Recently, the national football team is struggling for a place in the group of the Asian Cup, trying to avoid the "worst result in history".
The Guangzhou team, which has won two AFC Champions League championships in three years, has repeatedly reached new highs - but in the live broadcast room.
The sales volume in three hours was close to 1 million, and the number of people online at the same time reached 5,844, and the live broadcast room soared to the first place on the outdoor sports list, and ranked 10th in popularity on the whole platform......
The data looks very beautiful, but it's a pity that the theme of this live broadcast is "self-help".
used to be the richest and most successful team in the country, but now it has been reduced to "survival" in the live broadcast room.
Several young players went to the live broadcast room to shout and sing the team song.
@热血羊城
Zhang Dabin, a well-known local sports commentator, also came to the live broadcast room and became a volunteer anchor who called on everyone to "hurry up and shoot the link".
Originally, the live broadcast room only sold peripherals such as jerseys and badges, but later under the reminder of fans, daily necessities such as laundry detergent were urgently launched.
The fans felt very embarrassed, and the orders were not only the fans of the Guangzhou team, but also the fans of other teams. After payment, don't forget to leave a sentence in the comment area or barrage "Guangzhou team holds".
A message from a Guoan fan.
But some people sighed and couldn't help but scold, "I have fallen to this day, I did it all by myself."
Explain to friends who don't watch the game much - what trouble did the Guangzhou team encounter?
Today's Guangzhou team is Guangzhou Evergrande, which once relied on the Chinese Super League to win its name for 8 consecutive championships.
To put it simply, it is because the club owes the wages of the previous players and coaches, which may lead to the possibility of being excluded from the professional league in the new season.
Every year, the Football Association conducts an admission review of teams that apply to participate in the competition. One of the most important admission criteria is that the club to which the team belongs must not have debt disputes in the industry, including not owing players wages, accommodation and transportation expenses in the competition area, etc.
Originally, the Guangzhou Football Club, to which the Guangzhou team belonged, has passed the admission list and entered the publicity period.
However, in the past few days, a number of players and coaches have complained that the club has unresolved wage arrears disputes.
If the club is unable to repay the money as soon as possible or negotiate a solution with the player, it will involve falsification in the submission of materials, and will most likely be excluded from this year's professional league.
There is no commercial profit without a game, and the club is likely to be suspended or disbanded outright.
So starting from the 20th, Guangzhou Football Club started this vigorous "self-help live broadcast".
On the same day, three consecutive broadcasts were broadcast from morning to night, and the total sales reached 2 million.
But after all, there were not many things that could be sold in a hurry, and sales began to decline the next day.
And according to relevant sources, the total salary arrears of the Guangzhou team are as high as tens of millions of yuan, which is not enough to fill the gap.
As a result, the club is currently discussing with the players who are asking for wages whether they can pay the arrears in installments, and on the other hand, they are racking their brains to raise money.
For example, the "trophy rental" business has been developed, with the Super League trophy of 100,000 a year and the AFC Champions League trophy of 300,000 a year.
When I wondered what the use of fans spending a lot of money to rent this thing was, the football watching colleagues in the editorial department said:
"Well, whoever has nothing to rent that thing, the fans are just looking for an excuse to give the team some money. ”
For ordinary netizens, the emotional impact of the news of "Guangzhou team's live broadcast self-help" is great-
When Evergrande won 8 consecutive championships in the Chinese Super League, who would have thought that this team, which was only regarded as the "hope of Chinese football", would now be mixed to the point that it has no money to pay the players' arrears of salaries, and can only come out to bring goods for emergencies.
But in the eyes of senior fans of the Guangzhou team, the club's shortage of funds has long been a sword hanging over their heads.
Tremble and see when it falls.
The live broadcast room of the Guangzhou team was not newly opened in the past few days to repay the players' money, but in March 2022.
For the past two years, I have been selling jerseys and other team merchandise, and in the second half of last year alone, 40 games were broadcast.
In addition to the female anchor who was responsible for selling goods during the premiere, two players were also invited to "Zhenchangzi", which attracted 27,000 viewers on the same day and sold more than 760 orders.
@广东经视
At the time, it was seen as one of the evidences that the club was "out of money".
The most glorious period of Guangzhou Football Club's wallet was probably around 2018, and even ranked fourth in the "Top Ten Richest Clubs in the World" selected by European media.
But in the past two years, as the investor Evergrande itself has fallen into difficulties, the club has also suffered a "bloodshed" crisis.
In April last year, an announcement was exposed on social platforms that Guangzhou Football Club was ordered to withdraw from its training base in Panyu within a time limit because of rent arrears due to the expiration of the lease.
According to the report of The Paper, the daily operation of the Guangzhou team in the past two years has almost entirely relied on the profits of Evergrande Football School to rent school buildings and venues to maintain its operation.
Recently, many fans have also discovered a piece of news that makes people break the defense.
In the past two days, the Guangzhou team's training base actually hung a banner of "Shencheng Positive Energy", which is said to be rented to the Shanghai Port team for winter training.
When the Guangzhou team was still the top domestic giant, it and the Shanghai Port team could be described as old rivals of "the king does not see the king".
This scene is like a top star in the entertainment industry who fell once, and as a result, he could only play a supporting role for the opponent who tore off his red eyes back then.
In the past two days, the fans who usually quarrel for their hometown team have rarely united, and everyone wants to contribute money and effort to the Guangzhou team.
