The Dragon Country Star Football Team later sent an invitation to Shen Feng, but at that time, Shen Feng had already gone to Dubai with the U22 national youth team to participate in the training there.

The training of the U22 national youth team, the Dragon Football Association attached great importance to it, not only the senior party officials of the Football Association went to Dubai to supervise the game, but also the head coach of the Dragon team, Lippi, also went to Dubai to inspect the team's training status.

After three warm-up matches in Dubai, the U22 team returned to China to prepare for the tournament to be held from 9 to 27 January 2018 in Changzhou, Suzhou Province, where the U23 Asian Cup will be held.

This year's U23 Asian Cup, although it is only a chicken rib event, unlike the next one, that is, the 2020 U23 Asian Cup, and at the same time the 2020 Tokyo Olympics trials, but the Dragon Country Youth Team still attaches great importance to this event, after all, it is an event held at home, in order to ensure the team's results, and even Shen Feng, who has been sitting in the core of the attack in the Dragon Country team, is recruited into the team.

It is also because of the participation of Shen Feng, the most popular and supported player in Dragon Country Football, in this U23 Asian Cup, so it has received unimaginable support from fans.

The U23 Asian Cup, although it is named the "Asian Cup", is only a youth championship after all, and in terms of weight, it cannot be compared with the real Asian Cup.

Therefore, after the Dragon Football Association obtained the right to host the event, it arranged the event to be held in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, a second-tier city.

Changzhou, located in the core of the Yangtze River Delta region, is much stronger than cities of the same level in the central and western regions in terms of economic development level alone, but after all, it is only a prefecture-level city, without its own professional team, and there is only one stadium that is relatively large, but there are only more than 10,000 spectators.

Originally, neither the AFC nor the Dragon Football Association expected how many tickets could be sold for this event, but with the Dragon Country team reaching the World Cup finals for the second time in history, a wave of football boom was set off in the Dragon Country, and the popularity remained high, which made the fans' desire to watch the game soar.

Therefore, although this U23 Asian Cup, in Asia, can only be regarded as a third, or even fourth-level event, the tickets for the three group stage games of the Dragon National Youth Team have been sold out early.

Even, this event has been targeted by scalpers, and there is scalping on the market, and a ticket with an original price of dozens of dragon coins has been fried to two or three hundred yuan, which is still in short supply.

Of course, the number of games with hot ticket sales is limited to the games in which the Dragon National Youth Team participates, and the other games, more than 10,000 tickets, can be sold one or two floors, even if it is quite good, it is better than the AFC and the Dragon Football Association expected in advance.

The main reason why the tickets for the three group stage games of the Dragon Country Youth Team are sold so well is that there is Shen Feng in the team, the face of the current Dragon Country football!

Before the game, the AFC officially announced the "Hope Star" of the players participating in this U23 Asian Cup, which specifically listed Shen Feng separately and named him the title of "Super Hope Star"!

This is indeed the case, Shen Feng is not the youngest among the players participating in this event, but he has just turned 20 years old, which is definitely not too old, and he happens to be the appropriate age player for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

However, his ability and results are already far ahead of the rest of the players, even those who are older than him!

Not to mention anything else, just saying that he won the 2017 AFC "Asian Footballer of the Year" and "Best Men's Young Player" awards, which made him stand apart from other players!

Shen Feng is the biggest star among the players participating in this U23 Asian Cup! Not "one", there is no one side by side!

As the host, the Dragons were seeded in Group A in the group stage, along with Oman, Qatar and Uzbekistan.

Since Qatar is the host country of the next World Cup, that is, the 2022 World Cup, in order to prepare for the World Cup held at its own doorstep, it has made great efforts in youth training.

Uzbekistan's youth training in recent years, has also done very well, cultivating a number of highly competitive players in Asia, in the previous World Cup qualifiers in the Asian top 12, their national team, if not in the last three rounds of the sudden collapse, only 1 point in the three rounds, the Dragon team wants to catch up in the group standings, surpass them, and qualify for the play-offs, it will be more difficult!

The three opponents of the Dragon National Youth Team in the group stage, only the Oman National Youth Team, is slightly inferior, but they are also the same as the Dragon National Youth Team, Qatar National Youth Team, and Uzbekistan National Youth Team.

On January 9, 2018, at four o'clock in the afternoon, the first round of the U23 Asian Cup group stage match between the Longguo National Youth Team and the Oman National Youth Team blew the whistle on time at the Changzhou Olympic Sports Center Stadium.

In this game, the Longguo national youth team did not send the strongest lineup, Shen Feng and Zhang Yuning did not appear in the starting list, Zhang Yuning was injured because of his body, and he was not suitable to play for the time being, Shen Feng was temporarily placed on the bench because the head coach of the national youth team wanted to use him as a deterrent weapon, and then decided whether to send him to play according to the trend of the game.

However, the starting lineup of the Dragon Country Youth Team in this game is still not weak, led by Wei Shihao, who performed well in the East Asian Cup and scored two goals in three games, and among the other players, there are as many as six who have been selected for the Dragon Country team and have already played in the Dragon Country team.

Therefore, this national youth team can be regarded as the second team of the Dragon Country.

With the cheering of more than 10,000 fans in the stadium of Changzhou Olympic Sports Center, the boys of the national youth team played their own level and cleanly beat the Oman national youth team with a 3:0 and made a good start to this U23 Asian Cup!

Three days later, at the same time and on the same field, the Longguo national youth team welcomed the second opponent of the group stage, the Uzbekistan national youth team.

The Uzbekistan national youth team lost to the Qatar national youth team by one goal in the first round of the game, and if you want to qualify from the group, you must win all three points in this game!

They have studied the first game of the Dragon National Youth Team and have an understanding of the strength of the Dragon National Youth Team, so they are very pragmatic in this game to adopt the tactics of defensive counterattack, when the defensive formation is completely contracted to defend the third area, often piling up eight * 90 players in their own penalty area, and the bus formation is very tight.