AFP, Beijing :
Marcello Lippi is slowly beginning to make China believe they can become a footballing power, despite another failure to reach the World Cup finals.
Since his appointment as head coach in October 2016 with China rock bottom of their Asian zone World Cup qualifying group, the Italian has presided over a resurgence that saw just one defeat in six matches, 1-0 away to runaway group winners Iran.
Back-to-back wins to finish the campaign, at home to Uzbekistan and a comeback 2-1 win when down to 10 men at 2022 hosts Qatar on Tuesday, have sent a wave of cautious optimism across fans and officials.
It was not enough for the world’s most populous nation to continue on the path to Russia next year as they fell just one point short of reaching the playoffs. But it was enough to keep alive the dream of one day again reaching the finals and of fulfilling the ambition of China’s President Xi Jinping to host the global showpiece.
“Since Marcello Lippi has been leading the team, the changes have been huge,” said Chinese Football Association president Cai Zhenhua of the man who led Italy to World Cup victory in 2006.
“The most noticeable is that the players are now able to express themselves on the pitch and that their confidence is growing.
“The ability of the players to carry out the coach’s plans and tactics has clearly improved.”
Still many pundits contend that the national team’s ambitions will continue to be hampered by mediocre coaching, poor funding choices and lack of passion at the grassroots.
Chinese Super League clubs splashing huge amounts of cash to import foreign strikers such as Oscar, Carlos Tevez and Alexandre Pato does not help.
Angela Smith, head of international projects at English Premier League club Stoke City, who have opened academies in China, said while Chinese clubs are “buying strikers, they are not thinking about the development of the whole team”.
“If you don’t develop the whole team, you are just constantly going to be paying money out to other countries, and the game will never develop from the grassroots levels in clubs and academies,” she said.
China aspires to have 40,000 football schools by 2020, up from the current 13,000.
But all the academies in the world will not be enough if youngsters lack passion, according to Luiz Ferreira, the Portuguese director of youth training at Chinese Super League (CSL) club Tianjin Teda.
“During a training session, I asked my young players: ‘How many of you watched the Champions League final?’ It was just one out of three. They just don’t care about it,” he said.
