After the Champions League group stage, Dortmund lost 1:2 to Hannover 96 away in the league. However, in the next seventh round of the league, they defeated Mainz 2:1 away.

After seven rounds of the league, Dortmund won four and lost three times, gained 12 points, ranking fifth.

The start of this league is not outstanding. You should know that Dortmund only lost four games in the whole season last season, but now Dortmund has lost three games.

The road to defending the league champion is not easy.

However, their performance in the Champions League was quite good. In the second round of the Champions League group stage, Dortmund challenged Marseille away and defeated Marseille 2:1, winning two consecutive wins in the group stage.

He also ranked first in the group with six points.

Back in the league, Dortmund also found his form, defeating the newly promoted Augsburg 4-0 at home. Zhou Yi gave an assist and a goal.

After playing this game, it will be the national team match day.

Zhou Yi left the club and returned to China.

For the Chinese national team, this game is the only one in October, but it is very critical.

Their opponent is the Asian powerhouse Iraq team.

The Chinese team is now 4 points with Jordan, and is ranked first in the group by relying on the advantage of goal difference.

Before the top 20 group stage started, there was a domestic Chinese media analysis that if the Chinese team wanted to qualify from the group, then they had to win the two home courts against Jordan and Iraq, otherwise the hope of qualifying would become very slim.

The game that kicked off at 8:15 pm on October 11th, Beijing time was the first home game that must be won.

The Iraqi national team unexpectedly won the Asian Cup championship in 2007. At that time, the national team born in the war won the respect of the whole world.

Many Chinese fans even compared Iraq to the Chinese team, saying that the motherland of the Iraqi national team has been in a turbulent war, and the team does not even have a normal training venue, so they can only train abroad, and every player's family risk their lives.

In this way, they won the Asian Cup championship.

The Chinese team has such good domestic conditions, stable society and prosperous economy, but the Chinese team is still like mud that cannot be supported by the wall.

Because of the chaos in Iraq, Chinese fans seem to have preconceived the fact that the Iraqi national team is not strong, so the Chinese team should be stronger than the Iraqi team.

But this is actually a misunderstanding.

The Iraqi national team has always been a representative of West Asian football. Their nickname is the "Mesopotamian Lions". They won the Arab Cup four times in 1964, 1966, 1985 and 1988, won the Gulf Cup three times in 1979, 1984, 1988, and won the gold medal in football at the 1982 Olympic Games. And they reached the World Cup finals in 1986 and were the first team in the Middle East to reach the World Cup finals. You should know that there were only two seats in Asia at that time, which means that Iraq was one of the two best teams in Asia.

The Chinese team was still struggling to seek a place in the World Cup finals until 2002.

So in terms of historical results, Iraq is stronger than the Chinese team.

Iraqi football is not bad.

However, after the Gulf War, Iraq has been in turmoil, which makes people take it for granted that their national strength is weak, which is equivalent to the fact that football strength is not very good.

Indeed, Iraqi football had a low point after the golden age of the 1980s. However, with the fourth place in football in the 2004 Olympic Games as a symbol, Iraqi football ushered in a new golden generation and finally won the Asian Cup in 2007.

Since the 21st century, the Chinese team and Iraq have faced each other seven times in all competitions, with the Chinese team winning three wins, two draws and two losses. From this point of view, the Chinese team has a slight advantage.

However, if you have to carefully analyze these seven games, you will find that the Chinese team does not have any advantages as everyone thinks.

In the seven games, the Chinese team won three games, two of which were friendly matches, one was the invitational match in 2000, and the Chinese team defeated Iraq 4:1. The other was the warm-up match before the Asian Cup at the beginning of this year, and the Chinese team defeated Iraq 3:2.

The only match for the Chinese team to beat Iraq in the official match was the Asian Cup held in 2004, where the Chinese team defeated Iraq 3-0 in the eight-to-four match.

There are two Asian Cup qualifiers and two World Cup qualifiers in the three draws and two losses.

Is it important to win the warm-up match or to win the qualifiers?

it goes without saying.

So in fact, the Chinese team has no advantage over Iraq in real games.

Judging from the overall historical record, Iraq is also the dominant one. Since the two teams first met in the group stage of the Asian Games in 1974, the Chinese team and Iraq have had a total of 16 games, with Iraq winning seven wins, three draws and six losses, scoring twenty goals, and conceding nineteen goals, which has a slight advantage.

In addition, this Iraq team is now the golden generation that won the Asian Cup championship in 2007, and they are at their peak.

