On October 19, Beijing time, Beijing Guoan lost the championship life and death battle with Shanghai SIPG. Thus basically losing hope of winning the last title of the season. The end of the season was a huge contrast to the goals set by Sinobo Guoan club for this season. It can be said that the achievements of Guoan this season are unacceptable to Beijing fans, Guoan clubs and club management.
The 2019 season is the third season in which Sinobo Group has taken over Guoan. At the beginning of 2017, Sinobo officially entered Guoan, injecting new vitality into the Guoan club that has fallen out of the first group of the Chinese Super League. However, this season has been a losing season for Guoan. At the beginning of the season, the team, under the leadership of Spanish coach Jose, had very unsatisfactory results, and after 12 rounds of playing in the league, espanyol was sacked.
After firefighter Xie Feng led the team through four league rounds as an acting coach, German Schmidt became Guoan's third manager this season. At the beginning of joining Guoan, the German had led Guoan to a wave of consecutive wins, but soon after, Guoan was once again caught in a vicious circle of unable to win. In the final 8 rounds of the league, Guoan scored only a pitiful 4 points. In the end, the Guoan League finished ninth, equalling the worst result in the team's history. It was also from this time that the author has become a "reverse shi faction". The reason is simple: after the failure of the high-level pressing tactics that the Germans are good at, there is no good way to lead the team to find a way to win again.
In the 2018 season, Guoan Club made a major change of blood for the team, after a number of veteran players left the team, Guoan introduced a number of powerful internal supporters such as Chi Zhongguo, Chi Wenyi, Wei Shihao, etc., and introduced Congolese goalscorer Bakambu and midfielder Vieira from La Liga at a high price. A series of big investments by the club seem to indicate that Guoan will usher in a good season. However, this season, the Guoan team still can't get out of the strange circle of high and low. After winning the half-way championship, the team's performance declined all the way in the second half of the season. Although it was a fluke to win the FA Cup, the result of the fourth place in the league was not satisfactory. And head coach Schmidt is too rigid, and the problem of not knowing how to be flexible is becoming more and more obvious.
This season, Guoan Club has further increased its investment in the team. At the beginning of the season, the club introduced Zhang Yuning, Wang Gang, Zou Dehai and two naturalized players Li Ke, Hou Yongyong and foreign aid Jin Weiyao, and the strength of the team has been greatly improved compared with the previous season, which is also well reflected in the team's achievements in the league. However, despite successive victories in the league, Guoan's performance in the AFC Champions League is in stark contrast to the league results. The team's record against Japanese and South Korean teams in the group stage was 1 draw and 3 losses. Such results also allowed Guoan to be eliminated in the group stage and withdraw from the AFC Champions League early.
The dismal results in the AFC Champions League, coupled with the away defeat to Shanghai SIPG in the 11th round of the league, have shown us that although Guoan has once again won the league half-time championship, under the leadership of coach Schmidt, Guoan has not had a good way to win the final victory against opponents of similar strength or higher than themselves. At this time, Schmidt was on the verge of graduation, and Vieira's absence from multiple rounds of the league due to serious injuries in the 18th round of the league was also the last straw that overwhelmed the camel. Guoan's subsequent three consecutive defeats in the league and FA Cup made Guoan determined to fire Schmidt. This time, unlike 2 years ago, Guoan did not find a temporary coach to fight the fire, but directly introduced french coach Genesio.
Genesio's arrival once gave Beijing fans hope. The reality, however, is harsh. Ten days after joining Guoan, the French ushered in the big test. Obviously, the newcomer Genesio did not pass this exam, and his Guoan lost 1:3 at home to Guangzhou Evergrande, and the league points were further expanded to 7 points, and the hope of winning the championship was extremely slim. However, in the following three rounds of the league, Evergrande lost consecutive points, and Guoan took the opportunity to narrow the point difference with the leader to 1 point. However, in last Saturday's battle with SIPG on King Mountain, Guoan once again lost at home to its opponents. And this time the loss, so that Guoan has basically lost the league championship. Home lost to SIPG and lost their last chance to win the title. While lamenting the team's poor strength, we should also reflect on it, where is the problem of national security? Is it really wise for the team to change coaches in the league halfway and a series of operations? I don't think Schmidt shouldn't change it. But the question of the choice of coach will largely determine the team's performance. And as a perennial leader of the ligue 1 club's second team, has Genesio, who has only been promoted to first-team manager in recent years and is not familiar with the Chinese league, really the right person to replace Schmidt?
