China beat South Korea twice at under-22 level in 2025, and now they meet for an Asian Games final place

South Korea have won the last three Asian Games men’s football titles. China have beaten South Korea’s under-22 side twice since March 2025, and on Wednesday the two meet at Nagai Stadium in Osaka for a place in this year’s final.

Kick-off is at 3pm local time, which is 11.30am IST. The winner plays Japan or Uzbekistan, who meet in the second semi-final at the same ground that evening, in the gold medal match at Toyota Stadium on 3 October.

China’s two wins in 2025

The first came in a friendly in Yancheng on 23 March 2025. Liu Haofan scored from a rebound in the 86th minute after Peng Xiao’s header hit the woodwork, and China won 1-0. The second was at the Panda Cup in Chengdu on 15 November, a 2-0 China win in the group stage. South Korea went on to win that tournament anyway, beating Vietnam 1-0 in their last game.

Those were under-22 friendlies, not tournament football, and both squads have changed since. Still, nobody in Lee Min-sung’s camp is treating China as a formality, and Swansea City winger Eom Ji-sung said as much this week. “The moment we start taking wins for granted, we will fall apart,” he told Yonhap. “We have to minimize silly mistakes.”

Korea have scored ten and conceded one

Eom and Kim Myung-jun have three goals each. Eom scored a first-half hat-trick in the 4-1 win over Qatar on 15 September, with goals in the 7th and 20th minutes and another in first-half stoppage time. Kim, the Genk forward, has scored in all three games, the last of them the fourth goal in the 4-0 quarter-final win over Vietnam, where Lee Young-jun scored twice.

The only goal they have conceded came in the 85th minute of that opening game against Qatar. Saudi Arabia and Vietnam did not score against them.

China’s route has been slower

Antonio Puche’s side have also conceded only once, but goals were hard to come by in the group. They beat North Korea 2-1 in their first game, with Zhang Yuning and Wu Xi scoring, and then drew 0-0 with Iran and 0-0 with the United Arab Emirates. The 3-0 win over Thailand on Saturday was their most convincing performance by some distance.

That win put China into an Asian Games semi-final for the first time since Bangkok in 1998, and for the first time since the tournament became an under-23 event in 2002. Puche also took China to the final of the AFC U-23 Asian Cup in January, so this is not a group new to the late rounds.

On this tournament’s evidence South Korea start as favourites. They have scored twice as many goals as China and needed only one half to put Qatar away. But China have kept three clean sheets in four games, and they have already beaten this South Korean age group twice. It should be closer than 4-0.

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