Blazevic to coach China Olympic soccer team
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Veteran Croatian coach Miroslav Ciro Blazevic was named the new head coach of the Chinese Olympic soccer team here on Saturday.
After the Olympic soccer team's frustrating performance at the Guangzhou Asiad last month, the Chinese Football Association (CFA) has been considering to replace coach Sun Wei with Blazevic, and the CFA confirmed that on Saturday in a press conference.
Before Blazevic, the Chinese Olympic soccer team had three other foreign coaches Radivoje Ognjanovic of former Yugoslavia, Bobby Houghton of Britain and Ratomir Dujkovic of Serbia.
The CFA signed a two-year contract with the veteran coach, which will expire on Dec. 1, 2012. Li Bing was named the assistant coach.
The 73-year-old Blazevic has a rich coaching history, highlighted by taking Croatia to third place at the 1998 World Cup in France and the same side to last eight at the 1996 Euro Cup. However during his helm in the national teams of Iran and Bosnia-Herzegovinia, the two teams failed to enter the 2002 and 2010 World Cups.
Blazevic led the Chinese Super League side Shanghai Shenhua to third place this year.
Wei Di, head of CFA, said they chose Blazevic because of his rich coaching experience in national teams and clubs, better knowledge of Chinese and Asian football, capability of fostering young players.
Blazevic, dressed in traditional Chinese garments (Tang suit), felt proud to put on the suit and considered China a great nation to be proud of.
He felt optimistic about the future of Chinese Olympic soccer team, saying that China has quite a few soccer talents and what he needs to do is tap their potential.
"Only if we had one percent hope, we will make 99 percent effort," Blazevic said. "And China needs to make some changes to soccer concepts like they should play soccer for victories rather than playing itself."
Blazevic will then select players from a 50-member list and start a 10-day collective training. Then the team will travel to Antalya of Turkey, where there will be almost 20 national teams, for a 17-day training.
Blazevic promised to do his utmost to bring a drastic change to Chinese soccer in the shortest time possible though he can not ensure a place for China in 2012 London Olympic Games.
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