(Ecns.cn)--Dragged into to being the interpreter for José Antonio Camacho Alfaro, China's men's national football team coach, Zhou Yi has been widely criticized for not being able to fulfill his job. The team's football players have been filing complaints about his misleading, sometimes inaccurate, interpretations during trainings.
More dramatically, disappointed fans have been venting anger at Zhou for the barely satisfactory performance of the team. For the past two months, they have been looking for an alternative to Zhou, as if his leaving would give the team a chance for a magical reawakening.
He doesn't know a bit about football, he doesn't speak fluent Chinese, he has led to the breakdown in communication between the coach and his players and yes, he is to stay with the national team, sighed the media.
The second round draw for the Asian World Cup Qualifiers is only 10 days away and Zhou is to accompany the Chinese national football team to meet its counterpart from Iraq on November 11. If the team loses the game, they lose the chance to play at the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Therefore, Zhou has been seen a lot on the news lately.
This time, sympathetic voices for the 34-year-old interpreter are being heard.
No one is born for the position; it's time for a little more patience, said the Guangzhou-based Yangcheng Evening News.
Zhou does need time to make improvement but is definitely not the crucial reason for the poor performance of the whole team, commented the China News Week this Tuesday.
Under fire
Only in August was Zhou appointed on an interim basis as the Spanish interpreter for José Antonio Camacho and four other coaches. Since then, he has been stumbling along.
The most furious criticism is about Zhou's lack of knowledge about football's technical terms, which has resulted many times in a breakdown of the pre-season trainings.
Once, Zhou took the meaning of the "place kick" to be "standing forth," and thus sent the wrong message to the players, who followed his instructions and pissed off the coach. Camacho yelled at his players for not running as he requested, only to find it was the interpreter who had said the wrong thing.
Complaints from team players started to mount after a month. On various occasions, they expressed disapproval of the Chinese-Argentine interpreter.
Even the chief coach Camacho once told Spanish media that he has "no idea what Zhou told the players to do, anyway, they were not doing what I was expecting."
After almost two months of facing harsh criticism and after working crash courses of diving into the field, Zhou the football layman finally warmed up and started to make fewer mistakes.
Yet, resentful feelings towards him continue to abound, especially during times when the national football team fails to satisfy the country.
