() Tang Wu almost single-handedly set off another wave of football craze in China.

Needless to say, college football leagues, joint games, and intramural sports meetings have all put football projects in the focus. This time, more primary and secondary school students have also joined the ranks of "fans", and some places have even proposed to include football in the category of high school entrance examination along with track and field, shot put, and long jump.

With this wave of enthusiasm, the deaf football stadium project has once again accelerated the process. This time, Xinjiang, Tibet, Gansu, Harbin, Yunnan and other remote areas have also contracted out a lot of land to build football stadiums.

Football is a sport that not only trains students' physical strength with its fierce competition system, but also enables teammates to form a tacit understanding and learn how to live in harmony with others in the team.

Parents love football, children love to play football, and leaders naturally welcome football.

The day after Tang Wu's barb kill, the draw for the 2006 World Cup Qualifiers Asian quarterfinals was announced in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Although the Chinese team won the Asian Cup, combined with some usual international friendly matches and the last World Cup and Asian Cup, South Korea and Japan finally led Group A and Group B respectively as seeded teams, with China and Iran listed as the second bracket. Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan are in Tier 3, and Bahrain and North Korea are in Tier 4.

According to the rules, the above eight teams will be divided into two groups, and the top two teams from the two groups will qualify directly for the 2006 World Cup in Germany after the round-robin round-robin. The winner of the two third-placed places will compete with the fourth-place finishers in CONCACAF for a place in the finals.

As a result, South Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain were placed in Group A, while Japan, China, Uzbekistan and North Korea were placed in Group B.

The Chinese team not only avoided the old enemy South Korea, but also successfully avoided Saudi Arabia and Iran, two strong teams in West Asia.

For South Korea, for historical reasons, they avoided the North Korean team, which they least wanted to meet; But on the football field, they met Iran, which they most did not want to face.

Because the South Korean team's heavy defeat in the Asian battlefield is related to Iran: whether it is 2-6 in the Asian Cup in '96, or the gold medal snatched by the Iranian team in the Asian Games in '02, or the 3-4 loss to the opponent in the Asian Cup this year, such results have made the South Korean team avoid this opponent.

And the Iranian team is not without scruples, they are most afraid of the fourth tier of Bahrain, because the Bahrain team has beaten Iran twice in the last World Cup qualifiers.

As a seeded team, the Japanese team has been performing steadily over the years. Although they lost to China in the final of this Asian Cup, the players participating in the Asian Cup do not represent the overall level of the Japanese national team.

But the Chinese team is the last thing to fear is the Japanese team, so for the two teams, the best result is to join hands to qualify.

While such a grouping makes fans excited, they can't help but feel the growing strength of the country.

8 teams compete for 4.5 qualifiers, which is quite high for the national football team.

even vented his deafness and said: Sun Yangyang, Li Tie and Tang Wu play well in the Premier League, and it is not too late for the team to really compete for the 0.5 qualifiers before coming back to compete.

In the Champions League, with Tang Wu's shocking kick, Liverpool became the last team to qualify for the Champions League round of 16, and the Premier League also became the biggest winner.

In the round of 16, there are four Premier League teams, three Bundesliga teams, three Serie A teams, two Ligue 1 teams, two La Liga teams, one Eredivisie team and one Portuguese Super League team, which is very different from the last Champions League.

Compared with the rampant dark horses of the last year, this Champions League has been jokingly called a feast for giants by the media.

Since the restructuring of the Champions Cup in the 99-00 season, there have been continuous losses of traditional giants: Inter Milan in the 00-01 season was eliminated by Helsingborg of Sweden in the qualifying round; In the 01-02 season, Juventus finished at the bottom of the group and failed to qualify; In the 02-03 season, the German team was eliminated in the group stage, Bayern Munich only accumulated 2 points in 6 games, and the third-place Lens team reached 8 points; Last season was an ice age for Europe's biggest clubs, with only Porto having tasted the European title of the four teams that reached the last four, and that memory goes back 17 years.

The awakening of the giants means the demise of the dark horses, and all the Eastern European teams in this Champions League have become the first victims.

From a normal point of view, such a high promotion rate in the four major leagues and the annihilation of Eastern European teams are small probability events. And this is also two sides of the same event - the Eastern European teams are gone, and the big four leagues will naturally have a little more.

The reason for this pattern is believed by The Sun to be related to last year's Champions League upset.

While last year's round of 16 looked normal, 11 of the four major leagues made the cut. But the final four were a big surprise.

