Youthful China aims to make mark at Cup

Global soccer officials have long waited for China to start punching its weight on the world stage but the decade since the national team's run to the 2004 Asian Cup final has been marked by serial underachievement and a battle against corruption.

Local leagues remain tarnished by an anti-corruption drive that swept up dozens of players and officials in recent years, and fans remain wary of a team dumped in the first round of the last two tournaments.

All that aside, the youthful national squad competing in Australia has provided genuine cause for optimism, stringing together encouraging results in the lead-up under French coach Alain Perrin.

Perrin's first match in charge was an uninspiring 1-3 loss to Iraq in March which, ironically, was enough to secure its place in the Asian Cup.

Since then, 97th-ranked China has lost only one of its 10 matches, albeit against a succession of similarly modest opponents.

It faces a difficult group, drawn with North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, but not an insurmountable one and can reasonably be tipped as a dark horse to make the last four.

Whether the very raw squad can get any further than that will be the real test. Captain and 2013 Asian Player of the Year Zheng Zhi is the only player aged over 30.

"The players' age is not important to me... I'm not looking at their ID cards, only their performance and attitude," Perrin said in December.

Midfielder Zheng, who plays for Guangzhou Evergrande, is joined by six of his club teammates for the January 9-31 tournament.

They include striker Gao Lin, who will also be expected to guide the youthful line-up and provide a key path to goal for a side that failed to score in recent draws against Palestine and Honduras.

China has played in 10 Asian Cups, its first in 1976, and was runner-up for the first time in 1984. As with its last two tournaments, a first-round exit would draw fierce recrimination back home.

With Chinese soccer long beset by corruption and match-fixing scandals, a good performance by the national team could be a stepping stone for the nation of 1.3 billion to rejuvenate its footballing potential and overhaul the ailing system.

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