Newly crowned champions. Could this be the beginning of a dynasty?

China Super League side Guangzhou Evergrande pulled off a feat that is very rare in football. The Guangdong Province based club have become the first team in China (probably Asia as well) to win the first division title after promotion from the second division. Looking back in football history German Bundesliga club FC Kaiserslautern seem to be the only other club to pull this off back in 1998.

Relegated to the second division last season after being implicated in a match-fixing scandal, the club received new investment from property firm, Evergrande Real Estate Group, which set out to bring the top Chinese players. Players such as Chinese internationals Gao Lin, Zheng Zhi and Sun Xiang followed the club down to the second division and became the catalyst in their quick return to the top division.

Dario Conca. High-profile buy for the club that could see a swell of other players join up in the future

Making it back to the top division the spending did not stop there. The club spent massive amounts of money on talent from abroad by signing Brazilian Cleo and then topped it off by signing Argentine Dario Conca from Brazilian side Fluminese.

While the amount of money the new league champions spent on these players pales in comparison to what European clubs like Chelsea, Manchester United, Real Madrid and AC Milan spend every summer, it does bring a lot of attention to those on the Asian continent. At a time when teams in Japan’s J-League, South Korea’s K-League and Middle Eastern clubs would most likely have the chance of signing top players, China is now emerging as a viable competitor.

This also brings up a question. Could Guangzhou become the first of a host of “super” clubs in the China Super League? With recent investments in the game by the Wanda Group and Evergrande, there is hope that the league as well as football in China, in general, will see some improvements.

So, where can these other “super clubs” come from? As the CITIC Group is the sponsor for former champions Beijing Guoan FC, there would be no problem for the capital club to make further investment to take the league crown from the southerners. Tianjin Teda, Shanghai Shenhua, and, possibly, Hangzhou Greentown could elevate themselves to that status if owners were willing to put more money into their clubs by signing top players and coaches.

There are risks, of course, when more money is invested in clubs and success is not achieved. This is one of the problems that has led to the downfall of many teams in Europe. Clubs such as Nottingham Forest, Leeds United and Sheffield Wednesday, EPL regulars in the past, fell on hard times by spending beyond their own means just to keep up with the bigger clubs. The CFA must make sure that spending does not get out of hand in the league.

Football in China could be starting to put past scandals behind themselves and some clubs seem to be offering an improved product on the pitch. However, there is still a long way to go. If there is continued investment in the game, then perhaps China could have its first club lift the Asian Champions League trophy in the near future.

Additional Articles

• Financial crisis: How football is affected by the credit crunch
• Money to burn
• Newly-crowned Chinese champions Guangzhou Evergrande are raising the bar in China & perhaps in Asia
• Newly crowned Chinese champions Guangzhou Evergrande setting sights on 2012 Asian Champions League

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Lee Jang-Soo, Beijing Guoan's former head coach

Beijing Guo’an FC (北京国安) ends their 16-year title wait today by winning 4-0 against Hangzhou Greentown (杭州绿城) in Chinese Super League. October 30th is no doubt the biggest day in the capital club’s history, but one man’s name becomes a taboo in their post-match celebration: Lee Jang-Soo (李章洙), the club’s former South Korean head coach.

From a football fan and a bystander’s point of view, Mr.Lee simply transformed the way Guo’an played since he took the hot seat by the end of 2006.  The players, albeit some of them considered young in Chinese football, looked more confident than ever on the pitch under Lee’s coaching, especially in their away games. The South Korean toughened up the team with new blood like Huang Bowen, Yang Hao, Zhang Xinxin and Zhu Yifan, just to name a few. Huang, Yang and Zhang all capped for Chinese national team since this year.

Mr.Lee was sacked by the club earlier on September 16th, after a 0-2 defeat to Changchun Yatai, though Guoan sitting still in the 2nd place in the league.

