Tianjin Teda F.C.
Near the end of the 1997 Chinese league season the Chinese Football Association would hire a foreign coach in Bob Houghton to manage the Chinese football team and Jin Zhiyang was brought in as an assistant coach to help him. This lasted until December 2008 when recently promoted top tier side Tianjin Teda F.C. offered him their head coach position, taking this opportunity to return into management he would lead them at the start of the 1999 league season to a respectable seventh-place position at the end of the season. In 2000 Jin would return to the Chinese football team as their manager, but on only on a part-time caretaker basis to aid the team prepare for some important 2000 AFC Asian Cup qualification games. When he returned to Tianjin Teda F.C. he would once again achieve similar mid-table results from the previous season and leave the club at the end year.