Recognize the reality, after the defeat of the AFC Champions League, Taishan will introduce the Super League beast waist, and Cui Kangxi is afraid of losing his loveIn the first official game in 2024, Shandong Taishan suffered a black start. In the AFC Champions League knockout round, they fought hard at home, but they were scoreless, losing 2-3 to the mighty Kawasaki Frontale. Losing the advantage, the Tarzan team will have to fight with their backs in the next game and travel to face their opponents on the road. Unless an incredible miracle happens, they will face a huge puzzle to get through.
The heavy defeat to Kawasaki Frontale at Taishan's home stadium can be directly attributed to the stubborn temper of coach Choi Kang-hee. As we all know, under the heavy blow of Son Joon-ho's termination and the departure of Fellaini and Moises, the most urgent need to strengthen the Taishan team this season is the back position. However, the old Cui insisted on locking his eyes on his fellow countryman Bai Shenghao, and as a result, Bai Shenghao finally joined the Championship team Birmingham, which made Cui Kangxi's recruitment plan fall short, and Cui Kangxi's insistence became a stumbling block to the team's recruitment plan.
Without an excellent midfielder, for the Taishan team, it is simply a loss of the key link between attack and defense. In this scenario, it would not be surprising to lose to Kawasaki Frontale. Therefore, whether or not the Tarzans can go further in the AFC Champions League, they are in desperate need of a foreign midfielder before the winter transfer window closes.
According to the latest news from Shandong Sports**, Taishan Club has launched a new recruitment plan, and will bring in a new midfielder in this transfer window. However, at present, there is no additional foreign aid registration place for the Taishan team, so in order to bring in new foreign players, it is necessary to let one of the foreign players in the team leave. And this foreign aid is undoubtedly Choi Kang-hee's favorite Pato.
It is reported that once the Tarzan team finds a suitable foreign player for the midfield position, they will let Pato leave. If no team is willing to loan Pato, Shandong Taishan will directly terminate his contract. When he signed Pato last year, the liquidated damages in the contract were not high and were within the acceptable range of the club. This confrontation between the introduction and the termination of the contract once again made the recruitment of the Taishan team one of the focuses of the winter window.
Shandong Sports revealed that the Taishan team has now locked in a suitable foreign aid in the back, he is the 33-year-old Ghanaian player Wakaso, who once played for the Shenzhen team. In fact, as early as the beginning of this year, there was an affair between Wakaso and Shandong Taishan. However, perhaps because Choi Kang-hee was too persistent in his pursuit of Baek Seung-ho, Wakaso failed to join Taishan.
Despite his age, Wakaso is still in excellent form. Last season, he played five Chinese Super League games for Shenzhen and his overall performance is still impressive. With the official disbandment of the Shenzhen team at the beginning of this year, Wakaso returned to free agency, but has not been able to find a new team. There were rumours that Wakaso would join the West Asian side, but it was eventually confirmed that it was just fake news.
It is also worth mentioning that Wakaso signed with the same agency as Fellaini, a meritorious foreign player of Taishan. Therefore, the possibility of Taishan Club signing Wakaso is still very large.
Although Cui Kangxi successfully led Shandong Taishan to rise last season and eventually won the runner-up of the Chinese Super League, his defeat to Shanghai Shenhua in the FA Cup final and Kawasaki Frontale in the first game of the AFC Champions League knockout round undoubtedly highlighted Cui Kangxi's shortcomings in personnel arrangement and command skills.
At the end of last season, Taishan FC handed over the team's recruitment decisions entirely to Choi Kang-hee, however, it was clearly not a wise move. Now, Choi Kang-hee should also start to review his recruitment strategy, and it would be wise to be too obsessed with certain players. Lao Cui's adjustment began with sending away Pato, whom he had personally introduced, which may have been a necessary and painful corrective move. List of high-quality authors