Four years of time has passed, and the Football Association has started to lay out the strategy of player naturalization in an attempt to rapidly enhance the overall competitiveness of the Chinese men's football team, with a view to returning to the glorious stage of the World Cup.
To help the FA implement this strategy, in the 2018-2019 season, Guangzhou Evergrande, Beijing Guoan, Shandong Taishan and other giants have introduced numerous players with Chinese ancestry or foreign background. Most of these naturalized players have become the backbone of their respective teams and have achieved success in the league.
However, the performance of these naturalized players in the national team is at an impasse. Due to the internal interests of the national team, former head coach Li Tie was quite conservative in his use of naturalized players. Except for Ackerson and Jiang Guangtai, the other naturalized players had few chances to appear in the preliminaries. Without the help of these players, the national soccer team returned from the preliminaries in defeat, once again missing out on the World Cup in Qatar.
Li Tie's notoriety has seen the national soccer team's managerial throne change hands, with Jankovic taking over. The foreign coach is well aware of the power gap between naturalized players and local players. With the preliminaries and the Asian Cup about to kick off, Jankovic decided to recall four naturalized players to the team while the national team was preparing for the tournament.
Following Eckerson and Jiang Guangtai, who were last selected for the national training team, Jankovic has also called up naturalized players Li Ke and Fernando, who have both excelled at Guoan and Taishan.
In March, Jankovic did not call up naturalized players for the national football team's warm-up match against New Zealand. The reason for this was that the Chinese Super League had not yet kicked off, Aixon, Li Ke and Fernando had yet to show their strengths, and he was equally cautious about the use of Jiang Guangtai.
However, half a year later, the Chinese Super League is almost halfway through, and Ickerson and Jiang Guangtai have proved themselves with their outstanding performances in the league. Li Ke and Fernando have been away from the Premier League, but both have made great strides. Li Ke has become the core of Guoan's midfield, and Fernando has also built up a lot of success in the league, becoming the killer app of the Taishan team.
Recently, Yankovic has frequently penetrated into the Chinese Super League to scout for national team players. In this round of the league, he threw his attention to work sports, national security and Shenhua team international players, and Li Ke is undoubtedly the first choice in his mind.
It seems certain that Li Ke and Fernando will be selected for the national soccer team again. They will start training with the national team at the end of this month. On the 9th and 12th of next month, the national football team will meet Malaysia and Syria at home. At that time, Ackerson, Jiang Guangtai, Li Ke and Fernando are expected to appear in both warm-up matches.
This is also the largest gathering of naturalized players since last year's National Football League preseason fiasco. We sincerely hope that these four naturalized players will shine in the tournament, win the favor of Jankovic, and help the national football team to achieve excellent results in the preliminaries group matches against Thailand and South Korea in November, laying a solid foundation for getting out of the group.
