Yaya Toure’s red card after 10 seconds and a last-minute winner completed a great escape from relegation for the only English coach in Chinese soccer.
Former Taiwan head coach Gary White’s managerial career has also taken in the British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, Guam, Hong Kong, Japan and now China for a second time, but he said that masterminding Nantong Zhiyun to safety on Saturday in their final game of the season in China’s second tier ranked among his greatest achievements.
The 45-year-old took over at Nantong, near Shanghai, in August and had eight games to save them from the drop.
They lost his first two matches in charge, but then went unbeaten in the next five and approached the daunting visit to Toure’s top-of-the-table Qingdao Huanghai knowing that victory would preserve their China League One status.
Nantong and White’s survival bid got off to the best possible start when the former Manchester City and Barcelona midfielder was sent off just after the start.
Toure protested his innocence, but White said: “It was a definite red card, he wildly kicked our central midfielder at the top of the box.”
However, 10-man Qingdao, who were already promoted and chasing the league title, took the lead just before the hour mark and Nantong faced going into a relegation playoff.
White called it “quite hectic” as he willed on his men while keeping an eye on results elsewhere with two other teams also fighting to survive.
“I was in every kick and header that was going on, and trying to push the players forward. It was the complete opposite to calm and collected,” he said.
Needing to score, Nantong equalized two minutes after falling behind and made absolutely sure of another season in League One with a 90th-minute winner.
White, whose previous job was at Tokyo Verdy in Japan, was inundated with bunches of flowers as he and his team landed at Nantong airport on Sunday.
Chanting fans serenaded them with banners and flares as the team bus made a triumphant return along the city streets.
White, a former youth team player with Southampton who also played in Australia, took over a Nantong team who had not won for two months and were in free fall.
“When we came into the club it really wasn’t in a good place. The players were not fit enough and there were many things lacking,” White said.
“Many people would have looked at it and said it was a suicide run. I was never really worried that I couldn’t do it, it was just there was no time to make any mistakes,” he said.
Making the players believe in themselves again was a major reason for White’s success.
“I always say that if you can capture their hearts and minds, their legs will follow,” he said.
White pulled off a similar trick in 2016, dragging Shanghai Shenxin out of the relegation places, although on that occasion he had 19 games to do it.
White said he would sit down with the management of Nantong, who pull in home crowds of about 12,000, to discuss his future, but long-term he would like to manage in his native England.
“The problem is trying to find an owner with the courage to take a chance on someone like myself who hasn’t played for England a bunch of times,” said White, whose wife and four-year-old son have accompanied him on his managerial odyssey.
Until then, White is enjoying making a name for himself in Asia.
“I’ve found a niche market here. I am the only Englishman [coaching] in China and was the only Englishman in Japan,” he said. “I’ve carved out a little area for myself.”
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