The Bizarre Rise & Fall Of The Chinese Super League

on January 21st 2016 seven years ago to this very day Liverpool bid 24.6 million pounds for Alex taisheyra it was Jurgen klopp's first transfer window at anfield three months after replacing Brendan Rodgers and he wanted to make taisheyra his first Marquee signing following six years at shakhtar Donetsk tayshayra was sought after by several Champions League clubs not least since he had already scored 22 goals in only 15 League games Midway through the 2015-16 season for shakhtar from attacking Midfield Chelsea in particular had made no secret of their interest but say Shara a lifelong friend of Philippe coutinho's told the press that it would be an honor to wear the Liverpool shirt adding for me the English Premier League is the best league in the world I believe in myself and I feel that would be the best move for my career Le Liverpool are a huge Club I want to be there I can only hope end quote even shaktar's own boss merchia lucchesku seemed to be prettier resigned to losing taisheyra to Liverpool telling the Press I don't want to keep a player against his desire he wants to play in a big Championship as far as most people were concerned then taisheyra's January destination was already a foregone conclusion but rejected Liverpool's bid having received a much much larger one not from Chelsea who did have a bit of a habit of doing that sort of thing but from jiangsu sooning a club who had finished ninth in the Chinese soup League the previous season playing under another name zhangsu sooning paid 50 million euros Forte Shira outbidding Liverpool by 18 million euros and handling the Brazilian a contract twice the size of anything that he was likely to get at anfield it was the third time in just 10 days that the Chinese super League's record transfer fee have been broken following the arrivals of Ramirez and Jackson Martinez and the second time that it had been broken by the newly owned zhangsu sooning taking the League's total spending for the winter transfer window up to 388 million euros the highest are there any league in World football tayshayra wasn't the League's first big name signing then from Brazil alone you already have the likes of paulinho Diego toddelli and rabinio but his arrival felt the most significant up to that point the Chinese Super League had seem like quite a helpful way for European teams to offload High earners for greatly inflated transfer fees Chelsea were delighted to get 25 million pounds for Ramirez who was on the verge of turning 30 and Athletico Madrid couldn't quite believe their luck when they turned a profit on Jackson Martinez after he had only scored three goals in 22 games for the club since arriving from Portugal but beating two certified European Giants to the signing of taisheyra well that was something quite different and it didn't stop there next came as equal of Betsy ah yeah that's really not a good look Ezekiel followed by Papa cise and Graziano Pella and before long Diego Costa was telling Chelsea Midway through a premier league title challenge in which he was their top scorer that he wanted to leave the club in order to sign for Tianjin kwanjian this was unprecedented in modern football Chinese Super League clubs weren't just signing aging husbands in their late 30s they were challenging Europe's Elite for signings and even snatching players from them Antonio Conte warned that Chinese investment would be a danger for all of the world's clubs not just Chelsea mimal arsene Wenger stated the Premier League clubs had to be worried about the rise of China and the strength of political will behind the nation's footballing project in the 2017 Chinese Super League following all of this Investments Guangzhou ever Grant taobao won their seventh successive Chinese Super League title under the management of Luis Felipe scalari Hulk Oscar and Ricardo carvalho's team Shanghai sipg were the revision's runners-up Tianjin kwanjan the club of axelvitzel Alexander Pato and Anthony modeste managed by Fabio canavaro finished third and her Bay China Fortune managed by Premier League winner Manuel Pellegrini and with a squad boasting the likes of Ezekiel obesity stefanum beer and gervinio completed the revision's top four that was five years ago in 2022 China's most successful football Club Guangzhou ever Grande since renamed Guangzhou FC were relegated from the Chinese Super League Shanghai sipg now go by the name Shanghai port and Oscar is the only big hitter who remains at the club Tianjin kwanjan no longer exist having been dissolved in 2020 and her Bay China Fortune now simply Herbie FC were also relegated from the Chinese Super League in the season just gone with a pretty miserable minus three points tally and currently facing an existential crisis for their own Survival it should probably go without saying at this stage that this isn't how things were supposed to work out in March 2021 I made a video entitled what on Earth is going on in the Chinese Super League following an exodus of some of the League's star players and the first seeds leading up to the collapse of the Chinese Super League looking to have been almost two years on with some of the Dust starting to settle but other chaos only just beginning I wanted to return to China not literally of course they have an extremely strict zero covert policy and hitc don't give me anything like that kind of budget but to the subjects of China