Late at night on September 28, a piece of heavy news shocked the football world: the Chinese Super League powerhouse Guangzhou Football Club officially announced that it had reached an agreement on the termination of the contract with Italian manager Carlo Cannavaro and his coaching team. This signifies that Cannavaro has failed to continue his coaching duties after three and a half seasons and after taking over the team twice. In that time, he led the team to collect one Chinese Super League trophy and one Super Cup trophy.
Looking back to the beginning of 2015, Cannavaro was once the new head of Guangzhou Evergrande after replacing his "mentor" Lippi. However, only half a year later, due to poor performance, he was forced to leave, and then Brazilian coach Scolari took over his position.
Since then, Cannavaro has coached Tianjin Quanjian (now renamed Tianjin Tianhai) for one season. The team achieved remarkable results under his leadership, and he was then invited back to coach the Guangzhou side once again.
Since the end of 2017 "two into the palace", Cannavaro used more than three years to complete the Guangzhou team's "renewal". Yang Liyu, Wei Shihao, Gao Junyi and other young players as the representative of the new generation gradually rise. However, this reform also paid a heavy price, the team in the 2018 season and 2020 season twice missed the Super League title.
In fact, rumors of Cannavaro parting ways with the club have been commonplace over the past few seasons, but the two sides ultimately decided to strictly enforce the terms of their contracts.
However, with the club's parent company, Evergrande Group, experiencing unprecedented economic difficulties, the Guangzhou team is no longer able to afford the exorbitant salaries of Cannavaro and his coaching team. From the official announcement, the two sides have officially reached a break-up agreement.
Now, the future direction of the Guangzhou team has become the focus of attention. It is reported that the team will temporarily be 41-year-old decorated captain Zheng Zhi acting as the head coach.
There is no definite answer as to how long the Guangzhou Football Club will last. When the Guangzhou team will regroup has also become an unknown mystery.
