Less than a month before the start of the soccer competition in the Olympics, the CFA relieved Dujkovic of his head coaching duties for the Olympics. It's an extremely shocking move coming so close to the Games, but the only question I really have is why didn't it come sooner? There was talk for a long time that Dujkovic was just as responsible as Petrovic was for the World Cup Qualifying failure as Dujkovic seemed to play a major role in the national team's coaching staff and its decisions. Due to this and other internal issues, the press has been discussing a lack of trust between players and the coach leading up to a boiling point last week. Supposedly the move has something to do with health problems on Dujkovic's part, but it's unclear whether he stepped down or was fired by the CFA.
A lot of expectations have been placed on this Chinese team and anything short of the quarterfinals will be seen as a disappointment to most fans. A change like this, coming so close to the Olympics would be seen as dangerous by most, but when the players have lost trust in the coach, its worth the risk and hopefully, it will cause the players to come together and bond, turning out to be beneficial. It seemed to work as China was able to eek out a 1-0 win over Australia in a tough match on Sunday.
The replacement coach is Yin Tiesheng, affectionately known as Steel Egg, and he made some minor changes to the 22 man lineup today, the losers were Zhu Ting and Shen Longyuan, who were moved to the reserves.
The lineup will be:
Zheng Zhi, Li Weifeng, Qiu Shengjiong, Liu Zhenli, Feng Xiaoting, Yuan Weiwei Wan Houliang, Tan Wangsong, Lv Jianjun, Zhao Xuri, Zhou Haibin, Cui Peng, Hao Junmin, Jiang Ning, Chen Tao, Gao Lin, Dong Fangzhuo
and the four reserves are: Shen Longyuan, Zhu Ting, Dai Lin, and Zhang Lu
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment