A Modern Lei Feng

青岛中能  0 － 0 北京国安

When the team can’t be arsed to play, its sometimes difficult getting myself up to writing this blog.  I’m not a fair weather fan, far from it in fact, and while I can accept underperforming, its hard to take straight up not trying.  Guoan suffered a difficult midweek loss against Shandong, a match that pretty much killed Beijing’s title hopes, but a strong team, a good manager would have gotten the players to suck it up and be ready for the next opponent.  Instead, on Sunday their heads and hearts weren’t in the match and it showed, as the champions weren’t able to score against the worst team in the league.  After a draw like this one, its time to take a long, hard look at the manager and the players, figuring out who is going to be in charge next year and who is worth keeping around.

The draw, combined with Shandong’s victory yesterday, put an end on any hopes we have at the title.  Guoan sit 12 points behind Shandong with 9 matches to play, a virtually impossible margin to make up, though they can at least try to when Shandong comes to Gongti in 2 weeks.  At this point, it may be time to start giving the youngsters more time and auditioning players for next year.  While we’re far from having an Asia spot wrapped up as there are 7 teams within 5 points of the 2 available spots, Guoan should be okay in the end.  Plus, the Asian Champions League just doesn’t have the same cachet (or monetary advantages) that the European version does.  One of the reasons Shanghai is where they are is their failure to qualify for the Champions League, while Changchun and Henan struggle.

As for the rest of the league, its pretty much time to announce that it’s over.  As much as I hate saying this with 9 games left, Shandong pretty much has the title wrapped up after crushing Jiangsu.  Shanghai only managed a draw against Dalian, giving Luneng a 6 point advantage.  While Shanghai have a number of difficult games coming up, Shandong finish their season facing off against the relegation sides, before hosting Shanghai.  Both teams have big games when the league resumes after the international break, with Guoan hosting Shandong and Liaoning welcoming Shanghai.

Time to play out the season, watch the Asia and relegation races, and get ready for next year.  As the weeks go by and summer turns to fall, we’ll see how many of the true fans keep coming out to Gongti when the team is playing for nothing more than pride.

山东鲁能 1 － 0 北京国安

Argh…F@)#)%!@#…Sorry I’m not more expressive right now, but last night’s loss was a tough one to take.  It’s in line with so many other matches we’ve played this year, unusual lineup choices, lack of heart, bad defending, stupid substitutions, and bad luck.

I was a little surprised to see Wang Xiaolong start last night considering he hadn’t played for months, but he did a passable job, even helping start a few early attacks.  It was his setup that saw Martinez clear through the box in only the 2nd minute, his shot across the box dribbled just past the post.  It was a sign of things to come, the failure to go 1-nil up would be followed up by a number of blown chances the rest of the night.

With all my talk about the likes of Antar and Han Peng scaring me, it was an old nemesis, the machine gunning, arrow shooting Li Jinyu who put the home team in the lead when he got on the end of a beautiful, curving free kick and knocked it in 15 minutes on.  It was blown coverage by Joel Griffiths that led to the goal, he failed to mark Li tight enough, but credit where credits due, it was an excellent Shandong goal.

Luneng didn’t let up at that point, continuing to pressure the Guoan goal, though as always Yang Zhi was able to turn them back.  When they went into the locker room at halftime, it didn’t look like Guoan had much chance of pulling out a draw.

The pressure continued, an Antar header, a Wang Yongpo shot, all handled by Yang to keep it down to a 1 goal deficit.  Yan Xiangchuang was brought on for Wang Xiaolong in the 55th minute to get things started and set up Zhu Yifan with a decent scoring chance minutes later, but Shandong’s keeper dealt with it.  In the 60th minute Du Wenhui was brought on and as often happens in that situation, Guoan’s attacking opportunities ground to a halt.  They had one final chance toward the end of the match, Yan Xiangchuang ripped a shot off a corner kick that banged off the crossbar, one final bit of bad luck that guaranteed a Shandong victory.

There are still 10 matches left in the season, including one more head to head against Shandong, though they now command a 10 point lead over us, that’s making up 4 matches in 10 games, not an easy thing to do.  Even if Luneng starts to falter, Guoan can’t afford another loss and still have to face all the title contenders and rival Tianjin through the final 10 matches.  Things aren’t looking good for Guoan, I’m not closing the coffin of their title defense, but I’m preparing it.  At this point we can only win and take care of our own business, hoping Shandong slips up, it might be time to change the focus to getting into Asia rather than winning the league.  Depressing.

No that’s not a typo, tonight’s clash between Beijing and Shandong (tv coverage on BTV-6, 19:30 kickoff) is actually matchday 7 for them.  The match between the two sides was rescheduled due to an event in Shandong’s home stadium on the original matchday way back at the beginning of May.  This is a cannot lose match for Guoan if they want to keep their title hopes alive.

It will also be a hard night for Hong to put together a lineup.  The midfield is already facing a number of injuries and may even have to go without Ryan Griffiths, who was shown a bad red card in the match over the weekend. There’s a bit of controversy since this game was moved and if it was played as originally scheduled in May, Griffiths would have been able to play.  After a 2 goal debut, youngster Zhang Xizhe will certainly be part of the manager’s plans tonight and hopefully Yang Hao will have shaken the virus that has kept him out for over a week.

The opponent’s tonight, Shandong, have stayed around the top all season long and have held on to the top spot for over a month now.  Led by a resurgent Han Peng, who has knocked in 12 goals this year, and Zhou Haibin, who has found his role after a bad showing in Europe, the team is solid top to bottom.  The names are all familiar to Guoan fans, who most of all are scared of the big man in the middle of the field Roda Antar, though Darko Matic did a good job dealing with him head-to-head last year.

The past three times these two sides have met all ended in draws.  An away draw won’t end Guoan’s title hopes, but a loss pretty much spells the end of their title defense, putting them 10 points back with 10 games to play.  Shandong’s never an easy place to play and they’ll definitely be ready for this one, after being rocked by Liaoning over the weekend.    My heart’s pulling for a victory in this one, but I’m expecting they’ll stay in line with the history and it will be a low scoring draw, though Lele’s sticking with her heart and predicting Beijing will win.

I couldn’t make the trip to Jinan, but hoping the guys in green can make me proud tonight, we need 3 points.