It is not easy for the Chinese team to defeat them.

So from the beginning of this game, both sides were in a stalemate.

It is difficult for anyone to gain an advantage and overwhelm the other party.

No goals were scored throughout the first half.

However, the game changed suddenly in the second half. Just one minute after the second half, the Iraqi striker, captain, and representative of the golden generation of Iraqi football, Yunis Mahmood, finally broke through the Chinese goalkeeper Yang Zhi's ten fingers and took the lead for Iraq!

"Ahhhh!" Liu Hong shouted regretfully, "It was Iraq's first goal! It was Yunis again!"

From the scene, the Chinese team playing at home has no advantage. Even with Zhou Yi, they did not suppress Iraq. Because Iraq is also full of powerful players, after all, it was the golden period of Iraq's entire generation, and what about the Chinese team? Although they won the runner-up in the Asian Cup at the beginning of the year, everyone knows who the biggest contributor to the runner-up is.

Without Zhou Yi, the strength of this national team will still be worrying.

If Iraq is the golden generation, then the golden generation of the Chinese team has not arrived yet...

So there is nothing wrong with falling behind at home to this Iraqi team.

The key is what to do after falling behind.

Everyone looked at Zhou Yi, including the camera lens of the live game broadcast, which also gave Zhou Yi a close-up.

Although Zhou Yi is very young, only twenty years old, he is already the core of this national team.

I also have to thank the head coach Gao Hongbo who loves to use young people and does not like veterans. If he hadn't firmly excluded those experienced players from outside the national team, Zhou Yi would like to be the core of the national team? Have you ever been to the dock? Have you recognized the elder brother? Have you not? Have you not any of the above? So what are you to be the core!

Now this problem does not exist. The country's internal shantoism has been effectively curbed, factional disputes have disappeared, and everyone is united unprecedentedly, so Zhou Yi can easily become the core.

Coupled with his outstanding performance in the Asian Cup, Zhou Yi has conquered everyone's hearts, and he has shown his skills in times of crisis more than once.

So what about this time?

※※※

This time it wasn't that easy.

Iraq has made a very strict defense against Zhou Yi, and they are quite aggressive in Zhou Yi's defense.

This Iraqi team is completely different from the Iraqi team I met during the warm-up match before the Asian Cup at the beginning of the year. This is also the difference in the investment of the biggest opponents in the warm-up match and the official match.

When Iraq launched a full-game press against Zhou Yi like a hunting match, the Chinese team's midfield operation was not smooth enough.

"Zhou Yi needs help..." Liu Hong saw that if the Chinese team relied on Zhou Yi alone, they would be caught off guard in the Asian Cup. However, when they won the runner-up of the Asian Cup and Zhou Yi performed extremely well, the opponent naturally could not ignore Zhou Yi.

By that time, what should I do if the Chinese team that only relies on Zhou Yi?

Some teams watch the World Cup qualifiers more than the Asian Cup. They may not be as hard as playing the Asian Cup qualifiers. After all, the Asian Cup is just to play in Asia, but if they can enter the World Cup finals, it will be an opportunity to show their faces in front of people all over the world.

Gao Hongbo obviously saw this, so he started to substitution, replaced Deng Zhuoxiang on the field, and replaced a striker Yu Dabao. It seemed that he had weakened the offensive power.

However, after Deng Zhuoxiang comes on the court, he can strengthen the control of the midfield, and Zhou Yi can also have a helper. After all, before Zhou Yi joins the national team, the main midfielder of the Chinese team was Deng Zhuoxiang.

After Deng Zhuoxiang came on the court, Zhou Yi faced much less pressure.

The Chinese team finally tied the score in the 63rd minute.

This goal was because Zhou Yi distributed the football to Deng Zhuoxiang, which attracted some of the defensive attention. After Deng Zhuoxiang received the ball passed back by Deng Zhuoxiang, he then stuffed the football to Gao Lin, and Gao Lin scored the football into the goal.

The moment Gao Lin equalized the score, there was a thunderous cheer in the stadium.

"The ball is in!! The Chinese team equalized the score! Beautiful!!" Liu Hong shouted excitedly. "The Chinese team did it! Zhou Yi's assist!!"

Gao Lin turned around and rushed towards Zhou Yi, then hugged each other to celebrate the goal.

Other Chinese players flocked to surround them.

The Chinese fans in the stands cheered. This was just the beginning. While they equalized the score, they began to look forward to overtaking the score! (To be continued.)
Chapter completed!