The "cross-border" quarrel between the literary, commercial and sports circles about Chinese football has come again. At the beginning of the inexplicable, the development of chicken and duck talk, the result is naturally on several Weibo hot searches, and then replaced by other hot search topics, forgotten. But for the subject of discussion, Chinese football, it is still necessary to find the light in the darkness under the emotions of loneliness and resentment.
To be honest, the current discussion about Chinese football is not too little, but too much.......
Text / Chen Diandian
Editors / Xue Yinbo, Song Xinyu
This article should be the most messy logic in my past series of columns.
And this may also reflect the chaotic, complex and even absurd living environment of football in our society.
In fact, as a practitioner in the industry, I first identified two things in my heart:
1. The level of development of Chinese football itself is very low, and there are problems in the development direction;
2. To get out of the predicament, Chinese football needs help from all sides of society, from national policies to individuals.
In the end, the football industry needs help, but what it needs is based on the insights after respecting, understanding and thinking about the industry, rather than the irony and ridicule that facilitate the online slangers to take it out of context.
After patiently reading this article, I hope that you can also have a more objective and calm understanding of the current situation of Chinese football.
01
Misunderstanding and confusion
Over the years, in my work and life, I have heard many misunderstandings about football from all sides of society. At first, I was emotionally agitated to explain, theory and even argue with the other party, but I gradually realized that this was not an isolated case, but an irrational stereotype of football in the general environment. After a brief summary, there are roughly the following four types.
· Common Misconception 1 ·
Why do you make so much money playing football
Teacher Gong Hanlin's previous discussion during the two sessions about football players taking high salaries and not scoring goals largely represents the society's doubts about Chinese professional football players, which can be summed up in eight words:
"The level is not high, and I earn a lot."
However, there are actually several misunderstandings about this problem.
First of all, there is no direct causal relationship between how much Money China's top football players make and the performance and results of his performance on behalf of the national team.
The vast majority of a player's income comes from the clubs he plays for, with only a small part coming from subsidies and bonuses after being transferred to the national team. The decisive factor in how much money top professional players can earn is the market supply and demand relationship and scarcity.
Regardless of whether the players themselves are worthy of tens of millions of annual salaries, in the market environment at that time, there were indeed Chinese Super League clubs willing, and even competing to offer such generous treatment to players.
Think about it in a different way: If it were you, would you refuse to pay a high salary or offer to take a pay cut because you are "unworthy"?
Of course, based on the level of competition, ornamentation and commercial value, whether China's top players match the annual salary of tens of millions of levels, whether such a salary structure is conducive to the sustainable development of professional clubs, in the past 6-8 years, there have indeed been many chaos, and finally triggered the partial collapse of the current professional football ecology. But that's another dimension of the problem.
People who pay attention to the football industry know that in the past 3 years, the salary limit of the Football Association has become stricter and stricter every year, and the maximum salary of local players in the Chinese Super League has been controlled in the range of 3 million / year. Compared with the average annual salary of about 2.4 million in the J League and about 1.2 million in the K League, they are all on a horizontal line.
Therefore, what our entire society needs to know is that the salary system for professional football players in China has changed. The era of super-high salaries and multi-millionaires for everyone has become a thing of the past. On the contrary, in the context of the collapse of real estate + football ecology, many Chinese Super League players have become "losers" who are struggling to get wages.
How many people care about this side of Chinese football?
In addition, I personally believe that in a sound professional football environment in a country, the top players should be among the highest income groups in this society.
On the one hand, athletes are the most fundamental source of productivity in the field of football, they have the ultimate ability to enhance productivity, change and determine the relations of production, and they deserve to be richly rewarded; on the other hand, when the whole society sees such labor income, it can also encourage and promote new productivity to a certain extent, that is, the base of young people participating in football.
Looking across the football industry, England and the Premier League, where the football industry is most developed, the median per capita income in England in 2020 is 31,487 pounds, while the average salary of players in the middle and lower reaches of the Premier League in Southampton in 2019/20 is about 2.2 million pounds, which is a 70 times difference.
Then, if you use the median per capita disposable income of mainland urban residents in 2021 of 43504 yuan as a reference, the current salary of China's top professional football players is relatively reasonable in the range of 1 million to 3 million.