In the 2019 season, it has been exactly ten years since Guoan won its first league title. Guoan's championship winning experience ten years ago was not smooth. At that time, Guoan, with 7 rounds of the league remaining, suddenly announced that the then coach Lee Jang-so was dismissed, and the team's elder Hong Yuanshuo became the temporary manager. Under the leadership of Hong Zhi, Guoan finally won the first championship in the history of the team. Ten years later, Sinobo, which is determined to win the championship, seems eager to replicate this feat in an almost gambling way. But unfortunately, the gamble failed. The reason is simple, the current situation of national security is not the same as it was then.
As we all know, Hong Yuanshuo, the interim coach of Guoan in the 2009 season, is the elder of Beijing football and Guoan. Guoan's earliest batch of star players, Gao Feng, Cao Jidong, Yang Chen, Zhou Ning, Deng Lejun, and Tao Wei, were all players that Hong Yuanshuo had brought in the 90s. During the 2001 Nine Games, Hong Yuanshuo brought out a group of young players such as Lu Jiang, Zhang Shuai, Zhang Xinxin, and Wang Changqing who later became the main force of guoan. Since then, Hong Yuanshuo has naturally become the leader of the National Security Youth Training. Huang Bowen and Yang Zhi were also excavated by him. It can be said that at that time, no one could know the Guoan team and the players of the team better than Hong Yuanshuo.
For Genesio, he not only does not know the Chinese Super League, but also does not know his players. This was already reflected in the match between Guoan and Evergrande. In this game, Genesio unexpectedly used Liu Huan as the starting left-back. And this decision to employ people has also made Guoan suffer bitter fruit. Guoan's three goals conceded in this game are all related to Liu Huan's mistakes. If ten days is not enough for Genesio to fully understand his players, then after nearly 3 months in charge of Guoan, Genesio's back combination of Lu Peng and Fernando in the match between Guoan and SIPG is somewhat incomprehensible. In last week's game, it was Genesio's wrong decision to employ people that caused Guoan to lose control of the midfield because he did not organize attacking players.
In addition, on the issue of the selection of the starting centre-back, Genesio did not make a completely correct choice. This season, Schmidt has stuck with the centre-back combination of Dabao and Kim Hyun-jae. It continued to be used after the arrival of Genesio. However, since he is not a defender, Yu Dabao often makes some fatal mistakes in defense. In the match against SIPG, Guoan's first goal was due to his long time falling to the ground, leaving Guoan lacking protection in the penalty area, allowing SIPG's Li Shenglong to score a header that broke the deadlock. While the injury to the player is understandable, it is incumbent upon the centre-back to immediately get up and throw himself into the team's defence when the opponent is attacking near the penalty area. For this goal that changed the balance of the two teams on the field, Yu Dabao should bear a lot of responsibility. Based on the performance in the past many games, we can see that Yu Dabao as Guoan's starting center-back is not a completely correct choice. But Genesio did not solve this problem well after coming to Guoan.
Based on the above two platooning problems, we can see that Genesio did not combine his tactical play style well with the existing player characteristics of Guoan, which is precisely because his understanding of Guoan players and opponents is far from enough. Apparently, at this point, his predecessor Schmidt was much better than him. Schmidt, who has been in charge of Guoan for two years, knows not only every player of Guoan very well, but also every opponent he has played in the league.
Of course, this is not to say that Schmidt cannot be changed. But in terms of the level of knowledge of Guoan and the Chinese Super League, Schmidt is more suitable than Genesio. In addition, in the current guoan first-team coaching team, in addition to Tao Wei, the other old guoan has been basically cleaned. With Schmidt's departure coming out more suddenly, it was difficult for Guoan to find a suitable Chinese coach to lead the team to fight the fire. On the other hand, Guoan's management also did not have enough courage to appoint the young Tao Wei as the team's interim head coach. And this problem is also a problem at the current top level of national security - too obsessed with big-name coaches and players.
Guoan's failure to bring in a striker to replace Bakambu this summer was also largely due to the problem of looking too much at major cards. According to "official" sources, Guoan was bent on bringing in Sevilla striker Ben Yeder, who "definitely doesn't need everyone to baidu", but due to the offer and some other problems, Guoan ultimately failed to bring in the French striker. As a result, the opportunity to solve the problem of the team's lack of attack before the start of the second half of the season was missed. Subsequently, due to the renewal of the contract, he lost a national-level striker - Wang Ziming.
Based on the above various reasons, the current problems in this national security team can be said to be quite a lot. So it's no surprise that they have repeatedly lost against strong league opponents. From now on, Guoan's gamble in the second half of the league to win the championship has completely failed. In the absence of a suitable head coach replacement, replacing Schmidt is not a completely correct choice.