In this year's China Youth Football League, Han Peng led Luneng
The U17 red team (missing a number of key players) competed in the U19 category and came first in their group, and are now actively preparing for the next stage of the finals.
The recent major and Central League
, the C.B. team warmed up and performed well.
◆Football: As from Luneng
What is it like for a player who has gone out of the football school to return to the school as a ladder manager?
Han Peng: 23 years ago, Luneng
I was one of the first players to be promoted to the first team when the school was established. Retirement
After being able to come back to the football school to coach, for me, my heart is full of feelings for this place, which is something that has always been a great desire.
◆ What is the difference between going from assistant coach of a professional team to head coach of a ladder team? Has it been an adjustment to the change?
The job of a professional team coach is to get the training right and adjust the players' condition to the best, while the duties of a youth coach are different. The players are all 16 or 17 years old and are still learning, so we, the youth coaches, also take on the responsibility of teaching and educating people. I still hope that they can improve both in playing football and as a person, which is also a very good point of our football school. Over the past twenty years, we have been emphasizing that 'to be a football star, you must first be a person', and if a person doesn't know how to be thankful, then even if he is trained to become a professional footballer, there won't be much improvement.
◆ You led your team to advance in this year's China Youth Football League.
How do you evaluate the team's performance when it comes to the next stage? What are the goals for the next ones?
The first time we took the team to a national tournament, and it was a small tournament, when we first came into the tournament, to be honest, our coaching staff didn't have a clue - because we hadn't seen it before and hadn't played it before. The players had played more warm-up games before, but there was definitely a difference between the players' mental and on-field performance in this kind of official game. Fortunately, through this tournament, after our adjustments on the field, and thanks to the whole team's desire to win the game, we ended up with a good result.
More importantly, the team got a very big boost after this stage of the competition, both mentally, technically and tactically, and physically. The goal of the next stage is to remain in the first group (there are two more stages to follow, and the last one to decide the champion).
◆ As a player with a very successful professional resume, what soccer philosophy would you most like to instill in these youth players?
What I've been instilling in the players is that they must try to adapt to this high-intensity, fast-paced, high-speed transition game. In training, you can't afford to take your time with the tempo, including details such as passing. And all of this must be done to the extreme, if you can't do it in training, you certainly can't do it in the game.
◆Will the experience of having been there be shared with the players?
We still want to instill in these players the most advanced things that we have learned, because our own experience is many years old and some of the so-called experience is outdated. We will try to instill the most advanced things we have learned, the most advanced concepts, in our players.
What does ◆ expect from these players going forward?
Firstly, expect them to be promoted to the first team more often and appear more often in the Super League
On the field, more can be selected for the national team
. Of course, it would be nice to have players go out and play in Europe.
