Reporter Jia Yanfeng reported that at noon on March 12, 2022, Dalian Ren Football Club officially announced a message of equity transfer: "At present, Dalian Football Reform and Development Working Group has signed an agreement with Wanda Group, Yifang Group and Dalian RenRen Professional Club, and the Dalian Football Reform and Development Working Group will form a management team to take over Dalian Ren Professional Club, exercise full authority over the club, and actively explore a new path for football reform and development with Dalian characteristics." ”
The news also shows that according to the agreement between the two sides, Wanda Group will bear all the historical debts of the first 20 years of the club's takeover, the club operation in the next three years, the youth training and the operation of the Dalian Campus Football Primary School Base, and donate the Dalian Football Youth Training Base with a total cost of about 1.6 billion yuan to the state-owned enterprise Detai Holdings for the development of football.
According to the meaning expressed in the news, the management team of Wanda Group will fully withdraw from the team management work on the date of the announcement. After handing over the management of the club, it has to continue to invest for three years, responsible for repaying debts, and donating to the base free of charge. As soon as the news was announced, everyone praised Wang Jianlin and Wanda Group's righteous deeds and generosity. Dalian fans are even more grateful to Wang Jianlin, even if the team has been relegated to the Middle League.
Since 2019, there will be some news about Wanda quitting Dalian football at the beginning of each year, and finally, in 2022, it will become a fact.
If the football glory of the Dalian Wanda era is shaped by Wang Jianlin on his own initiative; then whether it is sponsoring the national team or returning to the decline of Dalian Renren Club, it is a real result of Wang Jianlin's passive return to football.
After Wang Jianlin withdrew from the professional league in 1998, it was not until 2011 that wang Jianlin and Wanda's names were once again related to Chinese football. At that time, Wang Jianlin also went on CCTV, saying that he would invest 500 million yuan in 3 years to help the development of Chinese football. Whether it is hiring a head coach Camacho for the national team, naming the Chinese Super League and the Women's Super League, hosting the China Cup, investing in the U-series youth football league, increasing the income of law enforcement referees, and sending a batch of young players to study abroad, Wang Jianlin and his Wanda are trying to present a successful company to give back to the society.
At that time, Evergrande had already emerged in Chinese football. Wang Jianlin did not directly confront Xu Jiayin in the frontal battlefield of the professional league, but declared the heavy punch of his football territory in another way. At the same time, in 2011, Wanda Group's annual revenue exceeded the 100 billion mark for the first time, reaching a staggering 105.1 billion yuan; by 2013, Wanda Group's total assets reached 380 billion yuan, and with the successful listing in Hong Kong, Wang Jianlin became The richest man in China. However, due to the failure of Camacho's coaching, Wang Jianlin's investment of up to 500 million yuan did not achieve the expected effect.
In 2015, Wang Jianlin bought a 20% stake in La Liga champion Atletico Madrid for 45 million euros. Wang Jianlin's move also opened the prelude to the large-scale acquisition of Chinese companies in the field of professional football in Europe, after which Wang Jianlin's Wanda Group did not develop smoothly, and three years later began to deal with foreign assets, including shares in Atletico Madrid, but at this time, Wanda will regularly send small players to European football to continue to stay abroad.
At that time, Dalian football also encountered difficulties, and the Albin club at that time encountered a financial crisis and the team faced dissolution. Perhaps it is precisely because of the fact that Wang Jianlin has been helping Chinese football, and the leaders of Dalian's relevant parties personally went to the Wanda headquarters in Beijing to try to persuade Wang Jianlin to return to the professional football field and help Dalian revitalize football.
At that time, the specific content of the negotiations was unknown to the outside world, but later Wang Jianlin personally admitted to the outside world: "I can't pick up a Chinese First Division team, the scale of Albin Club and Wanda Group does not match, and Dalian Football will consider taking over until it returns to the Chinese Super League." However, Wang Jianlin did not stand idly by, and he persuaded his business partner, Sun Xi of Dalian Yifang Group, to come forward and take over the Albin Club. In the years when one side competed in the Chinese First Division, the investment of the club was the responsibility of Wanda, but it was managed by one party group.
Dalian Yifang played tepid in the Chinese First Division for 3 years, and Wanda Group did not have any obvious commercial expansion in Dalian until the end of the 2017 season, when the team rushed to the Chinese Super League. Originally, the team rushed to overtake is a great joy, in the process of team overtaking, whether it is the chairman of the party group, or the leaders of Dalian City at that time, they have come to the team many times to comfort and encourage, but after the success of the team, the party group quietly submitted the team hosting application, saying that it could not continue to bear the team's expenses. It is said that this is actually Wanda's attitude.
