In the fierce battle of the tournament, the Shanghai soccer team showed a distinctive regional characteristics - the delicate passing control of the southern soccer. The Shandong team, adhering to the spirit of the Yin Tiesheng coaching era, focuses on defensive counter-attacks and has a distinctive physical confrontation strategy. In the group stage, the two teams have had previous encounters, making the final straight to the point at the beginning of the game, without too much exploration. In the 39th minute, Yang Yang's precise long pass and Li Yuanjie's quick shot on goal gave Shandong a 1-0 lead at the end of the first half. In the second half, Shanghai strengthened their attack, but Shandong, on the basis of solid defense, counterattacked sharply, making Shanghai's defense line tired to deal with. In the end, both sides had nothing to do in the second half, and Shandong won 1-0 to take the gold medal of the Games.
Back on November 26, 1999, in the same season, Taishan and the red-hot Shenhua met in the final of the AFC Cup. Shenhua had just won the first division title, and it was widely expected that Coach Xu Genbao's team would win the cup. However, the progress of the game and the result was a shocker. Tang Xiao Cheng, assisted by Cebu Maozhen, scored in the first 4 minutes to give Taishan the lead. Then, in the 20th minute, Li Xiaopeng added a header to make the score 2-0, and despite Shenhua's counter-attacks, with Xie Hui and Fan Zhiyi hitting the goalposts twice, the final score was settled, with Taishan winning the AFC Cup, and Yin Tiesheng's position in Shandong's soccer ranks becoming even more secure.
Time flies, 29 years later, Yin Tiesheng once again defeated Xu Genbao, the cycle of history as if telling the philosophy of "thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river".
