Football
Michael Church, Asia correspondent 7y

Fabio Cannavaro wants new striker as Tianjin Quanjian lose to Changchun

Fabio Cannavaro was left ruing the lack of a top-class striker after seeing Tianjin Quanjian lose 3-1 to Changchun Yatai as speculation continues that his club will sign Diego Costa from Chelsea.

Tianjin lost Alexandre Pato to injury at half-time as they trailed 2-1, with Axel Witsel scoring from the penalty spot for Cannavaro's team to cancel out Anzur Ismailov's opener, before Szabolcs Huszti gave Changchun the lead at the break.

Huszti scored the decisive third goal 11 minutes from time as Changchun moved up to 11th in the Chinese Super League table, three points behind Tianjin.

"We are short of a centre forward," said Cannavaro, whose side have been linked with Costa and a number of other high-profile Europe-based attackers since the turn of the year. "Everybody knows, the chairman knows."

Tianjin issued a statement on Thursday denying speculation that Costa had signed a pre-contract agreement with the Chinese Super League club and, with Pato potentially sidelined, the pressure to find a goal scorer in the summer transfer window -- which opens on June 19 -- will only increase.

"This was typical of a game when a bad beginning leads to a bad result," said Cannavaro, who led Tianjin to China's second division title last year.

"I have apologised to my players in the dressing room already. There might have been problems in my evaluation on our opponent and how the players lined up.

"Today, when it came to picking players and choosing our tactics, especially on some specific positional arrangements, we didn't reach our expectations.

"Football is a team sport. Just like last year, even though we are now in a different league, so long as we play as a team we can win. If we focus too much on individual players, it will be very difficult no matter who we are facing."

Shanghai SIPG, meanwhile, moved back to within two points of leaders Guangzhou Evergrande as Andre Villas-Boas' side handed Guizhou Zhicheng a 3-0 defeat thanks to goals from Wang Shenchao, Hulk and Elkeson.

SIPG moved onto 17 points, two behind Evergrande, who defeated Shanghai Shenhua on Friday evening, and one ahead of Guangzhou R&F, who meet Shandong Luneng on Sunday.

Henan Jianye picked up their first win of the season to move off the bottom of the table with a 3-2 victory over Chongqing Lifan.

Christian Bassogog set up Ahmed Al Salih and Hu Jinghang before scoring his side's third in injury time as the African Nations Cup's MVP took centre stage for Henan, who moved up to 13th in the standings.

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