Despite being born in Shandong, Qi would go on to play for teams within Liaoning before he would be selected for the Chinese national team. As a footballer, he played as a centre back and was known for his extraordinary ability and superb running game. His wealth of experience was limited due to the Chinese Cultural Revolution. However, he was still able to play within the 1976 AFC Asian Cup and help China to a third-place finish before he retired.
Managerial career
After he retired from playing, Qi took the Somalia head coach position with little success before returning to China, where he mainly took on numerous coaching positions for youth teams or as assistant manager for adult clubs.
After years of working his way up through these positions, in the 1986 league season he took on his first major job within China as the Guangzhou Head coach where he guided them to seventh in the league.[1] His management saw Guangzhou become a mid-table team for the next several years until Dalian became interested in Qi Wusheng's coaching style of a focused, solid defense to act as the basis for the team's attack.
After winning the Chinese FA Cup in 1992 with Dalian, the Chinese national team became interested with his services after they replaced Klaus Schlappner as the head coach. Qi would go on to manage the national team to a silver medal in the 1994 Asian Games football tournament.[2] While he experienced some success with the team, he could not guide China to a place in the FIFA World Cup and was replaced by Bob Houghton after he resigned. He would take a position with Wuhan Hongjinlong before spending several seasons with Yunnan Hongta F.C. until the club merged with Chongqing Lifan F.C. and Qi was released.
After a short spell with Tianjin Teda F.C. he would return to Guangzhou to help manage them to push for promotion back into the top tier; unable to achieve this, he would leave at the end of the 2006 league season.
