Today's CBA league has become the world of domestic coaches, and none of the 20 teams is a foreign coach. Of course, this does not mean that the foreign coach is really not as good as the local handsome, and the CBA also had many foreign head coaches with great characteristics, such as the Greek coach Yannis of the Beijing Shougang men's basketball team.
Yannis is an old acquaintance of Chinese fans, and in 2013, he came to China to join the Chinese men's basketball team as an assistant coach of Yanakis, and won the 2015 Asian Championship with the team. In 2017, Beijing Shougang began to rebuild, and the club hired a new general manager, Qin Xiaowen.
And the first thing Qin Xiaowen did after taking office was to change the coach, she used her relationship to invite Yannis, and secretly lowered Min Lulei to the air. After Yannis took over the coaching whip of Beijing Shougang, he did bring a lot of changes to the team, building Shougang into a team with iron-blooded defense, which also made Beijing Shougang one of the most ugly teams in the CBA.
In the 2020 season, due to well-known reasons, Yannis left China and did not renew his contract with Shougang FC. Major Marshal Xie Libin temporarily put out the fire, but the results of the Shougang team did not improve, but became worse and worse. Under such circumstances, Qin Xiaowen invited Yannis back again, but after Yannis returned, she failed to lead the Shougang team out of the trough.
In the 2021-22 season, Beijing Shougang was swept out of the Jilin men's basketball team in the qualifying round of the playoffs, and Yannis immediately resigned. And Qin Xiaowen also left Beijing Shougang after her contract with the club expired at the end of the year.
Now, Yannis has been out of the sight of Beijing fans for more than 2 years, and recently there has been news in the domestic basketball world that Yannis will return to the CBA this summer. Recently, a well-known basketball media person broke the news that Yannis will return to the CBA, but it is impossible for him to coach Beijing Shougang again, because Shougang Club has just corrected the former Chinese women's basketball coach Xu Limin and hired former Chinese men's basketball coach Li Nan to serve as the team's technical adviser.
Judging from the current situation, there are only 3 teams in the entire CBA that need to hire new coaches, they are: Guangzhou men's basketball team, Sichuan men's basketball team and Shanxi men's basketball team. Among these three teams, the Guangzhou and Sichuan men's basketball teams are all clubs run by small capitals, and the main goal of next season is to reduce the club's expenses, and it is unlikely to hire a foreign coach at this point in time.
Therefore, now only the Shanxi men's basketball team is left with the strength to hire Yannis. Due to the large state-owned enterprises behind the financiers, the financial resources of the Shanxi men's basketball team are much stronger than many CBA clubs today, and the club's management is also willing to let the team play the ideal league results.
Therefore, after Yannis returns to the CBA, his next home can only be the Shanxi men's basketball team. And this makes him the only foreign head coach in the current CBA league. It is reported that Yannis's annual salary for coaching the Shanxi men's basketball team has reached $1.5 million, which is higher than local CBA champion coaches like Yang Ming and Du Feng.
However, after Yannis returns to the CBA, it is difficult to say whether he can lead the Shanxi men's basketball team out of the trough and become a strong team in the CBA. After all, the strength of the Shanxi men's basketball team is still much worse than that of Beijing Shougang back then. There are also many uncertainties about whether Yannis's iron-blooded defense and the tactics of lowering the offensive rhythm are suitable for the Shanxi men's basketball team. Therefore, whether Yannis's position is stable enough depends on the performance of the Shanxi men's basketball team in the league next season......