{"id":429177,"date":"2026-01-24T00:57:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T00:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/429177\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T00:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T00:57:10","slug":"china-soccer-fans-can-believe-again-as-u-23s-reach-asian-cup-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/429177\/","title":{"rendered":"China soccer fans can believe again as U-23s reach Asian Cup final"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"ArticleTag_articleTag__P1Zo7\" href=\"https:\/\/asia.nikkei.com\/spotlight\/sports\" data-trackable=\"primary-tag\" data-dark-mode=\"false\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sports<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"NewsArticleHeader_newsArticleHeaderSubtitle__ZlvPp\" data-trackable=\"subhead\" data-dark-mode=\"false\">&#8216;The Great Wall&#8217; take on Japan in Jeddah in nation&#8217;s biggest match in years<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"image-main img-fluid ImageNew_imageNewImageResponsive__f1VTu\" src=\"https:\/\/images.ft.com\/v3\/image\/raw\/https%3A%2F%2Fcms-image-bucket-productionv3-ap-northeast-1-a7d2.s3.ap-northeast-1.amazonaws.com%2Fimages%2F3%2F1%2F2%2F2%2F12042213-1-eng-GB%2F67ec60c6f417-GettyImages-2257358995soccer.jpg?width=780&amp;fit=cover&amp;gravity=faces&amp;dpr=2&amp;quality=medium&amp;source=nar-cms&amp;format=auto\" alt=\"20260122 China Asian Cup U23\" width=\"780\" height=\"auto\" loading=\"eager\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"NewsArticleCaption_newsArticleCaption__fxo8v\" data-trackable=\"caption\" data-dark-mode=\"false\" style=\"display:block\">Chinese players celebrate after winning the AFC U23 Asian Cup semifinal against Vietnam\u00a0in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on Jan.\u00a020. \u00a9 Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>JOHN DUERDEN<\/p>\n<p>January 24, 2026 08:24 JST<\/p>\n<p data-dark-mode=\"false\" class=\"Paragraph_paragraph__2p1wC\">LONDON &#8212; Chinese soccer fans have had little to celebrate in recent years, but that changed this month as the country reached the final of the AFC U-23 Asian Cup. On Saturday, China will face Japan in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah, a match that will be watched by tens of millions back home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sports &#8216;The Great Wall&#8217; take on Japan in Jeddah in nation&#8217;s biggest match in years Chinese players celebrate&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[55042,40706,178880,49,8071,48,95,2342,4445,3644,3527,561,82,178881],"class_list":["post-429177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-again","tag-asian","tag-believe","tag-ca","tag-can","tag-canada","tag-china","tag-cup","tag-fans","tag-final","tag-reach","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-u-23s"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}