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on the evening of september 10, in the second round of the 2026 world cup asian qualifiers, the chinese men's football team took an early 1-0 lead at home and was defeated by saudi arabia 2-1 after having one more player. after two consecutive defeats in the round of 18, the chinese national football team ranked last in the group with 0 points, and the national football coach ivankovic also fell into a crisis of confidence.

image source: xinhua news agency

in this match, the chinese team scored the first goal in the 14th minute. fernando took a corner kick, and jiang shenglong's header caused a saudi player to score an own goal, and the chinese team led 1-0. five minutes later, saudi player cano violently fouled jiang shenglong. the referee directly gave him a red card after watching the var replay and sent him off. in the subsequent match, the chinese team played against the saudi team's 10 players with 11 players.

with one more player, the chinese team lost the ball twice from corner kicks for 70 minutes. the tactical arrangements and untimely substitutions of head coach ivankovic aroused doubts among netizens.

after the game, tens of thousands of chinese national football fans watching the game at dalian soyu bay stadium shouted in unison: "ivan resigns!" on the internet, the topic of "ivan resigns" also became a hot search.

image source: weibo screenshot

on september 11, he sheng, a fan who calls himself "return the money brother", posted a video on social media, saying, "this feeling of giving you hope and then despair is really worse than death. i don't know how much time is left for ivan and the chinese football team."

in addition, he also mentioned: "before the game, i thought the high ticket prices might keep many fans away, but i didn't expect that more than 48,000 fans still showed up."

source: jimu news compiled from huanqiu.com, the parties’ accounts, and previous reports