Special correspondent Gan Hui reports On January 6, Shanghai Shenhua ended its winter break of about a month and gathered at Jiushi Kangqiao Sports Base to prepare for the new 2025 season.

The new assistant coach was a legendary goalscorer in the Russian Premier League

In the 2024 season, Shenhua is the runner-up of the Chinese Super League by one point. In the new season, the team's goal is clear, to go to the next level and strive for the Chinese Super League championship.

From the perspective of personnel changes, head coach Slutsky has focused on the offensive side of the team in the new season. When he came to Shenhua a year ago, Slutsky brought two assistant coaches, one of whom was Vasily Berezutsky, who was in charge of the team's defensive training. At the end of last year, Vasily left Shenhua after receiving an offer from the head coach of Azerbaijan's club Sabah Baku, but instead of hiring an assistant coach in charge of defense to replace Vasily, Slutsky brought in an assistant coach in charge of attack, Verettennikov.

Veretchennikov, 54, was also a very good goalscorer as a player, and at one point set the Russian Premier League goal record with 143 goals, a record that was only broken by Dzyuba in 2021. In 2010, Veretnikov began his coaching career in Volgograd Rotol, where he served as the head coach of Volgograd Rotol and Vladivostok Solar. Slutsky and Veretannikov had worked together in Kazan Ruby and were familiar with each other, which helped Veretnikov quickly enter the role in Shenhua.

Slutsky invited Veretennikov to join his coaching staff this time, hoping that he can help the team improve its attacking power, especially to improve the goal conversion rate. Last season, Shenhua defended very successfully and conceded the fewest goals in the Chinese Super League, but in the end they fell short, finishing second with Harbour one point behind, which had a lot to do with wasting too many chances in attack. Over the course of the season, Shenhua have scored 23 fewer goals than Harbour.

Shenhua has also adjusted the foreign players in the forward line, and the Brazilian striker Saulo Mineiro from the Ceará club of the Brazilian second league will replace Malele, who has left the team at the end of his contract, and form a new forward combination with Andre in the new season.

Saulo Mineiro was born on June 17, 1997, is 1.84 meters tall, weighs 74 kilograms, and has a right foot and is relatively fast. Between July 2021 and August 2023, Saulo Mineiro played for Yokohama FC in the J-League, scoring 10 goals and joining Ceará in the second division in August 2023, where he made 30 league appearances, scoring 11 goals and providing six assists.

At the same time, Shenhua further enriched the team's medical security force, improved the medical security system, and added two physiotherapists. Last weekend, Patrick Prowler, the former chief physiotherapist of Swiss Grasshopper, announced on social platforms that he would soon join Shenhua. Born in 1993, Patrick Proroler is not very old, but he has a good professional background and has accumulated a lot of clinical experience in his work. It is understood that Trick Proroler has a bachelor's degree in exercise and exercise science from the University of Salzburg, a bachelor's degree in physiotherapy from the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, and a master's degree in sport and exercise science from the University of Salzburg, and has been the chief physiotherapist of the Grasshopper Club since 2020.

From the perspective of a series of operations, Shenhua attaches great importance to the construction of the club's scientific and professional security system, and has done a lot of work in the past two years, hoping to build Shenhua into a more professional and professional club.

There are people who come in and there must be people who come out. On the last day of 2024, Shenhua Club officially announced that Cao Yunding, Ma Lailai, Jin Yangyang, and Xu Yougang, whose contracts expired, would not renew their contracts and terminate their contracts with Wen Jiabao ahead of schedule. In addition to these 5 players, Ma Zhen, Wang Hao and others will be on loan to strive for more opportunities to practice in the game.

Haikou winter training, the international player was absent from the first period

According to the arrangement, after the concentration on January 6, Shenhua will not immediately devote itself to preparation training, but will carry out a comprehensive physical examination and professional physical function test for the players, and help the coaching staff understand the current physical condition of each player in an all-round way through a series of data, so as to better and more scientifically arrange the next winter training. On the afternoon of January 9, Shenhua flew from Shanghai to Haikou to officially start preparation training.

Shenhua's winter training in Haikou will last until January 27. Since the national team is also training in Haikou from January 9 to 18, the international players of the Shenhua team will be absent from the first half of the team's training camp and can only participate in the second half of the training from the 19th to the 27th.

During the winter training in Haikou, Shenhua arranged a total of 4 warm-up matches, and the opponents were basically domestic clubs. Slutsky hopes to build up the lineup through the warm-up match and help the players gradually regain the rhythm and form of the game.

At the end of the winter training in Haikou on January 27, Shenhua returned to Shanghai, and the players will usher in a four-day Spring Festival holiday. On the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, the team regrouped at the base.

The first match of the Shenhua 2025 season has also been confirmed. A few days ago, the Chinese Football Association announced that the 2025 "Super Cup" between Shenhua and Haigang will be played at 19:35 on February 7 at the Kunshan Olympic Sports Center Stadium.