Recently, Guangzhou Football Club issued a document setting out a new salary standard for teams at all levels of the club. Among them, the highest annual salary standard of the first team is 600,000 yuan before tax, and only three players can get such a salary package; while the starting salary of the entire first team 30 people is 60,000 yuan; that is, the monthly salary is only 5,000 yuan.
Personally, when I first heard the news, I thought that someone had made up a paragraph, because in recent times, there have been a large number of paragraphs and comments about Chinese players' "monthly salary of 3000" and "monthly salary of 5000". It wasn't until I saw Evergrande's red-headed document that I suddenly realized: This is actually true!
What does this mean? This means that Guangzhou Evergrande, the originator of China's "Golden Dollar Football" and the most successful club using the "Golden Dollar Football" model, has completely lowered the proud head of the past; the luxurious Evergrande of the past and today's Evergrande have officially "cut" and come to an end.
In the past decade, there is no shortage of "local tycoons" in the Chinese Super League who have offered huge salaries for players; but when it comes to the overall treatment of players, Evergrande has always stood proudly in the first position in the Chinese Super League. In the most prosperous period of Evergrande's "Jinyuan Football" development, the after-tax annual salaries of players such as Zheng Zhi, Gao Lin, Zhang Linpeng, Yu Hanchao, Feng Xiaoting and other players exceeded the 10 million yuan mark.
Even if foreign aid is not included, no club in the history of the Chinese Super League can raise so many super-paid players like Evergrande.
In that era, the annual salary of any major player in the Evergrande first team could be worth the salary of the current group of players for ten years, which is definitely not an exaggeration. In the same club, the salary standard fell off a cliff, and the comparison between the two reflected the reality so bleak.
Even in the most brilliant days of Evergrande, there is no shortage of people who stand up and remind: the model of golden dollar football will not last long. Among these people were Scolari, who was the manager of Evergrande at the time, who bluntly said that according to the scale of Evergrande's investment at that time, it could only be maintained for "6 to 7 years" at most. Even Evergrande itself wanted to "step on the brakes", and two years ago they issued regulations requiring evergrande football school players to pay no more than 3 million yuan before tax.
It's just that for the current batch of Evergrande players, "3 million before tax" is just a beautiful fantasy.
Evergrande's Golden Yuan era has come to an end, and Chinese football is now full of holes. Many people say that it was Evergrande that led the money-burning storm that harmed Chinese football. In fact, from the perspective of an ordinary fan, at least I am not disgusted with Evergrande's gold dollar strategy, why? Because Evergrande's past is indeed brilliant enough, as a Chinese Super League team, they have stood on the stage of world football, and their market value even surpassed giants such as Manchester United; they and their competitors have brought a large number of high-level players to the Chinese Super League, making every season of the Chinese Super League full of points.
For fans, the league is exciting, is there anything more important than watching the ball "cool"? Evergrande offers the Chinese Super League a possibility that we couldn't even think of before.
However, we will not believe that "gold dollar football" is a good thing. Just as even the most hopeless addict will eventually understand that those chemicals are poisoning his body, when the short-term stimulus brought by the gold dollar gradually disappears, in the face of this already devastated environment, we will truly understand that temporary happiness can not overcome this cruel reality.
Perhaps the most regrettable person now is a rulemaker like the Football Association. When the first Chinese players with transfer fees of more than 100 million yuan and annual salaries of more than 10 million yuan appeared, when the first foreign aid with hundreds of millions of dollars in annual income came to China, the rulemakers should realize that some parts of the league were close to getting out of control, but they did not give any solution at the time; until now, it was too late to regret it.
The era of gold dollar football is over. But this history, and the impact of former "local tycoon" clubs such as Evergrande, will continue to influence Chinese football for many years, until the day when the "aftermath" ends, I don't know what era it will be.