- Mainland report says opening leg in Yongin city near Seoul may move to neutral ground
- China will play Korea on March 6 before home leg in Sydney with winner going to Tokyo Olympics
The Chinese Football Association raised concerns about its women's Olympic qualification play-off against South Korea in Seoul early next month after a sudden outburst of coronavirus cases in the neighbouring country.
Having finished second in the group stage behind Australia, China will have to travel to Seoul on March 6 for the opening leg of the home-and-away tie with the return leg in Sydney five days later. The winners stamp their ticket to Tokyo this summer.
However, mainland reports claimed there had been ongoing discussion on the latest epidemic situation in South Korea, which moved past 700 confirmed cases on Monday, with most of them occurring during the weekend.
Last Friday, the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) postponed the first stage draw for the 2020 World Team Table Tennis Championships, which were scheduled to take place in another Korean city, Busan. A number of K-League football matches was also postponed due to the sudden increase in virus cases.
Stay away China women's football team vie for Tokyo Olympic spot
Beijing News said the parties involved would soon decide whether South Korea will move its home game to a neutral ground. If they decide to change the venue, South Korea could play their home match in Thailand or Australia. The match was scheduled to take place at the 37,000-seat Yongin Municipal Sports Park, located 40-minutes from Seoul.
China are still preparing for the play-off in Sydney where they played the group tournament matches after the outbreak of the novel virus in the country. Since then, the venue moved from Wuhan to Nanjing before Australia agreed to host following the epidemic outbreak in China.
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China's top player Wang Shuang, from Wuhan, went back to the city on January 22 for a family reunion during the Lunar New Year but just one day later, the city was locked down. Wang has since been stranded in her home city and was unable to join her teammates for the group stages in Australia.
Mainland reports said the Chinese team had made three changes from the group stage squad, bringing in Zhang Rui, Li Mengwen and Fang Jie while Wang, the 2018 Asia women's Footballer of the Year, is still not selected, apparently due to the fact that the epidemic is still prevalent in Wuhan.
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