Friendly reminder: The Chinese men's football team will start playing the World Cup qualifiers again - on the evening of November 16th, they will face Thailand away. I don't know if everyone still cares, looks forward to it, or scrolls through their social media.

Why say "again"?

Because in terms of the concept of participating in the World Cup qualifiers, after a successful attempt in 2001, the following 22 years and 5 challenges all ended in failure.

Again and again.

For over twenty years, one or even two generations of football players have not allowed the Chinese men's football team to once again stand on the stage of the World Cup.

The 2026 World Cup will be jointly hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The total number of matches in the final stage will increase from 64 to 104, and the size of the competition in the final stage will also be significantly expanded from 32 teams to 48 teams. This is the most controversial military expansion in the history of the World Cup - opposition far exceeds the expansion from 24 teams to 32 teams during the 1998 World Cup in France.

Let's not worry about the controversy for now. After the expansion, the Chinese team is one of many teams in the world that have regained hope of being shortlisted. Because the number of spots in Asia has increased from 4.5 to 8.5 now.

After looking at the relevant schedule and rules, I found a very interesting phenomenon, or rather an interesting expectation: this is likely to be the longest history of the Chinese men's football team participating in the World Cup qualifiers, and it is also likely to be the longest expected cycle of billions of fans being pulled.

Simply put, in the next two years, the Chinese team is likely to repeatedly be in a "hopeful no hopeful hopeful hopeful no hopeful" survival cycle.

Let's first take a look at the relevant rules.

The World Cup qualifiers are held on various continents, including Europe, South America, Central and North America, Africa, Oceania, and Asia. In fact, their respective competition rules are different and are formulated based on the actual situation in their respective regions. For example, in the South American region, there are a total of 10 teams. Over the past 30 years, their qualifying rules have always been for 10 teams to play in a home and away double loop, with a total of 18 rounds of matches. Everyone plays against all teams twice, which is the most fair. But in other continents, with a large number of members, such rules are clearly not applicable. There are a total of 46 member units in the Asian region. If you adopt a game system where everyone plays home and away, and one team and 45 other teams play home and away, it is obviously unrealistic.

Therefore, the Asian region has developed a total of 5 stages of competition for the 2026 US Canada Mexico World Cup.

The first round (qualification round) ended last month. 20 teams participated in the competition, with the participating teams ranking 27-46 in Asia. After drawing lots for home and away matches, 10 winning teams advanced to the first stage of the group stage.

In the second round (first stage group stage), 36 teams will participate, including not only the 10 teams that advanced in the first round, but also the teams ranked 1-26 in Asia. After drawing lots, the team will be divided into 9 groups, with 4 teams in each group, for a home and away double round robin competition. The top two teams from each group (a total of 18 teams) have entered the third stage, and these 18 teams have also qualified for the final round of the 2027 Saudi Asian Cup.