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 | Thursday, April 27, 2000, updated at 16:09(GMT+8) | ||||||||||||
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How to beat Europe? Hire younger playersEven if we only have a 1-per cent chance, we still exert 100 per cent of our ability, says Wang Jiawei, head coach of the Chinese men's volleyball team. Wang knows well how hard for his team to win a journey to the Sydney Olympics in July's qualification tournaments in Greece. The players will compete with almost all the top European teams.Eight teams will play in the qualifiers from July 24 to 27, and the top four will go to Sydney. But what troubles him most is not the taller, more stalwart European rivals. Instead it is the stagnation of his own squad. Like the women's side, the men's squad is facing its toughest challenge since placing second-to-last in the 1999 World Cup. In 11 Cup matches, the Chinese beat only Tunisia, the bottom team of the final standing. Their Asian throne also shook when arch-rivals Japan and South Korea beat them at the Cup games. So the traditionally conservative Wang combated stagnation on Tuesday by announcing his youngest team since he took the coaching post four years ago. More than half of the members on the old roster morphed into flamboyant new faces who staged sparkling performances in the national league. Two of the new faces are teen-agers. The most stunning change is the ace spiker. The No 1 Asian spiker Zhang Xiang settled for becoming a bench player this time, and his place on the court will be taken by Sun Zhiye, a Chinese Army player who is five years younger than he is. Wang, the former Chinese volleyball backbone, says he is taking a risk to see if a new line-up can give the Europeans a surprise attack. "They are unfamiliar to Europe," Wang said. "We have used the old line-up so long that the Europeans had found ways to deal with them." But Wang also knows the inexperience of the young team might fail them in their bid for their second Olympics. "I hope a vigour brought in by the new players will help them to win," he said. The tournaments will also be a life-or-death moment for Wang, who was pushed to the brink of resignation after the World Cup. So whether the team wins an Olympic berth will probably decide Wang's coaching future.
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