Beast Master | Chinese football has suffered a great defeat in 30 years

In March 1992, inspired by the Shenzhen model, the Dalian Sports Committee, the hometown of football, decided to establish China's special football zone. Wu Shaozu, director of the National Sports Commission, happily wrote a big report to the National Sports Commission in Dalian:

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Two months later, the establishment of the Dalian Football Special Zone was approved. Wu Shaozu flew to Dalian to talk about the significance of the football special zone, wanting to establish a virtuous cycle operation mechanism full of self-development and vitality.

Director Wu met a small developer who was willing to sponsor the Dalian football team 4 million. The two talked about football, and under the recommendation of Director Wu, the small developer had the honor to meet the leaders of Dalian City at that time.

The small developer soon reorganized on the basis of the Dalian team and established China's first professional football club, which later became the hegemon of China's A-A era:

Dalian Wanda team.

A week after Director Wu returned to Beijing from Dalian, he held a meeting under a large ceiling fan at the Red Mountain Pass in the western suburbs, where the Bayi Workers Brigade is located.

In the history of Chinese football, this meeting can be called the "Zunyi Conference". Reform is the theme of this national football work conference. Director Wu proposed that football reform should be regarded as a breakthrough point in sports reform, and the direction of football reform is:

Associations are materialized and leagues are professionalized.

In 1992, when the controversy over the surname was still in trouble, Director Wu was already bold. Unexpectedly, the central leaders attending the meeting were even more bold. He said that he should make the reform of the football system in one step, establish a professional club system, and support himself with broadcast rights, advertising, tickets, lottery tickets, transfer fees, etc.

Prior to this, Chinese football followed the model of moving from the municipal sports school to the physical engineering team and then to the national team. After the Red Pass meeting, the Physical Engineering Brigade was transformed into a professional club.

In 2000, Director Wu left the sports system, and the number of Chinese football players increased from 1,000 that year to 60,000, and the number of clubs also increased to more than 300. The following year, the national football team made a historic move from reaching the World Cup finals.

The small developer in Dalian became the most well-known developer in China through football. He left the sports circle earlier than Director Wu.

After a change of coach, as the owner of the team, he was scolded out of the office by the leaders of Dalian City. Later, Wang Jianlin took advantage of a famous match-fixing match to announce his permanent retirement from Chinese football in 1999.

In 2018, the Dalian municipal government found Lao Wang again. After receiving some promises, Wanda began to give blood transfusions to the Dalian team again.

Four years later, in 2022, the Chinese Super League was close to collapse again, and Lao Wang announced his retirement from the club again. He donated the Dalian Football Youth Training Base to Dalian state-owned enterprise Detai Holdings.

Detai Holdings belongs to the Dalian Football Reform and Development Working Group. The working group took over the Dalian Football Club, and the group was personally headed by the leaders of the relevant departments in Dalian.

In 1992, Chinese football carried out professional reform, and the physical engineering teams of that year were transformed into football clubs; Thirty years later, under the strong leadership of the new football association, dozens of teams were disbanded and withdrew in the past three years.

Some clubs, if not dissolved, exist in name only, no different from local sports brigades.

Generations of Chinese football people, with youth and hard work, have been exchanged for reconstruction and zeroing again and again.

1

In November 2022, Li Jun, general manager of Huaxia Happiness Football Club, was taken away for investigation, and it was Meng Xuan, president of Huaxia Happiness, who was taken away with him.

That same month, Zhao Hongjing resigned as vice president of Huaxia Happiness, and he is said to be in Singapore. Imprisonment and exile are said to be related to football, but they are not secret.

That November, the only person who was taken away in front of everyone was Li Tie, the former 3 national football manager. Official Announcement:

Suspected of serious violations.

If it is exactly the same, it will appear in the official announcements of more football association leaders in the next few months, and Liu Yi, secretary general of the football association, and Chen Yongliang, executive deputy secretary-general, will be investigated at the same time.

