China soccer fans rip Lippi for high salary, low results

Ever since the FIFA World Cup kicked off last month, Chinese soccer fans have been ridiculing their men’s national team for their failure to qualify.

Now it seems they’ve also turned on Marcello Lippi, manager of the China national team, after reports revealing he is among the highest-paid managers in the world went viral.

The Italian soccer legend earns $28.1 million a year heading the China national team, a salary second only to Manchester United’s Jose Mourinho, according to the South China Morning Post in April.

For comparison, Germany’s Joachim Low was the highest-paid coach at the Russia World Cup at 3.85 million euros ($4.52 million) – a sixth of Lippi’s salary, according to football2018worldcup.com.

“Let’s be honest and say that Lippi is clearly overpaid. It doesn’t seem to make a difference who leads China’s lousy soccer team, me or someone with experience,” wrote one Sina Weibo user.

Net users pointed out that Lippi’s pay is twice the combined salaries of coaches of eight top-performing 2018 World Cup teams – Uruguay, France, Brazil, Belgium, Russia, Croatia, Sweden, and England.

However, others justified Lippi’s salary at the expense of the Chinese team.

“Lippi is obviously suffering much more than the top eight World Cup team coaches,” wrote a Net user.

“It will never be enough to make up for his tarnished reputation for being associated with the Chinese team late in his career,” wrote another.

“He’s fairly compensated considering that coaching the Chinese men’s team is the toughest job out of all of them,” wrote another.