It is no secret that the golden dollar wave of Chinese football has receded in a hurry, and it is no secret that many clubs are facing financial difficulties. Stock improvement exhibition is slow, the division is difficult to determine, the start of the competition is far away... On May 9, some Super League clubs finally heard a somewhat exciting news: some media people broke the news that the Chinese Football Association will soon study the return of the reinforcement adjustment fee. Obviously, for clubs with tight financial conditions, this money is undoubtedly a "life-saving money".
The so-called "reinforcement adjustment fee" is a system implemented from the summer transfer window of 2017, the Chinese Football Association and third-party auditing agencies first review the financial situation of each club, for clubs in a state of loss, the introduction of foreign aid funds more than 45 million yuan / person-time, the introduction of domestic player funds more than 20 million yuan / person-time, charged an equal amount of reinforcement adjustment fees. According to the notice of the Football Association when it introduced this rule, this amount was fully included in the China Football Development Foundation. For transfers that do not exceed the "red line" of 45 million yuan for foreign aid and 20 million yuan for domestic aid, the club does not need to pay the reinforcement adjustment fee, but needs to increase the actual amount of the reinforcement expenditure on the basis of the original youth training budget.
By the last day of 2019, when the Chinese Football Association announced the adjustment of the 2020 professional league policy, on the basis of keeping the standard of 45 million foreign aid / person and 20 million domestic aid / person, it changed the original "full collection" to "differential collection".
The Football Association has set up a reinforcement adjustment fee system, the short-term goal is to limit the clubs in order to pursue short-term achievements blindly high-priced reinforcements, the long-term goal is to hope that through the construction of the system, so that the investment in reinforcements and youth training investment tend to be balanced, so as to promote professional football on the road to healthy and stable development. In terms of short-term effects, the reinforcement adjustment fee has indeed played some role, and the most intuitive effect is that the overall summer window transfer expenditure of the Chinese Super League has shrunk sharply from a staggering 128 million euros in 2016 to 55.45 million euros in 2017 and 55.2 million euros in 2018. However, it is worth noting that in the summer window of 2019, the binding force of the reinforcement adjustment fee policy declined, and the transfer expenditure of the Chinese Super League powers returned to nearly 116 million euros similar to the 128 million euros in the summer window of 2016.
The reason is partly because at the beginning of the implementation of the policy, the clubs were unwilling to openly violate the desire of the Football Association and even higher management to control the overall investment of the league, so they avoided excessive transfer expenses through loans and other means; and then, after a period of exploration, the clubs have found a way to circumvent the adjustment fee. For example, if you want to introduce an internal support worth more than 20 million standards, then sign several young players whose value is much lower than this level from the club where the players are transferred, and the average of several people will not exceed the standard, and everyone is happy. To introduce foreign aid worth more than 45 million yuan, it is also possible to bypass the reinforcement adjustment fee by letting the player first terminate the contract with the original club, and then complete the transfer in a free body. In this case, it is difficult for the Chinese Football Association to ask foreign clubs to cooperate with their work, so as to confirm whether there are transfer fees or how much transfer fees are generated. In this way, the reinforcement fee has largely lost its original restrictive role. For clubs that have the right to rush to the championship or relegation just need, even if the other club is unwilling to cooperate, the adjustment fee is only to pay a little more money, if it is those "not bad money" clubs, it should still be bought.
In addition, with the implementation of the policy, some unreasonable points of the reinforcement adjustment fee have also emerged, and the more obvious point is that whether it is the Chinese Football Association as a social organization or the China Football Development Foundation, it is necessary to collect this fee under the premise of complying with the relevant financial management regulations. To put it simply, the reinforcement adjustment fee paid by the clubs has become a "hot potato", and when the Football Association is still unable to issue invoices, there are also some clubs that are in arrears in the reinforcement adjustment fee because they cannot pay the account, which further aggravates the dissatisfaction of the clubs that pay the adjustment fee according to the requirements. Especially in the past two years, with the end of the "Golden Dollar Era" of the Chinese professional football league, the investment of Chinese Super League clubs has shrunk on a large scale, and the Football Association has more and more stringent spending limits for clubs.
So, in the past few years, how much reinforcement adjustment fee has the Chinese Football Association received? On March 19, 2019, the Chinese Football Association announced the players who completed the transfer procedures during the 2019 winter registration transfer period of the Chinese Super League and The Chinese League A clubs. It can be seen from the publicity that Talisca, Paulinho, Fellaini and Hamsik, four heavy foreign aides in the winter window, have paid the adjustment fee.
In addition, according to football newspapers, in 2018, the transfer of a total of 8 foreign aides involved the payment of adjustment fees, namely Beijing Guoan's Bakambu, Vieira, Guangzhou's Paulinho, Talisca, Dalian's Hamsik, Carrasco, Shandong Taishan's Fellaini, and Tianjin Tianhai's Modeste, and the total adjustment fee paid by the above players is about one billion yuan.
So, why did the Football Association keep this huge amount of money and now consider returning it to the club? The most fundamental reason is that in the absence of an application to the higher authority to collect enterprise fees, that is, to obtain a fee permit, the adjustment fee is not a reasonable and legal income of the Football Association. Although the Chinese Football Association has collected this money, in view of the fact that the procedures for the fee permit have not been completed, the adjustment fee can only be placed on the account of the Chinese Super League Company. However, as a social organization, the Football Association must follow the financial provisions in the Regulations on the Registration and Administration of Social Groups, "the financial revenue and expenditure of social groups shall be fully included in the bank accounts opened by them, and the bank accounts of other organizations or individuals shall not be used", so the Football Association transferred this money to the account of the Super League Company, which is obviously "using the bank accounts of other organizations". If it is not dealt with in time, it will become the object of the state's cleanup of the "small treasury". Money can not be spent, storage and touch the red line of financial management, this is the embarrassment that the Football Association is facing now, and it is also the reason why the State Administration of Market Supervision has sent personnel to visit the Chinese Football Association on the issue of fee compliance, as reported by the media. The early cancellation of this fee and the refund of the collected amount have become the most convenient way for the FOOTBALL Association to solve this problem once and for all.
Now, as the tide of golden dollar football recedes, more and more clubs with financial difficulties are calling for the FOOTBALL Association to refund the reinforcement adjustment fees they have paid. When the club's financial situation was good, the money was paid, and now the club has no money, and the Football Association cannot put this money into the youth training system as normally as expected, and it is no wonder that the club has moved to ask the Football Association to refund the adjustment fee. Moreover, the adjustment fees paid by the clubs at the beginning were as little as tens of millions and as many as hundreds of millions, which can also be used to a large extent to fill the financial deficit of the club and alleviate the problem of wage arrears.
On the one hand, the club is anxious to wait for this money to "save lives", and on the other hand, the Football Association is willing to return it in order to avoid financial violations, so the rumors that the Football Association will study how to deal with the adjustment fee for reinforcements are very likely to eventually become a reality. Of course, even if the reinforcement adjustment fee is refunded, it still has to go through the relevant procedures, and the focus of the Work of the Chinese Football Association is still on the preparation of the league. With the two teams in Shanghai successively stationed in dalian, a major preamble to the start of the Chinese Super League has made great progress, and then it depends on when the preparatory team can finalize the division.