Source: statista
In many cases, more and less, value is not worth it, is based on the subjective cognition and judgment of the individual. However, for the development of the industry, what needs to be considered are the objective conditions and development needs. Based on the latter, we will discuss the salary standard of professional footballers, I am afraid it will make sense.
· Common Misconception 2 ·
The uselessness of the market
The military system and the intensive training system are the ways to solve difficulties
The second problem is also the general misunderstanding of football in society.
Not long ago, Mr. Gao Yanming, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairman of Hebei Ocean Shipping, put forward a series of opinions on the development of football, and I personally agree with the proposal to expand the population base of football and build stadiums in various places. However, it is difficult to agree with the view that the provincial and national teams should implement the military system training.
What is distressing is that there are indeed not a few people with similar ideas in public opinion. Like what:
"If you choose a group of young people with good physical fitness, manage militarily from an early age, and practice football every day, won't this be able to enter the World Cup?" This is a point I've actually heard at dinner.
It can only be said that the people who hold such views do not know much about the sport of football, or the degree of development of modern football.
It is true that our sports industry has made major breakthroughs in the military system and in the development mode of "three from one", but for the sport of football, it is not applicable.
First of all, we must realize that the development of modern football has completely exceeded the football sport itself, but is a social product that combines multiple dimensions such as culture, education, science and technology, media, capital, etc.
When the football of other countries is developing in a coordinated way in terms of society, if we still develop this sport in isolation based on competitive performance, then the end will be like the starship parade encountering water droplets in the battle of the apocalypse in the trisolaran, dying heroically and losing completely.
A professional footballer is, first of all, a social individual with a full personality.
Referring to the performance of an Asian neighbor that adopts a similar approach to ensure the level of football competition, it may be able to create a miracle in a world cup qualifier, but this is its limit. Perhaps this approach can ensure the bottom line of competitive performance to a certain extent, but it also seals the upper limit of development and may trigger a series of governance problems in the future.
· Common Misconception 3 ·
The Golden Age of the Chinese Super League is no longer prosperous
Football is worthless
When many people discuss Chinese football, they do not recognize the essence of the problem. In the past two years, a large number of once-glamorous Chinese Super League giants such as Suning, Evergrande and Huaxia Happiness have finally come to an end, triggering a series of football "useless theories" and football "valueless theories".
Indeed, irrational investment and short-term utilitarian appeals have bred chaos in Chinese professional football over the past 8 years. This journey will require many people to reflect, take responsibility and correct their direction in the future.
But we need to recognize that in the so-called golden dollar football era, football itself is only seen as a tool. For traders, football can tell a bigger capital story, can maintain local relations, and can leverage richer resources. Now the tool with this function is no longer football, but has evolved into a new energy car, a meta-universe concept and so on.
The reason, then, is that football as a tool is not wrong, but the "people" who use the tool are wrong.
For football itself, its social value and significance as the world's largest sport in the world's most populous country still exist, but we need to find more reasonable and effective ways to activate and release it. The development of the football industry and the football industry in China is far from being limited to the Chinese Super League and sixteen clubs.
In addition, even if our professional league has encountered many problems in recent years, we must objectively and rationally understand that this is also a necessary process for development. More importantly, in such a turbulent cycle, some clubs have gradually found a more suitable way to survive. For example, the reform of club equity and the emphasis on the construction of youth training echelons are all directions worth further exploring.
· Common Misconceptions IV ·
Women's soccer teams play better than men's soccer teams
You should also earn more than the men's team
During the Spring Festival holiday, the men's football world preliminaries on the first day of the Chinese New Year defeated Vietnam miserably, and the six women's football Asian Cup won the championship at the beginning of the New Year, this time, let public opinion put the women's football team on the altar, and at the same time, they were eager to step on the men's football team to hell.
Indeed, competitive sports are cruel, and success or failure depends on the results and results. The Chinese women's football team has returned to the top of Asia after sixteen years, whether it is the final result or the process of winning the championship and cutting through the thorns, how many praises and praises have passed.
But realistically speaking, the achievements achieved by women's football cannot represent the overall professional development level of Chinese football.
In other words, using the stage success of women's football to ignore or cover up the problem of men's football development is definitely a self-deception and cover-up mentality.