“We don’t really have any reason to fire him if the club’s sitting at the top, and he wouldn’t be convinced by our decision that way. And now we’re in the 2nd place and the club hasn’t been playing very good with stronger teams.” Luo Ning (罗宁), Beijing Guoan’s chairman of the board, told press two days after the club made the decision. Mr.Luo repeatedly talked in press whether or not to end the head coach’s contract before that.

Lee Jang-Soo first came to China in 1998 to coach Chongqing Lifan. He benched Gao Feng (高峰), a regular player in Chinese national team at the time for his addiction in alcohol. The South Korean was soon nicknamed “iron coach” by Chinese media, as he focuses very much on discipline and professionalism in team management.

In 2000, Chongqing Lifan defeated Beijing Guoan 4-2 in two-round finals to win the  Chinese FA Cup, the club’s first and only trophy until now. The Chongqing municipal government granted honorary citizenship to the head coach. Lee signed for Qingdao by the end of 2001, and help the team lift the FA cup in 2002, the only championship in the club’s history. The coach was once again given honorary citizenship and this time was by Qingdao government.

Former Guoan head coach Lee Jang-Soo (Right 1)

Lee Jang-Soo returned to China to coach Beijing Guoan after three years in his motherland with Chunnum Dragons and FC Seoul. Under Lee’s coaching, Beijing ranked runner-up in Chinese Super League in 2007, a result on par with the club’s best record in 1995.

Mr. Lee’s relationship with Guoan grew worse earlier this year, mainly for not using particular players favored by the management. The coach complained to the media this July for a lack of arrangement in fixtures between CSL and the Barclays Asia Trophy, part of the program of the 1st Beijing International Football Festival that supported by Beijing Sports Bureau under the municipal government.

Back to CSL, Shandong Luneng lost 0-1 to Chengdu in Jinan, but enough to seal a berth in next year’s Asian Champions League by beating Shanghai Shenhua in goal difference. Shanghai beat Changsha Ginde 2-1. Title competitors Henan Construction and Changchun Yatai also booked their places.

Hangzhou Greentown and Chongqing Lifan relegated to Jia League. Liaoning returned to CSL together with the People’s Liberation Army team that based in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province.

Links and Sources:

• Goal: Beijing Guoan Win First Super League Title In Style
• ESPN Soccernet: Beijing Guoan win Chinese Super League for 1st time
• Jinghua Times via NetEase: Guoan wanted to sack Lee long ago, but not enough excuse (Chinese)
• Beijing Youth Daily via Xinhua:  Lee: Somebody doesn’t understand football (Chinese)

Photo: Xinhua

Unsettled 'bad boy' Mao celebrates his last-minute equalizer to give Shanghai Shenhua a 1:1 draw against Qingdao on May 20.

I was overly optimistic towards the future of Chinese football players. Though this year saw a few of them found jobs outside the country, almost all footballers still find their rights trampled by the country’s backward transfer rules.

As the transfer window reopened by Chinese FA on June 25, 121 players from 29 football clubs have been transfer listed and 13 others are listed as available for loan. A majority of them, if not all, are fringe players who haven’t played first-team football for a long time.

China has 42 incipient professional football clubs. Each team, according to CFA, can only sign three Chinese players during the month-long transfer period till July 24. Of the 134 players on the transfer/loan list, together 93 of them are from Chinese Super League and Jia League, China’s top- and second- tier leagues, a trend of offloading players by these clubs. To most of the players, chances of transferring to teams in the two leagues are, if any, very low.

According to CFA’s transfer rules, there’re option preferences a player can state in his transfer request: Super League, Jia League, Yi League (third-tier) or any of them. Of the 134 players, 112 stated that they’re willing to play for any club, a desperation to continue their careers elsewhere.

“It goes without saying that a lot of the listed players will lose jobs after this season,” Han Xu, former captain of Beijing Guo’an FC, told China Sports Review. Han, 35, now works as the manager of a sportswear store at the Worker’s Stadium. “The transfer rules were a product of the past and look out of place now,” said Han.

