On the night of April 28th, Beijing Guoan will face Shanghai Harbour in the second round of the 2021 Chinese Super League season. Guoan's head coach, Bilic, revealed at the pre-match media conference on the 27th that he has helped revitalize his players in the last few days and expects his team to show a strong desire to attack against Seaport.
Bilic at the launch
Bilic's Chinese Super League (CSL) campaign didn't start well with a 1-2 defeat against Shanghai Shenhua in the first round of matches. Facing the Harbor team with better strength, Bilic's situation is naturally not optimistic. In the conference, Bilic shared the team's recent preparations, in addition to the regular technical and tactical training, he paid more attention to the players' mentality adjustment, "Although the personnel during the preparation is not complete, but I told the players, the most important thing is to maintain self-confidence, and I hope that they can continue to maintain self-confidence, in the next game to play well."
Talking about the lessons learned from the first loss, Bilic said: "I am very clear about the problems exposed in the last game, mainly the team's lack of desire to attack, allowing the opponent to create a lot of trouble for us on the offensive end, which also led to a long period of time, but could not be converted into an effective attack on the possession of the ball. The coaching staff also expected the players to have ups and downs before the game, so I expect the team to improve from one game to the next and gradually improve their form. For this game, I expect the players to improve significantly in terms of physical confrontation and desire to attack compared to the previous game."
As for the Seaports, Bilic knew something about them before he took over the Guoan team. Not only does he have video footage of last season's matches provided by Guoan FC, but he is also familiar with Seaports' current Croatian head coach Leko and goal scorer Arnautovic. "Harbour are also a strong team with a good tactical approach that is very different from Shenhua's and we need to be ready for that." Bilic said he and Leko, who both hail from Croatia's second-largest city, Split, and have started out with the country's second-biggest team, the Split Free Soldiers, as well as playing for the Croatian national team, know each other well. And when he coached West Ham United in the English Premier League, Arnautovic was a starter for the team. Bilic said he would inform his players about the characteristics of the Harbour team's playing style, but whether all this will help the game will depend on how the players play on the field.
Harbor head coach Leko
Harbourfront head coach Leko, who attended the conference later, said the team was in good shape after a 6-1 win over Tianjin Jinmen Tigers in the first match. However, the match against Guoan is completely different from the first match, as Guoan is a stronger team and will come out with a stronger motivation to fight for a win after the loss in the first match. Therefore, he hopes his players will do better than the last game.
Speaking about his relationship with Guiao head coach Bilic, Leko said, "First of all, I've known Bilic for a long time, we were teammates and I've always held him in high regard. Specifically for this contest, I think we will both put our personal relationships aside because it's between Harbour and Guiao, and we, as head coaches, will just be doing our own thing."
