New coach Yang Kovic is about to have a "thorough test". 11:45 p.m. on March 19, the Chinese men's soccer team flew from Guangzhou to New Zealand to prepare for two warm-up matches against New Zealand on the 23rd and 26th of this month.
A total of 45 members of the national soccer team participated in the tournament. In terms of the players, in addition to Eckerson who left the team earlier due to his health condition, Jiang Guangtai, Liu Yiming and Ren Hang also left the team one after another. Although the integration time is not long, but after this period of training, the national football players have fully experienced Yankovic's "devil" attitude to training. For example, after holding two high-intensity training sessions on the 18th, Jankovic added a large-scale sports training session on the morning of the 19th. Another characteristic of Jankovic's approach, compared to previous coaches, is that he prefers to be on the pitch himself, rather than letting assistant coaches lead the team. Many national soccer players and staff said that Jankovic's attention to detail was impressive. In addition, the new coach of the national soccer team has strict requirements on the physical condition of the players. The coaching staff weighs the international players every day before breakfast. Currently, all the players have a body fat percentage of no more than 10%, which is an important criterion for Jankovic to judge whether a player can participate in the game.
Wu Lei said the national soccer team has worked very hard in the past two weeks, and the new coach has been very strict on the discipline, technique and tactics of the players." The coach has just arrived and the team and him are in the phase of mutual bonding. In the past two weeks, our main task was to understand his technical and tactical requirements as quickly as possible, and so far everyone has done a good job." Wu Lei added that Yankovic's requirements for the two warm-up matches are very clear, "The coach has repeatedly emphasized that the national team has no concept of friendly matches, and that all matches must be won, and that we will try to play good defense and try not to concede any goals."
After arriving in New Zealand, the Chinese men's soccer team will live in the same hotel with the local Asian Games team. In the next training and games, Yankovic will also recommend the Asian Games with his new coach Judevic full communication, and even break the "barriers" between the two teams, so that individual players flow to participate in warm-up games.
