Reporter Lu Mi reported that on March 16, 2015, the Chinese government website officially published the full text of the "Overall Plan for the Reform and Development of Chinese Football" (hereinafter referred to as the "Overall Plan") issued by the General Office of the State Council. This plan is a programmatic document for the development of Chinese football, detailing the future development path and direction of football from the central ministries and commissions to the level of the Football Association to the grass-roots departments, leagues to clubs, coaches to players, youth training to social football. From the overall goal to the specific implementation, a detailed and executable strategy is given, and a beautiful blueprint for the future vigorous development of Chinese football is also painted for everyone.
At the beginning of the year of the document' release, frenchman Perrin led the Chinese national team to the quarter-finals of the Asian Cup; at the end of the year of the document's release, Guangzhou Evergrande won the AFC Champions League for the second time. Whether it is a national brand or a league, it gives people a sense of prosperity, and the introduction of the "Overall Plan" at this time is opportune, and it also makes people believe that Chinese football, which has a certain development foundation, will have a better tomorrow as long as it is implemented in accordance with the plan.
Now, seven years have passed since the introduction of the "Overall Plan", what has Chinese football experienced in these seven years?
Two world famous coaches have coached the Chinese men's football team in the past seven years, but unfortunately, neither Hiddink nor Lippi has been able to bring substantial help to the Chinese men's football team, the former was fired before the Tokyo Olympic qualifiers began, and the latter resigned in anger in the face of the collapse of the team and frequent mistakes in the process of taking the national team to the top 40 for the second time. "No courage, no hard work, no courage, no personality, fearful hands and feet, can not pass continuously, can not launch a successful operation, no heavyweight players can provide support..." Lippi's summary of the performance of the Chinese men's football team on the night of his resignation became a true portrayal of the performance of the Chinese men's football team during the World Preliminary Tournament in the next two years. Although the national football team reached the top 12 under the leadership of Li Tie, the record of 8 wins, 1 win, 2 draws and 5 losses, and the weak performance of 1-3 loss to Vietnam, let the Chinese men's football team fall into a whirlpool of controversy.
In the past seven years, after Perrin, the national men's football team has experienced six terms of five managers, namely Gao Hongbo, Lippi (twice), Cannavaro, Li Tie, and Li Xiaopeng.
At the time of the "Master Plan", Frenchman Perrin had just led the men's national team to reach the quarterfinals of the Asian Cup. When he took office in 2014, the media reported that the Frenchman's annual salary was about $1 million, which was much less than his predecessor Camacho. The prestige of the quarter-finals of the Asian Cup did not allow Perrin to survive the World Preliminaries. In the Round of 40 of the World Cup in Russia, the national football team lost to Qatar away and was forced to draw by Hong Kong, China, resulting in Perrin's dismissal.
Although Gao Hongbo, the firefighting coach, led the team to the round of 12, he was dismissed because of the first four games, 3 defeats and 1 draw.
Although Lippi took over the team with a good record of 6 wins, 3 wins, 2 draws and 1 loss, it still failed to reach the round of 12. In the 2019 Asian Cup in the United Arab Emirates, Lippi voluntarily resigned after losing 3-0 to Iran. After that, the Chinese Football Association considered letting Cannavaro lead the team and let him test the Water China Cup, but the poor record made both sides who did not sign at the time back down, and just two months later, Lippi took office again. This time, in addition to the equally staggering salary, the Italians have more say, including the introduction of naturalized players, with the goal of impacting the 2022 Qatar World Cup.
But no one expected that Lippi, who took office in May 2019, resigned again in November, the national football team lost to Syria in the World Preliminary Round, Lippi post-match press conference shelled the international footballer's attitude to meet the battle, and finally resigned indignantly. According to financial media reports at the time, Lippi coached the national football team twice for a total of 1,003 days, and the second time was to get a salary of 85.44 million yuan, adding up to more than 400 million yuan in wages twice.
Lippi is followed by Li Tie, and then now Li Xiaopeng, for a full 7 years, the Chinese men's football team has competed in two Asian Cups, standing still in the quarterfinals, and failing to qualify for the World Cup finals for two consecutive times.