According to the data at the time, the average operating cost of Chinese Super League clubs in 2016 was about 688 million yuan, compared with 387 million yuan in the 2015 season, an increase of 78%, and the average labor cost of the club also increased from 216 million yuan to 464 million yuan, an increase of 115%. After returning to the Chinese Super League, you can't be relegated immediately, right? So if the investment of nearly 1 billion yuan a season cannot help from a commercial point of view, then why invest in football? Therefore, on the surface, one party does not want to do it, but in fact, Wanda really does not want to stay.
Later, under the coordination of relevant leaders, Wanda Group did not quit Dalian football. The reason for this may be answered from the announcement issued by Wanda Group on January 1, 2020: At the beginning of 2018, the main leaders of Dalian City made a special trip to Wanda Group to propose that Wanda Group pay the funds required by one football club in advance for that year, and promised to coordinate and solve several problems in the development of Dalian football in 2018, including the judicially frozen accounts of one football club, the equity transfer and the huge debt left over from the history of one of the former shareholders.
Although it has not withdrawn, there have been rumors in recent years that Wanda is withdrawing. According to the legend in Dalian football circles, after Wanda took over Dalian football, the relevant government departments did not fulfill their original commitments, and even Dalian Yifang's equity in the club was not transferred to Wanda. There are many interludes in between, which are rumored to be related to the change of leaders in Dalian.
Wanda is a company after all, and if there is not enough interest to drive, Wanda also has too many reasons why it cannot continue to invest in football. At that time, the Dalian people's team already had big-name players such as Carrasco and Gaitan, and the salary was sky-high. Wanda is no longer dry, this team can not take over, so Wanda gradually terminated all that can be terminated, including many domestic high-paid players, and now the entire operating cost has been reduced, but the team has also been relegated.
Opening the "Tianyan Check", we can see that the Dalian Renren Club is still registered under the name of Dalian Yifang Group. In other words, the issue of the club's equity has not been resolved so far, and the club has not been transferred to Wanda's name.
Why can't it be transferred? There are legal issues involved. When the group took over the club, what kind of agreement did the group make with the Albin club on the creditor's rights and debts, such as: how to deal with all the debts and claims before the transfer of the club? The specific circumstances of the club's dispute are not known, but what is certain is that neither one party nor Wanda is willing to take on any debts left by the club's former shareholder, Albin.
Judging from the announcement issued by Wanda Group on New Year's Day in 2020, Wanda has always insisted that the solution to this problem at that time had the endorsement from the relevant government departments, but the promise has never been fulfilled, so this debt problem has been dragged on and has not been solved, and the club's account has been sealed, whether it is club operation or salary, it is very inconvenient.
Logically, if wanda bears this part of the debt, the club will complete the transfer, and if it does not bear it, it will naturally not be completed.
At present, what can be found from the public information of the court system and the industrial and commercial registration system is that there are 34 debt disputes related to the club, involving a large amount; among them, they are not entirely left over from the Albin era, but also one party and the Dalian Ren Club are produced in two periods; only from January 25, 2022 to March 8, 2022, there are 9 legal proceedings with Wanda after taking over the club. In addition, there were disputes arising from the club's ticket sales agent, the rental of the venue and the arrears related to security costs.
In these debt disputes, the arrears left over from the Albin era can be found in the court system, and the largest amount is the two foreign aides of Varro and Alfonso, adding up to about 20 million yuan, and the rest cannot be found in the public information.
According to incomplete statistics, Wanda officially took over the club in 2018 to the end of the 2021 season, in the past four years, if you count the base, the investment in Dalian Renren Club should be no less than 3 billion. If you count from the Dalian Yifang era in 2015, Wang Jianlin's investment in Dalian football has also been 7 seasons. In the past 7 seasons, Wanda has recruited big-name coaches and stars to build the most modern football training base, which is deeply imprinted in the history of Dalian football.
Whether the payment and return can meet Wanda's expectations, this outsider does not know. What the outside world can know now is that Dalian Football and Wanda said goodbye. But after all, there are still three years to go, and Wang Jianlin and his Wanda will continue to support Dalian football financially, so it is not time to finally say goodbye.