Made Xing: Limited Appearances of National Team U Players in the League, Performance Awaits Evaluation

On August 20th, according to Made Xing, a veteran reporter from the Sports Weekly, since the U19 national youth team of the 2005 age group will also be using this international match window to assemble at Xianghe on September 2nd, and is scheduled to play two warm-up matches against the visiting Iraq U19 national youth team on September 6th and 9th, all the players recruited by Antonio’s newly reformed U21 national team were born in 2003 and 2004, with no “grade-skipping” players. Moreover, after the U20 Asian Cup in February next year, Antonio’s U21 national team will not temporarily recruit any players born on or after January 1st, 2005.

Given that the China League One and League Two do not take a break, and the U19 national youth team is also in training, it is not surprising that many players who have not played in the Super League can enter the U21 national team list. According to statistics, out of the 25-man list, 19 are from the Super League first teams, but six of them have had zero appearances this season so far. Liu Xiaolong, the forward from Shanghai Port, has only made one substitute appearance for a total of 10 minutes; Liu Yujie from Shanghai Shenhua also made only one substitute appearance, for just 9 minutes; midfielder Wei Zhiwei from Meizhou Hakka only recently got two opportunities to play.

Made Xing wrote: “Overall, the playing time of players in this age group in professional leagues is still relatively scarce, especially compared to their peers in South Korea and Japan. Especially after the cancellation of the U23 policy in the Super League over the past two years, the playing time of players like Hu Hetao and Motalifu has formed a stark contrast, because these two players precisely benefited from the U23 policy, thus emerging in the Super League and eventually being selected for the U20 national youth team and directly becoming starters. Now, after the cancellation of the U23 policy, the playing time of these two players in the league has dropped sharply, of course, Motalifu suffered a serious injury this year. Under such circumstances, what kind of performance will these players, lacking league training opportunities, show when they come to the U21 national team in the upcoming Changsha Four Nations Tournament?”