The Chinese Super League has now reignited, but the overall attention is not high. Before the start of the Chinese Super League, there was a more shocking news in Chinese football - Beijing Guoan's left-back Li Lei will leave the team to join the Swiss Super League Grasshoppers. This news is relatively unexpected, mainly because of Li Lei's age. He will turn 30 on May 30 next year, apparently choosing to play abroad at such an age that he had to be sweated for him. Leaving aside Li Lei, I don't know if you have ever thought that there are many European managers who have left the Chinese Super League in the past year or so far, but why so far, no manager will invite a player from the Chinese Super League to play in the team he is currently coaching?
In the past few years, gold dollar football has become popular in the Chinese Super League, and the owners of various clubs have shown their magic and invited so-called famous coaches from Europe to coach. After every famous coach arrives in China, he will inevitably be bombarded by all kinds of media, not only domestic media, but also many European media. The Chinese media likes to ask these foreign coaches what they think of some of the popular local players in the team. From time to time, foreign media have to ask these foreign teachers what the level of Chinese football is. In short, the two answers we hear most often are: "The real level of Chinese football is not as good as the results show", and "So-and-so player has the ability to play in the Europa League." ”
To be fair, these words are enough. When the foreign teacher came to China, he didn't even recognize all the players, so how could he know what level of Chinese football it was. As for "so-and-so player can get a foothold in the Europa League", it is a polite statement in the polite words. This is actually a logical problem. I ask you, after you foreign teachers left China, why have you never asked the new owners to bring in Chinese players?
On the contrary, the most common thing we have is that after foreign teachers come to China, they bring their own concubine troops from Europe. For example, soon after Schmidt joined Guoan, word soon became that the Germans wanted to bring in their favorite in the Bundesliga, Campoir. When Benitez came to the Chinese Super League in 2019, he also quickly introduced Venezuelan center Rondon, who was Master Bei's beloved apprentice during his time at Newcastle, and now the two are reunited in Everton, struggling with the team on the road to relegation. Even the famous Asian coach Choi Kang-hee, after coming to Shenhua, also brought his own love general Kim Shin-woo.
The foreign coach also has many disciples in the Chinese Super League, and even some of the team members were hand-pulled during the coaching period of these foreign teachers. Let's take the simplest example. Garcia, who is currently coaching Makalo in La Liga, has twice coached Beijing Renhe. Especially during his first coaching of the team, he single-handedly promoted Cao Yongjing and Deng Hanwen, and made Wang Gang famous in the Chinese Super League. However, after his return to Spanish football, he has never shown interest in Chinese players, not even in other Chinese Super League teams.
At present, in the Mallorca squad, Garcia has Kubo Kenying and Li Gangren, two young talents from Japan and South Korea, and the current situation of players from China, Japan and South Korea is probably impossible in all of Europe to know better than him. If anything, it can only be Schmidt, who is currently in charge of Eredivisie giants Eindhoven. Schmidt went to the Dutch League after leaving Guoan to coach, and there was news that he and his assistants had been paying attention to Li Lei, but in the end nothing happened.
The reasons for this are actually very simple - Chinese players are not competitive. European teams bring in Asian players for two main purposes. First, it's cheap and easy to use. Second, open up the market. However, "cheap and easy to use" is always on top of "opening up the market", because assuming that a professional player has no core competitiveness, even the minimum exposure is not available, which will not help at all for the so-called market development. Wu Lei has been staying in Yang for nearly 2 years, has the Spaniard cultivated a very loyal fan in China? Apparently not.
However, when discussing this issue, our domestic public opinion environment always likes to put the cart before the horse, thinking that European teams will definitely give preferential treatment to Chinese players because they are unwilling to give up the Chinese market. Obviously this is a very arrogant view. Zhang Xizhe and Zhang Chengdong in the early years, as well as He Shuoyu in the previous two years, have in fact proved that such a domestic public opinion is just wishful thinking.
Let me give you another example. In the summer of 2021, Hengo Furuhashi, who had scored 15 goals in the J-League half season, moved to join the Celtics. Since then, he has become a super scorer in this veteran superstar in the Soviet Super League, and is the hottest star in the team. As a result, coach Post Koglu plans to continue bringing in Japanese players from the J-League. Flag bearers Yoyoshi, Yosuke Izuguchi, and Maeda Dairan all became prey for this team. It is worth noting that Bo Shuai has coached in the J-League and he is very aware of the level and ability of Japanese players. There is a successful example of Furuhashi Heono, which makes him have no obstacles in bringing in Japanese players, low costs and high levels of performance, and also makes the club happy to make these deals.
It can be seen that playing iron also needs to be hard, and at the current level of Chinese football and Chinese players, it is obviously unrealistic to be favored by European coaches who have coached themselves and take them to Europe by name. (Supine Braces/Zhang Yangyuan)