Arie Haan, the Dutch coach of the Chinese national soccer team, remains confident that they will advance to the finals of the 2006 World Cup Asian Zone qualifying tournament.

"We are more powerful than the Hong Kong players. As long as we can play our level, we will win the match," Haan said on Friday.

China is to play Hong Kong tomorrow night in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province, and only a victory by a big margin will give the Chinese any chance of qualifying for the final eight.

China must win by at least two more goals than Kuwait, who leads the group on goal difference and is to play Malaysia at the same time.

According to reports from the Guangzhou-based Soccer newspaper, on November 10 the Malaysian Football Association asked Bertalan Bicskei, their head coach, to line up a second-best team for the Kuwait game to ensure the upcoming semifinals of the Malaysia Cup are unaffected. This would mean that seven players from the national team would be absent in the Malaysia-Kuwait game on November 17.

Haan, whose team lost 1-0 to Kuwait on October 13, is upbeat about the coming match. "I am really satisfied with the pre-training," said the former Stuttgart and FC Nuremberg coach.

"The purpose of the training is to give our players more confidence to attack as only scoring goals can bring us happiness. We need to defeat our rivals psychologically first, forcing them to make mistakes on the pitch. It would be wonderful if we could score in the beginning of the match."

"I will not take a three-forwards formation," said Haan, in response to questions about the team's lackluster forward line. We will focus on the midfield and try our best to pressure our rivals in that area, giving our forwards a great space to attack."

On November 16, the Chinese Hong Kong team officially unveiled their line-up of 18 players to come to Guangzhou, with most of them shorter than 1.80m and six forwards among the name list.

China qualified for their first World Cup finals in South Korea and Japan in 2002 under Serbian Bora Milutinovic, but came back down to earth in the group stage, losing all three matches without scoring any goals.

(China Daily, China.org.cn November 16, 2004)