The Football Association launched a player naturalization program four years ago to improve the overall strength of the Chinese men's football team in the shortest possible time and achieve the goal of entering the World Cup again.
To help the FA implement this plan, during the 2018-2019 period, clubs such as Guangzhou Evergrande, Beijing Guoan and Shandong Taishan have naturalized a number of Chinese and non-Chinese foreign players. Most of these naturalized players are mainstays of their respective teams and have performed well in the league.
However, the situation of these naturalized players in the national team was very embarrassing. Due to the internal interests of the national soccer team, the then head coach of the national soccer team, Li Tie, discarded many of the naturalized players. Except for Ackerson and Jiang Guangtai, the other naturalized players had very little playing time in the preseason. Without the help of these naturalized players, the national soccer team also returned home in the preliminaries and missed the Qatar World Cup again.
Now, Li Tie has lost his reputation and the head coach of the national soccer team has been replaced by Jankovic. As a foreign coach, Jankovic knew the difference in strength between naturalized players and local Chinese players. Therefore, with the preliminaries and the Asian Cup about to start, when the national soccer team started to regroup and prepare for the tournament, Jankovic decided to call four naturalized players into the national team again.
In addition to Ickerson and Jiang Guangtai, who were last named to the national training team roster, the national team continues to Jankovic will also call up naturalized players Li Ke and Fernando, who have excelled at both Beijing Guoan and Shandong Taishan this season.
Jankovic did not recruit naturalized players for the warm-up match between the national football team and New Zealand in March this year. This was mainly due to the fact that the Chinese Super League had not yet begun, and with Ackerson, Li Ke and Fernando yet to prove themselves, Jankovic was very cautious in his use of Jiang Guangtai.
Half a year later, and now that a good chunk of the Chinese Super League has been played, both Ickerson and Jiang Guangtai have proven themselves with great performances in the league. Li Ke and Fernando have been out of the Premier League for a long time and they are both getting better and better. Now Li Ke has become the main back in Guoan's midfield, and Fernando has scored and assisted many times in the league, becoming the odd man out for Taishan.
Recently, Yankovic has been frequenting the Chinese Super League with the aim of scouting players from the national soccer team. In this round of the league, he will be present in the international players of the teams of Work Sport, National Security and Shenhua, while Li Ke is a key player for Yankovic.
From the current situation, there is basically no doubt that Li Ke and Fernando will be selected for the national football team again. They will start training with the national team at the end of this month. On the 9th and 12th of next month, the national football team will face Malaysia and Syria at home. At that time, Ackerson, Jiang Guangtai, Li Ke and Fernando will likely appear in both warm-up matches.
This is also the largest number of naturalized players since the national football team lost big in the preliminaries last year. We also hope that these four naturalized players will perform well in the tournament and be appreciated by Jankovic, helping the team to achieve good results for the two preliminaries group matches that the Chinese football team will play against Thailand and South Korea in November, and laying a good foundation for the Chinese team to advance from the group.
