By Emily Goddard
July 19 – Veteran coach Miroslav Blažević has said he will leave his post as manager of the Chinese under-23 football team before the end of the year following the team’s failure to qualify for next year’s London Olympic Games.
The 74-year-old discussed his future in China with the Chinese Football Association (CFA) last week and it was decided to let the Croatian go at the end of the year if he could not help the team nail a berth in London, according to the contract, which expires on December 1, 2012.
“We had hoped to keep the under-23 team intact and Blažević as the coach for a longer time, but there are many unresolved problems such as coordination with players’ respective clubs and arrangement of their competition schedule,” said CFA vice director Yu Hongchen.
Blažević was invited to take charge of the under-23 team last December, after his recession as head coach of the Bosnia and Herzegovina national football team.
He was initially given six months to fine-tune his squad which was selected from a pool of just a few hundred eligible players nationwide.
The experienced coach, who led his home country to third place at the 1998 World Cup in France, could not replicate that feat with the Chinese under-23 side, which endured the humiliation of a goalless draw with Oman at home and a 4-1 loss away in June’s play-offs to condemn them to elimination from the Olympic reckoning.
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