The home stadium of the national football team was finalized in March, and Hangzhou became a hot spot for football

Reporter Chen Yong reports On December 23, the Chinese Football Association announced the venue of the fourth home stadium of the national football team in the top 18 of the 2026 World Cup qualifiers: Hangzhou Olympic Sports Center Stadium. On March 25, 2025, the national football team will welcome the eighth match of the round of 18 here, at home against Australia. Hangzhou, as a key city for football development in China, has shown a new look as a hot spot for football.

The Chinese Football Association has a clear introduction to the home bid, with a total of 11 cities, including Changchun, Changsha, Chongqing, Guiyang, Haikou, Hangzhou, Jinan, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Wenzhou and Xi'an, bidding for the home games in March. Among them, 3 cities are not suitable for hosting this event due to venue reasons.

"In the selection process of this home stadium, the Chinese Football Association adhered to the principle of creating the best conditions for the national team to participate in the overall consideration, mainly considering factors such as climatic conditions and social benefits. From the perspective of climatic conditions, the temperature in the northern cities in March is low, which is not suitable for the team to prepare for the game and fans to watch the game, so the national team recommends that the home stadium be chosen in the southern city with a more suitable climate. In order to meet the needs of fans to the greatest extent and create a warm home atmosphere, the Chinese Football Association will give priority to the stadium with a large number of spectators when determining the home stadium of the World Preliminaries. The Chinese Football Association said.

Taking into account the above factors and fully respecting the opinions of the national team, the Chinese Football Association confirmed Hangzhou as the host city in the third phase of the 2026 World Cup Asian Qualifiers in March. ”

So far, the top four home games of the national football team in the round of 18 are Dalian (September), Qingdao (October), Xiamen (November) and Hangzhou (March), and the matches mainly consider the weather and the journey of the national football team. The Hangzhou Olympic Sports Center was completed and put into use in 2019 to hold the opening and closing ceremonies for the main venue of the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou. With 80,800 fixed seats, it is the second largest stadium in China after the "Bird's Nest" and the largest home stadium of the national football team in the top 18 of the national football team.

As a key city for football development in China, Hangzhou has a complete football development system, the most well-known are naturally Zhejiang Football Club and Greentown Football School, which are home in Hangzhou, the former is a well-known football club in China, and the latter is one of the top youth training institutions in China.

In addition, Hangzhou has a complete campus football development system, and at the same time is in a leading position in the country in terms of women's football construction. In the 2024 China Youth Football League, Hangzhou U18 Women's Football Team won the national runner-up, and they shook hands with Shanghai Women's Football Team in the final, but unfortunately lost in the penalty shootout. In the women's U17 group of the first China Youth Championship, the Hangzhou women's football team also won the runner-up.

Recently, Hangzhou Football Academy was officially listed in the Cangqian Campus of Hangzhou Normal University, starting from next year, it will recruit about 25 football talents from all over the country every year, and strive to build a high-level football academy with greater influence in about ten years. From 2024 to 2027, Hangzhou will set aside at least 40 official business editors every year to recruit football coaches, and further improve the overall football level of Hangzhou by improving the level of coaches.

At the recent work mobilization and deployment meeting, the main leaders of Hangzhou described the construction of a key city for national football development as a "difficult but correct thing". It's not easy to do this well, one of the focuses of football development is the players, and the focus of player development is on the campus. To this end, Hangzhou started from the talent growth system, hoping that the officially unveiled Hangzhou Football Academy could solve the problem of "retirement at the age of 12". Next, Hangzhou has relevant measures.

In terms of professional leagues, in addition to Zhejiang Football Club, there is news that Langfang City of Glory will be moved to Hangzhou. As for the professional league, Hangzhou hopes to achieve the pattern of "one city, two supers": the specific plan is that by 2027, Hangzhou plans to have at least two men's and women's second division and above league teams, and by 2035, strive to have a total of four or more men's and women's professional football club teams, two into the super league, and two into the first division.

In March 2025, the national football team will have two top 18 matches: on March 20, the seventh round, the national football team will play Saudi Arabia away, and on the 25th, in the eighth round, the national football team will play Australia at home in Hangzhou.

For the national football team, if you want to qualify for direct promotion, in fact, the seventh round of away matches with Saudi Arabia is the most critical, and only by getting points or winning, the national football team is expected to directly qualify for the World Cup. But from a realistic point of view, if based on getting the top four in the group, the national football team's home match with Australia is more crucial.

At present, the national football team intends to carry out a short-term training camp during the winter training period, which will be in mid-January 2025, and the short-term training camp is also to minimize the impact on the club, and at the same time let the national football team have a certain amount of time for technical and tactical preparation. In the process of short-term training, the national football team focused on practicing technical tactics and set-piece offensive and defensive tactics. As for before March, there were two 1/8 finals of the AFC Champions League Elite before the round of 18, and at present, Shanghai Port, Shanghai Shenhua and Shandong Taishan are likely to have two teams advance to the quarterfinals, which will have a certain impact on the preparation of the national football team. But from another point of view, the international players will actually have a better competitive state at that time.

For Hangzhou, the national football team's away match with Saudi Arabia is also very important, if the national football team defeats Saudi Arabia away or gets points, it will inevitably greatly boost the confidence of fans, then the Hangzhou Olympic Sports Center, which has a seat of up to 80,000, can theoretically welcome more fans.

The Hangzhou Olympic Sports has 80,000 seats, and normally the upper limit of the allowed seats should be 68,000 people, and if this number can be reached, it will be the highest number of seats in Chinese football in recent years.