After breaking the market with millionaire signing and unprecedented salaries, Chinese football monopolized all the covers. Five years later, the story has changed so much the current Superliga champion has not been able to register for the next season because of his financial problems. This is the panorama of the competition he came to Juan Fernando Quintero, to Shenzhen.
(You may be interested: Neighborhood emergency: an important meeting has been brought forward)
Alarms went off in China in late February when the team that won the 2020 competition won the Jiangsu Suning, announced that it was discontinuing its operations because it was unable to address the debt problems that prevented it from paying out some of its salaries to its players during the campaign.
The coach, the Romanian Olaroiu, and its biggest star, the Brazilian Teixeira, had already left the ship after the title due to defaults.
Its hitherto owner, the Suning conglomerate, was forced to sell 23% of the shares in order to obtain liquidity, although the founder has already warned they would cut the tap on expenses unrelated to its main activity, that of distribution.
These plans have not only put it now named Jiangsu FC on the brink of doom – barely two years after it was supposedly about to sign Gareth Bale – if it didn’t find a short-term buyer, but they also have had an ultrasound in Italy, as Inter Milan is controlled by that company.
And in England, the Premier League eventually canceled a multi-million dollar broadcast contract with Suning subsidiary PPTV after failing to make agreed payments.
Political issue
(Also Read: The ABCs of the Women’s Copa Libertadores, starting next Friday)
According to the local press, Jiangsu – which has had Ramires of Miranda in its ranks for the past few years and Fabio Capello in its couch – is for sale for one yuan, but whoever gets it should take the blame, which would mean spending more. than 60 million euros in the first season alone
“The fact that no one wants to take over the club is not a good sign for the future of Chinese football,” warns Cameron Wilson, founder of Chinese football specialist Wild East Football.
The analyst explains to Efe that a buyer’s last minute appearance is still “a possibility” because the situation is “too ridiculous even by Chinese football standards”, but “time is running out”. “It’s one of the worst things that has happened in the history of Chinese football,” he laments. How has Chinese football managed to get into this situation just five years after the government announced a plan to become a world football power by 2050?
“I suspect there has been a political change, and someone has said you need to speed up a few gears on the football project,” said Wilson, recalling that the plan “made everyone believe it was a great opportunity.” big corporations, who thought they could “get political favors by investing in football”.
When asked about the influence of the coronavirus, the Scot rejects it completely: “The clubs did not make any money anyway, they cannot survive without a company paying the bills.”
In his view, China wanted international recognition, but the lack of progress in local football – reflected in the team’s recent failures – would make authorities feel ashamed of the excessive spending on transfers and salaries. In fact, the CFA, the national federation, has announced successive reforms for the past two years to prevent clubs from continuing to spend millions on international stars, as this is totally unsustainable.
‘China is failing’
The Jiangsu is not the only case: last year, the Tianjin Quanjian, a team that passed Pato, Luís Fabiano or Witsel disappeared after a legal scandal cut ties with its sponsor, and many teams survive this year thanks to public investment.
(Also read: Barcelona gears up for its unusual presidential election)
And that’s only in the Super League: In the second and third divisions, more than a dozen teams were expelled from school last year for failing to meet financial requirements.
And, according to Wilson, more clubs will disappear. The expert believes that the ‘extraordinary’ level of political interference in football has a lot to do with this decline: ‘The football people are not the ones who make the decisions or they cannot make them because they always have to take politics. With footballers at the helm, we wouldn’t see a fraction of all this ridiculousness. ”
But for now, in Chinese football “everything can change from one moment to the next” according to the will of someone powerful: “And then all the plans have to change, and all the billions that have been spent are suddenly wasted.”
The founder of Wild East Football believes the authorities did not understand how difficult their goals were: “They started throwing money, but it wasn’t that there was a plan. China thought building football is like building football. bridges or railways Although it is still difficult to predict what will happen to football in China, one thing is clear: “They will be fatal.”
Wilson, who has followed football in the Asian country for two decades, no longer even believes it will be possible to make the team one of the best in the world by 2050, as Beijing wanted.
And that neither Drogba, Mascherano, Oscar, Hulk, Lavezzi, Executioner, Duck, Anelka o Ramires who still want to take their careers to the Super League: “I don’t think we’ll see that type of player coming back to China until the finances (of the clubs) are more rational. And it will take a long time.
EFE