The East Stand

Beijing Guoan sack Roger Schmidt with club in Chinese Super League title race – is any manager safe?

German coach leaves after two years and winning the Chinese FA Cup last season to be replaced by Bruno Genesio

Even league-leading Guangzhou Evergrande boss Fabio Cannavaro is in second spell at the club after being let go first time

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Beijing Guoan coach Roger Schmidt (C) takes his first training session with the side in July 2017. Photo: Xinhua

Formerly of the South China Morning Post, Jonathan White has written about sport from China for nearly 15 years, and covered the Beijing 2008 Olympics, the Fifa World Cup in Brazil in 2014 and the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

Published: 7:22pm, 31 Jul 2019Updated: 12:44pm, 11 Dec 2019

Chinese Super League club Beijing Guoan have parted company with head coach Roger Schmidt.

The German’s sacking was expected. The Chinese Super League 2019 season Wikipedia page updated his departure for Lyon’s Bruno Genesio on Tuesday, while Chinese sports media carried their various obituaries of his time in Beijing on Wednesday morning. French radio broke the news.

He leaves the club with 10 games of the season left and the long-time league leaders four points behind table topping Guangzhou Evergrande. This is hardly a disaster.

The club are second to a team that has won 11 league games in a row, a new record and something that Guangzhou Evergrande never had to achieve during their seven titles in a row.

The fact that the Guangzhou side won most of those titles in a canter shows how competitive the league is this season, as does the fact that champions Shanghai SIPG are also four points back and they cannot be too displeased with their title defence.