On February 14, Huaxia Happiness officially announced that it received a notice from the Supervision Commission of Chongyang County, Xianning City, Hubei Province, that Meng Wei was suspected of illegal crimes and was liuzhi.

Xianning, Hubei Province, has become the land of Chinese football.

Then there is Chen Jiayuan, president of the Chinese Football Association, who is under investigation for suspected serious violations.

In August 2015, an ordinary summer, Li Tie, assistant coach of Evergrande, served as the head coach of Huaxia Happiness. At that time, the club was in charge of Meng Xuan, and in 2018, he directly served as the chairman of the club. Meng Xuan's previous chairman of the club was none other than Zhao Hongjing, the company's vice president.

Huaxia Happiness has just taken over the Hebei team and finished sixth in the Central League. After Tie Zi took over, there were only nine rounds left in the Chinese League One, and then, Tie Zi created a luxurious record of eight wins and one draw, sending Huaxia Happiness to the Chinese Super League.

At that time, the main competitor of Huaxia Happiness was Dalian Albin, which was also aiming to overtake. Dalian side soon felt that something was wrong, the momentum of Huaxia Happiness without tasting defeat was too strong, went to other clubs to inquire, the other party said bluntly:

Don't waste your effort.

In October 2015, the Dalian Fan Association held a press conference to report Huaxia Happiness for illegally hiring retired cadres of the Football Association and suspected of buying opponents. Huaxia Happiness's response to this is that it will not be suppressed by artificially created public opinion.

At that time, Li Xiaoguang, an advisor to the Huaxia Happiness Club, was also a retired cadre from the Technical Department of the Football Association and the State Management Department.

The resistance of the Dalian side was powerless. That October, before the crucial match between Huaxia and Xinjiang Snow Leopards, Shi Xueqing, the general manager of Dalian Club, flew to Urumqi alone to persuade the Snow Leopards executives not to give up the game.

Xinjiang was moved by Shi Xueqing's sincerity and promised to defend the dignity of Xinjiang football.

Following Shi Xueqing, Meng Xueqi came to Urumqi and offered to help the Xinjiang team attract investment.

Some people want to win, and there are always people who don't care about winning or losing. Forty minutes before the official match between Huaxia Happiness and Xinjiang team, Danarah, a foreign aid who was training normally in warm-up, suddenly announced that he was injured and could not play. Afterwards, doctors determined that Danarach had no new injuries that would not affect the game.

In that game, the Xinjiang team, which lacked the main foreign support, lost 2-0. The foreign aid of the Xinjiang Snow Leopards quietly left China the day after the defeat and never set foot on the land again.

A month later, Dalian Yi, who was only two points away from Huaxia Happiness, defeated Songjiang, who was taken over by Quan Jian, 2-0, and stood and watched Huaxia Happiness take away the Chinese Super League seat.

On the other end, the Huaxia Happiness players threw the iron high in the Qinhuangdao Olympic Sports Center.

Tie Zi only coached in Huaxia Happiness for one year. During this period, Huaxia Happiness spent a lot of money to attract signings, using up the 5+5+3 domestic and foreign aid transfer quota, and the total transfer fee was about tens of millions of euros.

Whether the sale is worth it or not does not know. But the following year, Huaxia Happiness's sales reached 120 billion, a year-on-year increase of 66%, becoming the biggest dark horse in China's real estate circle that year.

Later, after Li Tie became the manager of the national football team, Shi Xueqing publicly expressed his dissatisfaction, "Li Tie, a recognized match-fixing wizard in the industry, was appointed as the manager of the national football team, and I sighed 'it's over' at that time." ”

He was unfortunate enough to speak.

Shi Xueqing is the longest-serving professional manager in a professional club in China, and over the years, he has built a cannon, scolded Li Tie, choked Wang Dengfeng, and criticized Meng Xuan... After Li Tie was arrested, he said that "good and evil will be rewarded in the end."

I wrote before about the heyday of gold dollar football in those years. Suning, Evergrande, Quan Jian and other football clubs played with their lives and threw money and threw the investment amount of the Chinese Super League to the sixth in the world, and the owner of Quan Jian even said on the TV station, not ruling out the possibility of introducing Messi.

