Published : 2024-06-04

On June 4, 2002, the Chinese national football team kicked off their first match during the World Cup final stage against Costa Rica. Unfortunately, they lost the game with 0-2.

At 2:30 P.M. on June 4, the Chinese national team's first World Cup match during the final stage was held at the Gwangju World Cup Stadium in South Korea. It was the second match of the first round in Group C, with other teams in the same group being Brazil and Turkey.

The starting line-up of the Chinese team included Jiang Jin, Xu Yunlong, Li Weifeng, Fan Zhiyi, Wu Chengying, Sun Jihai, Li Tie, Li Xiaopeng, Ma Mingyu, Yang Chen etc., and they played in 4-4-2 formation.

In this game, the Chinese team performed decently at the beginning, and they were able to control the rhythm against Costa Rica's pressing.

However, Costa Rica's offense was quite sharp, making the first shot in the 21st minute, and subsequent attacks left the Chinese team somewhat at a loss.

Eventually, around the 61st minute, Costa Rica's forward Gomez launched a shot and broke the net in front of the goal, making the Chinese team fall behind 0-1.

Riding on their victory, Costa Rica organised new attacks shortly after the start. In the 65th minute, Costa Rica got a corner shot and depends on defender Wright to break the net from 3 metres in front of the goal, widening the gap to 0-2.

The Chinese team did not break Costa Rica's goal until the end of the game, and their first World Cup debut ended with a regrettable 0-2 loss.

The 2002 World Cup was actually a highlight moment for the Chinese team. In the previous Asian top 10 competitions, they successively defeated the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Uzbekistan, Qatar, securing their qualification two rounds in advance.