Chinese football and the Chinese Super League focusing partly on jiangsu sunning who both won their first Chinese Super League title and were dissolved in 2020 in one of the most remarkable collapses in World football in recent years but also on the rise and fall more broadly of China's ambitious football projects so sit back relax and join me on a journey to Beijing via Northampton and Shanghai via Southampton as we take a look at the rise fall and the downright strangeness of the Chinese super league and almost all of the League's biggest and richest clubs and now before any of you say it this wasn't my longest ever introduction that is still the Suriname video I checked to understand the downfall of the Chinese super league and China's rapid divestment from football we must first understand why such massive investment was made in the first place and there isn't just one reason throughout the 2000s Chinese football including the Chinese Super League was plagued by bribery betting corruption and match fixing scandals most of which were made public in 2009 gambling is illegal in China outside of the lottery and licensed venues in Hong Kong and in Macau but that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen in fact the appetite for gambling in China is unrivaled almost anywhere else in the world that is why there are so many dodgy Premier League sponsors with virtually no presence here in the United Kingdom targeting a legal means of gambling to Chinese consumers which I have made an entire video about to cut a long story short though at the end of the 2000s Chinese football was in a pretty dark place ranked 51st in the FIFA world rankings during 1999 and having qualified for the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan China's Men's National Team had plummeted all the way to 93rd in the FIFA world rankings by the end of 2009 behind the likes of Haiti Zambia and North Korea having finished bottom of their group in 2010 World Cup qualifying the Chinese Super League was in an equally perilous State Chengdu blades and Guangzhou JPC despite finishing 7th and 9th the previous season were punished with relegation in the Fallout of the 2009 Scandal and the Chinese Club hadn't reached the final of the AFC champions league since 1998. back when it was still known as the Asian Club Championship a lot is made of China Investing in football as a means of soft power to change the the perception of China abroad and as part of a wider diversification program of the Chinese economy all of which may be perfectly valid points it is hard to know precisely what the motivations of the Chinese Communist Party are or were Chinese politics is not exactly renowned for its openness or transparency but personally I don't think they're anywhere near enough is made of the fact that China is now a global superpower whose economy is destined to at some stage overtake the United States they are powerhouses at the Olympics typically finishing either first second or third in the middle table and yet they are absolutely terrible at football despite there being no luck of Interest or enthusiasm for the sport in China basically what I am trying to say here is that being quite so bad at football was embarrassing for a proud Nation there was excelling in virtually every other it is worth noting that as much as we can never see inside of anyone's heads unlike a lot of world leaders it does actually seem as though Xi Jinping has a genuine interest in football she has talked for years about having a sense of urgency when it comes to improving Chinese football and how he feels as though the spirits of sports reflects the spirit of China in 2013 two crucial things happened firstly China lost five ones at Thailand in what was considered to be the national team's most humiliating defeat at least since their loss to Hong Kong in 1986 World Cup qualifying which prompted riots if not of all time Chinese football fans were so incensed and despondent following that defeat that some of them even suggested that the Men's National Team should be disbanded and secondly Xi Jinping became the ninth president of the People's Republic of China it didn't take long long for she to put football on the agenda during his first year in office he outlined his ambition for China to qualify for the World Cup host the World Cup and one day win the World Cup in 2016 the CCP unveiled a more formal and detailed set of both short and long-term aims for football including the creation of 20 000 soccer schools and 70 000 pictures by 2020 reaching the level of leading Asian national teams like Japan and South Korea by 2030 actively working towards hosting the World Cup and ultimately becoming a football Powerhouse capable of winning the World Cup by 2050. I went into more detail about these initial plans in my Chinese Super League video from 2021 but basically it is at this point that Chinese investments in football exploded there was nothing organic about it basically Lee She mandated it through the use of state power and state funds as well as gently leaning on and offering certain incentives to Chinese businesses and billionaires the impact was immediate Guangzhou GPC who had been relegated in 2009 as a result of China's match fixing Scandal were acquired by The evergrande Real Estate Group in 2010 who are the second largest property developers in all of China and as soon as they got the nod they began shoveling money into the team