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Atrocious China
After watching China lose 0-3 to Uzbekistan last night, I finally realised why Chinese football fans are deeply pessimistic about their national team. What I saw was one of the worst sporting performances that I have ever seen, even worse than the English cricket team’s loss against Australia in Adelaide last year. Like England, the loss resulted from ultra conservatism and the attitude that a draw will be okay. A team will always run into trouble when their objective is to draw a match rather than to win it.
Chinese coach Zhu Guanghu signalled his intentions early when he took playmaker Mao Jianqing off the ground in the first half. The first half was a snooze fest, with both teams unable to launch quality attacks on goal. Led by the industrious Sun Jihai, China controlled play effectively, but it should have tried harder to score. Midway through the second half, China had the perfect opportunity to score, but the Chinese player fluffed the kick and the ball ballooned up and hit the crossbar. As soon as that happened, I knew China would lose. The soccer gods began to favour Uzbekistan and their captain shunted home the first goal of the match. The three Uzbek goals all highlighted a very strange decision by Zhu - the choice to change goalkeepers for this match. I thought the previous goalkeeper, Li Leilei kept well against Iran, but apparently the coach thought otherwise. The new goalkeeper seemed out of his depth, with his failure to grasp the ball properly allowing the Uzbek captain to kick the first goal.
After the first goal was kicked, the Chinese team had two choices – rally together and quickly score an equaliser or disintegrate. They chose the latter. Not only did Uzbekistan kick another two goals, the Chinese team really did descend into a rabble – Sun Jihai was knackered and Han Peng was knocked out after he was head butted by his team mate. It was totally embarrassing. It is funny that Uzbekistan didn’t play very well and still won by three goals. It is also funny that if China took the initiative and won the game, then they would’ve finished first in their group because Iran only beat Malaysia by two goals. Instead, China will be going home in total ignominy.
It seems certain that Zhu will be sacked as coach, but I have a question to ask – why wasn’t he sacked sooner? Since it has been evident for a long time that Zhu is a turkey, why did the Chinese soccer administration wait for such a long time before wielding the axe? The administration must be a bunch of sadomasochists if they wanted to see China humiliated and bundled out of the Asian Cup. The new coach will have to figure out a way of motivating his players and getting the best out of them. He will also need to teach them self-belief and that winning is everything.
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Posted: 6:36 PM, 19/7/2007 in SoccerShare on Facebook |
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great post
Li Leilei didn't play due to the foot injury he suffered in the Iran game.
Mao's subbing was stupid and too early, but he's terrible at defense and the way the wing backs kept coming up, having him out there left us very exposed, especially on the left where Sun Xiang likes to come up all the time.
A good coach would have thought of that, though. Zhu wasn't fired earlier because the extent of how truly bad he is wasn't slap-across-the-face obvious to CFA until the Thailand game and US tour, but at that point it was too close to the Asian Cup to make a move. I believe that Zhu basically went into the Cup as a lame duck, its unfortunate because the end result shouldn't have been this bad...
b. cheng (http://huoleifeng.blogspot.com) |
Posted by b. cheng at 11:19 AM, 20/7/2007 |
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