Striving for a full participation in volleyball at the Tokyo Olympics, China is looking for a foreign coach for its national men’s volleyball team.
“The search for a high-level foreign coach is going on,” said Li Quanqiang, director of the volleyball department of China’s General Administration of Sport, expressing hope that both the women’s and men’s volleyball teams as well as China’s beach volleyball teams could qualify for the 2020 Olympic Games.
As China’s men’s volleyball team missed both London and Rio Olympics, Li vowed to make big changes in the coming years through deepening reform.
China will expand the domestic volleyball league by adding more qualified teams, Li said, adding, “With more professional players, the national teams could have more choices.” On the country’s women’s team which won gold at Rio Olympics, Li said that they must also work hard to make improvement.
“After the girls stepped down from the top podium in Rio, they need to start from scratch, as more powerful rivals will show up at the Tokyo Olympics,” Lai Yawen, deputy director of the volleyball department and the leader of the women’s team in Rio is quoted on the Xinhuanet website of China’s official news agency.
This story first appeared in the blog, The Sport Intern. The editor is Karl-Heinz Huba of Lorsch, Germany. He can be reached at ISMG@aol.com. The article is reprinted here with permission of Huba.