As a player, John Aloisi is best known for holding his nerve in one of Australian sport’s highest-pressure moments: converting the penalty which took the Socceroos to their first FIFA World Cup in 32 years, making him an instant national icon.
As a coach, he will now unfortunately be associated with one of the most extraordinary collapses in world football history.
Aloisi took over Chengdu Rongcheng at the start of this year – his first coaching role outside of Australia – and for the entirety of the Chinese Super League season, up until Sunday night, they sat in first position on the ladder.
No team from western China has ever won the title, and with Chengdu given a significant head start – nine of the competition’s 16 teams were given deductions ranging between 5-10 points as part of sweeping anti-corruption investigations – this looked like their season.
With five matches to go, they led the competition by 14 points, leaving them needing just two points from their remaining fixtures to get it done.
They secured just one.
For weeks, Chengdu’s players have seemed frozen by the mere thought of the final hurdle in front of them. Speaking to this masthead in early September, back when the prospect of them not winning the title seemed impossible, Aloisi spoke of how he needed to ensure the “nervous energy” of the club’s huge and impatient supporter base did not seep into his dressing room and affect their mentality.
Destiny was still within their own hands on the final day of the season. Needing a draw at minimum from their last match away to Shandong Taishan, they went 2-0 down after 23 minutes – then pulled themselves back to 3-2, needing one more goal from the final 10 minutes plus stoppage time to vanquish their demons and drag themselves over the line.
But despite a furious late rally, they could not get the job done. Meanwhile, in a match played concurrently, Dalian Yingbo beat Tianjin Jinmen Tiger 3-1 in heavy snow, a result which ensured they would supplant Chengdu on top of the table. Both sides finished equal on 52 points, but since head-to-head records are the first tiebreaker in the CSL rather than goal difference, Aloisi’s men dropped to second place.
Even crueller, Chengdu Rongcheng hosted Dalian Yingbo in the penultimate round, and lost 1-0 – but only after VAR denied them a 90th-minute equaliser due to offside, which would have clinched the title for them, there and then.
It amounts to a choke of epic proportions, and one that has ensured worldwide coverage of an otherwise overlooked competition.
Unfortunately for Aloisi, he is the face of it.
Chengdu fans had already been calling for him to be sacked for weeks, fearful that he would be unable to arrest the slow-moving car crash they were witnessing, and convinced the only way to change the situation was by changing the coach.
More than 4000 supporters travelled to Shandong in the hope that they would be proved wrong, only to have their hearts torn out in front of them. Post-match, they assembled in the lobby of the hotel where the team was staying, venting their fury at players as they arrived as security stepped in to ensure the verbal exchanges did not become physical.
Forty minutes after the final whistle, the club released a statement apologising for the result and asking for those fans to stick with them. Even that, to some sections of the Chinese media, was evidence of mental fragility, that such a statement was ready to be published, so quickly.
Meanwhile, one reporter described Chengdu as a worldwide laughingstock, and other journalists apportioned blame to players for failing to deliver on the pitch, club executives for longstanding recruitment issues – and, of course, Aloisi, for being unable to stop the rot.
Asked if he would step down in his post-match press conference, Aloisi said it was not the time to have that discussion.
“We are indeed very disappointed not to have won the championship. We are in a very despairing state. There is nothing else to say,” he said, via a translator, in comments reported by Chinese outlets.
“I want to say sorry to everyone. Right now, my only feeling is one of great dejection and disappointment, because we could see the trophy right in front of us, but could not get it.”
In the end, there was an Australian coach holding the CSL trophy: Marko Rudan, who this year joined Dalian Yingbo as an assistant. The last time a team from Dalian won it? That was 2005, the same year as Aloisi’s famous penalty.
Twenty-one years later, this is a stain that may take some time for him to wash away.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
