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China coach to keep job after Asian Cup
DOHA - The Asian Cup turned out to be another learning — and ultimately losing — experience for China, which has grown into a major power in a multitude of sports but remains a minnow in football.
China finished with one win, one draw and one loss, and failed to advance from the group stage of the continental competition. However, the team’s coaching staff saw encouraging results.
“We end our journey in the Asian Cup but we have played three different matches and have had three different results,” assistant coach Fu Bo said. “This Asian Cup was a great experience for our young team. We could learn a lot.”
One thing China will have to learn is how to convert chances. It created plenty in the 2-2 draw against Uzbekistan on Sunday which saw it exit the competition, but paid the price for a lack of finishing and goalkeeper Ignatiy Nesterov’s heroics. Both China’s goals came from set pieces.
“I think our team did very well in this Asian Cup and got great experience but the result shows that we need to do a lot of work in the future,” Fu said.
China’s young team is being built up for qualifying for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
At least, there will be some consistency.
China’s state news agency said Monday that the coaching staff will not be removed after the Asian Cup.
Defeats and setbacks by the perennially underperforming Chinese squad are often followed by coaching changes, but team administrator Cao Jingwei said officials were satisfied the team was able to gain experience in Doha.
“Of course there’s a lot we have to think about before the team heads forward, but there’s no way we sack our head coach or any of the national team’s coaching staff,” Cao was quoted as saying.
“The main task that the Chinese soccer governing body handed to the team is to make the young players more experienced, and we thought they reached the goal.”
Despite China’s status as an international sporting powerhouse, football has long been an area where the country has failed to excel. The country’s notoriously scandal-plagued football federation has been riddled with violence, bribery and match fixing, obstacles that have choked player development and kept the national team mired at 79 in the world rankings.
China’s best showing at the Asian Cup was in 2004 when it lost the final to Japan,
China football failures mostly come down a lack of school and community teams and the country’s overwhelming reliance on elite sports academies to train players from a young age.
While the state system has brought success in technical sports such as gymnastics, it seems poorly suited for football, where star players may not begin to show their true potential until their teens.
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