Guangzhou Evergrande fans were treated to some good news this week as the club extended the contract of coach Luiz Felipe Scolari.
The Brazilian recently clinched the club's 6th league title in a row to add to his personal tally of the CSL championship and the AFC champions league the previous season and he sat down with us at CCTV to tell us about his Chinese adventure.
Guangzhou Evergrande is the CSL champions for the Sixth time running
Guangzhou Evergrande is the CSL champions for the Sixth time running. In the wake of their achievement the Guangdong sports art exhibition was on show at the Tianhe Sports Center has an exibition celebrating the team's success. One of the most attractive exhibits was the portrait of coach Luiz Felipe Scolari.
He said, "I think football is all about the pitch, so I put most of my attention on the green arena. I think it is very important to give what I know to the players, and I also like to do interviews to let others know me better."
Scorali replaced Italian world cup winning captain Fabio Cannavaro to take the helm at the Tianhe stadium halfway through the 2015 season. Since then he has led the team to a pair of CSL titles and the AFC Champions league crown.
But at the start of this season the players wern't able to keep up with the busy schedule and they were dumped out of the Champions league in the group stages, less than two months after winning it.
He said, "I think the main reason for the bad opening was that we didn't train well in the winter. We lacked order and we did not reach the expected amount of training time. Besides, the city was so cold, the coldest it had been in 80 years and we could not do our normal exercises which delayed things for two weeks."
"All of this affected us but we found our rhythm slowly in the league matches and the AFC matches. However, since April we have got back to our normal state and we did not fear any of our opponents and we won all the time.
Like Scorali said, Evergrande has found themselves since April to sweep to victory in the league. Despite winning the league the season has been far from easy for Evergrande.
He said, "The national team have matches this year, which had a big influence on us. On one side, about seven to eight players in the eleven for the Chinese team were from us and we also had Paulinho playing for Brazil and Kim Young Gwon, serving for the South Korea national team. When they returned from the countries' matches, they only had one to two days to practise with the team for the upcoming league matches.
On the pitch, Scorali was calm yet strict, while in daily life, the Portuguese leads an interesting life .
He said, "Out of work I think I am a common man and I did not take all the glory for the league and champions league titles. I think everyone is equal in our daily life. We should have a peaceful mood in our daily life and I do not think money can change me too much and the most important things is to you should have a calm state of mind."
It can be said the 67-year-old has an interesting life and Evergrande fans will be hoping he stays happy in China so he can lead the Crimson and gold to more success.