On February 28, Ivankovic ushered in his 70th birthday, and this day he received a special "gift" - to become the new head coach of the Chinese men's football team. However, for the CFA, since the moment of signing Ivan, a seemingly doomed to failure of the "bet" has quietly unfolded.
Chen Xuyuan bets big on Yankovic in haste
Ivan's resume is more illustrious compared to his predecessor Jankovic. Jankovic has coached the Serbian U21 national youth, Red Star Belgrade, Standard Liege, etc. He stepped into Chinese football in 2018, first as the head coach of the U19 yellow team, then took charge of the U20 national youth team in 2019, and then led the U23 Asian Games team in 2022.
After the dismissal, Yankovic temporarily led the national football selection team to participate in the 2022 East Asian Cup, and finally with 1 win, 1 draw and 1 loss, 4 points ranked third, the results are acceptable. But at that time, the FA was going to invite more well-known foreign coaches, and Paulo Bento, Queiroz, Ola Royo and others have had contact, but were politely rejected.
Until February 2023, Chen Xuyuan finally chose Yang Kovic. On the one hand, the FA had limited funds and Yang Kovic's salary requirements were not high; on the other hand, he was familiar with the Hangzhou Asian Games and the needs of the national soccer team in terms of competing for international player resources. For well-known reasons, it is not easy to bring in coaches from abroad, so Yang Kovic became a reluctant and hasty appointment.
However, the results of the warm-up matches with Malaysia, Syria and Uzbekistan have shown the inadequacy of Jankovic's coaching ability. After the opening of the country, the FA should have considered replacing the coach, but the termination of the contract in the middle of the game requires payment of liquidated damages. No one made decisions while Chen Xuyuan was under investigation. Song Kai took office in October, just one month before the 36-team tournament against Thailand, and it was too late to change the coach.
Therefore, everything was postponed from the 36th round to the Asian Cup. Nowadays, everyone has already made up their minds about Jankovic's ability. Before the Asian Cup, the FA was ready to let him go. However, the goal set by the FA was to reach the quarterfinals! This is obviously a misunderstanding of the national soccer team, Jankovic and his opponents.
As a result, as we know, the national soccer team won 0 matches and scored 0 goals in the group stage, and went straight out of the competition with the worst result in the team's history. At this point, the FA hastily remembered to replace the coach, but without having to pay liquidated damages. However, the battle resumed in the 36-team tournament in March, and the short Chinese New Year vacation left little time for them, so another hasty choice was born.
It's Songkai's turn to gamble, and Ivan takes over.
Is 70-year-old Ivankovic the right man for the job? He has the advantage of knowing Asian soccer and has led Oman to remarkable progress. He is undoubtedly more capable than Jankovic.
However, he has been away from Shandong Taishan for more than ten years, does he still have the same understanding of Chinese soccer? From the Shandong Premier League to Oman, he has coached twice but been fired five times, with no notable highlights in terms of technical and tactical construction and field command.
First of all, Ivan is old and out of touch with the world trend, making it difficult to bring qualitative changes to the national football team and lead the team in the long term, destined to be another temporary choice.
In fact, we can see from the terms of the contract that the FA is worried that Ivan will become the next Jankovic. Despite the three-year contract, Ivan will be released from his contract if he fails to qualify for the 36-team tournament. This is undoubtedly a short-sighted behavior: if the FA really investigates clearly, they should fully trust him and understand that four games are not enough for him to build a brand new national football team; if they don't investigate clearly and don't trust him, then inviting Ivan is unnecessary.
The harsh reality is that even if the World Cup expands Asia's quota to 8.5, it will be difficult for the national soccer team to get a World Cup ticket even if they make it to the top 18. FIFA's ranking of 13th in Asia is a reflection of strength. Therefore, it is only a matter of time before Ivankovic's fate is sealed and the FA will have to look for a new national soccer team coach once again.
Mistake after mistake, does the FA not understand the problem or not?
In fact, the FA clearly has better options, especially in the Chinese Super League. For example, Zhejiang's Qiao Di and Chengdu Rongcheng's Xu Zhengyuan. Qiaodi, in particular, graduated from Barcelona's La Masia youth training as Zhejiang's head coach. He led Barcelona U19 to win the youth championship, upholding 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 is ideally suited to lead the lowly national football team from the ground up.
If the FA had been interested for a long time, they wouldn't have waited until the start of the new season to dig their heels in. The matter could have been discussed after the end of last season and he could have even been allowed to lead the team in the Asian Cup. Could it have been worse than Jankovic's 0 wins and 0 goals?
If the Football Association only want to achieve results in a short period of time, then Shandong Taishan's Cui Kangxi is undoubtedly the best candidate, his coaching ability in the Asian coaches among the top. Of course, whether Shandong Taishan is willing to release, Cui Kangxi is willing to coach the national soccer team, is another matter.
In fact, the Football Association has been experiencing a "change of coach - trust - international players lack of ability to lead to poor results - high-level intervention - amateur management of the performance of insiders worsening - the coach is out of control of the players do not work hard - and then change the coach," the vicious cycle. This cycle even Lippi can not be solved, 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, this opportunity was missed and time was wasted.
In the final analysis, the Asian Cup fiasco was not bad enough, and the Football Association, even with a change in leadership, still has not realized the core of the problem.
