Background
China PR has a very very hopeless National Team in 2023. In the 2022 WC Qualifier Final Round, we only won one among the ten games, and shamefully lost to Vietnam 1-3 for the first time since 1959. However, in the early 21st century, China’s PR is one of the powerhouses in Asia. In 2002, my NT qualified for World Cup for the first time in history (which I will talk about it in the next post), and in 2004, my NT achieved second place in the Asian Cup. With those victories, and confidence that China PR could qualify for the 2006 World Cup, China PR started the journey for 2006 World Cup Qualifier.
Good Start, but is it really good?
The 2006 World Cup Qualifier is divided in three stages: In the first stage, some weak teams are going to compete against each other and the winners qualify for the second stage. My team receive a bye for the first stage. In the second stage, my team is paired up with Kuwait, Hong Kong and Malaysia.
This draw is considered a very draw from China PR’s perspective. China PR is very good at playing against Kuwait at that time: In 1998 WC Qualifier, we defeated Kuwait in both Kuwait stadium and Dalian Stadium. In 1994 Asian Games, we defeated Kuwait again, 2-0. The reason for the fact we are good at playing against Kuwait is due to the difference in style of play between us (and that is the same reason why we always win Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates in 1990s). Kuwait also did not perform so well in the last World Cup Qualifier, where they tied Singapore and was eventually eliminated by Bahrain in Kuwait City’s Stadium. For the other two teams, Hong Kong and Malaysia, they are significantly weaker than us and has almost no possibility to qualify.
My NT team win the first three rounds against Malaysia, Hong Kong and Kuwait respectively. here are the scores:
| China (H) | Kuwait (A) | 1-0 |
|---|---|---|
| China (H) | Hong Kong (A) | 1-0 |
| China (A) | Malaysia (H) | 4-0 |
Even though we win all games first rounds, there are quite a few problems that is detrimental to us.
(1) We only win Kuwait 1-0. Considering that head-to-head goals have higher priority than overall goal difference, if we lost Kuwait 2 goals or more in the away venue, we are officially screwed. Coach from China PR warned that “[winning only] one goal in home stadium is not a satisfactory result” because playing in Kuwait venues in Kuwait city is going to be very hard.
(2) We only win Hong Kong 1-0. This means that we may not have more overall G.D. than Kuwait in the future. If we lost Kuwait in the second round, it will be very problematic.
Deterioration
In the fourth round, facing the weakest Malaysia, we have to score sufficient goals for Kuwait not to have higher goal difference than us, but unfortunately, things are getting worse: someone from my NT (I forget who) received a red card during the game, causing us having to play with one person less. Malaysia plays stronger than we think and we did not have too much opportunity during the game. In the end, we only defeat Malaysia 1-0.
In the fifth round, we could secure qualification for third round directly if we tie or win Kuwait, but if we lose 0-1, Kuwait will have 2 more G.D. higher than us, which means that in the last game, we have to win Hong Kong by AT LEAST 3 goals. The coach who brings us to 2004 Asian Cup final wants to play defensively, but this decision ends up becoming a disaster. As we cannot lose Kuwait, every player in China PR NT become so nervous that they frequently make mistakes throughout the game. We have very few chances of attacking during the game, while Kuwait has a LOT. Even though Liu Yunfei, our goalkeeper who saved the penalty during the 2004 Asian Cup semifinals again Iran, performanced extremely well during that game and saved various shots-on-target from Kuwait, we still lost 0-1. If Liu did not perform that well during the game, we may lose 0-2 or even 0-3, in which those two scores would send Kuwait to the third round and an ELIMINATION for us.
here is the situation after the 5th round:
| Team | Score | GD |
|---|---|---|
| Kuwait | 12 | 8 |
| China PR | 12 | 6 |
| Hong Kong | 6 | Not important |
| Malaysia | 0 | Not important |
Since Kuwait and China PR has the same head to head result, the one with higher GD would qualify. This means that China PR would have to massively win Hong Kong in order to advance to the next round.