To avoid an exodus of good players to rich clubs, transfer rules was established by CFA and was put into use since 1998. Different from FIFA’s current Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players, it stipulates a player needs to wait 30 months after his contract runs out at a club to become a free agent, a period of time spanning across three seasons. Anyone failed to do so will not be able to get registered at any other club. To most of Chinese players like Han, their careers have been tied to a club from the beginning to the retirement.

The transfer rules have given unbridled power to football clubs. Up until now, most of the players like Han have signed their season-long contracts once a year. If a player hands in a transfer request to his club and the club wants to keep him. Chances are he can still be transfer listed, but the sky-high price tag will only keep interested buyers away. Thus the player is saved, or, to put it in another way, caged. No one would be stupid enough to wait three seasons at home to become a free agent. How many three seasons does a player have in his career?

“I hope the transfer rules can be changed,” said Xiao Zhanbo, a 35-year-old veteran from Shanghai Shenhua FC in an interview with a Beijing newspaper. “If it continues like this, there will be less and less players in this country where footballers are already in short supply. It’s catastrophic for Chinese football in the long run.”

Xiao, once a regular player in China set-up, is now pursued by a Liaoning-based club in Jia League, but the RMB 4 million transfer fee that Shanghai asked was way more than enough to scare away the interested buyer.

“There’s no free transfer in China and a lot of players had no choice but to retire at an early age. How pathetic it is!” confessed Xiao, who has reportedly argued with the club management over a sum of unpaid bonuses last season. The tough and tenacious north-easterner seemed to have reached a compromise later with his boss, being listed as available for loan on June 25.

Mao Jianqing, Xiao’s teammate, has been having a hard time recently. The 22-year-old promising winger appears to have a drinking problem, and was punished to train with the reverse team by Zhu Jun, the club owner. Zhu is now looking to offload the “bad boy” by a whopping RMB 8 million.

“Which Chinese club would pay 8 million yuan for a player like me? It can’t be a final price,” Mao told Beijing TV as Guo’an, a CSL team in China’s capital, is said to have interest in signing him. “I hope to play for a big club if things work out well. But the club may not let me go to Beijing if I said too much.”

Mao had a point here. Thanks to the decade-old transfer rules, a Chinese football club can, in effect, decide everything about its players. And if you play bad boy with the big bosses, feel free to count your days on the chopping block.

China’s FA promised to obey FIFA’s transfer regulations early this year over Zhou Haibin’s case, yet clearly they’re not ready to put their words into action in its backyard, taking all the transfers in the country as domestic affairs.

Previously:

• Go West! Chinese Footballers Now Can Transfer, Finally
• Pirelli Signs Three-year Sponsorship Deal with Chinese Super League
• Zheng Zhi to Play in The Premiership?

Links and Sources :

• CFA’s Transfer Rules (in Chinese via Netease)
• Liaoning Daily: CSL transfer window reopens (in Chinese via China Interactive Sports)
• Jianghua Times’s interview with Xiao Zhanbo (in Chinese via Titan Sports)
• Gongti Legends: Guoan Making Run at Mao Jianqing
• BTV’s interview with Mao Jianqing (in Chinese via Sina)

Photo:  Sohu

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Du Wenhui celebrates his goal with the fans

In Group E, Beijing Guo’an came back to the Workers Stadium(北京工人体育场) after two years playing at Fengtai Sports Center with a 2:0 victory over Newcastle Jets. Ryan Griffiths’ early goal at 6 minutes made the 41,895 chanting fans at Gongti almost crazy. Joel Griffith, Ryan’s brother, who’s on loan at Guo’an from the Australian opponent, missed a great chance near the area before Du Wenhui sealed the victory in the added time.

Also in the group, Nagoya Grampus (JAP) kicked off their first Champions League game with a convincing 3:1 away victory over Ulsan Hyundai (KOR). Beijing will visit Nagoya Grampus at Mizuho Athleic Stadium on March 17.

