After the bubble of Golden Yuan football completely burst, the former 8th champion of the Chinese Super League Guangzhou Evergrande (Guangzhou team) collapsed. After the club's funds were cut off, many big-name foreign aides, naturalized players and popular international players of the Guangzhou team left the team.
Now, of the 7 naturalized players in the Guangzhou team that year, only Jiang Guangtai is still playing in the Chinese Super League, but he has also switched to Shanghai Port. The other six naturalized players have all returned to their countries of origin, while Xiao Taotao completed the withdrawal procedures last month and officially restored his Peruvian nationality.
After Xiao Taotao, the second naturalized player who retired will also be produced soon, he is Gaulart, who was successfully naturalized 4 years ago but did not play one game for the national football team.
Recently, according to a number of Brazilian sports media reports, Gaulart's withdrawal process has entered the final stage, if there is no accident, Gaulart will be able to officially restore his Brazilian nationality in the next 1-2 months. For these denaturalization procedures, Gaulart only needs to pay 250 yuan, of which 50 yuan is the processing fee charged by the Brazilian civil affairs department, and the other 200 yuan is the notarization fee for Goulart to provide denaturalization materials.
The 32-year-old landed in the Chinese Super League in 2015 and joined Chinese Super League overlords Guangzhou Evergrande for a transfer value of 15 million euros, which also set a new Chinese Super League transfer fee record at the time.
After joining Evergrande, Gaulart helped the team win three Chinese Super League championships, and after the Chinese Football Association launched the player naturalization program, he also became the focus of Evergrande Club's naturalization target. According to conservative estimates, in order to be able to persuade Gaulart to naturalize, Evergrande has paid Gaulart at least 400 million yuan in the past few years.
At the beginning of 2019, Gaulart completed all naturalization procedures and officially became a Chinese player. However, due to failure to meet the requirement to live in China for at least 5 years, Goulart was unable to qualify for international competitions for the national team.
In the case of the Evergrande club's capital chain and salary arrears, Gaulart took the lead in terminating his contract with Guangzhou early last year, returned to Brazil, and joined the Baja team Santos as a free agent. Due to poor form, Goulart was swept away by Santos FC last summer and moved to Bahia in the second division.
In order to no longer play in the team as a foreign player, Goulart began to go through the procedures of renouncing his Chinese nationality and restoring his Brazilian nationality last year. Today, the denaturalization procedures for Goulart have been almost completed, and he will soon be able to become a Brazilian citizen again.
In other words, the hundreds of millions of yuan paid by Evergrande for naturalization of Gaulart have all been lost, and he has not even played a single international match for the Chinese men's team. What is even more ironic is that after taking away 400 million yuan from the Chinese Super League, Gaulart paid only a measly 250 yuan for denationalization.
In the past few years, under the initiative of the Football Association, the clubs of the Chinese Super League have invested heavily in naturalizing many foreign players, but few can actually play for the national team in the World Qualifiers, and their performance in the World Qualifiers is also very disappointing.
It can be said that Chinese football paid a double price of achievement and money for the failed naturalization program of the Football Association, and only those agents and insiders of the Football Association who earned a lot of benefit fees through the naturalization of players became the winners. In this regard, we can't help but ask, who should bear the responsibility for the failure of the national football naturalization plan now? Are Chen Jiayuan, Liu Yi and Li Tie enough?