Pacheco sitting in a shaky seat now

Last season, there was a giant welcome mat.

This season, it might be an exit sign.

Jaime Pacheco, one of the top additions to the Chinese league's coaching ranks last year, is on the hot seat after a series of frustrating games.

Luo Ning, honorary chairman of Beijing Guo'an, said the club won't base its decision to offer Pacheco an extension on match results, but will focus instead on the club's progress.

Pacheco (pictured), who led Guo'an to second place in the CSL last year, renewed his two-year contract last October.

But results do matter. Guo'an lost four of its past five league matches and was eliminated from the CFA Cup, and Luo openly expressed his dissatisfaction to the coaching team after a 4-0 loss to Shandong Luneng on Saturday.

Guo'an is fourth in the league. Only the champion, the runner-up and the winner of the CFA Cup qualify for the AFC Champions League.

"The season is not over, but I am very dissatisfied with the games we have played, and my dissatisfaction doesn't come from our recent performances - I already said that after the halfway mark," the Chinese paper Oriental Sports Daily quoted Luo as saying.

"The club followed the wishes of fans and media and extended the coach's contract ... we have done what we can and should do, and we don't know what more can we do."

Luo said the team is trying to figure out where the problems lie.

"The club has the responsibility to find out the reason for the team's undesirable results. If the problems lie in training and playing strategy, the coaching team should take the responsibility," Luo told Chinese paper Soccer News. "From the perspective of the club, there might have been some mistakes in the choosing of the head coach."

Pacheco's coaching team has been questioned about the way it chooses foreign players, for the quality of the team's training and for his overall philosophy, the paper reported.

While other CSL teams have brought in some big-name talent, Guo'an has purchased neither goals nor attention.

The club's most productive foreign striker is Reinaldo Elias da Costa, who has scored four goals this season. Luo said the club wanted former Spanish international Raul Gonzalez, but Pacheco shot it down.

"A lot of people said our players on defense are getting old," Luo told the paper. "The veterans' play should be enhanced by high-quality training. We played with the same lineup for two years - why are there so many differences? How is the training now?"

Luo said the team should strengthen its defense instead of being obsessed with playing attacking soccer.

"An important task of the coach is to organize the squad and make strategies and unite the team as a whole," Luo said. "It's hard to change one's soccer philosophy. He merely asked the players to get back and pay attention to defense in games, but (in practice the team is focused on) pressing forward.

"The strategy must be built according to the ability of the team."

Luo also said: "The contract is still there, Pacheco has been engaged in soccer for so many years, he is a professional coach, and he should know how to solve the problems."

The game on Saturday marked Luneng's most emphatic victory against Guo'an in the league in 19 years, and also Guo'an's biggest defeat during Pacheco's tenure.

"We sent all the players we have on defense to the field in the game, but we still had no way to deal with the speed of Luneng," the 54-year-old said after the fiasco.

"It's normal for soccer players to perform out of standard for one or two matches, nobody can remain in ideal form all the time."

(China Daily 08/14/2012 page22)