Cannavaro's Guangzhou coaching career review
On September 28, 2019, Guangzhou Football Club officially announced that it had terminated its contract with Carnavaro. The Italian skipper, who has made waves in Chinese soccer, has once again left his mark on Chinese soccer history. In more than two years with Guangzhou, Cannavaro led the team to win two trophies in 148 matches and produced a host of young talents such as Gao Junyi, Yang Liyu, Zhong Yihao and Yan Dinghao. However, he has also encountered controversy and even had the embarrassing experience of being forced to attend group corporate study sessions due to poor results. In today's environment, this funny and handsome Italian manager may say goodbye to Chinese soccer, let us look back on his coaching career in Guangzhou.
In November 2014, Cannavaro took over the coaching reins from his mentor Lippi, but abruptly stepped down in June of the following year. At the time, Guangzhou (formerly Guangzhou Evergrande) were tied for first place in the Chinese Super League with Shandong Taishan, had stopped in the 3rd round of the AFC Cup, and had advanced to the last eight of the East Asian Zone as group winners of the AFC Champions League. In his first few months in charge of Guangzhou, Cannavaro led the team to 23 matches, including 1 Super Cup, 1 AFC Cup, 12 Super League matches and 8 AFC Champions League matches, but only achieved 11 wins, 6 draws and 6 defeats, a win rate of only 47.8%. This was only a first-or-go-home league result for the ambitious Evergrande at the time.
After leaving Guangzhou in 2015, Cannavaro traveled to the Saudi League to continue his coaching career, but again, due to poor results, his contract was terminated after four months. Kasai then took over Tianjin Quanjian midway through the season, who were still in the Central League, and led the team to a successful Super League run. After two years of experience and training, Cannavaro returned to coaching in Guangzhou in 2017. However, to the disappointment of the fans, in the 2018 season, Guangzhou team in the case of points lead, but ultimately was Shanghai SIPG home and away double kill, watching the opponent to win the team's history of the first Super League trophy. 2019 season, Guangzhou team put forward to strive to complete the "full Chinese class" approach, Cannavaro focus on training new people, focusing on "youth", "youth", "youth", "youth", "youth", "youth", "youth", "youth", "youth", "youth", "youth" and "youth". The newcomers, the main "youth storm". In this season, the Guangzhou team successfully returned to Shanghai SIPG with a home and away double, and regained the Chinese Super League title.
Cannavaro has also experienced ups and downs as the 2020 season has been curtailed due to the epidemic. After Guangzhou scored just five points in five rounds of the Chinese Super League, losing to key title rival Jiangsu Suning, Cannavaro was interviewed by Evergrande's senior management and asked to attend a class on Evergrande's corporate culture. At the same time, the old captain Zheng Zhi was temporarily appointed as executive skipper. After the "study", Carnaval returned to the position of team manager, but eventually the Guangzhou team lost in the two rounds of matches against Jiangsu Suning, once again let the title fall by the wayside.
In his 3 full seasons in charge of Evergrande, Cannavaro has only won 1 league trophy, which is not satisfying by any means. In the AFC Champions League, Cannavaro's record with the team is also difficult to satisfy. Especially in the 2018 AFC Champions League, Evergrande topped the group stage with 3 wins and 3 draws to advance to the knockout stage. In the two times of coaching the Guangzhou team, Cannavaro led the team to participate in a total of 148 games, with a record of 90 wins, 29 draws and 29 losses. Of course, Cannavaro's coaching record can't just be measured by results, he also trained a lot of young players for the team, which will be the wealth of the Guangzhou team and even the future of Chinese soccer.