When Wu Shaozu commented on the club model, he once said that some of them regard the club as an advertisement, and the quality is not very high:

Can you be an entrepreneur by doing a little more ethical work?

2

For a long time, Chinese football was actually afraid of lack of money.

At the beginning of 1992, the Chinese Olympic football team and South Korea played the Asian finals of the Barcelona Olympic qualifiers, and in the opening nine minutes, the Chinese team was dunked three goals in a row, losing the Olympic qualification rights.

Ten minutes later, a phone call was made directly to Wu Shaozu, director of the National Sports Commission. The elder on the other end said in a deep voice that he had just watched the game:

It is necessary to sum up the experience.

For a long time in the seventies and eighties, Chinese football, which has a broad mass base, has been in the leading position in Asia. But by the end of the eighties, something suddenly went wrong with Chinese football.

At the Beijing Asian Games, the Chinese team lost to Thailand; World Cup qualifiers, three minutes in black.

The World Cup qualifiers ended, the president of the Football Association, Nian Weisi, retired, and Yuan Weimin made a comeback. Wang Junsheng, who was a goalkeeper for 12 years when he was young, joined the Football Association at the same time as a full-time vice president.

It has only been a month or two since he joined the Football Association, and Xiao Wang is still a little confused and goes to the airport to meet the 1-3 defeat of the national Olympic team. The deputy leader of the National Olympic team was taken aback and said to sum up the experience:

Your brother, you are so bold, why did you come at this time?

When the days are poor, the gold medal is the biggest face. Every time a gold medal is won on the field, the leader will send a congratulatory message. The leaders asked Chinese football to sum up the experience, and there were opposition forces within the sports committee, feeling that football would never win the gold medal anyway. Therefore, the annual funds of the Sports Committee of more than 200 million yuan were distributed to the Chinese Football Association:

Only one or two million.

Director Wu did not understand gold medals, and before he was transferred to the National Sports Commission, he was a general by secretary and the number one in the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

The advantage of a secretary is that the pen is very hard. It was only thanks to his notes that Beijing learned the old chief's instructions for bidding for the Olympics. Director Wu brought Wang Junsheng to talk alone, instructing that football reform should be regarded as a major task in China's sports reform, and what he could give was absolute power support:

With the achievements, it is all yours, and I will bear the responsibility if there is a problem, and I am ready to be dismissed.

Wang Junsheng understood this - asking for money, or not.

In 1992, 43-year-old Wang Junsheng received the task of reforming football from Wu Shaozu. He found a bunch of professors in Beiti to conduct preliminary practical research and theoretical guidance.

Because there was no money to pay salaries, the research time was limited to seven to ten days. The old professors were very motivated, and they circled around the venue where the domestic team concentrated for spring training, turning their heads and asking Wang Junsheng whether he wanted to hear the truth or falsehood?

Comrade Junsheng, don't let them practice, let them go home quickly.

Comrade Junsheng is not dead. Soon after, FIFA sent three international experts to help investigate, and foreigners in the purely technical field did not even look at it, saying that they should think of ways in the organization and management of football.

In the following months, Wang Junsheng reported to the Sports Committee twenty-two documents on the reform of China's football professionalization, which provided the theoretical basis for the football reform of the Hongshan Pass Conference.

From the end of the Red Pass meeting to the beginning of the A-League, there were still two years in between. In the past two years, the Football Association has done a lot of preparatory work, such as the arrangement of fixtures, the layout of the competition venue, and the preparation of referees.

But the most important thing is to find a start-up capital.

Most of the limited funds of the Football Association that year had to be used for youth training. Wang Junsheng flew to Japan to learn from the experience. Eventually, he found the answer to the business agent in Japan.

After some negotiations on the title and sponsorship of the A-League, IMG, an internationally renowned management group, won the commercial development rights for the first five years of the A-League. IMG did well in the business, and five years later, the contract was renewed again and the price tag was increased tenfold.

