Similar things happened to the three biggest Chinese table tennis stars and their trainers. Table tennis is more important than movies in China, they dominate this sport worldwide since the 90ies. Loosing the Olympic matches in Tokyo to foreigners or esp. Japanese players would be a national tragedy, similar to the US Basketball team loosing the Olympic finals, the Russian Ice hockey team or the Austrian downhill ski team. In China its worse, they never loose, and usually take all the first places.

So what happened was that national trainers were extremely successful, having studied Swedish and German tricks in the 80ies when they started losing to them (due to new materials also). Esp. Cai (head), LGL (men coach) and Kong (women coach). All ex-top players, and now the best trainers by far.
Cai started applying what he learned from table tennis training to other sports for Peking olympics and he became something like the president of the national soccer training effort. Being head of table tennis already gives you immense power, but then also soccer was too much for some politicians who feared their wading influence. The specific problem was one of Kong's relatives having a large gambling depth in a Macao casino, and Cai had asked LGL for some support with the soccer efforts. LGL was polite to say yes. This didn't go well with the vice mayor of Peking, a career politician who unfortunately has interest in sports to advance his career. Table tennis being the top sport. He has no idea about Table tennis of course.

So what happened was that LGL and Kong were fired effective immediately, while they world championship games were going on in Germany. The three top players voiced their support for their trainers, knowing the circumstances and knowing that the upcoming Olympics will be very tough to play against the Japanese and Germans who had again a slight advantage with new plastic balls coming up, which changed the game a lot. They were afraid to loose Tokyo 2020.
It needs at least two years to adjust to the new game style, more backhand, a new stroke called banana flick, and pips out.

So the best players and their trainers suddenly disappeared during the world championships, and were not seen much since. Officially the party line was, Kong was fired for his involvement of the debt (which he declined), LGL was promoted elsewhere with no influence and Cai, the only real danger to this guy, was also sidelined. The players were called injured, their Instagram posts immediately deleted, and the very best top player didn't play the next two years. He married, and apparently really had a knee injury. The 2nd guy was also not seen in big tournaments, only the third, the youngest played and got nr. 1.
big problem was the Japanese team beating the chinese players right and left. all the men lost to a 12 old boy (an ex-chinese who moved to Japan), the women lost to pips players, it was a desaster. like in the 80ies, when they started loosing to Koreans, Germans, Swedes and an Austrian.
The new head, the stalinist politician, called it a national reform effort, which lead to a drastic drama, they had one young guy who played similar to the Japanese, and even started winning some tournaments against them. He was pushed by the media, the "dark knight". but realistically he had no chance to win the next championships reliably. he is about world no 3, but probably not 1 or 2.
he was good at the most important Chinese internal national tournament, the world's strongest tournament, but this year he was a desaster.
So the "reform" backfired, and LGL appeared again as head of the Olympics mens team, and also the top 1 player suddenly reappeared and started winning international tournaments as if nothing happened in between. They beat the Japanese left and right. True story.