China's top soccer tournaments, the Super League and the Chinese League A, have just concluded with unprecedented success. In the last two seasons of the Super League, the winning teams coincidentally chose Spanish head coaches; similarly, in the past three years, the champion of the Chinese League A was also occupied by a Spanish coach. This phenomenon indicates that Spanish pass-and-control soccer has dominated the Chinese professional soccer field, attracting more and more clubs to hire Spanish coaches.
This season's Chinese Super League title was won by Shanghai Port. Despite the controversy that befell Spanish manager Javier halfway through the season, he still won his first league title in China, starting a new peak in his career. Let's not forget that it was Shanghai Port who snatched Javier from Henan at the beginning of the season, which proves Javier's popularity in the Chinese soccer world!
The winner of the Central League went to Sichuan Jiuniu, whose head coach is also a Spaniard. The 40-year-old coach, named Jesús Tato, is a former member of the La Masia youth training camp and Javier was also his coach. This season, Tato led Sichuan Jiuniu to the title with an eight-point lead over the second-place team, winning 22 games and five more victories than the second-place team!
Even more surprisingly, last year's winners of both the Chinese Super League and the Central League A were also the work of Spanish coaches. Pedro led Wuhan Sanzhen to the Super League title, while the Central League title went to Kunshan coached by Spanish coach Sarko. Sarko moved to Henan to coach this season. In addition, Wuhan Sanzhen, coached by Pedro, also won the 2021 Chinese League title!
In this way, it is surprising that the winners of the past three Chinese League One seasons and the past two Chinese Super League seasons have all been coached by Spanish-born coaches. The head coach of the third-ranked Zhejiang team in this season's Chinese Super League is also a Spaniard, Jordi. It can be seen that in recent years, more and more Spanish coaches have emerged in the Chinese soccer world to achieve remarkable success, and most of them have adopted the tactical strategy of pass-and-control soccer!