This season, except for Chelsea, the remaining three teams have encountered obvious troubles: internal and external troubles, financial constraints, and inability to qualify.

As the saying goes, the heat is poured out. Compared with last year's "Civilian Champions League", this year there is the "Western European Champions League".

This makes fans feel that football, like other fields, has a delicate balance and compensation.

On December 16, the draw ceremony for Europe's two major cup competitions began at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon.

The feast of the giants means that the strong and strong have a dialogue in advance, and the result of the draw this time really detonated the attention of the fans.

The two favourites, Barcelona and Chelsea, met in the quarter-finals, with Real Madrid meeting Juventus in the 02-03 semi-finals with Nedved's heroic performance. Inter Milan drew last year's champions Porto, while Gunners Arsenal met Bundesliga champions Bayern Munich. The old man's team was also "miserable", they met the mighty AC Milan.

In the remaining group, Lyon take on Werder Bremen, Monaco meets PSV Eindhoven early and Liverpool face pharmaceutical company Bayer Leverkusen for a place in the quarter-finals.

Such a grouping made Liverpool happy, and some fans even asserted that the Reds could be regarded as directly advancing to the quarterfinals!

Prior to this, several media outlets, including As, El Mundo and ABC, had provided a detailed analysis of the Spanish team's opponents.

Van Bronckhorst said in an interview: "The last thing Barcelona want to do is to run into a Premier League team"

"They all have a mature style of play, and they all have the quality to win the championship."

After the draw came out, the first story from Reuters was headlined, "Jose Mourinho gets his wish against Barcelona".

Indeed, Mourinho said something like this, and the day before the draw, Mourinho said: "Everyone says Barcelona are the best team in Europe at the moment, so I want to be able to play against them, I want to play against the best team, it's a challenge." Sure enough, this summit duel was an unfortunate statement for the Portuguese, for whom Mourinho had worked as an interpreter for Robson Sr. in Barcelona, it was also an emotional test.

The last time Chelsea and Barcelona met was back in the 2000 UEFA Champions League, when Barcelona returned home from a 3-1 defeat away to make it 5-1 (including extra time), when Figo, Dani and Cocu were all Barcelona starters, while Chelsea also had Gianfranco Zola and Flo. Today, both teams are unrecognizable.

Earlier, Ferguson said in an interview: "I have a hunch that I have never met AC Milan in an international tournament since I took charge of Manchester United and I feel like fate will take us down the same path. ”

Coincidentally, just a day before Ferguson's remarks, AC Milan defender Stam said: "The opponent I would like to meet most in the Champions Cup is Manchester United, I will think that it will be a battle between great teams, both teams have the quality to win, if we meet, it will be my first return to Old Trafford as an opponent, I will pay tribute to the fans there, in Lautrafford I have a lot of good memories, I can say that I am still a Manchester United fan, of course. That's a thing of the past because I'm very happy at AC Milan now. ”

In fact, AC Milan and Manchester United have met in the United States in the Champions World Championship this season, but at that time, many of United's main players were absent, and AC Milan had just resumed training, so they could not represent the highest level of the team.

The penalty shoot-out lasted 10 rounds before AC Milan emerged victorious.

Inter Milan, along with Liverpool, both think that they have been drawn to the "upper sign".

Although Porto was the last champion, this edition of Porto is obviously devastated and how far it can go in the Champions League remains to be seen.

Anyway, for Mancini, as long as he doesn't meet Barcelona and Real Madrid, he thinks it's a signing.

Bayer Leverkusen in the Bundesliga were seen as a last-16 package, but instead of being drawn by a tougher opponent, they met Reds Liverpool.

Although Bayer Leverkusen is known as the weakest team, they also see hope of advancing after seeing Liverpool's lack of short strikers. Of course, all this is premised on whether Liverpool can buy a better striker in the winter transfer window.

An hour after the results of the round of 16 draw were announced, the famous European bookmaker William Hill immediately adjusted the odds to win the championship.

AC Milan replaced Chelsea at 1-6.5 to become the favourite, and Chelsea were tied for second place at 1-7.5 due to an early meeting with Barcelona. After that, there are Arsenal, Juventus, Manchester United and Inter Milan.

As for Liverpool, due to Tang Wu's wonderful play and the fighting spirit shown by the team, the odds with Real Madrid are 1 to 13, ranking behind Inter.

The last champion, Porto, can only be ranked first from the bottom with odds of 1-67.