Xinhua News Agency, Madrid, June 11th: back to La Liga, I am very calm and want to cultivate more “Wu Lei” for Chinese football
— Interview with Granada chairman Jiang Lizhang
Xie Yuzhi
After two years of La Liga, Granada in 2018-2019 season the second place ended the West B league, next season will return to La Liga. Recently, Jiang Lizhang, chairman of the club, shared Granada’s experience of returning to La Liga in an exclusive interview with Xinhua News Agency, and revealed that his goal was to cultivate more “Wu Lei” for Chinese football “.
On the evening of June 5th, in the penultimate round of the West B league, with the third-ranked arbassett 1:2 losing to Malaga, ranking second in the standings, granada, with a 4-point advantage in hand, rose to La Liga in advance. The whole city of Granada is in a carnival. The fans shouted the name of Jiang Lizhang in front of the city hall, and Jiang Lizhang, who flew from China to attend the celebration, shouted excitedly, “Long Live Granada!”
But after the initial ecstasy, Jiang Lizhang, who was interviewed at the Hotel Cafe, defined his mood at this moment with the word “calm”, “I said when the team was downgraded, we will come back in two years. It is just two years now “.
After acquiring Granada in 2016, Jiang Lizhang became the chairman of the club. He, who was born in marketing, especially valued the “right to speak” in the football world “. In his view, acquiring a European team means “having a voice in Europe and the core circle of football in the whole world”. However, only one season later, Granada dropped into West B.
Fortunately, this setback did not shake Jiang Lizhang’s confidence. He did not sell the team as people speculated, but continued to run the team bulkhead. Now, when the team returned to La Liga, looking back on the past three years, Jiang Lizhang admitted that this was an attempt to “cross the river by touching the stones. “At the beginning, we really didn’t understand things like football management. But Chinese are resilient. I regard the process from La Liga to La Liga as an opportunity to learn, in which I learned the knowledge and language of the football world. We made the team play step by step through our efforts. Now the team is back, and I am more confident.”
Nowadays, Jiang Lizhang is also the “leader” of Chongqing contemporary Lifan Club of China Super League “. He said frankly that there are great differences in club management between China and Spain, “Spanish football clubs are already very mature. La Liga league has a set of constantly updated management methods. Local fans, media, government and club staff have formed their own set of culture, which promotes the continuous development of Spanish football. However, the management of Chinese football clubs is still very elementary, but I can’t copy the Granada set to the Super League completely, which is unrealistic because no one can implement it and no one understands it. Many aspects of Chinese football have just started. We have to learn too much and step by step “.
“Step by step” is the most frequent interview with Jiang Lizhang, which represents his attitude: Do not rush for success. He said: “Sports is a slow industry, and be patient.” For the next development goal of Granada, he gave a pragmatic answer: “It is good to stay in La Liga. Don’t Talk empty words now. Maybe five years later, the team will have a bigger goal, and then work towards it.”
In the past six months, La Liga has attracted more attention among Chinese fans because Chinese striker Wu Lei joined the Spanish team, which has also made more Spanish teams see the potential of the Chinese market. Granada, as a Chinese-funded team, has the advantage of “getting close to the water, the tower and the moon first” in the operation of Chinese players joining. However, Jiang Lizhang stressed that the team would not blindly introduce Chinese players for the sake of Bo’s attention.
He said: “I have two views. One is to find the right player, not to introduce for introduction, and to take a scientific attitude, let the powerful Chinese players come through the investigation of scouts, otherwise they will be useless to the players and the club. Second, we should not aim at only one Wu Lei or only the group of forwards, consider where the second, third and fourth Wu Lei is.”
In fact, how to cultivate more “Wu Lei” for Chinese football is the proposition that Jiang Lizhang has always been most concerned about. In recent years, he has built a system called Hope based on several clubs under his own. At present, the system already includes Granada, Chongqing contemporary Lifan, members of the 4 clubs of Serie A Parma and Portugal chaotondra. An important part of the system is to create a “player training service” through commercial operation to transport some young Chinese players overseas for training.
Jiang Lizhang said: “How can Chinese football establish a connection with European and even world football and how can it contribute to Chinese football? I think it is necessary to establish a system and form a standard to continuously produce Chinese players.”
This is undoubtedly a long-term plan. Jiang Lizhang revealed that in his Hope system, there is a technical team above all clubs: “From the establishment to the present, this team has done a lot of running-in, overcoming cultural differences is to implement my idea of cultivating Chinese players.” And this idea has also been instilled into all staff of Granada Club from general manager to sports director, youth training director and even coaches at all levels.
Jiang Lizhang said that he hoped that his team would give Chinese players who joined the team more respect and the same feeling as home: “In the past, many Chinese players came to a club because of sponsors or other relationships, however, they were not valued and marginalized. We are a Chinese-funded club. As the boss, my will can play a decisive role. I demand that if Chinese players join, they must be accepted and respected by everyone. If a coach can help Chinese players gain a foothold in the second-tier team in the assessment, I can give him a bonus, so they will be happy to do it.”
Taking the club of Granada as a foothold and making use of the advanced experience of European football to contribute to the development of Chinese football is Jiang Lizhang’s hope and his original intention to acquire Granada. He said that he paid more attention to the training of Chinese players by the club than whether the team was in Spanish or West B: “If the team is in West B, they can lose a Chinese player entering the World Cup, that is success; But if the team is in La Liga, but can’t make any achievements in cultivating Chinese players, it is a kind of failure for me.”