on top all season and leading the competition by 14 points with five rounds remaining<\/a>.<\/p>\nBut they lost all five games and, after slipping to a 3-2 defeat to Shandong Taishan on the final day, handed the title to Dalian Yingbo, where former Western Sydney Wanderers coach Mark Rudan is an assistant.<\/p>\n
While Chengdu had a superior goal difference, the Chinese Super League prioritises head-to-head records between teams, and Dalian had won both meetings between the sides.<\/p>\n
Aloisi had been hoping to become the next Australian to guide a team in China’s top league to a championship after Kevin Muscat led Shanghai Port to glory in 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n
Instead, the former Western United championship winner will have to continue his journey elsewhere after Chengdu parted ways with Aloisi and his staff on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“Mr John Aloisi will no longer serve as head coach of Chengdu Rongcheng Football Club. Members of his coaching staff will also depart,” the Chinese club said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Aloisi had apologised to Chengdu fans after the capitulation.<\/p>\n
“We are indeed very disappointed not to have won the championship. We are in a very despairing state. There is nothing else to say,” Aloisi told local media via a Chinese translator.<\/p>\n
“I want to say sorry to everyone. We certainly know that our fans have travelled a long way to fight alongside us and support us.<\/p>\n
“Right now, my only feeling is one of great dejection and disappointment, because we could see the trophy right in front of us, but could not get it.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, John’s older brother Ross Aloisi departed Zhejiang FC after just one season when they finished ninth.<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Aloisi has paid the price for Chengdu Rongcheng’s catastrophic title choke, with the Chinese club sacking the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":958822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[5844,64,63,524927,596,162652,13198,588,85],"class_list":["post-958821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-abc-sport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-chengdu-rongcheng","tag-football","tag-john-aloisi","tag-soccer","tag-sport","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=958821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/958822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=958821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=958821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=958821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}