Chapter 19 The old man and the new coach of the national team
"At the European Season Awards Ceremony held last night (local time) in Paris, France, Chinese players received a double blessing. Li Qingqing won the third place for the European Player of the Season and won the Bronze Ball Award. Hu Lai won the bronze medal representing the best player in Europe.
The 'little golden ball' for young players. These two 'golden girls' of Chinese football are still writing their own wonderful stories in European football..."
As the announcer announced, Li Qingqing appeared on the TV screen holding the Bronze Ball Award. She was standing on the stage and delivering her acceptance speech in English:
"...This is a huge encouragement and reward for me personally. Thank you to the jury for recognizing me, I will continue to work hard...Thank you to my club, thank you to my teammates, and thank you to my dad, who
He was my first football coach, and it is entirely due to him that I am able to get to where I am today..."
Xie Lan saw the subtitles printed at the bottom of the news and glanced at Hu Lixin next to him.
Hu Lixin got up at this time and walked to the kitchen.
"Why don't you watch it?" Xie Lan asked.
"Have you finished watching? Didn't you watch the live broadcast yesterday?" Hu Lixin was already standing in front of the kitchen stove and turned on the range hood. The roaring sound on the TV outside could not be heard.
"You can watch famous scenes again and again..." In the living room, Xie Lan muttered and continued watching TV. "This is called a classic replay."
Next it was Hu Lai's turn to deliver a speech.
"...There are too many people to thank, so I won't name them here. In short, thank you all, thank you to everyone who supports me. As a shooter, I am nothing without you... But I want to express my special thanks here.
one person……"
Hearing his son say this, Xie Lan couldn't help but sit up straight.
In the picture, Hu Lai raised the trophy in his hand, and his English changed into Mandarin: "Dad, this trophy is for you. How about it? Your son didn't embarrass you, did he? Ha!"
Hu Lai on the TV laughed, and Xie Lan in front of the TV also laughed, and then turned to look at the kitchen.
Hu Lixin was smoking. In the kitchen where the lights were not turned on, the red cigarette butt flashed on and off. When it lit up, it reflected the side of his face red, and when it dimmed, it melted into the darkness.
I can't clearly see his expression at this time.
She still remembers watching the live broadcast. When Hu Lai suddenly said these words, she glanced at Hu Lixin in surprise and saw that her husband had a sullen face and was extremely serious. But in fact, he was very touched and happy.
Just don’t show it on your face…
Xie Lan smiled and cursed: "You are so arrogant!"
Then she lowered her head and took out her mobile phone to send a voice message to her son: "Son, when you return to China to participate in the competition, will you bring the trophy back with you?"
Not long after, she received a reply from Hu Lai: "Mom, the national team won't be playing in Jincheng, so you won't be able to receive it if I bring it back... Don't worry, I've already asked Song Jiajia to carry her body back, and he has arrived in Dongchuan."
Will contact you."
"Okay. Oops, I have to trouble Fatty Song every time. I'm so embarrassed..."
"Then I'll try to get less awards next time?"
"Hey! What do you say? Let him come to our house more often and I will make him delicious food!"
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The interest on the Internet about Hu Lai and Li Qingqing's respective awards has not subsided. Hu Lai has returned to China and is preparing to participate in the next two national team warm-up matches.
In fact, what is happening at this time should be the qualifiers for next year's Asian Cup.
However, due to the AFC's reform of the Asian Cup qualifiers, the 12 teams that qualified for the top 12 Asian Cup qualifiers and the World Cup Asian qualifiers automatically qualified for the Asian Cup.
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If the host country of the Asian Cup fails to reach the top 12, then at this stage, 13 teams will automatically qualify for the Asian Cup. The top 12 teams plus one host country.
Among the remaining 28 teams in the top 40 that were not able to qualify for the top 12, four ranked second in the group, eight ranked third in the group, and the four best ranked fourth in the group ranked third.
Sixteen teams entered directly into the Asian Cup qualifying group stage.
