Ivankovic, the high-profile new national football coach, has taken office, and his next priority is to select a new national football squad to prepare for the upcoming back-to-back world preliminaries.
The national team will travel to Singapore on March 21 and then return to their home stadium on March 26 to continue playing against the Asian giant. In order to help the national football team defeat this opponent, the Football Association deliberately chose the venue for the game at the Tianjin Olympic Sports Center.
The last time the national football team played in Tianjin was in 2013, when the opponent was also Singapore. At that time, after Camacho suddenly left class, Fu Bo was ordered to lead the national football team to a 6-1 victory. Therefore, the Football Association placed the venue in Tianjin this time, undoubtedly hoping that the national football team could replicate the glory of that time, so that the national football team could successfully advance to the top 18.
But just choosing a "blessed land", obviously is far from enough, if Ivankovic wants to successfully let the national football team advance to the round of 18 and enter the World Cup again, he must change the existing strategy and adjust the national football personnel, after all, the current national football squad is in urgent need of new and old replacements, and the problem of weak attack has also been exposed in the previous Asian Cup.
The three Asian Cup group stage games have not scored a goal and have not won one, which undoubtedly needs to be summarized by the national football team, and there are too many changes to be made at present. For example, although Wu Lei won the Golden Ball Award again, his performance was not ideal, and Ivankovic should give more opportunities to Wei Shihao and Lin Liangming, two young players, and let them partner Zhang Yuning.
1. Li Titian is expected to replace Wu Xi and Wang Qiuming into the national football team, and is expected to enter the starting lineup.
When the national football team was facing a predicament, Wu Lei showdown his heart when he delivered his acceptance speech: "I feel deserved to win this award", I believe this is also the voice of all national football players, and all this needs to be changed by Ivankovic. In recent years, the national team's results have been unsatisfactory, especially in the Asian Cup, and our performance has not been able to rank among the second tier in Asia.
Of course, Wu Lei also said that he is confident to help the national football team enter the round of 18 of the 2026 World Cup qualifiers, which is undoubtedly an exciting goal, but to achieve it, we can't avoid reality, for Ivankovic, if you continue to use the existing group of players, it will not be easy to enter the top 18 in the qualifiers.