To be honest, I don’t think this would be enough to write a novel. Chinese media claimed that Korea can check its national team and weaken its power in the World Cup qualifiers against Thailand.
China’s “Sohoo” said on the 2nd (Korea Standard Time), “The Korean national soccer team can deliberately lose its strength in the World Cup qualifying match against Thailand to keep the Chinese national soccer team in check.”
Chinese soccer is suffering from deterioration in quality recently. As recently as the early-mid 2000s, Chinese soccer was lagging behind other countries such as Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, but fell behind in recent years. In the FIFA rankings released right after the “A-match” in November, China ranks 79th, lower than Oman (74th).
Among Asian Football Confederation (AFC) countries, China ranks 11th overall and shows how weak it is, considering the 8.5 tickets deployed to Asia at the 2026 FIFA World Cup in North Korea, Central America, and the U.S. In fact, the average age of the national team is over 30s due to the recent failure of generational change.
China belongs to Group C, along with Korea, Thailand, and Singapore, in the second qualifying round for the 2026 FIFA Asian region. China won the first match against Thailand, the second round against the Korean government, but was completely defeated by Korea 0-3 at home. It is the largest loss by a score in the history of the Korea-China match. 토토사이트
Based on its objective performance, the assessment is that Korea is something that is beyond the argument. China, which had been hoping for a victory over the Korean team after its victory over Thailand, is also concentrating on the race for the second place, realizing the reality. Even if Korea loses the original sentiment, it can easily advance to the third preliminary round if it catches Thailand.
The rivalry between Thailand and China for the second place continues. The Chinese team will play two consecutive home away games against Thailand and Korea at the A-match in March, and the Chinese team will play two consecutive home away games against Singapore. While China will face off against its relative weaknesses, Thailand will face off against Korea, which is considered the best in Group 1, so there is a difference in the difficulty level of scheduling.
Against this backdrop, some absurd claims were made in China. “It is true that Korea is strong. However, I cannot say that I did not benefit from the referee’s decision even in the match against China. A referee cannot be normal in a match against Korea,” Sohu said. “Don’t forget the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup.”
“Korea is strong. That’s why it is too much to rank No. 1 in the group. The team also lost 0-3 in home games. If so, Korea should realistically advance to second place in the group. Therefore, Korea should disregard Thailand,” Sohu said.
Against this backdrop, Sohu raised an outrageous conspiracy theory. The media outlet continued its delusion by saying, “We can think that China is in an advantageous position because we caught Thailand with the original sentiment. However, we should not let our guard down. Considering that the Korean national soccer team did to China in the past, we could deliberately give Thailand a point and try to eliminate Korea.”
“We don’t know what Korea will do in the two consecutive games against Thailand. To avoid such a situation, we should definitely catch both Singapore games. If we win the second home game against Thailand, we can go to the third round no matter how hard Korea tries to keep us in check,” Sohu said.
In a nutshell, Korea could start a rotation against Thailand or try to manipulate the outcome in order to keep China in check. There is no reason to keep China in check in the first place, but since Korea has yet to confirm its advance to the third qualifying round, anyone can see that it is an absurd claim.
Since the end of the match against Korea, China has been continuing its absurd conspiracy theory that the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) will systematically check China. On top of that, Korea is effectively putting itself down by suggesting that it can intentionally concede a point against Thailand to check China.