The Russian coaching season abroad ended in tragedy.Slutsky could have made history of China, but in the end lost everything
The Russian coaching season outside of the country ended in tragedy. Leonid Slutsky could have entered the history of the Chinese championship, but at the most crucial moment, he lost everything.
Perhaps the time of Russian coaches abroad has passed once and for all. Statistics show that the results of Russian specialists are steadily declining. Stanislav Cherchesov was the first to lose his job at the beginning of summer, failing the third qualifying round for the 2022 World Cup with the Hungarian national team. At the end of the month, another Russian coach left his foreign club. Leonid Slutsky left the Chinese Guangzhou after more than two years of work.
Slutsky went to conquer China at the beginning of 2020 and immediately set the highest goals for himself - to win the championship. Guangzhou has not won the championship for 8 years. Slutsky set about creating a new team and in two transfer windows spent a total of 60 million euros on new football players. Among the newcomers was the famous Brazilian Paulinho, who previously played for Barcelona and Tottenham.
Slutsky planned to return Guangzhou to the top of the standings in a year. In 2020, he took 8th place, but then the results dropped even lower. In 2021, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the entire championship was held in one city with a compressed calendar. Guangzhou finished only 10th. In 2022, Slutsky's team dropped to 13th place.
Slutsky could not achieve his main goal - to enter the top 3 of the championship and qualify for the Asian Champions League. Guangzhou played successfully only in the Chinese FA Cup, reaching the final in 2022, but lost to the Shanghai Shenhua club with a score of 0: 2.
The Russian coach tried to save his post in every possible way, but after the final match of the championship, he announced his departure from Guangzhou. Slutsky intends to return to Russia, where he has already received several job offers.
The most realistic option is CSKA, where Slutsky worked from 2009 to 2016 and won the Russian championship three times. This season, the "army team" will be headed by Vladimir Fedotov, but the new coach has a poor relationship with the club's management and may be fired at the end of the season. Then Slutsky will get a chance to return to CSKA.
Another option is Lokomotiv, which will leave Markus Gisdol after losing to Ural in the Russian Cup final and finishing the championship in the middle of the standings. Many Lokomotiv fans want to see Slutsky as the head coach of the "red-greens", but in this case everything will depend on the new general director of the club.
