Reporter Jia Yanfeng reported that the 2022 season of the Chinese Super League is expected to restart at the end of April, which is a season under the exit of the national team from the World Cup qualifiers, the retreat of Jinyuan football and the continued impact of the epidemic, which is a season full of more challenges and tests for the Chinese Football Association. For the CFA preparatory team, which is responsible for the specific preparation and coordination of the league, the workload has more than doubled.
In order to restore the fans' confidence in the league and to make Chinese football not fall further, the Chinese Football Association and the China Football Federation Preparatory Group consider not only the preparations for the current competition, but also the future, how to revive Chinese football.
How to revive Chinese football? Reviving the professional league is certainly an important starting point, and the domestic league is most eager to be guaranteed is the following basic work.
The second basic principle of the "Chinese Football Reform Plan" has such a statement: focusing on the long term and consolidating the foundation are combined. Strengthen the top-level design, pay attention to the implementation of the strategy... Strengthen scientific governance and solve development problems.
Looking back at the biggest development problem of Chinese football in recent years, it is that the professional league under the leadership of the Chinese Football Association does not have a coordinated and forward-looking development plan, but constantly increases the instability of policy changes, and constantly increases the operational risks and pressures of investors, thus making the Chinese Super League after the Golden Dollar Football become difficult.
After the outbreak of the epidemic, the industry once thought that the 2020 season was the most difficult, but then there was a more difficult 2021 season, and now the 2022 season, with the background of the national team being eliminated, coupled with the accumulation of shortcomings in the first two seasons, may be even more bleak. In order to prevent Chinese football from continuing to sink, it is more important to strengthen the top-level design with a long-term perspective.
A major reason why the Chinese Super League has made many investors miserable in recent years is that policy changes are too frequent, although these adjustments are also to make up for many loopholes and correct many unreasonable phenomena, such as limiting sky-high reinforcements, limiting players' sky-high salaries, U23 policies and so on. In fact, if many problems can have a certain foresight and foresight, there is a relatively perfect system from the beginning, and there is no need to temporarily adjust when problems always occur. So who will complete the top-level design of the future fate of the Chinese league? Who will set a basic direction and principle of the league in three to five years? This is important for the Chinese league.
From the emergence to the decline of Evergrande, and then look at the professional leagues piled up by Jin Yuanzu, it has not brought any substantial improvement to the national team. Combined with the football reform plan, the current managers of Chinese football have soberly realized that Chinese football needs the support of capital for a long time, and now it needs it, and it is more needed in the future; Chinese football needs to respect capital, and in the future, it must strengthen benign dialogue and communication with capital; Chinese football needs reasonable guidance and use of the power of capital to let capital exert force where it is going.
In fact, many enterprises invested in the field of professional football, especially after the implementation of the neutral name system, all the capital invested in the field of football can not get the basic return from the market, then in the future, in the operation, we must also take into account the return to capital, or at least reduce the unnecessary loss of capital.
In the 2021 season, the ratings of the first round of the Chinese Super League were only 0.5%. In fact, although the home attendance of the Chinese Super League in the past era of big-name players was good, the broadcast ratings have not been reflected in a relatively clear figure. If the 2022 season is still played in the form of a tournament system, it will further have a negative impact on the ratings, and the fans' interest in the Chinese professional league will become lower and lower, and the evaluation will become worse and worse, which is also a key point that must be paid attention to.
Fans are the largest audience for the revival of China's professional leagues, and there are two ways to better win back the hearts of fans: either to achieve breakthrough results in a short period of time, in the national team or in the AFC Champions League, which obviously we can't do in a short period of time; or consider taking the initiative to increase the participation of fans in the league. Although fans can't enter the stadium to watch the game, it is precisely because they cannot enter the stadium to watch the game that it is more important to actively enhance the participation of fans. Because if it has been so separated, slowly fans will be further lost, the less people to pay attention to, the lower the confidence of capital in football, so we must take the initiative to save the hearts of fans into a category of key thinking.
How to increase fan engagement? In the context of epidemic prevention and control, close contact is certainly impossible, but in today's online network communication technology is so developed, active interaction and communication with fans through the network is an indispensable means to strengthen fan stickiness.