they appointed Marcelo Lippy who won the 2006 World Cup as Italy manager they then replaced him with his 2006 World Cup winning Captain Fabio cannavaro and when kanavaro left they brought in 2002 World Cup winning Brazil boss Luis Felipe scalari all three of them during their times in Guangzhou were reported to be among the highest paid managers in the world on the playing front in came paulinho robinio and Ricardo Gula three full Brazilian Internationals all on Mega contracts so perhaps it's no surprise that guangzhao renamed Guangzhou ever Grande after their new owners came in went from an enforced relegation in 2009 to being crowned as the champions of Chinese football for seven successive Seasons between 2011 and 2017 before adding a record equaling 8th championship in 2019 Shanghai sipg meanwhile were acquired by the exclusive operator of all of the public terminals in the port of Shanghai in 2014. the sipg in their name only introduced following their Takeover in 2014 stands for Shanghai International Port Group which means that technically speaking their full name when no longer abbreviated was actually the Shanghai Shanghai International Port Group which I hope you will agree with me is quite silly Shanghai International Port group are among the hundred largest publicly traded companies in China and they also through their financial might behind their new club in a bit of pleasure former England boss van goren Ericsson was hired poached from Chinese Super League Rivals Guangzhou rnf they reportedly made Dario conquer at uncapped Argentine who was relatively unknown outside of South America the third highest footballer in the world behind only Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi soon joined by the likes of asamoa Jan Ricardo Carvalho Hulk Oscar and much later Marco arnautovic who arrived from West Ham in 2018 Shanghai sipg broke Guangzhou abergrande's run of seven successive League titles by being crowned as the champions of Chinese football for the first time in their history of the club a real fairy tale story of what it is possible to achieve by building a club up from the ground piece by piece focusing on Youth Development and spending more than the GDP of a small country I hope that you would all agree Herbie China Fortune represented an even more rags to Rich's tale though no more organically previously named Herbie jong-jai they were competing in China League one their second Sarah of Chinese football when they were acquired by beijing-based real estate firm China Fortune land developments who changed their name to reflect that fact you might be starting to notice something of a theme at this stage her Bay promptly won promotion in their first season under new ownership going from the third set of Chinese football in 2013 to the Super League by 2016. Newbie status in the top flight wasn't about to deter Herbie's ambitious new owners from making an immediate Splash as they went out and signed quite literally a brand new starting 11 which included the likes of gervinio as equal of etsy and Stefan and beer a Seventh Place finish was the outcome but that wasn't enough for manager Lee Tai to keep his job as Premier League winning boss Manuel Pellegrini was brought in on a 12 million pound a year contract straight off the back of three years of Manchester City zhangsu sooning who we are particularly interested in were only acquired in December 2015 fresh off the back of winning their first Chinese FA Cup Crown against Tim Cahill and Denver Bar's side Shanghai shenhur named zhangsu gwash Insanity when they won that Crown as you might have guessed already Zhang TSU were acquired by sooning or the sooning appliance group to be more specific which is a hold income company and the third largest shareholder or at least they were at the time in suiting.com which is one of the largest retail companies in China the level of investments in zhangsu sooning was pretty much unprecedented even in the Brave New World of the Chinese Super League in sooning Appliance group's first season as owners they splashed out in excess of 100 million euros in transfer fees and a great deal more than that in wages also bringing in an entirely new starting 11 featuring Australian International Trent sainsbury former Manchester City Striker Joe and most notably Ramirez from Chelsea and Alex taisheyra who had been wanted by both Liverpool and Chelsea for that record-breaking 50 million euro fee incidentally tayshayra was quite blase where asked about his move to China claiming that the Chinese Super League was only doing to the Premier League what the Premier League had already done answer other leagues in terms of its spending of course that comparison doesn't entirely hold up but more on that in a moment South Korean Legend choyong Soo who won the Kaylee title as a manager in 2012 became the new regime's first appointment but he was sacked Midway through a miserable 2017 season for Jiang TSU in which they finished 12th and replaced by former Seria La Liga and Champions League winning head coach Fabio capalo there's no doubting capello's pedigree but jangsu made him the third highest paid manager on the planet ahead of both Diego Simeone and Jurgen klopp despite the fact that he had been out of management for over two years and out of Club management for more than a decade in the end it took the appointment of cos minolaru a Serial Trophy winner in Asia for zhangsu sooning to win their