For many people, 2023 begins with a cough.
The aftermath of the Qatar World Cup has dissipated, and the TV series "Hurricane" is rushing, and every time an episode is updated, the hot search list will be refreshed.
The "hurricane" of Chinese football began almost at the same time as the TV series, and a group of managers led by Chen Xuyuan, chairman of the Football Association, and Du Zhaocai, secretary of the party committee, fell in the storm. In this cold winter, they are waiting for the coming judgment.
This year, the Chinese Super League returned to the home-and-away system. The departure of big-name foreign players has not cooled the market, but has led to a rush for tickets due to the opening of a series of professional stadiums.
Also hard to get a ticket is the international football friendly match, Messi and the Argentine national team proved the influence of the king of the ball with practical actions this summer. Subsequently, invitations from China flew into the offices of Miami International and Riyadh Victory Club, and no matter how high the appearance fee was, it could not stop the succession of the "King of Balls China Tournament".
Competitive sports are all about winning and losing, and kings can enjoy wealth, attention, and even everything, and the same is true in the business world. China Evergrande Group, which has invested in football for 10 years and spent more than 10 billion yuan, encountered a crisis, and Xu Jiayin, chairman of the board of directors of the group, was taken compulsory measures in accordance with the law in September this year on suspicion of violating the law and committing crimes.
The fate of many people and things will change in 2023, some can be swayed, and some cannot be changed even if they try their best. So as the new year approaches, we can only be ourselves and pray for less coughing and less confusion.
The attendance of the Chinese Super League in the new season is impressive. (Photo by Zhao Yu.) ）
Welcome to the send-off
Chen Xuyuan was probably taken away by the Hubei police for investigation on February 12. Three days before he was taken away, he convened a meeting of all middle-level cadres of the Chinese Football Association called the "Warning Education Mobilization Meeting", and warned the people present to "explain the problem if there is a problem, and work hard if there is no problem". As a result, he did not take the initiative to explain the problem, and naturally he could not continue to "work hard".
Next, a series of middle and high-level cadres of the Chinese Football Association were taken away for investigation, including Du Zhaocai, Secretary of the Party Committee, Liu Yi, Secretary General, Huang Song, Minister of Competition, Chen Yongliang, Minister of State Management, Wang Xiaoping, Director of the Disciplinary Committee, Tan Hai, Minister of Technology, Qi Jun, Minister of Strategic Planning, and 4 former chairmen of the Chinese Super League Yu Hongchen, Li Yuyi, Ma Chengquan, Liu Jun and 1 former general manager of the Chinese Super League Dong Zheng.
Liaoning police took a group of players and coaches away for investigation, including former Shandong Taishan coach Hao Wei, players Jin Jingdao, Sun Zhunhao, Guo Tianyu, etc., who may be suspected of manipulating the game and taking bribes from non-state workers.
Liaoning and Hubei are 1,800 kilometers apart, and the police of the two places handle cases independently and have no overlap, but the spearhead is aimed at the stubborn diseases that Chinese football has been unable to cure in the past - fake, blockage, and corruption.
The storm began with the "Li Tie case" in October last year and gradually subsided this fall.
In this confused and chaotic environment, the 2023 Chinese Super League season kicked off on April 15 at the Workers' Stadium. Under the epidemic, the three-year competition system has greatly damaged the vitality of the professional league. When 50,000 people poured into the new stadium on the day of the opening ceremony of the Chinese Super League, many people shed tears.
The chairman was arrested, and Gao Hongbo, as the vice chairman, announced the opening of the league on the spot. As a player, he had sweated for the Guoan team here, and the Beijing fans naturally reciprocated with cheers and applause – for the first time in the professional league, no boos were heard during the "Leader's Announcement" session.
On October 16, the new Football Congress was held in the athletes' apartment of the Beijing Olympic Sports Center, and Song Kai, director of the Liaoning Provincial Sports Bureau, became the new chairman of the Football Association and established a new leadership team.
Sun Wen stayed and continued to serve as vice chairman, and Gao Hongbo, who announced the opening of the Chinese Super League, voluntarily left to serve as the technical director of the Genbao Football Training Base on Chongming Island in Shanghai.