In Group F, Shandong Luneng FC was hammered by the Asian Champion Gamba Osaka at Expo 70 Stadium by 3:0, with only two shots in the first half. The team looked very unfit without Zhou Haibin, who’s now playing at PSV Eindhoven. Shandong will fly back to play Sriwijaya on March 17, who was defeated 2:4 yesterday by the visiting FC Seoul.

Today on March 11, Shanghai Shenhua will play Singapore Armed Forces FC at 8pm at Shanghai Hong Kou Stadium(上海虹口体育场), while Tianjian Teda will face Japanese side Kawasaki Frontale.

Update: 

Kawasaki Frontale 1 – 0 Tianjin Teda;  

Shanghai Shenhua 4 – 1 Singapore Armed Forces

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Too bad that they won’t play in the Mainland. But worry not, four EPL teams – Man Utd, Chelsea, Hull City and West Ham United – will come to play for the capital city’s International Football Festival, which will be peaked by an Italian Super Cup match on August 8. Everything sounds so good right now for this football festival, it’s just there’s not many people playing the game.

Previously:

• Beijing to Stage International Football Festival This Summer
• Bird’s Nest to Host Italian Super Cup

Source:

Foxsports:  New sponsorship plans for Liverpool

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China Sports Review previously told you that the Italian Super Cup will be played in Beijing on August 8th, China’s first ever National Fitness Day. Before that, Manchester United, the world champion club, will come to play Beijing Guo’an in July as part of the club’s Asian tour, with date still undecided. It’s reported that Man Utd will also travel to Shandong Province for a friendly with Shandong Luneng, the CSL defending champion.

Also in July, the Barclays Asia Trophy, a friendly four-teams football tournament held in Asia every two years, will finally come to China’s mainland. Three Premiership teams, Totham Hotspurs, Hull City and West Ham United, will compete with Beijing Guo’an for the trophy, beginning from July 28.

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The new CSL season will be kicked off on March 21, with Shanghai Shenhua, Shandong Luneng and Beijing Guoan are among the favorites. While the defending champion Shandon Luneng lost their midfield general Zhou Haibin to PSV Eindhoven, Shanghai Shenhua spent over $ 8 ml USD in the transfer market this winter, snatching Mark Milligan from Newcastle United Jets in Australia’s A-League and another two players from FC MTZ-RIPO, a team in Belarusian Premier League. The Beijing Guo’an FC, or Imperial Guard, received a RMB 20 million yuan (roughly $ 2.92 million USD) boost from Beijing Municipal Bureau of Sport (BMBS) this January, and Li Weimiao, head of the Beijing Municipal Football Administrative Center, the football governing body under BMBS, became vice president of Guo’an Club.

There’s been rumors that the decision makers at General Administration of Sport in China (GASC) has been discussing whether to nationalize Chinese football by getting back clubs’ ownerships. “This could be the first step of GASC’s nationalization plan,” said Nan Fang, a former Beijing Guo’an midfielder to China Sports Review, “If they do it, they’re probably going to cross the river by feeling the stones.” Nan, co-founder and coach of Beijing Langyue Football School, attributes the futility of Chinese football to bad environment, namely fixed games and bribes in the league. “You can’t whiz everything back into the 80s. Things changed.” Aside from help fund a friendly match with world champion club Manchester Utd, BMBS will also help Guo’an develop youth players in the government-funded sports schools. “This would bring more young talents into the pool,” Nan noted. “I think the problem is whether they have enough good coaches there.”

China’s FA is currently in talks with Nike for a sponsorship deal. The sportswear manufacturer is reportedly to have prepared a 10-year-long contract for the clubs, with each club in the 2009 season could get equipments worth of RMB 5 ml and another RMB 1.5 ml fund. A lot money for some, the deal might not sound very riveting to big clubs like Beijing Guo’an, who is currently sponsored by Adidas.

Previously:

• Chinese to Enjoy English Premier League for Free?
• Go West! Chinese Footballers Now Can Transfer, Finally
• China May Juguo Its Professional Football League
  

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