China must set up good football training system
Questions are being raised after the Chinese Football Association (CFA) officially named World Cup-winning coach Marcello Lippi as the national team's new coach on Saturday.
The CFA said in a statement that the 68-year-old "silver fox" Lippi came on board after Guangzhou Evergrande cancelled his contract earlier in the day. No other details were given.
According to an earlier report by news site ifeng.com, the Italian will be paid 20 million euros ($22 million) a year, a global record high for a football coach.
Lippi's appointment has made a splash on Chinese social media. On Sina Weibo, the hashtag "Lippi coaching China's national team" has received more than 17.3 million views as of press time and 45,000 comments.
In a survey conducted by news site sina.com on Saturday, 85.6 percent of 7,350 respondents said they were satisfied with Lippi as the new coach, while over 76 percent said it would be impossible for the Italian to take the team to the World Cup finals.
Wang Dazhao, a senior football commentator in China, told the Global Times that China is investing as much as top football countries in the sport; however, it takes more than a star coach to be successful.
Many Net users said that Lippi is too expensive as coach for the national football team and suggested the country use the money to build more football pitches for kids. Some even said Lippi has entered the twilight of his coaching career, and that they are not sure if he still has the stamina to fulfill the duties as coach of the Chinese national football team.
Lippi has never coached a team in the state the Chinese national team is, said Wang. "However, it is good for Chinese footballers to train under the former World Cup champion coach, which was inconceivable in the past and a luxury for many teams in the FIFA World Cup Asian Zone qualifiers."
It is a wonderful thing for Chinese football to be exposed to legends like Lippi, Liu Xiaoxin, chief editor of Guangzhou-based newspaper Soccer News, told the Global Times, adding that "however, hiring Lippi to coach the team alone does not guarantee a radical and immediate upswing for Chinese football."
China still has to establish an effective countrywide football talent training system, and it doesn't make sense to discuss what Lippi or any single great individual could do to help the country's football team reach a certain skill level, Liu added.
Lippi's coaching career began in Sampdoria, Italy. Lippi coached the Italian 2006 World Cup champion team and has won five Italian Serie A titles and one European Champions League title with Juventus, Xinhua reported. He began his first stint in China in 2012 when he was appointed as the head coach of Evergrande and led them to the Asian title for the first time in 2013.
