Straight from the latest report, news came in on January 26th that the Chinese men's soccer team regretted to say goodbye with two draws and one loss in the group stage of the Asian Cup, failing to qualify for the knockout rounds. In the face of such a poor result, Xinmin Evening News wrote an article analyzing that Jankovic's coaching is clearly in jeopardy and the winds of dismissal seem to be approaching.
The national team dropped to 18th place in the rankings, marking the worst performance in the history of the Asian Cup. Looking back at history, in the past 12 Asian Cup tournaments, China has reached the final and finished second twice, in addition to two third-place finishes, two fourth-place finishes, and four stops in the last eight. Even the worst group stage result managed to maintain the 9th place ranking.
Since Jankovic took charge of the national team, controversy and questions have never ceased. His background, Jankovic has only coached the Serbian U21 national team, in the club level, he has been in Red Star Belgrade, Standard Liege and other teams as a head coach, but lack of adult national team and the top five leagues of the first-tier club coaching experience, not to mention the Asian coaching experience. He is a representative of the "three no's", and his qualifications are at the bottom of the list of foreign managers.
Jankovic has been coaching the national team for almost a year now, and before the Asian Cup, he led the team to participate in a number of warm-up matches and enjoyed more than 20 days of training time. However, the tactical arrangement of the national team is puzzling. According to the analysis of the New People's Evening News, although the strength of the players is average, the task of the head coach is to select the best players and make up for the lack of strength through tactics, and reflect their own philosophy in the game. Obviously, Jankovic did not achieve this goal.
With the World Cup qualifiers set to restart in March 2021, the Chinese Football Association (CFA) is running out of time. Industry sources have revealed that given the importance of the World Qualifiers, the new national team manager is likely to be a foreign coach familiar with China's top league. Shandong Taishan's Cui Kangxi, Zhejiang's Qiaodi and Chengdu Rongcheng's Xu Zhengyuan are all suitable candidates, but whether they are willing to take over this thorny issue is still unknown.
