Silent Lonesome Man

A few months ago, three months for precise, China hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, under strict lockdown, despite concerns over China's unwavering commitment to zero-COVID. This temporarily eased worries about China's abilities to host a much smaller, yet equally important, Asian Games in late 2022 in the city of Hangzhou. At least. But China brought a shock wave to Asian football when the country officially relinquished its rights to host the 2023 AFC Asian Cup on 14 May, citing COVID-19 pandemic is ravaging the nation. This could not come in such a moment like this, given Xi Jinping has continued to commit with zero-COVID strategy and suppressed any dissent at home; thus China has been crippled of a major sporting event, though it was scheduled in summer next year. This has doubled further troubles when the attempted 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou has also been delayed as well - potentially moved to 2023 or could be even cancelled. And that is not impossible. In the

After the 2022 AFC Women's Asian Cup, six slots for the upcoming 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup were decided: defending champions China, former world champions Japan, alongside South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam and the joint-host nation, Australia, will take part. Among these participants, the Philippines and Vietnam will debut for the first time. But after the Asian Cup, one thing hangs in question: why does the AFC have no strategic plan to create an independent qualifier to the World Cup? And if it can do it one day, then how will it be? In term of women's football, Asia is among one of the most successful, second only to Europe. This has been the case since the first Women's World Cup held in China in 1991. Since then, two teams from this part, China and Japan, have jointly appeared in the final three times; the latter became the first Asian team to win the World Cup for the women in 2011. By this point, it should have been the inspiration for future success of Asi

Politically, when we look about journalism, we may expect every journalist to have the same degree of respect to each other, even when their affiliation may complicate the matter. Not this time though. Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian American journalist of Catholic background, had been shot dead by an unknown assailant on 11 May 2022, when she was covering news from Jenin, which had been recently besieged by the Israeli special forces hunting for Palestinians suspected of being terrorists. Her past was also interesting, she gained American citizenship from her maternal parents but she felt belonged to Palestine instead, and chose the journalist path. But in a faithful encounter, she enrolled herself to Al Jazeera in 1997. By that time, Al Jazeera was still a baby TV channel, established a year ago and used the staff from the already closed BBC Arabic branch in Riyadh that relocated to Qatar. And Shireen's role was far more important than expected: her journalist activities have ma

In February 2022, Vietnam entered a round-robin playoff, competed against Thailand and Chinese Taipei, both were World Cup participants. Chinese Taipei previously played the 1991 FIFA Women's World Cup in China, which was the first World Cup in the history of women's football, 61 years after the first men's World Cup was held - and that stays as the country's only participation since. Thailand has qualified for two editions, in 2015 and 2019; the former evoked a painful wound for many Vietnamese as it was Vietnam who lost 1-2 to Thailand in the decisive playoff spot right in Ho Chi Minh City. But Vietnam had an edge: its squad was mostly healthy - while Thailand and Chinese Taipei were plagued by coronavirus. A 2-0 win over Thailand initially sealed the hope high, but Chinese Taipei beat the same opponent 3-0, putting Vietnam and Chinese Taipei into a dramatic final confrontation. Chinese Taipei just needed a draw to qualify, but defying all odds, Vietnam won 2-1, thus

India and Vietnam are being seen as the potential bulwarks against Chinese aggression, largely because of their common hatred against China. However, their political development shows that disliking against China doesn't mean they will join the same fight against Russia, a country that shares similar political structure and authoritarian tendency like China. If anything that teaches us about such an absurd case, then in some parts of the world, Russia is still being viewed as a saviour rather than an imperialist state, which is painfully true to India and Vietnam's case. This has been observed by the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. Despite the Russian invasion stalled and faltered due to successful Ukrainian resistance, despite Russian troops' excessive display of barbarism against Ukrainian civilians, still a large portion of Vietnamese and Indians cheer the Russian invaders who are massacring civilians and supporting, loving a dictator that is threatening a nuclear wa