There are still the last twelve teams left in the top forty teams, and these twelve teams will go through two rounds of play-offs to determine the last eight places to participate in the qualifying group stage. Together with the previous sixteen teams, a total of twenty
The four teams are divided into six groups. The four teams in each group adopt a home and away double round-robin system. The top two teams in each group advance to the Asian Cup.
If the host country of the Asian Cup does not qualify for the top 12 and participates in the qualifying group stage of this stage, then the host country will squeeze out the second place of the group with the worst performance in this stage of the competition, and the latter will miss the Asian Cup.
Main race.
The 12 teams determined through the qualifiers and the 12 teams from the previous World Cup qualifiers will form the 24 teams participating in the Asian Cup.
This edition of the Asian Cup will be held in Qatar in January next year. They have just hosted the World Cup and have hardware advantages. As soon as they announced their intention to run, other competitors announced their withdrawal. So in the end, Qatar did not fight.
won the right to host the 2027 Asian Cup.
Because the Chinese team has already reached the top 12 in the Asian qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup in the United States and Canada, the Chinese team does not need to participate in the Asian Cup qualifiers.
They can directly participate in the main competition in January next year.
So on the national team match day, when the Asian Cup qualifiers are in full swing, they can only play friendly matches.
Of course, because they participated in the World Cup and performed well in the World Cup, as the only team that remains undefeated in this World Cup, if the Chinese team wants to play a friendly match, it will be easy to find an opponent.
Unlike in the past, it was really not easy to find someone who was good enough to compete with, and you had to spend money. Not to mention that for some teams, even if you spent money, you might not be able to do it.
And now...after the World Cup, many national football associations have come to visit, hoping to discuss friendly matches with the Chinese team.
In the end, the Chinese team decided on two friendly match opponents, namely Slovakia from Eastern Europe and Mexico from Central and North America.
Needless to say, the strength of Mexico, which participated in the World Cup in the United States and Canada, has always been an important force in American football.
Although Slovakia failed to participate in the World Cup, it is still a team that cannot be ignored. Many players on the team are playing in the five major European leagues. It can be said that they are a high-quality friendly match opponent.
Both games were played in China, but not in the same city.
After the World Cup, the Chinese team's domestic reputation has further increased, and fans in many cities hope that the national team can compete in their cities.
Therefore, the Football Association arranged the national team's warm-up matches in two different places.
Of course, considering the factors of time and distance, one was not arranged in the northernmost Heihe Province and the other was arranged in the southernmost Yuezhou Province.
Instead, one was in Jiu'an City, the capital of Hexi Province, and the other was in Jingyang City, the capital of Haining Province.
Although these two games are warm-up matches, all overseas players have returned to the team.
This is the first official appearance of the Chinese team after the World Cup, which is of great significance.
So even though it was a warm-up match, the Football Association still issued call-up orders to all overseas players.
The head coach leading the national team has also changed.
After Shi Wuyin's contract expired and his contract with the national team was not renewed, the Football Association began to select a coach.
It's just that the selection process was not very smooth.
Currently, all the famous coaches with sufficient reputation and ability in the international arena are working and none of them are idle at home.
So the Football Association tried to find world-class coaches in China.
There were rumors at the time. The Football Association and the parties involved had never admitted it. They were all just rumors. Rumors said that the Football Association initially hired the German Friedrich Lechmann, who coached the Lingnan South China Tigers. This head coach had
Blue and White Munich, and led the team to win the Champions League championship, he is a very high-level head coach.
In order to recruit him to coach, Lingnan South China Tigers spent a lot of money and offered him the highest coaching salary in China, a sky-high price.
However, Lechmann has no interest in coaching the Chinese team. After Marcel Wilson was dismissed, the Football Association approached him, but he rejected it.
Same this time.
The two consecutive refusals seemed to dispel the previous rumors that he was unwilling to coach the Chinese team because the Chinese team was too poor and he looked down upon it...
After all, the Chinese team, which has remained undefeated in the World Cup, should not be considered to be of poor quality.
Of course, the above are all rumors and have not been confirmed by any party. Even football reporters in the circle did not mention this matter. All careful sources are limited to various online rumors.
Or there are rumors. It is rumored that after being rejected by Lehmann, the Chinese Football Association went to the famous coach Jorge Dillon who coached at Dashun Golden Arrow.
