Lippi urges China to unite for ‘improbable’ World Cup run

Marcello Lippi has urged his China team and the nation to pull together to accomplish the "improbable" task of qualifying for the 2018 World Cup before he begins a thorough overhaul of the struggling football program.

The Chinese Football Association formally unveiled Lippi as head coach of China's Dragons at a news conference on Friday, almost a week after the deal was agreed.

Chinese media reports say Lippi's three-year contract is worth 20 million euros ($21.8 million) annually and makes him the highest paid national team coach in the world. Association officials have declined to discuss specifics of the compensation package for Lippi, who led Italy to World Cup victory in 2006.

China is ranked No. 84 by FIFA and is a perennial under-achiever in international football competition, despite massive spending on foreign players and coaches in the domestic league. High-profile managers including World Cup winner Luiz Felipe Scolari and former England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson have also arrived to take charge at Guangzhou Evergrande and Shanghai SIPG.

Still, it's unlikely China will even qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. Gao Hongbo quit as head coach after the 2-0 loss to Uzbekistan earlier this month left China with just one point from four games in Asia's last round of World Cup qualifying. China has qualified for the World Cup only once, when the tournament was co-hosted by South Korea and Japan in 2002, but was bounced out of the group stages without scoring a goal.