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Former Asian Player of the Year Zheng Zhi has stressed he and his China teammates will do whatever it takes to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, despite conceding his side is not the strongest on the continent. Zheng, who has won two Asian Champions League titles with Guangzhou Evergrande and led the national team to the quarterfinals of the Asian Cup early last year, is taking inspiration from the performances of other nations at major tournaments in the hope China can book a long-overdue second World Cup appearance. "We are not the best team in Asia, but in football you can see so many underdogs taking down favoured teams," said the 36-year-old. "If you look at the Euro championships and the World Cup, the teams in the final stages are not always the best teams in their region. Our ultimate target is to qualify for that stage, and to reach there we will do whatever we can." China have only ever qualified for the finals of the World Cup on one occasion, when Bora Milutinovic steered the country to a place in South Korea and Japan in 2002. Now under the management of Gao Hongbo, they will take on the Koreans on Thursday as they kick off their attempt to secure a spot in Russia. South Korea have long represented one of Chinese football's biggest challenges, with the national side having only registered just one victory in matches between the two nations; that win came in Tokyo at the 2010 East Asian Championship during Gao's previous stint in charge. Gao, whose team has also been drawn with Syria, Qatar, Iran and Uzbekistan, has named Guangzhou Evergrande central defender Feng Xiaoting as captain and the 30-year-old will be making a return to Korea, where he played for two seasons with Daegu FC and Jeonbuk Motors. "Once again I'm back here," said Feng. "I have played here for the national team and also in the Asian Champions League, so I know this place well and I feel very close to it. I don't feel any stress being made captain, but of course there is some pressure. These qualifiers are very important for me. We have worked hard as a team but our group is not an easy one and there will be pressure in every game, but that gives us more motivation to fight in each game."
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