Dillon did not refuse this time, but the two parties failed to reach an agreement.
Finally, seeing as the national team games were coming, we still couldn't reach an agreement.
At this time, there were also voices on the Internet calling for local head coaches to be given opportunities.
After all, the Chinese team reached the World Cup for the first time under local head coach Shi Wuyin, and his performance in leading the Chinese team in the World Cup was indeed not bad.
Since there is a precedent of Shi Wuyin's success, why can't China trust its own head coach?
Someone online first issued such an appeal, which subsequently attracted widespread attention and unanimous support.
The momentum is getting louder and louder.
So the Football Association began to focus on local coaches in the selection of coaches.
But unlike fans with high national sentiments, the search for a local coach did not go smoothly.
High-quality local coaches are now coaching in the Chinese Super League and have contracts. If you want to coach the national team, you must first terminate the contract with the club. According to the contract, if the head coach proposes to terminate the contract early, the coach himself must pay compensation for the breach of contract.
If the club proposes to terminate the contract and release the player, then the club will pay liquidated damages. No one will be willing to pay this money.
Of course, both parties can also terminate the contract through "friendly negotiation" and no one will have to pay any compensation.
But nothing like this happened.
Local coaches in the Chinese Super League appear to be relatively "indifferent" to the position of the national team.
They are not as eager as fans imagined, vying to be the helmsman of the "strongest national team in history."
After the World Cup, the good reputation and prestige of the national football team among the people does not seem to apply to professional coaches.
The Football Association finally finalized the candidates just a week ago:
Dong Jianhai, the former head coach of Capital Dragons who is currently unemployed at home, has officially become the head coach of the Chinese team.
Dong Jianhai, who is 66 years old this year, is also a well-known coach in China. He has coached the Olympic team and the national team successively, and has experience in coaching national teams. Although the final results were not satisfactory, whether he coached the Olympic team or the national team,
They all failed to complete the task of breaking out of Asia. But in the dark era of Chinese football, the deeper reason why the national football team could not qualify was obviously not Dong Jianhai. It was indeed difficult for Dong Jianhai to lead Chinese football out of Asia and to the world under such circumstances.
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Switching to coaching at a club, Dong Jianhai proved that his coaching level was not a problem.
He has coached Nanhe Shangdu Shenwei twice. Both times, he took over the team midway as a firefighting coach and successfully avoided relegation at the end of the season.
As a head coach, his peak period was when he led Capital Tenglong to win the Chinese Super League championship in the 2015 season. This was also the only league championship for Capital Tenglong. Before winning this championship, he coached the Chinese team in the 2014 World Cup qualifiers for the Asian Top 40.
He failed, failed to lead the team to the final top ten, and was cast aside by fans across the country.
With doubts, he became the head coach of the Capital Dragons and led the team to win the Chinese Super League championship three seasons later. He avenged his previous humiliation.
Today, Dong Jianhai retired from the position of head coach of the capital Tenglong two years ago and is idle at home.
Because he has proven his coaching ability in the league and has experience in leading the national team, he has become the most suitable candidate that the Football Association can currently find willing to coach the national team.
However, the Football Association did not sign a long-term contract with Dong Jianhai, but a short-term contract valid until February next year.
In January next year, the Asian Cup will kick off in Qatar and finish in February.
The expiration time of this contract is so clear, and it is obvious that the plan is to use the Asian Cup to test Dong Jianhai's coaching ability in the national team.
If the Asian Cup goes well, then continue to sign. If it doesn't go well... I'm afraid I'll have to hire someone else.
This is not to say that the Chinese Football Association does not trust Dong Jianhai, but it is a normal operation. After all, Dong Jianhai has been away from front-line coaching work for two years. Signing a short-term contract also avoids the embarrassment of being unable to get rid of him.
However, there is still a subtle feeling that everything is left unsaid regarding the duration of this contract.
Whether the Chinese team, under the leadership of Dong Jianhai, can continue the good performance of the Shi Wuyin era, the performance and results of these first two warm-up games may provide some reference.