In the more than 20 years and nearly 30 years of development of Chinese professional leagues, they have never considered actively cultivating the fan market. The club basically simply believes that as long as the results are good, the fans will naturally support, and if they do not communicate, they will support; if the results are not good, the communication is just scolded, so it is better not to say. In the future, such thinking should be adjusted.
At the moment of high-speed information dissemination, taking the initiative to establish positive and effective interaction and communication with fans, so that fans can understand the survival difficulties of clubs and the status of players under the pressure of the epidemic, is an important means to reduce fans' expectations of league level and understand the level of league. Because once the league restarts, if the players are not so satisfactory, they may start a new round of scolding, so the significance of the league restart is only to become a new catharsis for everyone. This is obviously not conducive to the recovery of China's professional leagues, and it will further hit the confidence of some young people who want to work in the football industry. Between Chinese professional football and ordinary fans, there are often many places that are not familiar with each other and do not understand each other, and everyone just looks at the problem from their own point of view, so many problems are actually caused by misunderstandings.
The sixth item of the "Football Reform Plan" mentions the need to popularize the development of social football and promote the mutual promotion of social football and professional football. Whether you want to popularize or promote social football, it is essential for professional football to lower its posture and strengthen communication with the outside world. There are a large number of Chinese fans, including many rational fans, if they can be found to join the reconstruction of Chinese football, it is bound to play a benign role in guiding public opinion.
Chinese professional leagues have developed for so many years, although there are also fair play awards at the annual award ceremony, but in fact, it is rare to give in-depth commendations and awards for the specific work of some club operations.
What does that mean? For example, in previous years, everyone has focused on some big clubs and teams with brilliant achievements in civil and foreign wars, such as Shide, Evergrande, Suning, Luneng, Guoan, Shenhua, etc., but few people pay special attention to clubs like Henan Songshan Longmen. Now Henan Songshan Longmen Club has completed the share reform, and a large part of the reason why they can complete the share reform so early and so quickly comes from the club's corporate culture - honesty and trustworthiness, respect for the contract.
Many clubs cannot smoothly promote the stock reform because when they check the accounts, there are a large number of bad debts and bad debts, whether they are foreign aid or domestic aid, there are big loopholes that cannot be plugged. State-owned enterprises can take over the club's future, but for the past, it must be borne by the original investors themselves. In this regard, Chairman Hu Baosen of Henan Jianye can almost be said to be a model of the Chinese Super League, and it is precisely because of this that the share reform can be completed so smoothly.
Jianye is not a giant in China's professional league, but they have insisted on many things that the giants can't do in the past few decades - strictly abide by the spirit of the contract, respect the contract, respect the players, regardless of whether it is domestic or foreign. For such a club, such an advanced model, if the future can still adhere to the club's consistent excellent style, then it should be more widely publicized and commended as a positive model, establish the image of its excellent club representative, let more fans see in the eyes, let more clubs see the example.
Also under the influence of the epidemic, although investors are facing difficulties, how do clubs like Henan Songshan Longmen do? Jianye is not the largest enterprise in China, why can he do it while other companies can't? For clubs that have always abided by the rules, and for investors who have made great contributions to Chinese football for many years, the Chinese Football Association should consider setting such enterprises and clubs as models for the entire Chinese professional league to learn.
Respecting the contract and respecting the spirit of the contract is the minimum standard of the law, but in the Chinese professional league, it has become the highest standard. Under the premise of fully protecting the interests of players, it is also necessary to consider protecting the interests of investors. For this kind of honest and trustworthy enterprise, the greatest respect is to focus on the promotion and packaging of the league, and strive to bring more social value and recognition to the enterprise.
The 2022 season has formulated a punishment system for enterprises that do not abide by the rules, in fact, it should also be formulated for some in the business difficulties, dare to take responsibility, honest and trustworthy operators rewards and praise, this reward is not necessarily material, the specific way should be decided by industry managers. At the same time, for such a company that carefully maintains the football brand and image, industry managers should also listen more to their voices, listen to some of their specific and cutting-edge feelings in this field, and listen more to the voices of investors like Hu Baosen who have been overcoming difficulties and operating in good faith, and try to care for and retain the hearts of investors like him, so as not to let them leave because of coldness.