At the level of the national brand, at that time, along with the silver foxes, there was also the head coach of the national Olympic team, Hiddink. The Dutch coach became the head coach of the national Olympic team in September 2018 with an annual salary of around 3.5 million euros. However, he led the team for only 1 year and 10 days, and then he was overshadowed, and in the final round of the Olympic preliminary group stage, the life-and-death battle with Malaysia was barely forced to equalize the opponent to qualify for the qualifiers, which was difficult to satisfy. At the Yellowstone Invitational tournament in September 2019, the national Olympic team drew 1-1 with North Korea and lost 0-2 to Vietnam, which became the direct trigger for Hiddink's dismissal.
In the past seven years, the Chinese Olympic team has failed to attack the Olympic Games twice, and the record of the U23 Asian Cup participated in the 2016 three games was at the bottom of the group, in 2018, 1 win and 2 losses in the group third, and in 2020, the three games were lost at the bottom of the group. At the Asian Games, he finished ninth in 2018.
In November 2014, SIPG acquired Shanghai East Asia Football Club wholly owned, Huaxia Happiness announced the acquisition of Hebei Zhongji Football Club in January 2015, Quanjian Group entered the professional league in a cooperative mode in February 2015, and In December 2015, Suning Group acquired Jiangsu Sainty Football Club. In the same year that the "Master Plan" was released, these new protagonists of the league with strong capital intervention appeared one after another, and in the following years, together with the old forces of the Chinese Super League, they pushed the golden dollar football that Guangzhou Evergrande opened in 2010 to the peak.
Many of the world's and Asia's top foreign teachers began to appear in the Chinese Super League, Suchkey Lippi, Scolari, Benitez, Capello, Pellegrini, Magat, Eriksen, Boas, Pereira, Choi Kang-hee, Choi Long-so, Luxemborg, Paul Sousa... The duels of various famous coaches have become the focus of the Chinese Super League again and again.
More and more world-class big stars have also become a necessity for the Chinese Super League, Paulinho, Talisca, Oscar, Hulk, Teixeira, Ravitch, Witsel, Pato, Tevez, Hamsik... According to statistics from the German "Transfer Market" website, during the winter transfer period of 2016, the Chinese Super League surpassed the Premier League with an overall transfer investment of 334 million euros, and once became the world's most expensive professional football league.
In the summer transfer period of 2015, Quanjian Group announced the signing of the international Sun Ke for 66 million yuan, pushing the value of domestic players to a new height, and since then it has risen all the way to jaw-dropping, Tianjin Quanjian introduced Wang Yongpo for more than 80 million yuan, Zhang Chenglin joined Guangzhou Evergrande as the first "Mr. Billion Yuan", Hebei Huaxia Happiness spent 150 million yuan to introduce Zhang Chengdong to reach the peak, in addition to the transfer fee rising again and again, the salary of domestic players also exceeded the level of 10 million yuan.
It is undeniable that in those years, the Chinese Super League was unprecedented in terms of both viewing and influence. Zhang Jian, then secretary general of the Chinese Football Association, once said at the National Football Congress that the average number of people in the Chinese Super League in the 2016 season reached 24,200, ranking fifth in the world, and in terms of overseas broadcasting, it covered 71 countries and regions. In The Asian arena, the performance of Chinese clubs has also reached its peak, with Evergrande winning two AFC Champions League titles and two Club World Cups fourth place. In 2016, Shanghai Harbor and Shandong Taishan reached the final four of the East Asian region, in 2017 Shanghai harbor entered the final of the East Asian region, in 2018 Tianjin Quanjian entered the final four of the East Asian region, and in 2019 Guangzhou Evergrande reached the final of the East Asian region.
In 2020, Tianjin Tianhai, which was dissolved due to the collapse of its parent company and was acquired and failed, became the first Chinese Super League club to withdraw, and that year, including Tianhai, more than 20 professional clubs in the three leagues withdrew, and all talents realized that Jinyuan football was in jeopardy.