3

On April 17, 1994, at the Chengdu Sports Center, in the presence of 40,000 fans, Sichuan Quanxing and Liaoning Far East completed the first match of the Chinese Professional League.

Afterwards, Wei Qun, who scored the first goal in the Chinese league, took a 3,000 yuan prize and spread it on his mattress one by one. Sitting on the edge of the bed and lighting a cigarette, he looked at a blue ocean in a daze.

Dalian Wanda also won its first league match. According to rumors, Lao Wang walked into the dressing room, threw a black pocket on the table, and said four words:

It's all here.

After Dalian Wanda won the A-A championship, Wanda's sales soared from a few small targets to nearly three billion.

At this time, Huandao began to name the Wuhan Avant-garde. As early as 1988, Huandao dared to spend 600 million yuan to buy a 6.5-square-kilometer development zone on Haidian Island, Hainan, and Wanda can only be regarded as a small dog compared with Huandao.

By 1997, the avant-garde Huandao began to compete with Wanda, buying well-known stars such as Gao Feng, Jiang Feng, and Han Jinming in the transfer market. Among them, the peak transfer fee is as high as 1.7 million.

Wang Junsheng's self-reliant professional league was catalyzed by real estate bosses and got out of control for the first time.

In 1998, Qianwei Huandao relocated to Chongqing. As the city's football calling card, Atoll Island once again introduced legendary South African footballer Mark Williams.

In order to make this introduction, the Chongqing municipal government introduced a young man who introduced South African construction projects to Chongqing to Huandao. In 2000, Mark Williams became the team's top scorer, helping Chongqing win the FA Cup.

The young man also tasted the sweetness of a football agent in this transfer. He later ran Mirren, Sun Jihai, etc., and became Lee Jang-so's agent.

It was also when recruiting Mirren for the Chongqing team that the Chongqing team found that Mirren had also signed a contract with Guoan, and Shi Xueqing, who was the general manager of the Chongqing team at the time, bombarded the young man:

The black sheep (of the family).

In the years that followed, the young man gradually faded out of the football agency circle.

At the end of 2012, news of remarriage came from IMG and the Chinese Football Association. The Wall Street Journal said IMG has again begun managing and operating the Chinese Super League.

In 2018, the young man reappeared. At this time, he was named vice president of football, winter sports and government strategy at IMG China, and talked about the progress of the Chinese Super League in overseas broadcasting platforms and sponsorship introduction under his leadership.

He also said that he participated in the project demonstration and preliminary planning of Shanghai Pudong Stadium.

Shanghai Pudong Stadium is the new home of Shanghai SIPG, with a total investment of 1.8 billion. It is rumored in football circles that the young man who found a new job also helped a son who had nowhere to go after graduation to find a job at IMG.

In August 2019, the Chinese Football Association held the 11th general meeting in Xianghe, and Chen Jiayuan, former chairman of SIPG, was elected chairman of the Trust Football Association, and Du Zhaocai, Gao Hongbo and Sun Wen were elected vice chairmen.

This young man, Liu Yi, parachuted from IMG to the Football Association and was elected as the secretary general of the Chinese Football Association. A senior executive of a foreign company who had never been exposed to the management of the football association became a core decision-making member of Chinese football.

A Chinese Super League club executive described his shock when he saw the news:

How did a man fall from the sky and emerge from the ground.

4

"Football News" reported that during Liu Yi's participation in the design of the Pudong football stadium, and later Chen Jiayuan, the president of the Football Association:

A deep friendship was forged.

The Football Association internally evaluated Liu Yi as a smart person, but first and foremost a businessman. Chairman Chen is also a smart man, but first and foremost an official, and a football-related official.

Chen Jiayuan worked as a worker at Pier 15 in Shanghai Port at the age of 17, because of his diligence and willingness to work, he gradually rose to prominence, and also liked to write and draw, published poetry and prose in Shanghai Port News, and finally became a full-time secretary of the group office, and then transferred to the Shanghai Port Authority.

