February 28 is the 70th birthday of Ivankovic. Before that, he received a "gift", that is to become the head coach of the Chinese men's soccer team. However, for the CFA, another doomed to fail "gamble" began at the moment of signing Ivan.
Chen Xuyuan "bets big" on Jankovic in haste to take over
Ivan's resume is more glowing than that of his predecessor, Jankovic. The latter, who coached the U21 National Youth, Red Star Belgrade and Standard Liege in Serbia, came to China in 2018, initially as head coach of the U19 Yellow team, then the U20 National Youth team in 2019 and the U23 Asian Games team in 2022.
After his dismissal, Jankovic temporarily led the national soccer selection team to participate in the 2022 East Asian Cup, resulting in one win, one draw, one loss and four points to rank third, which was an OK result. But at that time, the FA originally intended to hire a more famous foreign coach, and had contact with Paulo Bento, Queiroz, Ola Royo and others, but they were all rejected.
Finally, in February 2023, Chen Xuyuan chose Yang Kovic. On the one hand, the Football Association has no money, Yang Kovic's salary requirements are not high; on the other hand, he is familiar with the Hangzhou Asian Games and the national soccer team to compete for international player resources. Coupled with the well-known reason that it is inconvenient to find people from abroad, so Yang Kovic became a very helpless choice, very hasty to take office.
However, warm-up matches such as the draw against Malaysia, the defeat against Syria and Uzbekistan have exposed the inadequacy of Jankovic's coaching ability. After the opening of the country, the FA should have considered a coaching change, but he had to pay liquidated damages after being fired midway through the tournament. In addition, Chen Xuyuan was investigated and no one made a decision. Song Kai took up his post in October, with only a month left before the 36-team tournament against Thailand. It was too late to change the coach.
So, from the 36 to the Asian Cup, there were delays and delays. By now, everyone is actually well aware of Jankovic's ability. Before the Asian Cup, the FA had to be ready to let him go. As a result, the FA set the goal of reaching the quarterfinals! Obviously, this is an understanding of the national soccer team, Jankovic and the opponents.
As a result, as we all know, the national soccer team won 0 games and scored 0 goals in the group stage, which not only led to a direct exit, but also created the worst result in the team's history. At this point, the FA hastily remembered to change the coach, but there was no need to pay the default payment. However, the war reignited in the 36-team tournament in March, with a Chinese New Year holiday in between, leaving them very little time, so another hasty choice was born.
It's Songkai's turn to gamble, and Ivan takes over.
Is 70-year-old Ivankovic a suitable choice? He has the advantage of knowing Asian soccer and has led Oman to remarkable progress. He is certainly more capable than Jankovic.
However, he has been away from Shandong Taishan for over a decade and he really isn't familiar with Chinese soccer. From the time I left the Chinese Super League to go to Oman, I have had the experience of being fired after coaching five times twice, and I have nothing particularly outstanding in terms of technical and tactical construction and field command response.
First of all, Ivan is older, behind the world trend, difficult to bring qualitative changes to the national football team, difficult to lead the team for a longer period of time, doomed to be another temporary choice.
In fact, we can see from the contract that the FA is worried that Ivan will become the next Jankovic. Although the two sides signed a 3-year contract, there is a clause that he will be dismissed if he doesn't make it out of the 36-team tournament. This is undoubtedly a short-sighted move:If the FA really investigates well, trust him fully and understand that four games are not enough for him to build a new national football team; if you don't investigate well and don't trust him, don't invite Ivan.
The harsh reality is that even if the World Cup expands Asia's quota by 8.5 places, it will be difficult to get a World Cup ticket even if the national soccer team makes it to the top 18. The FIFA ranking of 13th in Asia is a reflection of the level of play. Therefore, it is only a matter of time before Ivankovic's class is over and the FA will have to get busy finding a new coach for the national soccer team.
Mistake after mistake, does the FA not understand what the problem is?
In fact, the FA clearly has better options, especially in the Chinese Super League. For example, Zhejiang's Jiao Di and Chengdu Rongcheng's Xu Zhengyuan. In particular, Qiao Di, the head coach of Zhejiang, comes from Barcelona's La Masia youth training. He led Barcelona U19 to win the youth championship, adhering to the tactical philosophy of pass-and-control soccer and emphasizing the development of young players. He is a head coach in line with modern soccer trends, highly acclaimed in his circle, and perfect for leading the lowly national football team from scratch.
If the FA had been interested for a long time, they wouldn't have had to wait until the start of the new season to dig around corners. You could have talked about it after last season or even had him lead the team in the Asian Cup. It can't be worse than Jankovic with 0 wins and 0 goals, can it?
If the Football Association just want to achieve results in a short period of time, then Shandong Taishan's Cui Kangxi is undoubtedly the most ideal candidate, his coaching ability is definitely the top three Asian coaches. Of course, whether Shandong Taishan is willing to release, Cui Kangxi is willing to take the national soccer team is another matter.
In fact, the FA has been going through a cycle of "changing coaches - trusting at first - poor performance due to poor international player ability - high-level intervention - increasingly poor performance by outsiders in charge of insiders - coaches out of control and players not contributing to the work - changing coaches again". This cycle can not even be solved by Lippi, and Ivan can not be solved.
Now there is a heavenly opportunity. The FA should have used this anti-corruption storm, leadership change, and the Asian Cup as an opportunity to appoint coaches such as Jordy and Xu Zhengyuan and give them enough time and trust to start from scratch. Unfortunately, I missed this opportunity and wasted my time.
At the end of the day, losing the Asian Cup wasn't bad enough, and the FA, even with a change in leadership, still doesn't realize where the core of the problem lies.