first Chinese Super League Crown in 2020 by that stage though things had already started to tail off for the Chinese Super League the earliest sign over a strike came in January 2017 when the Chinese Football Association announced that they would be restricting the number of foreigners in any Match Day Squad in the Chinese Super league and the teams must name at least two Chinese players under the age of 23 in their match day squads the announcement was sudden and came without any consultation causing several Chinese Super League teams to veto signings that they were on the verge of completing that window and quickly looked to offload foreign players should they wish to bring any others in of course that would be easier said than done given the very favorable contracts that most of their foreign players were on in order to attract players from Europe's top leagues who were making a sacrifice in terms of prestige no longer competing in or for the biggest trophies and often sacrificing their chances of selection for their national teams in addition to making what was likely to be quite a disruptive move that them and their families if they had Anita China with all of the culture shocks that that would likely entail they didn't just have to outbid European clubs they were typically offering two or three times what any of these players could have expected to earn almost anywhere else Carlos tabas for example reportedly became the world's highest paid footballer when he left Boca Juniors to sign a 600 000 pound a week contract with Shanghai shenhua on the verge of turning 33 at the time good luck off loading someone on a salary like that just on the drop of a hat then in 2018 the so-called luxury transfer tax was introduced the Chinese fa imposed a 100 tax rate on any overseas signings with the proceeds of that to be invested in the development of football and particularly youth team football in China once again the move came during the busiest transfer window for Chinese clubs effectively scuppering several transfers by making them totally unaffordable the cost of signing Diego Costa for example who was widely expected to join tanjin kwanjan for 64 million pounds during that window literally doubled overnight to 128 million pounds for the club themselves causing them to call it off five years on Neymar and kylian mbappe remain the only two players to have ever transferred for more than that amount more important than the unaffordability though was the message that it sent out it wasn't just that signing foreign players became twice as expensive it was that clubs and their owners instead of being incentivized to go out and spend money was suddenly being discouraged from doing so at least in certain areas and spending was massively scaled back from that momentum there were some exceptions Guang Zhao ever Grand re-signed paolinio for 42 million euros in January 2019 so effectively 84 million euros in terms of the cost Shanghai sipg splashed out on Marco arnautovic to the tune of 22.4 million pounds in July 2019 so really 44.8 million pounds accounting for the tax burden and Rafa Benitez brought Solomon Rondon with him to Dalian professional also in July of 2019 after the club activated his 16.5 million pound release Clause at an effective cost of 33 million pounds to them for those who clearly weren't quite getting the message still the Chinese fa implemented a new salary cap for the 2020 season limiting the salaries of incoming overseas players to a maximum of 3 million euros a year so roughly 50 000 pounds a week that still a pretty tidy sum of course I would be delighted with it but it's less than the average salary in the Premier League let's alone the highest earners and in the 2021 season they went one step further limiting every Chinese Super League team's annual wage Bill to 600 million yen which is about 70 million pounds and the total amount that they could pay all of their foreign players combined was restricted to just 10 million Euros so less than 9 million pounds so put that into some perspective Carlos tevis's annual salary alone in China was reported to be worth more than 33 million pounds clearly then the age of insane wages and China poaching players from Top European clubs had finished and it only lasted for about three years but that's only explains how Chinese Super League teams were restricted from throwing money around like a Tory Minister on bogus PPE contracts for their mates not why they were or how and why the league descended into total chaos the first thing to note is that China is not like most countries and I don't mean that as either a positive or A negative it's just an observable fact just as the Taps for investing in football were turned on very sharply effectively mandated by XI and the CCP it was G and the CCP that turned them off just as fast the end goal for China's policy makers was never just to have big name foreign players starring in China's domestic League that was just seen as wantall for reaching their end goal which was to establish proper youth infrastructure a widespread football culture and to have really competitive men's and women's national teams the idea was that these big name players by virtue of being talented would raise the standard of the Chinese Super league and domestic players would learn from them and develop faster as a result of training and playing alongside them meanwhile they're high profile and the excitement around