Reporter Cheng Shan reported that on January 9, 2022, the Chinese Football Association held the second meeting of the 11th General Assembly in Chengdu. There are several pieces of information at the meeting that deserve the attention of the Chinese Super League in the new season: first, clubs should further strictly implement the salary limit policy, and the annual investment of the first team is limited to 300 million yuan; second, go all out to restore the home and away system, and decide whether to open fans by all localities; third, all players must re-sign work contracts with new clubs after completing the stock reform; fourth, professional clubs can reach the admission qualification as long as they have U17 and U19 echelons in the future. There is no need to be forced to bear the operational pressure of multiple age groups with their own echelons, and the youth training below U17 is still handed over to social forces, local football associations and campus football in stages and levels.
From these four clear pieces of information, we can extract several key words, namely "investment amount limit", "resumption of home and away", "stock reform", "two-tier echelon". Among them, the stock reform has been identified by many Chinese Super League clubs as the premise for starting the preparation for the new season, and recently there have been continuous releases of news from the club, indicating that it is difficult to promote the stock reform, making it impossible to carry out many necessary work before the season. So, is the share reform mandatory? Should the slow progress of the stock reform become an obstacle and excuse for teams to start preparing for the new season?
Share reform is one of the most frequently associated words with football clubs in the 2021 season, and the share reform was originally written in the "Overall Plan for the Reform and Development of Chinese Football": optimize the shareholding structure of clubs. Implement diversified investment by the government, enterprises and individuals, encourage the local government of the club to invest in the shares with resources such as football stadiums, form a reasonable investment source structure, promote the regionalization of the club, and encourage the qualified clubs to gradually realize the non-enterprise of the name. Improve the corporate governance structure of the club, accelerate the construction of a modern enterprise system, base on the long-term, systematic planning, and strive to build a century-old club.
The "Plan" was released in 2015, but the years after that were the heyday of Jinyuan football, and a number of clubs in the Chinese Super League did not hesitate to smash superstar foreign aides and famous coaches in the league, so that the stock reform only stayed in the conceptual stage. Until the 2020 season, when real estate companies generally experienced operational crises and many teams in the Chinese Super League had operational difficulties, that only teams refocused their attention on stock reform. The first to complete the share reform is Shandong Taishan, they successfully completed the share reform in June 2020, after that, with the 2021 Shijiazhuang Yongchang to Cangzhou, in the name of Cangzhou Lion to complete the share reform; the veteran team Henan Jianye also transformed into Henan Songshan Longmen to complete the share reform. Shandong Taishan won the FA Cup in the 2020 season, the FA Cup and the Chinese Super League double in the 2021 season; the stable state of henan and Cangzhou in the 2021 season has made more clubs in the survival dilemma determine that share reform is the only way to survive at this stage.
However, the share reform is not mandatory, otherwise it would not be five years after the release of the policy that the first Chinese Super League club completed the share reform in accordance with the recommendations of the "Plan": Shandong Electric Power Company and the Jinan Municipal People's Government officially signed a framework agreement on the transfer of equity in Luneng Sports, transferring part of the equity of Shandong Luneng Taishan Football Club to the Jinan Municipal People's Government, and the Jinan Municipal People's Government authorized the relevant enterprises to undertake the shares. Since then, Luneng Sports has been composed of 4:3:3 equity, which is jointly held by Jinan Cultural Tourism Group, Shandong Electric Power Company and Luneng Group, forming a diversified pattern of club equity. The Jinan Cultural Tourism Group, which has a controlling stake in it, has officially become the new "leader" of the Taishan team.
The reason why Shandong Taishan was able to complete the share reform so smoothly has a huge relationship with the taishan team's original investment by state-owned enterprises. In the process of communication and research between the Football Association and the Chinese Football Federation Preparatory Group and the clubs, it was found that in fact, the situation is not the same in various places, and there are three situations in which the Chinese Super League teams face the stock reform: First, the local government requires the club, etc., and the stock reform has been launched in the process of improvement; second, the club is not absolutely powerless to continue to operate, but hopes to share the existing operating pressure by looking for new investment; third, the existing investors completely give up, and the local government and the Football Association need to take over. The first and third cases are relatively rare, the second case is slightly more, just don't want to vote again, and the neutral name policy gives these clubs a reason to expect the government.
The Football Association and the Preparatory Group of the China Football Federation fully promote the stock reform, the original intention is very simple, the first is that the "Plan" determines the survival mode and development trend of the league, and the second is that there are no more Jiangsu Suning clubs, ignoring the overall image of the league and withdrawing at will, and the negative impact on the entire professional league is difficult to eliminate in a few years. But the model of stock reform cannot be one-size-fits-all, let alone mandatory. To complete the share reform according to the "Plan", the government and local state-owned enterprises need to participate in the future investment and construction of the team, but the situation of the Chinese Super League A cities is very different, and the stock reform has not yet established guiding opinions, so no one can give a period of time for the share reform.
Stock reform takes time and cannot be achieved overnight. Instead of waiting passively, it is better to take the initiative to find ways to solve the club's problems, the most important of which is to solve the salary arrears. At present, many clubs have lawsuits that have not been settled, mainly because of the arrears of wages and bonuses, but it should be pointed out that even if the share reform is completed, the club's previous arrears will also set up a separate company and be responsible for the original investors. The intervention and investment of the government and state-owned enterprises after the stock reform are responsible for the future survival and development of the club, and will not solve the historical liabilities for the previous investors. Objectively speaking, the better the operating conditions, the greater the likelihood of success of the stock reform, and the clubs with huge historical debts are more likely to deter new investors.
Therefore, seeking stock reform and preparing for the new season, resolving wage arrears, in parallel, no one comes first, and no club should completely lie flat by waiting for the name of the stock to change.