In the final round of the Chinese League One, with Gui Hong's final draw, Meizhou Hakka won a place to advance to the Chinese Super League next season!
The match between Meizhou Hakka and Kunshan FC went to the 95th minute and 23 seconds, and the history of Chinese football was rewritten in this moment. Gui Hong's world wave from the left side of the penalty area penetrated into the dead corner of the Kunshan team's goal, 1-1, Meizhou Hakka equalized, and got the long-awaited 1 point that was enough to lock in the direct overtaking quota. "It's amazing, that's the beauty of football!" Meizhou fans in the stands shouted the name of "Meizhou Hakka" while pulling out banners announcing "Chinese Super League, we Meizhou Hakka are coming".
Less than 3 kilometers away from the Wuhua Olympic Sports Center, the competition between the Zhejiang team and the three towns of Wuhan, which won the championship in advance, has already sounded the final whistle. The Zhejiang team that won 2-1 has been ready to celebrate the success of the super, but what is waiting is the bad news that Gui Hong's whistle is absolutely flat, and the Chinese Super League ticket that is about to arrive is a play-off ticket, and the Zhejiang team falls from heaven to mortal.
After 9 years of hard work and waiting, Meizhou Hakka, which was established in 2013, finally realized a football dream that it had struggled for many years, and also let Meizhou City, known as the "hometown of football", finally have its own Chinese Super League team, and Wuhua County was also recorded in the history of Chinese professional football as the first county-level city with a top league team.
Meizhou is the famous hometown of football in China. In 1956, the State Sports Commission awarded Meixian District the title of "Football Town" based on the long history and development status of football in Meixian District (now Meizhou City). From the 1950s to the 1990s, Meizhou has been an important talent training base for Guangdong football, and has sent a large number of Hakka international footballers to the men's and women's national teams at all levels.
Wuhua, formerly known as Changle, is not only an important landmark in Meizhou, but also an important source of Hakka culture in eastern Guangdong, and the birthplace of modern football in Chinese mainland. In 1873, two missionaries, Charles Piton of France and Heinrich Bender of Germany, founded the church school Yuankeng Zhongshuguan (later known as Yuankeng Middle School) in the village of Yuankeng in Changbu Town, Wuhua County, Meizhou City. At that time, Yuankeng Middle School was built on a mountain, and at both ends of the lawn playground of the mountain pass, the goal was built with wood, and Bian Dezhi taught the students to play football. Since then, modern football has been introduced to Chinese mainland, and it has also created the continued development of Meizhou football for the next 148 years. In November 2015, Wuhua County's Yuankeng, the birthplace of modern football in Chinese mainland, was recognized by the State General Administration of Sport.
Wuhua, whose permanent population is less than 1 million, has a popular saying: Wuhua Brother is hard. "Hard to fight hard" reflects the heroic spirit of the Five Chinese people who work hard and have the courage to forge ahead in the face of adversity, and there are several layers of meaning. The first is the "hard fist" of the five Chinese, and there have been many "Wu Zhuangyuan", "Wu Jinshi" and "Wuju people" in history; the second is that the Five Chinese people are "technically hard" and have always been famous for their abundant stone carving craftsmen. The third is "hard feet", which is the hometown of the world ball king Li Huitang.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Li Huitang was a well-known generation of football kings at home and abroad. He was the captain of the Chinese men's soccer team that participated in the Olympic Games for the first time in 1936, scoring more than a thousand goals in his lifetime. As the saying goes, to watch the drama is to see Mei Lanfang, to watch the ball is to see Li Huitang. Li Huitang's former residence is located in Xikeng Laolou Village, Hengpi Town, Wuhua County, which not only retains the original appearance of the former residence, but also builds the Ball King Cultural Park, which has become one of the football landmarks in Wuhua County.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Wuhua County, which has a deep football culture precipitation, trained the first international player Zhang Junlang in the 1960s, and since then has sent a large number of outstanding players such as Zhang Fotian, Wei Chongjin, Wei Faci, Li Pengrui, Li Yunxiang to the Guangdong Provincial Team, becoming an excellent representative of Guangdong football Hakka players.
However, when Chinese football began to enter the era of professionalization, Meizhou City has not established its own real professional team because of the lag of the football system and the underdevelopment of the economy. What is more serious is that Meizhou's grassroots football training system has been paralyzed, and many young players with potential have been lost.