their arrivals would raise the profile of the Chinese Super League in China and increase its domestic interest television audiences and viewing figures there is enormous appetite for football in China it's just that most Chinese football fans don't support Chinese clubs they support European teams or at increased instances they hone in on individual players and follow whichever team they happen to be playing for at any given time or they simply just watch games in the Premier League and in the Champions League because of this standard of football and the entertainment in the simplest possible terms it was decided between 2017 and 2020 that the strategy of signing big name overseas players wasn't having either of those desired effects or at least not to the kind of extent that would justify the enormous cost similarly at the same time that China was spending a fortune on overseas players they were also doing their best anji's wishes to buy up overseas clubs themselves within just a couple of years the likes of wolves West Brom Southampton and Inter Milan were all acquired by Chinese companies or investors most of whom were plainly only doing so because of orders from above even Northampton town was taken over by a fairly obscure Chinese company if there was any doubts about their motivations their Exodus almost on mass in an equally short period of time should leave no one in any doubt theory was that by taking over clubs in established football leagues China would gain insights into how football clubs were running countries with established footballing infrastructure leagues and national teams which they could then Implement back home as well as creating greater fluidity between the Chinese football ecosystem and that of the rest of the world once again the project was scrapped quite simply because the powers that be in China determined that it wasn't proving to be a useful or worthwhile one and that the opportunity cost just wasn't justifiable basically in both instances there was too much capital outflow from China to other countries which the CCP felt was primarily benefiting the countries and clubs that Chinese money was flooding into either through the acquisition of players or the acquisition of entire clubs more so than it was benefiting China themselves and in 2017 sports clubs were actually added to the list of sectors that Chinese companies would be restricted from investing in overseas hence the mass Exodus Club sales and the Holton purchases since then at the same time as Chinese authorities were starting to come to the realization that maybe they ought to rethink their football strategy China also entered into a pretty severe economic crisis starting in 2020. it would take an entire video of a similar length to this one to explain it all but in the simplest possible terms this downturn was largely the result of a real estate bubble regulatory action and a liquidity crisis at some of China's largest companies it was compounded by turmoil in the banking sector particularly at Regional banks in provincial cities and regions which included a mass freezing of bank accounts lots of panic and widespread protests then you throw in China's strict zero covered strategy which has had inevitable significant economic ramifications and has also led to some of the most widespread and notable protests in China's modern history combined with concerns around China's aging population soon to be overtaken in total numbers by India and the lack of working age populations to deal with surging demand largely as a result of the former one child policy and there has been what you might describe as a slight hiccup for an economy which has experienced the most remarkable growth in modern history since 1978 if not of all time now you might be thinking at this stage what has any of this got to do with football a question that is quite commonly asked when people watch this channel but China is an authoritarian single-party state in which nothing is truly free of State control state-owned companies account for over 60 percent of China's market capitalization and more than 40 percent of the country's GDP and that is ignoring the fact that in reality all Chinese companies are State controlled to a great degree if not outright state-owned Chinese investments in football at home and abroad was State mandated that's why it was so immediate and now that the view on investments in football has changed other priorities have overtaken it and the economic realities have shifted so too is the direction from government even if this wasn't the case on a micro level the sector that was most invested in Chinese football was real estate the same sector that caused the crisis and was hardest hit between 2020 and 2022 the ever Grande group who owned Charter's most successful football club formerly known as Guangzhou ever Grande who were relegated from the Chinese Super League in two thousand 22 is literally the company that started China's real estate crisis when it was discovered that they had hundreds of billions of dollars of debt as of 2022 the company still has liabilities in excess of 300 billion US Dollars hyukayan the chairman of the evergrande group saw his estimated net worth fall from 45.3 billion dollars in 2017 making him the wealthiest person in China to 3.1 billion dollars in 2022 ranked 44th in China and falling as he struggles to keep hold of his crumbling property development Empire you can see