After 19 years of pouring all his love into the Blues' Chelsea, Russian tycoon Abu is finally going to say goodbye to this team. A war that put aside Abu's dreams of stamford Bridge, he was forced to make the decision to sell Chelsea and give up all his shares, an era that belonged to Chelsea was coming to an end. In China, thousands of miles away, although Evergrande, as the eight champions of the Chinese Super League, is still insisting, it has also changed from a giant that has spent thousands of dollars to a civilian team that relies on youth players to play the world. The reason why these two teams are linked is because they both opened an era of golden dollar football, but unfortunately, Evergrande did not live to become Chelsea in the end.
On 24 April 2003, the second leg of the 2002/03 Champions League quarterfinals was played at Old Trafford, Manchester United beat Real Madrid 4-3, alien Ronaldo's hat-trick, Beckham's scoring twice were impressive, that wonderful game, let Abu sitting in the Old Trafford stand, but also made him make a decision to buy Chelsea, as for why Chelsea, because the Manchester United boss refused to sell.
In this way, at that time, a bunch of debts, even after the game to exchange shirts were strictly prohibited to save money chelsea no pole tai tai shot gun exchange, Abu with great enthusiasm began to spend money for Chelsea, he made a list of reinforcements including superstars such as Little Ronaldo, Zidane, etc., which made the then Chelsea manager Ranieri a little dizzy, he consulted with the club CEO Peter Kenyan, and listed a list of strong players such as Belon, Jocor, Duff, Makelele and Glen Johnson. Abu took it all, and then after finishing runners-up in the Premier League in 2003/04 and reaching the top four of the Champions League, he fired Ranieri, and if I remember correctly, the nickname of the Italian coach "Potmaker" was also called at that time.
Evergrande's acquisition of the Guangzhou team is actually a similar process. At that time, Guangzhou Guangzhou Pharmaceutical was ordered to be relegated for playing match-fixing, Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Group also officially withdrew, Evergrande became the receiver, took the runner-up team in the first year of the first year of the A into the arms, and introduced the international players Gao Lin, Zheng Zhi and foreign aid Muric and other powerful players, easily won the Chinese First Division championship and entered the Chinese Super League, and the Golden Yuan era of Chinese football officially arrived. And strikingly similar to Chelsea, Abu fired Ranieri, who was considered to be of average level, and Lee Jang-so, who led Evergrande to stage the Kaiserslautern myth and reached the top 8 of the AFC Champions League, was also replaced by World Cup champion coach Lippi, in fact, judging from Li's coaching experience in China, he also deserves the title of pot maker.
In the 19 years of Abu operation, Chelsea have won 21 titles in all competitions, and they have become the fifth European team to take all kinds of titles into their arms. Evergrande has also achieved eight Chinese Super League champions and won the AFC Champions League twice with the support of infinite financial resources, and the FA Cup Super Cup has also been completely acquired, becoming a team at the level of the Chinese Super League. At least at the level of Asian football, Evergrande has achieved no less than Chelsea, and it is not an exaggeration to say that they are the Asian version of Chelsea. However, chelsea, after years of heavy investment, not only cultivated a large number of young talents by building a youth training system and a "taxi" strategy, but also enabled them to turn a profit for the first time in the 2016/17 season, with a strong hematopoietic function. In fact, when Chelsea suffered a transfer ban in the 2019/20 season, academy players such as Tammy Tammy Abraham, Mount, Hudson Hudson-Odoi, Tomori, Gilmore and Rees James stepped forward to ensure Chelsea remained in the top four of the Premier League.
Like Chelsea, Evergrande also opened a vigorous youth training after the rush, and the 10,000-person football school also set a Guinness World Record. Although the growth cycle is a bit long, it has also cultivated young talents such as Tan Kaiyuan, Ling Jie, and Perlman Jiang. However, Evergrande does not have its own hematopoietic function like Chelsea, and now even if the salary is compressed to the company's white-collar level, it still needs Evergrande Group to be responsible for expenditure. In other words, Evergrande copied Chelsea's prosperity process, but did not live as Chelsea.
In fact, Abu has also increased investment at any cost in Chelsea, which has put great pressure on all teams in the Premier League and led to the introduction of the UEFA Financial Fairness Act in 2009, and Abu's response to this is to convert the club's huge liabilities into share assets, simply put, turning left hand to right hand and swallowing all debts. However, this practice of buying out the debt of the club owner was also locked in by UEFA with supplementary regulations, which forced Abu to change his business strategy and deepen the youth training frenzy to enhance Chelsea's self-hematopoietic function, and achieved fruitful results. Last summer, Chelsea signed veteran Lukaku for €115 million, but because they sold a number of marginal players and earned €120 million, the Blues actually had a surplus of €5.35 million!
The reason why Evergrande did not have such good luck is not only the lack of a UEFA fiscal fairness bill, but also the most important reason for the extreme management method of the Football Association. At the beginning of the 2011 season, they watched Evergrande invest no matter the cost and did not make any moves, but only applauded Evergrande's brilliant record of sweeping Asia. In fact, with the fans' enthusiasm for the domestic league at that time, the Chinese Super League clubs could take this opportunity to have their own hematopoietic function and become a real professional team.
Until 5 years later, the Chinese Super League Golden Dollar football reached a climax, Jiangsu Suning, Shanghai SIPG, Hebei Huaxia Happiness and Tianjin Quanjian and other teams have followed up, Luneng, Shenhua and Guoan can only increase investment in this case, seeing that the Golden Dollar football is almost out of control, the Football Association has been busy introducing the number of foreign aid to play limits and transfer adjustment fees, even so it is also very effective, just to recycle Paulinho to introduce Talisca, Evergrande paid a reinforcement adjustment fee of more than 60 million euros.
However, even if it is more to use football as a carrier of brand promotion, Boss Xu's love for this sport is also obvious to all, otherwise Evergrande would not have such a big investment in youth training, after all, this is a matter of great investment and slow effort. Nowadays, even if it is difficult to do internal and external difficulties, Evergrande has not given up football, but has used the minimum cost to let football school players get super-level training, which can also be regarded as a new revival plan for chinese football in the downturn. Compared with Abu having to say goodbye to Chelsea, which he loves, Boss Xu is at least still playing football, which is already valuable.