On January 21, Beijing time, some netizens found a figure that disappeared in the eyes of Chinese fans for a long time in the advertisement of an amateur football youth club - Chen Xiaomao. Chen Xiaomao is currently the youth coach of the U11/12 age group in the youth club, and his resume is impressively written with the thought-provoking words "former member of the U16 echelon of Liverpool, England". In 2011, at the age of 14, Chen Xiaomao went to England at Christmas to try out for Liverpool, the veteran giant of the Premier League. At that time, no one in China could play in a club of Liverpool's level, so almost all the fans focused their attention and attention on this talented teenager. But unfortunately, after chen Xiaomao, there was no news, and it was difficult to find his trace in the domestic league.
What impressed the fans was that Frank, director of the player development department of Liverpool Club, said in the Youth Department of the Chinese Football Association that the "huge potential" shown by the two Chinese football teenagers during the Liverpool trial training was amazing, and Long Cheng and Chen Xiaomao became members of the U18 and U16 echelons of Liverpool club respectively. Frank said: "This is the first time to come to China and it is very happy that two young Chinese players can join the Liverpool club, this is also the first time that a Chinese player has appeared in the Liverpool echelon, and they have a good chance to play in the Premier League as first-team players in the future. "But after that, Long Cheng and Chen Xiaomao were not able to continue to stay in Liverpool or even stay abroad, and their development after returning to China has not been very smooth. Long Cheng went to the reserve team of Wuhan Zhuoer, Henan Jianye and other teams, and finally joined Jiangsu Suning, and is expected to get certain opportunities to play next season. Chen Xiaomao worked as a reserve team player in Shenhua, but never had the opportunity to play for the first team.
Last season, Chen Xiaomao was directly removed from the Shenhua reserve team, and he did not even have the opportunity to play for the reserve team. After that, Chen Xiaomao actually went to Sichuan FC for trial training, but the result was that he did not pass and get the opportunity to play football. That is to say, this talented teenager who was photographed by the director of Liverpool at that time is now reduced to the point where he can't even play at the level of the middle division. Chen Xiaomao is only 22 years old this year, which is the golden age for a professional player to start his career, but after too long without the ball to play, Chen Xiaomao finally chose to retire and work as a youth coach, which can't help but make people feel deeply sad. Players who go high and go low and fail to live up to their talents are not unique in China, and this cruel reality may confirm that there are indeed great problems in our talent training system.
Of course, the relaxation of personal self-requirements and the degradation of self-motivation are the direct reasons for the fall of Chen Xiaomao, a former genius. However, I still wish him good results in the position of youth coach and cultivate more outstanding talents for Chinese football.