In the past 30 years, the management platform of Chinese football has Xi accustomed to ushering in the ...... of officials, gold medalists, cross-sports, and academics Every head of the Football Association came with great ambition, saying beautiful things with lofty goals and signing various documents that violated the laws of football, and the results can be imagined. In the end, even getting out of it all becomes a kind of luck.
Hopefully, we won't repeat the same mistakes this time.
Super League counterattack
According to a Chinese Super League data obtained by Lazy Bear Sports, the total number of spectators in the 2023 season will be 4.76 million, with Xingongti ranking first with an average of 43,769 people per game, and Chengdu Phoenix Mountain Stadium ranking second with an average of 39,215 spectators per game. The single game with the highest attendance rate in the league throughout the year was Beijing Guoan's home game against Shanghai Shenhua, with 52,500 spectators.
More than 70,000 fans went to the away stadium to watch the game, of which more than 1,000 people played 22 games, and the largest number of people in a single game was Shanghai Shenhua vs. Zhejiang team in the 30th round, and the number of away fans was nearly 3,000.
Shanghai Shenhua received the largest number of away fans at home, and Shandong Taishan Club had the largest number of fans who went to watch the game away. The Chinese Football Association stressed at the league work summary meeting held in Suzhou on November 26 that some competition areas limited the number of fans of the away team on the grounds of security pressure, resulting in a decrease in the number of fans going to the away game in some games, especially in some key areas and key games.
"Excessive security" restricts the freedom of fans to watch the game. Football stadiums should become more open and inclusive while ensuring safety.
With the retreat of the Jinyuan football wave, the big-name foreign aid in the Chinese Super League is almost extinct except for the remaining Oscar and Fellaini, but its attention has not diminished, and the games of Gongti and Phoenix Mountain Stadium are usually sold out as soon as they are opened.
After 3 years of the epidemic, fans could not watch the game at home. After getting back on track, going to the field to watch the game has become a part of some people's lives again. In addition, several professional football stadiums have been put into use, which has brought a better viewing experience to fans.
The Dalian team has used a total of 3 stadiums in the 2023 season, namely Dalian Sports Center Stadium, Puwan Stadium, and Barracuda Bay Football Stadium. The first two stadiums are comprehensive stadiums, with an average attendance of 14,000 and 11,000, and Barracuda Bay is a professional football stadium, with an average of 30,171 spectators per game after four games. It's double the amount it had before.
The opening ceremony of the 2023 Chinese Super League season. (Photo by Zhao Yu.) ）
However, the attention of the Super League is not proportional to the level of competition. The average number of goals per game in the 2023 season is 2.78, 0.07 fewer than last season and 0.31 fewer than in 2019. The average net game time is 50 minutes and 51 seconds, which is the shortest in the past five seasons. "It's very easy to play in the Super League after coming back from Europe" - this is the consensus of all overseas players.
After the three-year competition system, the only official sponsors of the Chinese Super League are Cestbon, Chevron Lubricants, Tuhu Car and Guoquan Food Exchange. The title sponsor Ping An of China has confirmed that the contract will not be renewed for the new season, and the Chinese Super League is looking for a new title sponsor, but it has not yet been finalized.
With less income, the clubs will naturally not receive much dividends after the season. According to Lazy Bear Sports, the Super League's dividend this year is about more than 8 million yuan. The Chinese Super League stated to the club that the timing of the payment of this money depends on the return of sponsors, copyrights and other related accounts.
For the Chinese Super League, the current good news is that the broadcast rights for the next five seasons are likely to be obtained by Migu, with a total cost of 750 million yuan. Compared with the previous three years (70 million, 80 million, 90 million), the future copyright fee will increase slightly.
Before the start of this year's league, Guangzhou City and Hebei teams were unable to pass the access of the Chinese Football Association due to salary arrears and announced their disbandment. The deadline for the new season of the Chinese Super League is December 5, but the Football Association has not announced the results until today, and many clubs are frantically making up for the debts owed over the past year. There are also those who are not in a hurry, but they are waiting for a different outcome - to continue to exist or to perish.
