeared on the Japanese team's opponent.

So, when it comes to that Asian Cup, there will definitely be many fans who are unconvinced.

In 2011, it was the Asian Cup again. The Chinese team made it all the way to the final despite not being favored, but core player Zhou Yi was suspended due to accumulated yellow cards and missed the peak duel with the Japanese team. Without Zhou Yi, the Chinese team's strength was greatly reduced, and in the end, the Chinese team lost to Japan again and missed the Asian Cup championship again.

This Asian Cup is probably even more unconvinced for Chinese fans. Everyone can't help but guess—if Zhou Yi hadn't been suspended, if he had been on the field in the final, would the Chinese team have really been able to beat Japan and end the embarrassing record of the Chinese team not winning against Japan in international A-level matches?

Fortunately, this time, in the World Cup qualifiers, Zhou Yi was not absent again.

He will lead the Chinese national team to challenge Japan, China's old rival, away from home.

Some enthusiastic netizens on Weibo drew a picture in which the Chinese national team players are all wearing Eighth Route Army uniforms. The most obvious person leading the way is Zhou Yi. He is waving a big knife and shouting: "Comrades, follow me!"

Obviously, this is hoping that Zhou Yi will succeed in "resisting Japan."

This picture still caused some controversy after it came out, but the controversy had nothing to do with football, but with the history of the Anti-Japanese War. Some people criticized the painter for letting the players wear Eighth Route Army uniforms, which was distorting history, because the main force in the Anti-Japanese War was the Kuomintang, and they should wear Kuomintang uniforms.

Such remarks led to denunciations from other people, and the two sides fought in a group, also involving innocent people, making it impossible for fans to cheer for the Chinese team properly.

In this case, Zhou Yi's Weibo, which had been verified with his real name, suddenly forwarded the Weibo of this picture.

And wrote: "Thank you, will definitely work hard, and will not disgrace the mission!"

Some arguments are still continuing, but more people can focus on football.