Japan's "China Football Pass" Koji Maeda took over the Guangzhou team

Reporter Wang Wei reports On December 26, Chongqing Tongliang Dragon Club officially announced that the former head coach of the Guangzhou team, Salvador, took over the team's coach, and Japanese coach Koji Maeda, who has worked in China for ten years, will replace Salvador as the head coach of the Guangzhou team. This Japanese coach, who has traveled all over the echelon of professional clubs, Chinese Super League giants, low-level clubs, and even coached women's football, can be called a "Chinese football expert".

The 55-year-old Koji Maeda played for Vissel Kobe, Fukuoka Hornets and Iwata Joy as a player, and in 2003 he transitioned to coaching, and has served as sports director or assistant coach of Kobe Vissel and Fukuoka Hornets clubs.

In 2015, Koji Maeda came to China and served as the head coach of Zhejiang Women's Football Team, Guangzhou U19 Echelon, and Wuhan Three Towns 06 Age Echelon. In the 2023 season, he served as an assistant coach for Shenhua's first team, winning the 2023 FA Cup with the team. At the beginning of the 2024 season, Koji Maeda accepted the invitation of Qingdao West Coast Club to serve as the team's assistant coach, leaving in May. In the second half of 2024, at the critical moment of relegation, he served as the head coach of the Zhongyi Haikou Famous City Team and led the team to relegation.

Judging from Koji Maeda's resume, he is very familiar with Chinese football. Ten years ago, with the help of Takeshi Okada, Koji Maeda came to China to serve as the head coach of the Zhejiang women's football team, but the experience was not long.

Since the 2021 National Games will be held in Shaanxi, the Shaanxi Football Association attaches great importance to the cultivation and training of players of appropriate age in this National Games, hoping to make a breakthrough in performance, so they found Koji Maeda. In 2017, he served as the head coach of the Shaanxi Football Association's 04 age group team, and then served as the youth training director of the Shaanxi Football Association. In the process of leading the team, due to some changes, in 2019, Koji Maeda left Xi'an and failed to lead the team to the National Games.

After leaving Shaanxi, Koji Maeda came to Guangzhou to coach the Guangzhou team in the 02 age group. At this age, many players are currently in the first team of the Guangzhou team, and Koji Maeda has a mentorship with them, and it should not take much time to understand when he takes over the position of coach of the Guangzhou team.

After spending almost two years in Guangzhou, Koji Maeda moved to Wuhan to take on the role of head coach of Three Towns' U17 team. During this period, he also introduced Kenichi Uemura to China to coach.

Koji Maeda was really known to most Chinese fans when he joined Shenhua to assist Wu Jingui, and at that time, he was in charge of the team's technical and tactical training and execution. In the 2023 season, he won the FA Cup with the team.

At the beginning of 2024, Koji Maeda accepted the invitation of Qingdao West Coast to be an assistant coach, but in May this year, he left to become the coach of Haikou Mingcheng, the bottom team in the southern region of the Central B.

Haikou Mingcheng did not win in the first stage of the second division, only 4 points in 16 rounds, after Maeda Koji took over, he carried out a transformation and did a good job of defense first, and in the end, the team got 19 points in 12 rounds and successfully relegated.

Koji Maeda has two major characteristics, one is advocating technical football, and the other is very strict management. Whether you're a senior coach or a first-team assistant coach, these two characteristics are very distinct.

It should be said that after 10 years of coaching in China, Koji Maeda has a deep and comprehensive understanding of Chinese football.

"The biggest problem in Chinese football is that there is no clear structure, and the system has not been built well." In an interview with Chinese media in October this year, Koji Maeda said: "People have not figured out, where are the advantages of Chinese players? How to play this advantage? Starting from the basics, in fact, we should give full play to the advantages of Chinese players as much as possible. There have been many foreign teachers in China, and a foreign teacher may not lead the team for a long time, but he will definitely leave some good things. When the next foreign teacher comes, how do you keep these good things? There is another point: no matter who Chinese football wants to learn, the key is to dare to break the conventional thinking? Want a change? Or are you afraid of change? ”

"A lot of foreign coaches have told me that Chinese players can't play complicated football that requires brains. But I think the key point is not that the Chinese players are not good, but how you, as a coach, teach the players. Koji Maeda said.

On some levels, Koji Maeda has similarities with El Salvador, so in the eyes of the outside world, it should not be very difficult for him to take over the Guangzhou team.

Koji Maeda, one of the longest-serving Japanese coaches in China, has publicly stated that he has been in China for so many years and knows how to help Chinese football. He also hopes to make more contributions to Chinese football in the future. It is reported that the Guangzhou team will start winter training in the near future.