In addition to the results of previous years, many people feel that this team is "a pity that it is gone";
On the other hand, there are more and more well-known local teams that have had to be disbanded in the past two years because they can't get rid of their debts.
Just today, Shenzhen Football Club was also unable to pass the new season's professional league admission due to "serious historical debt problems" and had no choice but to disband.
This veteran club is only 4 days away from its "thirtieth birthday".
It is also due to the fact that the investor is in business difficulties, and there is no spare energy to invest more money in Shenzu - almost a replica of the Guangzhou team's predicament.
Since 2021, the club has barely relied on special subsidies from Shenzhen and corporate sponsorship from the government.
In 2022, the players only received 4 months' salary, and because they could not be paid, the main players left through arbitration.
As a result, the Shenzhen team can only continue to make up for inexperienced young players from the echelon, and the results are getting worse and worse after the vicious circle, and they were relegated to the Chinese League last season because of the bottom of the rankings.
Liaoning's Dalian Renren announced on January 17 that it had failed to pass the league.
Player Lin Liangming is still playing Lebanon in the Asian Cup with the national football team, and he received the news of the dissolution of the club.
Further on, there are Jiangsu Football Club and Wuhan Yangtze River Football Club......
According to some statistics, there have been 13 teams that have been disbanded in the past 4 years and have entered the Chinese Super League.
Now the fans who placed orders for their feelings in the live broadcast room of the Guangzhou team originally hoped that their support could give the Guangzhou team a "cardiopulmonary resuscitation", so that the team could take a breath and ease up.
But what the Guangzhou team, and many more clubs, may need is not just cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but a long "ventilator life".
Behind the dissolution of local football clubs is a cruel and non-negotiable fact:
Even the best teams with a lot of trophies in their hands are often saddled with huge debt gaps – and very low-cost debt.
Many local teams in China have had the opportunity to change hands to new owners in the early stage when investors were unable to operate.
For example, Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Group has been interested in reclaiming Guangzhou Football Club, while Shenzhen and Jiangsu have also approached potential new owners.
But without exception, these clubs have huge debts lying on their accounts, with the Guangzhou team having a debt of nearly 10 billion in 2022 and the Shenzhen team having a debt of 3.5 billion.
Who bears the debt becomes the focus of the negotiation, and in the end, the old owner wants to leave behind, and the new owner has no intention of taking over, which leads to the final dissolution or the end of dissolution.
Fans sincerely hope to keep the Guangzhou team, hoping to keep the "fire of a strong team".
But from a business point of view, a football club is essentially nothing more than an asset.
In the past, the financiers desperately threw money into it, hoping that high investment could bring high returns, and most of the former "wealthy powerhouses" were also the products of this "smashing method".
According to the news at the end of last year, the Guangzhou team owed the salary of former head coach Cannavaro at that time about 1 million euros, about 7.75 million yuan.
It's not too much for the past, but for the current Guangzhou Football Club, it's a big problem that can't be made up.
Li Tie also mentioned a ready-made example in the football anti-corruption documentary at the beginning of the month, which makes people intuitively see that some clubs can be so "not treating money as money".
He mentioned that at the beginning, Hebei Huaxia Happiness Club saw that Evergrande had brought a huge brand effect by investing in football, and also tried to achieve short-term results by "burning money".
In order to ensure that a game in which one side has a huge advantage can "win steadily", it spent 14 million to "dot" the relationship between all parties, of which 6 million was used to dot the opponent Shenzhen team.
As a result, Li Fei of the Shenzhen team felt that his team would lose anyway, and directly put 6 million into his pocket.
In the end, Huaxia Happiness spent 14 million, and what was exchanged for it was actually a "clean" game, how ironic.
Later, Li Tie's Wuhan team last year also practiced the same "throwing money" routine - in order to let the team rush into the Chinese Super League, in order to stuff players into the national team, the club is willing to pay any amount of money.
Now, the Wuhan team, the Hebei team and the Shenzhen team have all been disbanded.
I can't help but look like a joke with the money I threw and the slogans I shouted.
Maybe not every team spends their money on something as illegal as match-fixing.
But when the football industry has long been accustomed to being stuffed with a steady stream of hot money, it has also shaped a special industry form.
When the investor frenzy has passed, the local clubs are left with more than a headache of sky-high debt. It's more like a sudden power outage, and it's even harder to get up and running smoothly again.
Fans who miss the 8 consecutive championships of the Guangzhou team are probably disappointed, even if the club can survive this crisis, I am afraid it will be difficult to reproduce the original miracle in a short time.
After all, today's Guangzhou team is no longer the Guangzhou Evergrande with a deep family background and can buy whoever you say.
Some people suggested that instead of desperately trying to save the Guangzhou team, fans should let this shell fall down, start anew, form a new club, and start from 0 to return to the league little by little.
Is that really better? I don't know, and probably no one does.
I just thought of another "player" I brushed up on in the past two days, nicknamed "6-year-old talented kid brother" by many football lovers.
At first, it was the blogger @爱Kicking Director Chen who saw a little boy practicing alone outside the stadium.
He tried to teach children swinging balls, gravitational dribbling...... The little boy didn't say much, but just bowed his head and practiced as he was instructed.
Later, other children came to practice with the blogger.
From stumbling to slowly becoming proficient.
If there is really a "spark" in Chinese football, it is not in any club, but in them.