In Dalian, an official media reporter disclosed that he and his camera team routinely filmed the Harbor Team's training material before the game. The Harbor team's training content is always fixed, in a corner of the training ground for variable speed running, and each time the footage shot is almost the same, which makes the reporter worry: "If the audience observes carefully, they may mistakenly think that we use the same material over and over again."
One of the coaches who observed the Harbour team's training said that Coach Leko's training emphasized running skills to a very high degree and that the intensity of the training was quite high. However, the coach personally believes that the Harbor team's training focuses too much on running and relatively little on ball training that incorporates skills and tactics. He speculated that Leko may have been too conservative and continued to organize training at the same pace as in the season preparation period.
Looking back at this past season, Lecco's pick for outside linebacker, Mystorovic, suffered two torn ligaments in training and was lost for the season. Last year, Brazilian forward Lopes also suffered such an injury in training. Now, Zhang Linpeng has also suffered an unfortunate ligament tear in training. These circumstances raise questions about the science of training for the Lecco team: is it just bad luck that all three of the starters suffered serious ligament injuries on the training ground?
Leko, 36, played for La Liga's Málaga and Belgium's Bruges during his playing days, and was also a Croatian international who played in the 2006 World Cup in Germany. After his retirement, Leko started his coaching career, successively coaching Belgian teams such as St. Tilden, Bruges and Antwerp, etc. In the 2017/2018 season, he led Bruges to win the Belgian First Division title and won the title of Best Coach of the Belgian Liga.
One of the highlights of Lecco's career as a coach was coaching Antwerp to a UEFA Cup group stage win over famed Jose Mourinho-coached Tottenham Hotspur, a cold-shoulder victory that catapulted Lecco to stardom. Nonetheless, compared to his predecessors at the Harbour, Lecco is in a different league in terms of both coaching experience and contractual annual salary.
The first manager of Shanghai Dongya Football Club after the Harbour Group acquired the shares of the club is Eriksson, a veteran Swedish manager. He has a wealth of coaching experience, has led Lazio to win the Serie A title, but also led the England team to participate in the World Cup glory. Even in the late coaching career to the Chinese super gold, Eriksson's value is still as high as 4 million euros.
After that, Mourinho's right-hand man and former Chelsea manager Andre Villas-Boas took over the coaching whip. As a well-known coach in Europe, Boaz has advanced soccer concepts, and his annual salary for coaching a Chinese Super League team is as high as 12 million euros. Boaz brought in a new philosophy, built the strongest lineup, and introduced world-class stars such as Oscar, but ultimately only harvested two titles in the league and cup.
After the departure of Boas, Portuguese Pereira, who has the experience of winning the Greek and Turkish leagues, took over. Pereira focuses on details, emphasizes defense, and the formation changes are more abundant. He liberated Wu Lei as a center forward, to create Oscar, Hulk, Elkeson and Wu Lei's "front four", and ultimately helped Shanghai win the Super League title for the first time. Pereira's annual salary was 5 million euros in the first year, and rose to 10 million euros in the second year.
Currently, Leko's annual salary for coaching Harbour is about 3 million euros, which is a record low for the team's head coaching contract. Although his coaching experience is not particularly rich, Leko is full of enthusiasm and dares to promote newcomers, which is his strength. Overall, in the absence of Oscar and the lack of a full complement of foreigners, the stubborn Lecco has revealed some shortcomings in training control, tactical planning and field command. Nonetheless, the coaching quality and team leading ability that Leko has shown so far still matches his contract price. Compared with Eriksson, Boaz and Pereira, there is obviously a difference in the contract amount of Leko's team. Similarly, in terms of coaching ability, the Croatian also has a certain gap with his predecessors.