The club's unpaid wages have long been signs in the 2018 season, and at the beginning it was only a relegation team, which led to the introduction of the "four hats" to limit investment in 2019. In the past two years, affected by the global epidemic, the club's debt has accumulated, the salary arrears have spread to most of the clubs in the entire tertiary league, the parent company has lost the ability to maintain operations and repay debts, and the Chinese Super League has also become fragmented under the epidemic and the compression of the schedule forced by the national football team to compete in the World Preliminary Round. Jiangsu Suning announced its dissolution after winning the first Chinese Super League championship in history, and the Hebei and Guangzhou teams that had spent thousands of dollars in reinforcements were struggling to operate, except for a few clubs that completed the share reform, most of the clubs were hovering on the edge of life and death.
In the past seven years, Jinyuan football has brought the Chinese league to the peak, but also left a devastation, the foreign coaches, foreign aid and high-paying contracts that were originally invested in the money are now eating up the life system of clubs and even the entire league. Whether it is a club or a competent department, it seems that they have forgotten that the "Overall Plan" put forward the basic program of league and competition design 7 years ago. At the level of the "Overall Plan", the most thorough implementation of the Chinese Football Association is the one-size-fits-all neutral name.
In 2015, Cai Zhenhua, then deputy director of the State General Administration of Sports and president of the Chinese Football Association, explained the background and focus of the "Overall Plan" respectively, and he even said that the prospects of football reform were intoxicating.
In accordance with the requirements of the Overall Plan, in February 2016, the Football Sports Management Center of the State General Administration of Sport was abolished, and the Chinese Football Association completed the "decoupling", and in December of the same year, the China Football Development Foundation was officially established.
During Cai Zhenhua's tenure, a series of new reforms were impressive: since the 2016 season, clubs in the Chinese Super League, Chinese First Division, and China Second Division have been banned from transferring across registered associations, and the most far-reaching and still existing is the U23 policy that has undergone several changes.
In the 2017 season, the Chinese Football Association first introduced the U23 policy, and in the following three years, this policy has been changed and changed, for a time, U23 players have been robbed, their value has soared, and most of the players who just turned 24 in 2017 have lost their positions. The Chinese Super League has repeatedly seen farces in which U23 players play for one minute.
In 2017, the "adjustment fee" for the first time was proposed, and since June, the Football Association has issued a number of documents to levy a regulation fee of up to 100% for the transfer fee exceeding the prescribed limit. Then for two consecutive years, this initiative has been upgraded, and to this day, the multiple "adjustment fees" that were originally levied are a mystery where they are now and what will happen in the future.
In October 2018, during the league, 55 players were recruited into the national training team, which was trained for more than a month, and then went to Europe for training. In November, with the league over, the Chinese Football Association created the U23 League, which has only existed for one time. In December, at the 2018 Professional League Summary Conference, the Chinese Football Association officially introduced the "four hats" policy that restricted club investment, as an important signal, the Golden Yuan era of Chinese professional football was forcibly ended, but the backlash was inevitable.
In August 2019, at the 11th General Meeting of the Chinese Football Association, Chen Shuyuan, the former chairman of SIPG, was elected as the new chairman of the Chinese Football Association. In December 2020, the Chinese Football Association Professional League Special Governance Work Conference was held in Shanghai, at which the Chinese Football Association announced a series of new policies, which made more stringent regulations on salary limits, including the maximum annual salary of domestic players of 5 million yuan before tax, the maximum annual salary of foreign aid of 3 million euros, the total annual salary of foreign aid should not exceed 10 million euros, and the annual salary of U21 players should not exceed 300,000 yuan. The de-corporateisation of club names was announced, requiring all clubs to complete neutral name reform before entering the 2021 season.
Under the influence of the epidemic, the professional league has adopted the tournament system for two consecutive years from the 2020 season, and in the first season, due to loopholes in the format setting, it almost appeared that winning one game in the whole year could complete the relegation. In the 2021 season, the Chinese Super League was forcibly compressed to 22 rounds in order to make way for the national team, and many clubs that were themselves hovering on the verge of dissolution thundered in three offseasons.
In the past seven years, with the change of leadership, the Chinese Football Association has introduced round after round of new policies at the league level, but the landing of each policy is almost in the trial and error and adjustment, and the actual benefits brought to the league and even the national team have been answered by reality.