Fake like Hollywood
To ensure we win a lot in the last round, we negotiated with people from HK National Team, asking them to deliberately lose a lot to us in the last game. They agreed. (Note: There is no formal evidence on whether China actually negotiated with HK. But based on the results of the game, it is highly likely that China and HK have some consensus on the results of the final game. Similarly, Kuwait and Malaysia may also have some consensus as well.) We also have people from CFA going to the Kuwait venues to track the score on the Kuwait vs Malaysia side, so that we can score based on their results.
The AFC committee, on the other hand, knows the situation and informally says that “any results of the last round (Kuwait vs Malaysia, China PR vs Hong Kong) is possible”, which implies that neither of the four teams will be punished for matchfixing regardless of the results of last game.
The two game (Kuwait vs Malaysia, China PR vs Hong Kong) starts at the same time. (On the Wikipedia page, they state that China PR starts 5 hours later than Kuwait. However, that information on wikipedia is ENTIRELY WRONG.) Both Kuwait and China wants their games to end later than the other, so they both used some strategies: In China’s venue, Hong Kong players refused to go to the venue during the second half, which causes a few minutes of delay to the game. In Kuwait’s venue, Kuwait claims that they want to fix the net of the goal, which delays a few minutes as well.
In the first 50 minutes, China scored 5 goals, while the score on the Kuwait venue is Kuwait 1-1 Malaysia. With 5 goals ahead and Kuwait only scoring 1-1, players from China PR decide to stop attacking and wait for Kuwait to score. However, things drastically changed in the next 35 minutes, while Kuwait scored 5 goals in 35 minutes, pushing the results to 6-1. This result means that China would need to score 3 more goals in order to qualify for the next round.
However, the signals of the cell phone in the Kuwait venue stops working during 50th - 85th minute, which means that people from CFA is unable to send the score to the China’s venue. As a result, the China NT did not know such drastic changes until 85th minutes. During the 35 minutes, both China and HK did not attack (the reason for that is unknown). China PR receives a penalty in the second half, but Zheng Zhi, who scored 4 penalties in the Asian Cup, missed it. If he scored that penalty, we would have qualified to the third round. (By the way, the HK’s goalkeeper becomes a goalkeeper coach for Hong Kong NT in 2010s, and one of his students is Yap Hung Fai. He performed very well in 2018 World Cup Qualifier in the two matches against China PR, with his efforts, HK NT tied China twice in 2018 WC Qualifier.)
After we know those drastic changes, players from China NT are desperate to score. They scored a sixth one in 88th minutes. When the China NT vs Hong Kong game is around 90th minute, Kuwait’s game ends at the match stays at 6-1. This means that if we score two more goals within the last few minutes, we would qualify for the third round. In 92th minutes, we scored the 7th score. The coach furiously shouted “one more! one more!” and the China PR players celebrated for the fact that if they score one more, they would qualify for the third round. Ironically, those celebrations wasted the last few seconds, in which if they did not celebrate, they would have enough time just to score the 8th goal.
After the celebration, Hong Kong goalkeeper hits the ball towards the China’s side. When China decides to run and score the 8th one, and when the commentors shout that “Hope that China PR could score the 8th one in the remaining time”, the South Korean referee blows the whistle.
The game ends.
We win, 7-0. But even if we win, Kuwait qualify because they have more GF.
The scoreboard showing 7-0 suddenly becomes so ironic.
Meanwhile, in the Kuwait venue, everyone is cheering for their national team qualifying third round. They hope that if Kuwait perform well in the third round, they could qualify just like how they did in 1982.
Ironically, some Chinese fans are also cheering because they don’t know the rules. They thought that if China PR and Kuwait have same GD, China and Kuwait would play a playoff in another country’s venue. They thought China PR still has a chance.
It is not until the next day that they realized China are eliminated, Kuwait are qualified.
We are officially over.
Aftermath
Kuwait qualified to the third round. They won Uzbekistan and tied Saudi once in the first five games. In the sixth game, they could qualify to the Playoff Round (Fourth Round) with only a tie to Uzbekistan. However, in the sixth game, even though they managed 2-0 in the first half, Uzbekistan score three consecutively in the second half, pushing the results to 2-3 and qualified to the playoff.
After this game, China PR rapidly declines. It is not until 2018 that they qualified for the AFC Final Round again.