Until 2010, Meizhou City issued the "Ten-Year Plan for Revitalizing the "Hometown of Football"", which clearly put the formation of a professional football team on the agenda of the "Ten Ones" project. At the end of 2012, Cao Yangfu, the former head coach of the Guangdong Rizhiquan team who had failed to surpass the team for 4 consecutive years, was idle at home, and he received a call from a leader of the Meizhou Municipal Sports Bureau, followed by a surprise: an entrepreneur in Wuhua County wanted to invest in a professional team in the local area, wanted him to help form a team, started in the Chinese Second Division, and aimed to rush the first division a year later, as for money is not a problem.
The owner's name is Wei Jinping, chairman of a local real estate company in Wuhua. After several meetings and discussions, Cao Yang made up his mind to accept the other party's warm invitation, and he valued Wei Jinping's heart that loved football. In this way, Meizhou Hakka Football Club was established. Taking advantage of his long-term connections in Guangdong football, Cao Yang recruited a lot of old departments from his old club Guangdong Rizhiquan, and at the same time found some players from Guangzhou Evergrande and other Chinese Super League and Chinese League A clubs, and embarked on the journey of The Second Division.
In the 2013 and 2014 seasons, Meizhou Hakka successively folded the middle two knockout rounds. In 2015, Meizhou Hakka, which has undergone three coach changes in a single season, finally successfully rushed to the top under the leadership of the old coach Qi Wusheng.
In the past 5 seasons, Meizhou Hakka has not followed the trend in a high-profile manner in the "Golden Dollar Football" environment, but has adopted a strategy of steady investment and steady development. Through continuous internal potential, cultivate new talents, introduce cost-effective internal and external assistance, and hire foreign coaches suitable for their own style. This does not affect their foothold in the middle division. In the four years from 2016 to 2019, Meizhou Hakka's performance ranked in the middle of the middle of the middle division, and last year it won the best result in the history of the fifth place in the middle division. Before the start of this season, the club's investors and coaching staff reached a consensus that the Chinese Super League began to "de-gold" the tide, and the time had come for Meizhou Hakka to rush over, and set the season goal of rushing over.
On December 22, 2021, after nearly 8 months and 34 battles, Meizhou Hakka finally achieved positive results at the last moment of the last round and realized its dream of surpassing. Meizhou Hakka became the first team in Meizhou to rush to the top professional league, and Wuhua County also became the first county-level city in the history of Chinese professional football to have a top league team.
Since Meizhou City issued the "Ten-Year Plan for Revitalizing the "Hometown of Football"", under the successful leadership of Meizhou Hakka Football Club, the phased football layout of Wuhua County has achieved initial results. The Wuhua County Government set up the Wuhua Youth Football Development Fund to create a cultural tourism zone in the hometown of the king of the ball, forming a series of special football events and activities, polishing the signboard of the "hometown of the king of the ball", and launching the spirit of "Wuhua Brother hard".
In the 2018 season, Meizhou Huijun women's football team successfully entered the women's Super League in Wuhua County. At the end of 2020, Meizhou Hakka Football Club signed a co-construction agreement with the Guangdong Football Association to jointly build the Guangdong Women's Football Team and help the team participate in the Women's Super League and the Women's Senior Division of the 14th National Games. In the 2021 season, Guangdong Meizhou Hakka Women's Football Team won the third place in the National Women's Football Championship and the fourth place in the National Women's Super League, which is also the best result created by Guangdong Adult Women's Football Since 2002.
The Wuhua Olympic Sports Center, which has been built with an investment of nearly 1 billion yuan, has been put into use in 2019 and has become the home of the Meizhou Hakka team's Central League A this season. In the future concept of Meizhou Hakka, if the Chinese Super League can restore the home and away format in the future, the club will set up a double home stadium in Wuhua and Meixian, and the Wuhua Olympic Sports Center is one of them.
With the successful rush of Meizhou Hakka Club, counting the existing Guangzhou team, Guangzhou City and Shenzu, there will be 4 Guangdong representatives in next year's Chinese Super League, recreating the grand situation of the Guangdong Four Tigers competing for deer A in the 1996 season 25 years ago. The successful overtaking of Meizhou Hakka has brought Wuhua County from a small mountainous county into the core territory of Chinese professional football, and will further promote Meizhou to revitalize the "hometown of football" and even create a new chapter in the "Chinese Football Special Zone".
Wen | Ye Hui
Edit | ball lightning