After Zhou Yi returned to China, he and his teammates from the national team were training at the Chongming Island Training Base in Shanghai. A week later, they would set out from here to Tokyo, Japan to challenge the Japanese national team.

After returning to the national team, Zhou Yi was welcomed by his teammates. In this team, although he was young, he had a very high prestige. This prestige was not obtained by colluding with the team, coach, forming cliques, and playing with power techniques, but by earning him through training and performance in the game.

This training and game performance is not his performance at Dortmund. To be honest, Dortmund's Zhou Yi is very far away from the national team players. How he performs in foreign clubs is not necessarily related to his status in the national team.

If a player performs like a god in the club, he will become a soft-footed shrimp when he arrives at the national team. When he is needed, he will not stand up. How can such a player get the trust of his teammates? Even if the head coach supports him, it will be afraid that the players will rebound.

So Zhou Yi really conquered everyone with his performance in the national team and won everyone's trust.

Everyone knows that although he is young, he is a person who can be reliable at any time.

In last year's Asian Cup, if it weren't for him, the Chinese team might not have even qualified in the group, let alone reaching the finals.

If it weren't for him, the Chinese team would never have won that precious gold medal in this year's Olympics.

Other young players who have newly joined the national team have not enjoyed the treatment of Zhou Yi in the national team. Although the big brothers of the national team also welcomed their arrival, that kind of welcome is polite, which is somewhat different from their sincere love for Zhou Yi.

The young players of the National Olympic Team won the gold medal at the Olympics, which is the pride of Chinese football, but their resumes in the national team are still zero, and it is necessary to prove that they are worthy of this group. Before training and competition with them, many people in the national team will probably look at them with skepticism, but they will not show it directly.

Not to mention that these people are coming to steal the position of the elderly. If anyone can really open his heart and accept them unconditionally, it is really a model of moral imitation.

But it cannot be said that there is a phenomenon of seniority within the national team, because this is not seniority, but a ranking in terms of ability. If these newcomers perform very well in both training and competition after entering, then the national team's national team will accept them, just like they accepted Zhou Yi. When Zhou Yi first came to the national team, many people were looking at him with curious and suspicious eyes, but Zhou Yi conquered everyone with just one training class...

At the Chongming Island training base, everyone was involved in the training camp for the Japanese team. In addition to training on the court, the coaching staff also watched videos of the Japanese team's recent games for the players to understand and analyze the opponents through this.

There are many reporters reporting on the training of the Chinese team. After all, this is the first time that the Chinese team has participated in the top ten after missing the top ten in the two World Cup qualifiers. After being a melon-eating crowd for eight consecutive years, this time he personally took the stage to become a player, which of course touched the hearts of fans across the country.

The media reporting on the training of the Chinese team hope to see the tactics and lineup traces of the Chinese team against the Japanese team during training.

But unfortunately, every training class of the Chinese team is only open to media reporters for fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes are basically some irrelevant warm-up training or shooting training, and do not involve any tactical content.

The internal teaching competition is also completely closed and cannot be seen at all. In order to prevent reporters from spying on information, Gao Hongbo even asked the staff of the training base to surround the training ground with curtains so that reporters would not peek at it.

With such strict prevention, the information the reporters can get is pitifully small. No wonder they are not particularly friendly to Gao Hongbo in Chinese media - he is really too confused to take care of the reporters' feelings. This situation is not about preventing military intelligence, it is simply about preventing thieves.

However, because of such strict defense, Chinese and Japanese journalists cannot get more information about the Chinese team. In the Chinese team that challenged the Japanese team away, will the starting lineup change significantly from the previous two games? Will all the newly recruited Chinese Olympic teenagers start?

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After the training camp in Shanghai, the Chinese team set off for Japan. At the airport, many fans came to see them off.

In fact, in this group, the Chinese team, which won two games and two games, is in a good situation, ranking second in the group with six points. The first in the group is Japan, which has two wins and one draw, and seven points, but the key is that Japan plays one more game than them, and only one more point than them.

As long as the Chinese team does not lose to the Japanese team away, it will be considered as completing the task.

After saying goodbye to the fans who saw him off at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, the entire Chinese team arrived at Tokyo Narita International Airport by plane.

Take a bus here and arrive at the hotel where you are staying, and start preparing for the race two days later.

During this match day, the Chinese team only had one game, so they had relatively more time to prepare for the game. The training camp alone in China would last for a week, which is rare for the national team to arrange the match day in the European League.

The news that the Chinese team arrived in Japan has also become a highly-watched news in Japan.

At Narita Airport, at the entrance of the hotel where they stayed, the most Chinese players saw were not Chinese journalists, but... Japanese journalists!

This shows how much attention Japanese people pay to this game.

At the Olympic Games that had just ended not long ago, the Chinese Olympic team won the gold medal by defeating the Japanese team in the final. This craze has not passed yet.

In China, some media claim to take revenge on the failure of the Asian Cup final last year. At the same time, in Japan, some media are also clamoring to take revenge on the failure of the Olympic final.

Both sides think that the other party is an enemy and you have to avenge him. How could this game not attract attention?

In Japan, the most popular Chinese player is Zhou Yi, because he has been a partner in Dortmund and Shinji Kagawa for two years, and his relationships on and off the court are also good. Japanese reporters know this. When he was in Dortmund, Zhou Yi would also accept interviews from Japanese reporters, so he and some Japanese reporters have always met.

In the eyes of Japanese media reporters and Japanese fans, Zhou Yi is the most familiar Chinese player. He has the most people around him when there are interviews.

Of course, Japanese journalists will also use honorific words when facing Zhou Yi, which is a treatment that other Chinese players cannot enjoy.

Although the two sides were already at odds before the game, Zhou Yi was quite polite to the opponent of Japan.

"The Japanese team is a top-notch team in Asia, and we still have a certain gap with them. This time it is another away game... The situation is not good for us. But we will do our best." Zhou Yi said in a very modest and low-key manner. If he hadn't just led the National Olympic team to defeat the Japanese team in the Olympic final, many people might have really believed that the Chinese team would have many difficulties in away games.

But now, everyone doesn't believe that Zhou Yi and his Chinese team are really so harmless.

Shinji Kagawa is the name that Japan mentioned the most frequently to Zhouyi.

"This game will be the first time you and Kagawa are against each other on the court. Zhou Sang, do you have any expectations for this showdown?"

"Everyone is performing at their best." Zhou Yi said.

"Have you had any private conversations with Kagawa?"

"No, he is at Manchester United now, we don't have much opportunity to communicate privately."

"Kagawa said he was looking forward to the game with Zhou Sang."

"I'm also looking forward to the game with him, after all, I've never played as an opponent."

"So can you predict the outcome of this game?"

Zhou Yi shook his head: "Football is round, and predicting the results is meaningless. All we can do is to do is do our best on the court. As for the results, don't think too much before the game."

The Japanese media have a good comment on Zhou Yi's performance in the face of Japanese journalists - neither humble nor arrogant, the kind of self-confidence that naturally emanates from rather than forcibly pretending to be a man who has truly seen big scenes.

Japanese media also believe that after Nakada Hideho, another star with truly world-class standards has appeared in Asia - they do not think that Park Ji-sung is a world-class star, which may be due to Japanese football's hostility and prejudice against Korean football.

Whether their evaluation of Hideho Nakada is too high is also questionable.

However, the Japanese media's evaluation of Zhou Yi made the Chinese media and fans sound very pleasant - being able to gain recognition and respect from the enemy shows that Zhou Yi's strength and charm are outstanding.

...
Chapter completed!