Ball King Match
In 2023, it will not only be the Chinese Super League that will pick up, but the entire offline performing arts market. The health code has withdrawn from the stage of history, masks are no longer a necessity for travel, and people's lives have returned to normal. The international friendlies, which had been suspended for 3 years, also quietly came this summer.
I didn't think about it, and the beginning was the peak.
On June 15, under the watchful eyes of more than 50,000 fans, the Argentine national team played an international friendly match with the Australian team in the new stadium. In order to see the style of the football king Messi, even if the high-priced tickets of 3800 and 4800 yuan can be quickly snatched up. On the day of the game, in addition to the more than 50,000 spectators in the stadium, tens of thousands of fans who did not grab tickets remained outside the stadium, connecting themselves with the king of the ball in this way.
The game ended with cheers for the king of the ball and complaints about the organizer Hongqiao International Group. It is said that the organizers earned more than 50 million yuan. Both the efficiency and income of the tournament have created the history of China's commercial football tournaments.
When one model succeeds, it's no surprise what happens next in a land that excels at imitation.
In the summer and autumn of this year, Miami International Club, which owns Messi, received at least four invitations from China, and about seven Chinese companies approached Riyadh Victory FC, which owns Cristiano Ronaldo. Some companies are registered specifically for the king of the ball competition, such as Shanghai Mega Sports, which was founded on August 28, 2023. They got the Miami International Club, but they couldn't get the domestic event approval procedures, and as a result, the game was officially announced, but Messi couldn't "come as promised".
Half a month before the official announcement of the competition, I asked Xu Jing, the legal person of Mega Sports, on WeChat: "Will the game not be able to take place?" ”
For such big events, "I think" is not important, the important thing is to play cards according to the routine and do things according to the rules. Although it is said that "wealth and danger are sought", "risk" is built on the basis of full foreshadowing, and at a certain critical moment, it is necessary to fight with personal heroism. If there is no foundation and only pinning success on "seeking danger", it is not a fight at a critical moment, but a gamble from beginning to end.
There are failures, and there will be successes.
On January 24 and 28 next year, the Saudi Riyadh Victory Club led by Ronaldo will play against Shanghai Shenhua and Zhejiang teams in Shenzhen. On February 4, Messi and Inter Miami will play a friendly match against Hong Kong, China at the Hong Kong Stadium. Both teams have a single-game appearance fee of about $10 million.
Ticket price map of Messi's match on February 4.
More than 10 years ago, in that era of frequent international friendly matches, even if the most elite clubs in Europe were invited to play in China, the appearance fee was only 35 million US dollars, and now it has doubled or tripled, but there are still Chinese companies that have thrown olive branches to the team of the football king. According to Lazy Bear Sports, some companies plan to invite the two clubs to play in China next summer.
Today's commercial competitions exhibit the following characteristics:
1. Short operation time. The competition, which was supposed to take half a year to run, can now be completed in two or three months;
2. The appearance fee is high. Even so, the operating company expects to earn money back through the box office, and will not even count on sponsorship proceeds;
3. If you want the game to land, you must have the ability to open up various relationships;
4. Sports companies are no longer the protagonists, but some entertainment and cultural companies have begun to become the leading players in commercial competitions with strong capital;
5. Entertainment attributes. It doesn't have much deep meaning, it's just a very pure performance, which brings pleasure to the audience;
6. Fast consumption. Someone performs, someone buys tickets, and comes and goes. Whether it is a loss or a gain, settle the account after the autumn.
There was an online argument that "it's worthless if you come too often" for a commercial event like this, but tickets for the Feb. 4 event were sold out just one hour after they opened. It is precisely because of this that followers emerge in an endless stream, even if they scold their mothers and imitate them. Just like 20 years ago in Beijing, countless "dirt slag baked cakes" suddenly appeared on the streets.
I don't know how long the popularity of the "King of the Ball Game" can last, the two may not be much comparable, but aesthetic fatigue is a common psychology of human beings.
"Ryu Fang Hyakusei"
In mid-October this year, the Guangzhou team, which was relegated to the Central League last season, that is, the Guangzhou Evergrande team, which had won two large-scale championships before, succeeded in four rounds ahead of schedule.
