Puppeteer
On December 1, with the official debut of Uruguayan Boyet at the Kangqiao base in Shanghai Shenhua, the 2017 season of the top 16 managers of the Chinese Super League were all in place, and even Hangzhou Greentown, which fell to the middle division, clearly continued to hire Hong Mingfu as the team's head coach early, and another relegated team, Shijiazhuang Yongchang, announced the appointment of former Iranian national team coach Gutby as the manager in early November. However, who would have thought that Manzano, who has coached Chinese Super League giants Beijing Guoan and Shanghai Shenhua for three seasons, has failed to reach a contract extension with the club twice.
Manzano Chinese fans know that the 2016 season brought Shenhua from the 6th place in last year's league to the 4th place this year; coaching Guoan in the 2014 and 2015 seasons, respectively, won the 2nd and 4th places in the league, Man Shuai himself was also named the best coach in the Chinese Super League, at the end of the 2003/2004 season, he was a candidate for the Spanish team, and in October 2016, he was also expected to become the head coach of the Chinese national team.
Manzano, whose full name is Gregorio Manzano, was born in March 1956 and began his coaching career at the age of less than 30. He has coached 7 La Liga teams including Valladolid, Atlético Santander, Mallorca, Atletico, Malaga and Sevilla, with more than 400 La Liga coaching experience. I am not a professional footballer, and as a football coach I have a bachelor's degree in psychology and a license as a psychologist, which is not much in the Spanish coaching community.
Manzano's prominence in Spanish football is mainly related to Real Madrid and Barca, who led Valladolid to beat Real Madrid in the 1999/2000 season, and led Santander to a 4-0 victory over Barca in the second year; led Mallorca to a 5-1 bloodbath in the 2002/2003 season, and in the 2009/2010 season, it set a record for Mallorca - 10 consecutive home wins, and only lost 3 of the 19 home games in the whole season. He finished 5th in the league and finished in the Europa League.
However, Manzano does not seem suitable to coach the giants. Judging from the teams he leads, most of them are in the middle of the level, good at defensive counterattacks, and have more than 30 years of experience in really coaching big teams, only twice in 10 years, but the results are not ideal. In the 2003-/2004 season, Manzano managed Atletico Madrid for a 7th place in the league and missed the European competition, so the club did not renew his contract. Manzano took over Sevilla in the middle of the 2010/2011 season and eventually took the team to 7th place in the league. The most important reason why Manzano was unable to renew his contract with the club was that he failed to bring the team to the UEFA Cup. In addition, although he has psychological expertise, he is not good at dealing with the locker room relationship of the giants, and at Atletico Madrid ii entered the palace, he twice caused a locker room crisis.
The 3 seasons of coaching in China with Spain are very imaginable. In the 2014 season, he led Guoan 30 games, 21 wins, 4 draws and 5 losses and accumulated 67 points, ranking second in the Chinese Super League; the record in 2015 was not ideal, 16 wins, 8 draws and 6 losses in 30 rounds of battles accumulated 56 points, the league rank fell to 4th, the league penultimate round away to 0-4 to Taida, the last round of home not only failed to prevent Evergrande from defending the title to win 5 consecutive championships, but also lost 0-2 in the workers' sports, losing the last life-saving straw "AFC Champions League qualification", which can be described as "four empty", in fact, the desire of the top management of Guoan Club for AFC Champions League qualification is extraordinary. Originally, Guoan asked Italian Zaccheroni to coach the AFC Champions League in the 16th season, but the transformation failed, and after 9 rounds of class, the firefighter Xie Feng came out to finally bring the team to the 5th place in the league, 30-11 wins, 10 draws and 9 losses only accumulated 45 points, still failed to qualify for the AFC Champions League next season.
Although he was unable to renew his contract with Guoan, Manzano's coaching ability was generally recognized. The Spaniard was valued by ambitious Shenhua boss Wu Xiaohui, and the two sides of the 1+1 contract hit it off. Although it was agreed to get the top 3 automatic renewal of the league for 1 year, if shenhua results are 4-6, the two sides can negotiate, but the Manzano army won the AFC Champions League qualification two rounds in advance, which also completed the expected goal. Finished 4th in the league, there were huge differences between the two sides over the team's future philosophy, and Manzano returned to Spain to wait.
In fact, the real reason also includes sipping sippers in the last round of the rebound, ranking 3rd in the league and pressing Shenhua. The situation in Shenhua and SIPG is well known, the derby battle has changed, and the brothers in the same city who are the bosses of Shanghai Beach seem to be more important to some extent than whether they can participate in the AFC Champions League. Shenhua's ranking has improved year by year in recent years, ranking 11th in 2011, and then two times 9th and 1st 8th in the next few years, and in 2015, the league ranking has improved to 6th, Manzano led the team to become 4th, and qualified for the 2017 AFC Champions League, which is the best result in recent years. Although this year's league match against SIPG achieved a good result of 1 win and 1 draw, which won popularity, but in the end, after SIPG, it was defeated in the competition. This may be the root cause of Manzano's inability to renew his contract!
Manzano had the opportunity to win the 3rd place, Gao Hongbo led the national team to prepare for the 3rd round of the 12 rounds on October 6, before the Sino-Syrian war, during the league break, the club twice suggested that Manzano lead the team to warm up and maintain the state, but Man Shuai insisted on giving the team a 10-day holiday, and the result was that the last 4 rounds of Shenhua results were 3 draws and 1 loss, losing the third place in the league by 4 points. Coupled with the defeat of the national football team in Tashkent, during the selection of the coach of the Football Association, Manzano was fluttering after learning that he was one of the manager candidates, and it was reasonable for the club not to renew his contract.
However, the underdog of this year's National Security coach selection is Manzano's former assistant Jose, who has learned from the experience of changing the coach halfway; Shenhua invited Uruguayan Poyet is quite like Luneng coach Magat, who is extremely strict with the team management, strong wrist, iron blood style, can Shenhua senior management withstand the test of pain? The 2017 season of double-front combat is unpredictable.
Manzano has coached Mallorca 3 times and atLetico Madrid twice, and since former SIPG coach Sedarish Eriksen went to Shenzhen to coach, perhaps Manzano will accept an invitation from the Chinese League A club in the future, and even have the opportunity to return to the Chinese Super League like Pacheco, everything is possible!
List of top 16 head coaches in the Chinese Super League:
Guangzhou Evergrande Team Scolari, Jiangsu Suning Team Cui Longsu, Shanghai SIPG Team Boas, Shanghai Shenhua Team Boyet, Beijing Guoan Jose, Guangzhou R&F Team Stojkovic, Huaxia Happiness Team Pellegrini, Chongqing Lifan Zhang Wailong, Yanbian Fude Park Taixia, Tianjin Teda Pacheco, Liaoning Hongyun Team MaLin, Changchun Yatai Team Li Zhangsu, Henan Jianye Jia Xiuquan, Shandong Luneng Magat, Tianjin Quanjian Team Cannavaro and Guizhou Zhicheng Team Li Bing