On February 24, Beijing time, the national table tennis officially announced an important decision to appoint former world champion Qiu Yike as Sun Yingsha's new head coach. At this point, the Olympic champion will be "free-range" for 4 months of experience finally came to an end, but at the same time, many fans also issued a question:
Qiu Yike, is it okay?
For Qiu Yike's appointment, Li Falcon, the head coach of the national table tennis women's team, has given several reasons, but if we dig deeper, we will find that the reason for making the current arrangement comes from more aspects. Behind such a major decision, it is certainly indispensable to the opinions of Liu Guoliang, chairman of the Chinese Table Tennis Association and former head coach of national table tennis.
So why did Liu Guoliang and the coaching team choose Qiu Yike? This is what this article is about.
First, the reason given by Li Falcon
First of all, let's take a look at Li Falcon's evaluation of Qiu Yike:
Qiu Yike is a young coach selected from the provincial team to the national team at the end of 2018, and is also a world champion. He previously led the team to win the 2017 National Games Women's Team Championship in Sichuan, and during the national team, he supervised the world champion Zhu Yuling, and later took charge of the training of young seedlings, showing a very good coaching ability. ”
Personally, I think that the above paragraph has two main points:
First, Qiu Yike is also a world champion, which seems to be a stroke, but it has important significance, because it is the practice of table tennis and even the entire sports world to serve as a coach of a world champion, and it is difficult (but not impossible) for a coach with insufficient athlete performance to serve the public, and a coach with a world championship title can establish a natural prestige in front of young people.
Especially in the case that no one has brought Sun Yingsha, the title of coach himself has become a thing that everyone values, after all, unless it is Huang Haicheng's kind of person who witnesses Sun Yingsha's growth, many fans will inevitably not ask questions:
The person who coaches the Olympic champion must be at least a world champion, right?
Second, Qiu Yike's own coaching resume is also very bright, with world champions and young people trained, especially in 2017, he led the team to the final of the women's team of the National Games and won the championship. In short, whether as an athlete or a coach, Qiu Yike is at least superior to most of his peers, so of course he is qualified to take Sun Yingsha.
Li Falcon went on to say:
"Choosing him as Sun Yingsha's head coach, on the one hand, I like his aggressive and creative coaching style, on the other hand, young coaches and young players are also relatively smooth in communication."
This passage is a summary of Qiu Yike's coaching style, and can also be regarded as a requirement put forward by Li Falcon, the national table tennis coaching team and Liu Guoliang and other leaders of the table tennis association for Qiu Yike, that is, I hope that he can exert his creativity in the process of guiding Sun Yingsha, and at the same time communicate smoothly with the young general and run into a good relationship as soon as possible.
All of the above can be summarized in one sentence, that is, -
Qiu Yi can be qualified and capable of coaching Sun Yingsha.
Then the question arises: Qiu Yike's qualifications and abilities have always been there, but the national table tennis has been struggling for 4 months to announce this decision, why is this?
This has to be analyzed from the objective situation within the team.
Second, the difficulty of coaching at the current stage of national table tennis
It is indeed not easy for Sun Yingsha to identify a competent coach, and there are two reasons for this inability to appear:
First, she is an Olympic champion and a core main force; second, she is only 21 years old, and she is the youngest main player in the team.
Because she is the main force of the Olympic champions, so the average coach may "not be able to hold the field", such an athlete is originally the top master of table tennis, how can he casually arrange a person to guide her? Looking back, she felt that the coach was not as smart as herself, so how could she bring it on? So Li Falcon also said:
"The selection of the competent coach requires mutual recognition between the players and the coaches, which requires a process"
It is precisely because of this that Sun Yingsha's coach can only be the following two kinds of coaches unless she is a person like Huang Haicheng who accompanies her growth and knows her roots:
Either, she is also a top master during the athlete period, such as Ma Lin, everyone can have a common language, and may even be her idol-level "big god", so that it works; or, she has coached top masters and coached coaches with very good results, such as Li Falcon and Xiao Zhan, so that she will be convinced that this person can lead her to better results.
However, the problem now is that the national table tennis is currently lacking such a coach.
Since 2017, the personnel changes in the national table tennis coaching team have been very large, Kong Linghui, Guo Yan, Chen Xuan and other people have left the team, and the only coaches who meet the above conditions are Li Falcon, Ma Lin and Xiao Zhan.
But now Li Falcon is the head coach, it is inconvenient to always manage Sun Yingsha; Ma Lin has brought Liu Shiwen and Chen Meng, two main forces, which are tired enough; and Xiao Zhan's main energy is also on Wang Manyu, if he is in charge of two young main forces at the same time, the difficulty will be greater than Marlene - yes, the next thing is to talk about the age of the athletes.
As we all know, young players have good physical fitness but less experience, so they will rely more on coaches, while veterans will be the opposite. Therefore, although Ma Lin has one more main force than Xiao Zhan, Liu Shiwen and Chen Meng are not young, their ability to be independent and autonomous is far stronger than that of young athletes, and the places for coaches to manage are relatively few.
However, if Xiao Zhan is allowed to take Wang Manyu and Sun Yingsha at the same time, the difficulty is estimated to be not doubled, and if it is not handled well, the two achievements may regress.
Relatively speaking, Chen Xuan's performance in the athlete period is inferior to Ma Lin's, and his coaching achievements are inferior to Xiao Zhan's, which is a comprehensive version of the two, so the national table tennis was intentionally put in charge of Sun Yingsha at the beginning. However, like Huang Haicheng, Chen Xuan also left the team for personal reasons, so it is indeed more appropriate for Qiu Yi.
In terms of the honor of the athlete period, Qiu Yike is inferior to Chen Xuan; but in terms of coaching achievements, the victory of the women's team at the 2017 National Games has undoubtedly become his glorious resume. And he did take charge of the world champion Zhu Yuling before, which is also Qiu Yike's plus, so it is logical for him to take over Sun Yingsha.
In addition, due to physical reasons, Zhu Yuling has not participated in the competition for a long time and is currently in a state of recuperation; and even without this, Zhu Yuling is also a very mature athlete, so Qiu Yike can also have more energy to cultivate Sun Yingsha, which objectively also provides conditions for the cooperation between the two (although this condition came very accidentally).
How to say it, any new master-apprentice combination needs to go through the run-in, so we don't have to rush to conclusions about the appointment of national table tennis, or give Qiu Yike and Sun Yingsha some more time, look forward to the two can achieve each other, and leave a new master-apprentice story for the table tennis world: Come on, two!