Since the problems of Evergrande Group, this team can no longer get the financial support of the parent company, which is also the reason why the team's international players and foreign players have left and were relegated last season. According to common sense, a team that has just been relegated is not yet struggling with relegation, but Guangzhou is a special case.
This is a team composed of players trained by Evergrande Football School, with an average age of 21 years old. The first eight rounds of the league were winless and did not start winning until the team coach was replaced by Spaniard Salvador from the football school.
When Evergrande spends money, the team must hire world-famous coaches such as Lippi, Scolari and Cannavaro, who earn tens of millions of dollars in annual salaries. When winning the two AFC Champions League championships, the team has high-level foreign aid such as Paulinho, Elkeson, Conca, Kim Yingquan, and Gaolat, as well as Zheng Zhi, Zhang Linpeng, Feng Xiaoting, Huang Bowen, Zeng Cheng and other main players of the national football team.
After the Evergrande accident, the coach was a youth coach with no first-team coaching experience, and the players were produced by the football school. The club began to learn to make its own blood and take care of its own profits and losses. Part of the money for daily operations comes from football schools, and the other part comes from investment promotion, player transfers and e-commerce.
At the beginning of 2017, Evergrande Club held a plenary meeting for the new season at the Evergrande Center on Huangpu Avenue in Guangzhou. Looking at the 12 championship trophies placed like toys in front of him, Xu Jiayin was in a good mood, and proposed in his speech that the team would win the quadruple championships in 2017 (Chinese Super League, AFC Champions League, FA Cup, Super Cup), and emphasized that it would achieve an all-Chinese class in 2020. "The world's famous coach and the all-Chinese class are our goals at this stage of development. Our all-Chinese class also has to be at a high level, and we have to win a lot of championships. ”
As a result, the Evergrande team only won the Super Cup and the Chinese Super League that year, the AFC Champions League did not enter the top 4, and the FA Cup stopped in the semi-finals. Xu Jiayin's dream of an all-Chinese class finally came true in 2023, but he couldn't "win a lot of championships", and the club was struggling to survive. After the resumption of the home-and-away system, the team's home stadium was changed from Tianhe Sports Center to Yuexiu Mountain. Rumor has it that they plan to move to Foshan in the new year, where the stadium is bigger and can sell more tickets and make more money.
When Evergrande was at its peak, die-hard fans thought it was the epitome of professional football. But the sober know that that state will not last long. On the contrary, today's small-scale operation and self-financing have a little shadow of professional football.
The world is unpredictable, and under the necessity of being forced to live as they once desired.
On July 4 this year, Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao Football Club's official WeChat "Guangzhou Team" released an article, saying that Xu Jiayin presided over the management meeting of Evergrande Football Club, clarifying the club's goals for this year and next year, the principles of summer window recruitment and player transfer, and proposed that all the club's staff should further promote the spirit of the new Guangzhou team of "full of wolf nature, collaborative struggle, perseverance, and tempering elite".
The article is accompanied by a photo of Xu Jiayin wearing a formal suit and speaking at the venue. Xu Jiayin in the photo is in good spirits, waving his right hand, and the content of his speech is recorded in the notebook in front of him, which is no different from when he held a meeting with the club in the past.
Screenshot of Xu Jiayin in the official public account of the Guangzhou team.
On September 28, 2023, 86 days after the release of this news, China Evergrande Group announced that the company received a notice from the relevant departments that Mr. Xu Jiayin, the executive director and chairman of the board of directors of the company, had been taken compulsory measures in accordance with the law on suspicion of violating the law and committing crimes.
At this point, the fate of Xu Jiayin and the Guangzhou team has gone in a different direction.
In August 2005, in order to thank Xu Jiayin for his contribution to his hometown, Xu Jiayin's hometown was set up in the village square in order to thank Xu Jiayin for his contribution to his hometown. 18 years later, the situation has changed abruptly, the vicissitudes of life, and the only one who can "live for a hundred years" may only be Xu Jiayin in Jutaigang Village.