When it comes to the name Klaus Schlapner, Chinese fans will certainly not be unfamiliar. Although it has been away from Chinese football and even professional football for a long time, Schlapner still enjoys a high reputation. Just last Friday, "Uncle Shi" ushered in his 80th birthday, and he also recently gave an interview to the German Southwest Broadcasting Company to recall his coaching career.
In January 1992, the Chinese Olympic team suffered a "black 9 minutes" in the final round of the Asian final of the Olympic Qualifiers, and was scored 3 goals by the South Korean team, missing the Barcelona Olympic Games, triggering a change in Chinese football. It is in this context that Schlappner, a German with a checkered hat, a goatee and a thick accent, came to China.
At that time, the reason why the Chinese Football Association chose Schlapner had a lot to do with his coaching resume. In the 1982–1983 season, he led Mannheimwaldhof to 21 wins in the Bundesliga, scoring 83 goals and finishing first in the Bundesliga. In his first Bundesliga season, Waldhof was successfully relegated in 11th place, and in the second season, he finished 6th, but did not qualify for the UEFA Cup due to the difference in goal difference. This season, Schlappner's Mannheimwaldhof also beat the season's winner Bayern Munich, and the way he wore a hat emblazoned with the words "Bayern Munich" on his head to celebrate the victory, it was also a classic scene in the history of the Bundesliga.
With nearly half of Schlapner's team coming from his own youth team and producing stars such as Jurgen Koehler, Mauriccio Gaudino and Fritz Walter, Schlapner's reputation for tapping into young players is widely spread. To this day, Uncle Shi still believes that fully tapping into his own young players is the most important thing a manager should do.
The best transfer is to promote players from your own youth team, which is what coaches should do, rather than asking how much money they have in their pockets and how many people they can buy with that money.
Being good at digging up youth players, allowing a weak team to stand in the Bundesliga, leading the team to visit China, and inviting two coaches Li Yingfa and Jin Zhiyang to Mannheim for training, which is an important reason for Schlapner to become the head coach of the Chinese men's football team.
After coaching the national football team, although Schlapner led the team to play some friendly matches in the early days, in the 10th Asian Cup, the Chinese men's football team won the third place, so that Schlapner's reputation in China suddenly rose to the peak. He was even invited to the scene of the Spring Festival Gala in 1993, niu herd and Feng Gong performed the cross-talk "Auction", auctioned off a hair of Schlapner, which shows Schlapner's status in China at that time.
Uncle Shi's hair is white in China, white for Chinese football, white for China, and we want to keep it in China forever.
In response, Schlapner also recalled that he "didn't have to spend money to take a taxi in China." But Schlapner is a man, not a god, and after the Chinese men's soccer team missed the U.S. World Cup in 1993, Schlapner was suspended, turned from head coach to technical adviser, and then left China after the contract expired. Still, Schlapner maintains ties with China, from selling his eponymous beer to briefly coaching avant-garde Huandao, from helping to run transfers to Germany for Yang Chen, Xie Hui, Shao Jiayi and others, to helping to establish youth training cooperation between China and Germany, and even the professionalization of Chinese football is inseparable from his proposals. Perhaps there is some controversy about Uncle Shi's coaching level, but his contribution to Chinese football is real.
At present, the performance of Chinese football continues to decline, the impact of Jinyuan football on Chinese football, and the total collapse of the youth training system are considered to be the fundamental reasons for the regression of Chinese football, and this is also the link that the 80-year-old Schlapner has been criticizing.
Now you can always see someone showing off, buying a Ferrari, buying a private jet, buying this and buying that. It's not a good example for our kids and the young players, I criticize these phenomena and I don't like it.
It is also normal for Uncle Shi not to be accustomed to the current drunken fans of football, you know, although Schlapner did not play brilliantly when he was young, he was a time management expert. Before he became famous as a football coach, he was not so much a player as an electrician who could play football and ran his own family business.
Whoever allocates time well can accomplish a lot of things.
Now that Uncle Shi's business has long been managed by his son, he and his wife have moved to "seclusion" in the forest 20 kilometers north of Mannheim, and even so, he has no shortage of visitors, and until now he can still receive weekly letters from fans, hoping to get his signature. Football and life in the woods made Uncle Shi full of energy at the age of 80. However, affected by the epidemic, this 80th birthday Uncle Shi did not make a big fuss, but after the epidemic, Uncle Shi still hopes to invite old friends to celebrate together.
If you can't celebrate on a regular day, you might change it to September 22, October 22, or November 22.