In 1997, during the Asian financial crisis, Chen was ordered to solve the redundancy of various shipping companies, and with a wave of his hand, Chen laid off more than 18,000 employees, but exceeded the standard to give workers' family subsidies and benefits.

Later, when foreign capital was introduced, he again helped workers to fight for conditions and encourage employees to hold shares.

The Shanghai workers and Chairman Chen, who was dedicated to the workers, were heart-to-heart, and it took only three years to build the Yangshan Deepwater Port, which has since become the world's largest port in terms of throughput.

In 2011, Yangshan iron man Chen Jiayuan climbed to the peak of his life and became the secretary of the party committee and chairman of Shanghai Port Group. Two years later, when Shanghai Port acquired Xu Genbao's East Asia Football Club, Xu Jiayin met a real opponent.

The year after SIPG won the Chinese Super League championship, Chen Jiayuan officially became the eleventh president of the Chinese Football Association and the first head of the football association who did not come from the sports system.

This is seen as a big move in the reform of the football association. Before Chairman Chen became Chairman Chen, he rarely heard anyone say bad things about him, and only Xie Hui said at the wine table two years ago:

SIPG 12 billion for 1 championship.

Later, according to public information, the football newspaper calculated inside and out, not 12 billion, but 7 billion. I just don't know if Shanghai Pudong Stadium is counted.

It is said that Xu Jiayin plays Jin Yuan football. But Chairman Chen is much more printed than Xu's.

However, after Chairman Chen took office, he began to prevent others from spending so much money on football. In March 2021, in an interview with Bai Yansong, Chairman Chen set the tone for Chinese football:

Football itself is a public welfare product, and investors must have a sense of social responsibility.

Some people concluded that Chairman Chen's football reform is de-administrative, de-Jinyuan, de-naturalized, de-high-paid, and de-neutral name.

Of these five reforms, I don't know if they have begun, and the last four are excessively forceful.

The fragile system of the Chinese Super League began to crumble. Club players really don't have high salaries, they can't even get their normal salaries. At the end of last season, Huaxia Happiness players held banners on the sidelines to beg for salaries.

Thirty years ago, Wu Shaozu and Wang Junsheng ran around to make reason and make public welfare football a professional football. Now professional football is not far from public welfare again.

In 2015, the five-year title copyright of the Chinese Super League was 8 billion, and in 2018, it was changed to 11 billion for 10 years. Now, the dividends received by various Chinese Super League clubs have changed from 100 million in 2018 to become:

The average team is 8 million.

This month, the 66-year-old Chen Jiayuan fell from the horse, the third of the last five heads of Chinese football.

Earlier than Chen Jiayuan fell from the horse was Liu Yi, a former football agent, former vice president of IMG China and secretary general of the Chinese Football Association.

Chen Jiayuan should know some football. He talked about the lack of the youth training system, the football infrastructure and the lack of grassroots coaches. But once he sat in this position, it was like sitting in a magic chair.

Now everyone says that during the national team campaign, Chairman Chen let the international football team accompany the football, let the security personnel accompany the game, sing and dance every day, and divide the bonus. To paraphrase Xu Jiang's words in "Crazy":

What status is the same as me, a national athlete to accompany the ball?

5

The last time Chinese football was torn down and rebuilt was the Nanyong case, which began in 2009. The last two big leaders of the Football Association who were arrested were also Xie Yalong and Nanyong in that case.

Xie Yalong and Nanyong both served as directors of the Football Sports Center and full-time vice presidents of the Football Association. In the past, the Foot Management Center and the Football Association were two brands and one team. So both of them were the de facto heads of Chinese football.

After Xie Yalong fell from power, he wrote a book of 10,000 words, summarizing the problems of Chinese football into three issues: adult, system and environment. The content is actually a cliché, but the most ironic thing is that Xie Yalong suggested:

Carry out a comprehensive clean-up and rectification of the personnel and work of the football management center.

