Tianjin media: Women s Football Team draws the second tier of the Asian Cup in China, and will definitely be in the same group as the first team from Australia, Japan, North Korea and China

July 22 According to Tonight News, all 12 participating teams in the 2026 Women's Football Asian Cup were placed, and the group draw ceremony will be held in Sydney on July 29 local time. As the defending champion, the Chinese women's football team will participate in the lottery as the second division.

This Women's Football Asian Cup will start in Australia in March 2026. The top three Chinese teams, South Korean teams, Japanese teams and host Australian teams in the last tournament will go directly to the finals, and the other 8 participating teams will be generated through the qualifiers. A total of 34 teams participated in the qualifying stage. According to the competition system, the top rankings of 8 groups directly advanced. Among them, the Indian team beat the Thai team, which had participated 17 times, and broke through Group B in an upset manner. The other teams that advanced were Jordan, Bangladesh, Chinese Taipei, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Philippines and North Korea.

According to the plan, the final circle draw ceremony will be held next week. Except for the host Australia team automatically becoming the seed team, other promotion teams will use the current world ranking as the basis for grading. Therefore, although North Korea qualifies for the main match through the qualifiers, it still secures two other seed seats with the world's seventh-ranked Japanese team with the world's ninth ranking. The Chinese women's football team ranks 17th in the world, entering the second division with the 21st Korean team and the 37th Vietnam team. This also means that the Chinese women's football team will definitely be in the same group as one of the three teams of Australia, Japan and North Korea.

Considering that in addition to the top two in the three groups in the Asian Cup, the third place in the two groups with better results can also advance to the top 8, no matter which group the Chinese women's football team is assigned to, qualifying should not be a problem, but if you want to achieve better results, you should still strive to play in the group stage well and avoid encountering strong teams too early.

It is worth mentioning that after Milicic became the head coach of the women's football team, he led the team to fight against three strong opponents in Australia, Japan and South Korea, and only achieved 3 draws and 1 loss, which also indicates that the Chinese women's football team's Asian Cup journey will not be easy.