The Portuguese David Patrício became the youngest coach in the Chinese Super League at the age of 38 and wants to keep the recently promoted Nantong Zhiyun in the top flight, with a “mission spirit” to develop Chinese football.
“Despite my age, I already have 20 years of experience as a coach,” he told Lusa today. “I’m sure that [o Nantong] could be a breath of fresh air”, particularly thanks to the “most ardent supporters” of Chinese football, he added.
Patrício was appointed this Tuesday as coach of the first team of Nantong, a club from eastern China, which he joined in 2019, since then performing the functions of assistant coach, reserve coach and technical director.
After achieving third place in the Chinese League I, the second division, in December, Nantong was promoted to the Chinese Super League, with the best scorer of the Luso-Guinean Zé Turbo, with 20 goals.
The forward formed at Sporting and Inter Milan “has finished his contract and will follow another path, but soon we will have news of new foreigners and there may be Portuguese-speaking players in the team,” said Patrício.
“We want to have a quiet season, without major shocks, despite the lower budget,” stressed the Portuguese.
“Our reality is different from what is normal in China: the clubs are led by large companies that make large investments and that is why they always manage to be very competitive,” he recalled.
Gone are the days of 2016, when the 16 teams that played in the Chinese Super League invested around 460 million euros to sign foreign players, revolutionizing the transfer market.
“The three teams that were relegated had many financial difficulties and one of them, historical, is about to end,” confirmed David Patrício, referring to Hebei, where the Argentines Javier Mascherano and Ezequiel Lavezzi passed.
The Covid-19 pandemic, which forced the coach to spend almost two years in Portugal, dealt a severe blow to Chinese football, whose matches in 2019 drew an average of more than 24,000 fans to stadiums, the highest number in Asia.
The clubs spent three years playing in empty stadiums and training in anti-covid-19 ‘bubbles’, with virtually no income from ticket sales or television broadcasts.
Patrício hopes that, this year, with the relief of the ‘covid zero’ policy measures, the fans will return: “I think it will be the most competitive league in the last three years.”
In recent years, Beijing has embraced the desire to turn the country into a soccer powerhouse. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has said that he wants China to qualify for a World Cup final, host a World Cup and one day win.
“There is a lot of work to be done, but China has enormous potential and one of the things that made me come here was the country’s dream of developing football,” said the coach.
China is ranked 80th in the FIFA ranking and the only time it participated in the final phase of a World Cup, in 2002, it lost all three games and did not score a single goal.
“I don’t think these 1.3 billion people don’t have talent. What remains is to create infrastructure”, said the Portuguese.
“Only in the Lisbon area there are dozens of clubs. Here the city of Nantong, which has seven million inhabitants, has two clubs. It is manifestly little, ”she stressed.
China also needs more coaches “with a mission spirit”, added the Portuguese. “Many foreigners I met admitted that they came to China just to receive the money,” he said.
Source: TSF