Xie Yalong is a track and field coach. The most famous story is the summary meeting of the Chinese women's football Olympics held at the Xianghe base in 2008, some women's football team members could not bear the fate of crying, Director Xie said that women's football is a negative example of lack of fighting spirit and ability, should learn from Brazilian team members, and at 11 pm in the hotel gym to practice strength:

The most important thing in the body muscles of the Chinese women's football team is the forked lumbar muscle.

Don't say that the women's football girls don't know where this forked lumbar muscle is, even if you ask Messi, Messi may not know.

The director of the foot management center after Nanyong is Weidi. Director Wei is also a track and field teacher, and later became the director of the water sports center, and also wrote technical papers on freestyle skiing and throwing discus throwing, and became famous for his loud voice after his arrival.

In 2013, Director Wei stepped down as director due to age and performance issues. Age is definitely no problem, Director Wei will not retire until two years later. Director Wei, who seemed to understand everything, spoke a sincere word inside before leaving the foot tube center.

He said that as a layman in football, he had made many mistakes when he came to the Football Association, thinking that he could transfer his successful experience in the water sports center to the work of managing football. But after three years of work and practice in the Football Association, I found that I was very wrong.

Now I finally figured out some laws of football, but I had to say goodbye to everyone.

The director of the Foot Management Center after Director Wei is Zhang Jian, a scholar-type official who graduated from the law department of Peking University and previously worked in the Policy and Regulation Department of the General Administration of Sports.

Director Zhang also does not understand football. He learned the lesson of his predecessor, neither talking nor doing things indiscriminately, and after pedaling his bicycle to the office every day, he did not easily go out. In a meeting with FIFA President Blatter, Director Zhang's opening remarks were:

I don't really like football, I really like basketball.

For the past decade or so, track coaches, scholars, agents, and leaders of state-owned enterprises have managed Chinese football.

6

On the 25th of last month, the Wuhan Yangtze River Club, which has been entangled with Li Tie for many years, announced its dissolution.

The moment I received the push, the WeChat group of the Wuhan Fan Club exploded. The fans in the group began to curse, and some even cried.

In the A-A era, Wuhan Root Hongmiao Zheng's team was actually the avant-garde Huandao. After moving to Chongqing, Huandao merged with the Hongyan Club to form Huandao Hongyan, and later experienced two eras: Lifan and Contemporary Era.

In May last year, before the start of the Chinese Super League, the team, which was renamed Liangjiang Athletic, announced its disbandment.

On the day of the disbandment, captain Huang Xiyang walked out of the club in tears. An old fan in his 60s ran up to comfort him and said stop crying:

We're not afraid of losing, we're afraid of losing the team.

Over the past two decades, more than fifty football clubs in China have disappeared. Most of them disappeared in the last three years. In 2020 alone, 16 clubs dropped out of China's third-tier professional leagues.

In 2021, the defending champions Suning announced their retirement before the start of the game, creating a curious story in world football. Not long after, the original magnificent Jiangsu team training base building and the international standard training ground were pushed to the ground.

I have seen the picture of the bulldozed stadium and think that photo is like a microcosm of Chinese football.

Last year, the Chinese women's football team won the Asian Cup and returned to the top. Beast Ye saw Zhang Wei, an old football media person, write in the circle of friends, in the past sixteen years, the Chinese women's football team has been tossing, violating the rules, guiding the insiders in the layman, mixing sand to make sandwich rice, and destroying flowers in human disasters.

As a result, Shui Qingxia won the championship within 80 days of taking office. She is just a grassroots coach who has been working in women's football for a long time, and all she can do is recall the players who should have played the main team to the national team, practice the defense that should be practiced, do the prescribed actions in place, play cards according to the rules, and act with humility and according to the rules.

But in Chinese football, it turned out to be very remarkable.

After retirement, a reporter asked Wu Shaozu what Chinese football needs to do? The old leader who created China's football reform replied, Germany's Beckenbauer told me that Chinese football is on the right track, and what is needed now is patience and patience for 30 years.

But some of us have no patience at all.