why even if it wasn't being mandated from above which it was hukaiyan and Eva Grande's Focus might be elsewhere than football these days similarly sooning.com was among the most high profile Chinese companies to be hit with a liquidity crisis in 2021 requiring a 500 million dollar cash injection from a state fund in exchange for 5.59 of their shares to avoid collapsing in June 2021 founder Zhang Jin dong had his shares in sooning Frozen by a Beijing Court the following month and further private and state investment reduced sooning Appliance groups shares insooning.com from 10.68 to just 1.39 some of you may recall that fresh off the back of winning their first Serie A title in more than a decade Inter Milan had a fire sale in the summer of 2021 losing their manager Antonio Conte and selling the likes of Mazzio politano ashrafakimi and romelu Lukaku in a desperate bid to raise funds well that is because interaround or major already owned at least by the crisis ridden sooning Holdings Group who are currently looking to sell the club meanwhile jiangsu sooning owned by sooning Appliance group weren't even fortunate enough to get a fire sale instead just three months after winning their first Chinese Super League title the club was totally dissolved in terms of the state of play now of the former big hitters only Shanghai sipg now simply Shanghai Port remain remotely competitive the Shanghai International Port group it would seem have emerged from China's economic downturn relatively unscathed if you're wondering why almost all of the names have also Changed by the way that was just part of the same initiative by the Chinese fa where they introduced those strict salary caps to try and de-corporateize Chinese football and give football clubs more authentic sounding names by Banning corporate and Company owners or sponsors from inserting their branding into the names of clubs mirroring a similar policy that is mandated by the dfb in Germany the justification of it is quite sound but of course it only further disincentivize companies from investing in football clubs the last remaining big names in the Chinese Super League basically marrow and Fellaini and Oscar should now be on less than 50 000 pounds a week unless there is some funny accounting going on somewhere ultimately the Chinese super league has gone the same way as every other ambitious disruptive and free-spending Football League outside of Europe that preceded it whether that be the North American soccer league in the mid to late 1970s or the El Dorado era of Colombian football some 30 years before that but not for exactly the same reasons whilst individual companies have undergone severe economic hardship in China in recent years China had the resources to continue funding an ambitious football project for as long as they liked and unlike lucrative deals handed out by clubs in Saudi Arabia or Qatar for instance they didn't need to call favor with anyone else Chinese football doesn't need to become popular outside of China in order to be deemed as a success and China doesn't need footballers to endorse them or act as their ambassadors in quite the same way that Gulf States and others do not because China doesn't commit mass human rights violations or have anything to hide of course they do but because the country is so powerful now that they don't depend on Western States or anyone else in quite the same way that Gulf kingdoms and indeed the vast majority of other countries do whilst we see Saudi Arabia paying Lionel Messi a fortune to grotesquely sportswash their barbarism and several players journalists and indeed content creators becoming paid Stooges and falling over themselves to praise an authoritarian dictatorship in Qatar when Carlos Tevez returned to Argentina from China he described his stints at Shanghai shenhua as a vacation he said that Chinese footballers aren't naturally skilled like South Americans or Europeans and stated that even in 50 years they wouldn't become competitive Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party haven't necessarily given up on their football dream they've just decided to take an alternative approach a more modest methodical and more Chinese approach in some respects as best as we can tell at least China is still investing heavily in football infrastructure whilst plowing ahead with their implementation of mandating football in tens of thousands of schools they are just investing less heavily in Nikita yalabic and Ricardo vazte whether it will work out or not and whether it will be stuck to is an entirely different question whether it is the trains policy prescriptions or footballing machinations things move very quickly in China that is it for today's video I thoroughly hope you enjoyed it feel free to hit the like button if that was the case let me know your thoughts Down Below in the comments and go ahead and subscribe why not you only live once and turn on notifications for the one and only hrtc sevens and you can also find me personally on either Twitter or on Instagram simply via the username at hitc7s

Channel: HITC Sevens

Views: 356,844

Keywords: HITC Sevens, Football, Soccer, China, Chinese Super League, Bankrupt, Rise, Fall, Documentary, CSL, Jiangsu Suning, Guangzhou Evergrande, Relegated, Premier League, Transfers, Signings, Biggest, Richest, Money, Finance

Id: 12ezhhn8Kjo

Length: 37min 45sec (2265 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 21 2023