Three questions to be answered in Asian Cup

Is the 'sleeping giant' set to wake up?

By simple numbers: 20% of the world's population live in China, so therefore, they should produce somewhere around the 20% region of the world's best footballers. Well, we know that not to be the case.

China - now adding football to the school curriculum - appears to have finally caught the football bug, though. The country is sweating, hyper-ventilating around its own version of a European super-club, Guangzhou Evergrande - champions of China for four successive years and 2013 Asian champions.

Guangzhou was the home of former Italian World Cup-winning coach Marcello Lippi, the ex-Dortmund striker Lucas Barrios and, now, is home to Brazilian forward Alan who signed earlier this month for an eye-watering 11 million euros and Brazilian Ricardo Goulart who signed for a club record price of 15 million.

What's more, Guangzhou Evergrande's current boss is a World Cup-winning captain in Fabio Cannavaro.

Still, the national team has never quite captured the imagination of the Chinese public who identify with winning athletes and teams - and in Australia the Chinese are doing exactly that with three wins from three group games.

Coached by Alain Perrin, the former Portsmouth coach, the team is thriving and will take on the Socceroos in front of what is expected to be a partisan crowd. They're 11 games unbeaten under Perrin and Sun Ke has netted three goals for the outsiders.

What better way to announce that the giant has woken by ditching the host nation in front of a potential TV audience of well over 50 million.

Has Australia sold itself to Asian skeptics?

Australians love their sport - there's Cricket, the Australian Open and Asia's major international football competition all gunning for column inches this month.

But the tournament has gone down better than a fruit trifle: the head of the Organizing Committee is banking on the 600,000 threshold being broken by the end of the competition. That is, of course, presuming the Socceroos reach the final which could bring a further 82,000 fans in through the turnstiles.

It's nine years since Australia renounced their leading position in the Oceania Football Federation to join the more competitive scene of Asian football. It was a move that has not only improved the quality of football, but was in line with the government's plans to "thrive in the Asian century."

The arrival of such a large country, and potentially threatening power to the status quo of Asian football, was unsurprisingly met with some skepticism.

Taking the Asian Cup to Australia itself didn't necessarily go down well with punters in Iran, Iraq or elsewhere. Upstaging the same tournament on the African continent, the 2015 Asian Cup has been dubbed one of the best in recent memory.

Even if Asia's football federation has left Australia out of the map on its logo, the Socceroos look to be fitting in well in their new(ish) surroundings.

Is the UAE the team to pick on Japanese weaknesses?

One of the delights of the Asian Cup is the immense variety of playing styles considering the sheer size of the continent, the diversity in athletic cultures and of the people. The United Arab Emirates' fluid and flamboyant attacking game has attracted plaudits from those in attendance.

Only a last-minute loss to Iran on the third matchday prevented them avoiding the Samurai Blues.

Omar Abdulrahman, the team's playmaking number ten, had previously attracted interest from all over Europe and has produced flashes of ingenuity whenever he's featured Down Under; his balletic control of the ball and awareness of space is basically head-and-shoulders above most of his team-mates.

The 23-year-old has dazzled in the group stages with two assists - but the goals are tucked away by deep-lying forward Ali Mabkhout whose partner-in-crime is Ahmed Khalil. So far, these three have been nightmarish to deal with for opposition defenses.

But in the last-eight, the UAE take on the highly-coveted Japan. With all their minutes in World Cup finals and in top-class European competition, this seems to be a daunting task for the tiny Arab state.

Stranger things have happened, though. Japan's defense remains unconvincing and head coach Javier Aguirre has been at the apex of a match-fixing scandal in Spain.

The door to the last-four can only be opened by the wizardry of the Emiratis.

Who do you think will progress to the semifinals?