China’s national soccer coach Gao Hongbo announced his resignation after a 2-0 defeat to Uzbekistan left the perennially underachieving side’s hopes of reaching the 2018 FIFA World Cup finals in Russia hanging by a thread.
The loss in Tashkent on Tuesday left China bottom of their third-stage qualifying group for the next World Cup, with only one point from four games. Only the top three of the six contenders progress.
Despite being the world’s most populous nation and second-largest economy, and money pouring into the domestic game after Chinese President Xi Jinping declared ambitions to host and one day win the World Cup, China remain minnows on the global stage.
The team have only ever qualified for one World Cup finals and are ranked a lowly 78th in the world by FIFA.
“I will leave the national team because of poor health,” Gao told a press conference after the Uzbekistan match, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday.
However, he acknowledged discussing his future with the Chinese Football Association before the game, according to the Asian Football Confederation Web site.
“We agreed if we couldn’t reach a positive result against Uzbekistan I would stand down from my post,” it quoted him as saying. “As a result of this defeat, I bring an end to my time in charge of the China national team.”
Gao, a former international striker, previously managed the side from 2009 to 2011 and was reappointed in February, after Frenchman Alain Perrin was sacked following embarrassing performances, including a draw with Hong Kong.
Under Gao, China squeaked into the third round of World Cup qualifying, but they endured a humiliating loss at home to war-torn Syria last week and their sole point so far came from a 0-0 draw with Iran.
Gao “failed to mold an effective formation nor playing style for the China team,” Xinhua said, adding that while there were six matches left in the stage, “the performances of the China team have not given the fans any hope.”
However, many fans defended Gao on social media.
“The men’s team is like rotten meat and the coach is like the fridge. The meat already stinks, but management doesn’t think to toss it out for fresh stuff, it just keeps changing the fridge,” one netizen wrote.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier