
The author | voyeuristically
Original debut | Blue Word Project
After the tide receded, the Chinese Super League showed unprecedented weakness.
Guangzhou Evergrande and Beijing Guoan, who competed in the AFC Champions League as youth, were bloodied in the group stage. Since participating in the AFC Champions League in 2011, Evergrande has never been so embarrassed to lose out of a row: four games, not a single effective shot on goal. And Guoan's young players who even basically stopped the ball and passed the ball stumbled, but also set the record for the biggest score lost by Chinese clubs in the AFC Champions League - 0:7.
Who would have thought that in 2013 and 2015, Guangzhou Evergrande stood at the top of Asia in championship form. They once washed South Korea's veteran Jeonbuk Hyundai 5-1 and once claimed to have a 3:0 "minimum spend" to play each team.
At this time, the summer transfer window of the previous year's fiery cooking oil, under the double attack of the Chinese super salary limit order and the epidemic prevention and entry policy, there is no longer a grand situation of large-scale reinforcements and superstars, and even the news of the transfer of domestic players is rare.
On July 17, the News of Hebei's withdrawal from the tournament was basically confirmed, and the Tianjin Jinmen Tiger unpaid wage incident continued to ferment. Let the whole league start to have more unstable flavors. In fact, at the beginning of the season, the Jiangsu Suning Club, which had just won the championship, announced its dissolution, and a number of professional clubs fell one after another, and Tianjin Teda was supported by the regulatory authorities after it fell. With the "most successful reinforcement in history" Paulinho in the Chinese Super League, as well as the batch departure of high-level foreign aid, the era belonging to "golden dollar football" has completely ended.
Chinese football, with the bursting of the bubble, has lost more things.
"It's not football that rolls on the green field, it's gold."
At the special league governance work conference held on December 14, 2020, Chen Shuyuan, chairman of the Chinese Football Association, said: "The average investment of Chinese Super League clubs is 3 times that of Japan's J-League and 10 times that of South Korea's K-League; the salary of first-line players in Chinese Super League clubs is 5.8 times that of Japan's J-League and 11.67 times that of South Korea's K-League." The numbers are staggering. ”
"Aren't we awake yet? Are our consciences dead? Do you want to continue to live in such a football environment?
The clarion call to strike at "gold dollar soccer" was officially blown. As soon as the wind turned, the big guys who threw money and smashed out of the Super League in the past suddenly became "conscienceless" people.
Subsequently, policies such as investment caps, wage caps, and neutral name reforms fell one after another. The policy stipulates that the total annual expenditure of Chinese Super League clubs shall not exceed 600 million yuan, and the maximum salary of local players in the Chinese Super League shall be 5 million yuan before tax, and the maximum salary of foreign players shall be 3 million euros before tax.
The double limit is out, and the Chinese Super League, which has been burning money madly in the past 10 years, is undergoing subversive changes in its operating logic and pattern. The deep moat originally dug out by the super giant Guangzhou team is slowly becoming shallower or even disappearing.
In this history-recorded football bubble bursting, many people believe that the "neutral name reform" is the last straw that overwhelms professional clubs.
After all, in the capital game of losing money, brand exposure is regarded as the most important sports industry interest. The team name must not contain the name of other legal persons or unincorporated organizations, and must not use the font size, business name or brand name of the club shareholders or shareholders' affiliates, which is a fatal blow to the real estate developers who have long been accustomed to "the logo is bigger and bigger".
"Children they raise can't be given their last names." Blood transfusion for 26 years, in exchange for such an ending. Jianye boss Hu Baosen is very depressed.
On the last day of 2020, Henan Jianye Football Club posted an announcement and changed its name to Luoyang Longmen.
A provincial club with a 26-year history that has never changed its name has become a city club in a remote corner under the pressure of the football association's neutral name, and the team's home stadium has moved from Zhengzhou to Luoyang, and the fans' sense of collapse is particularly strong.
Angry fans pulled up banners outside the stadium
Nine days ago, Henan Jianye official micro issued as many as 10 alternative neutral names, calling on fans to vote. Among them, "Henan Zhongyuan" and "Henan Navigation" led the way in terms of votes. After the voting closed, the Luoyang Cultural and Tourism Bureau suddenly came out to seek a marriage with Jianye.
Without any pre-announcement, the time set by the Fa was imminent, and in the end Jianye chose a name that was completely unknown to the outside world. Once issued, the huge psychological gap made the fans who had followed for many years immediately collapse.
The 47-year-old He Hongsheng, from 1994 to 2019, 25 spring and autumn, did not leave a home game for Jianye.
"In 1998, Henan football did not die, died on December 31, 2020." Henan Jianye issued a name change announcement at 19:00, and 24 minutes later, He Hongsheng updated the circle of friends, and Jianye's team logo changed from color to gray.
After 12 hours, He Hongsheng updated the circle of friends and video number again. The caption "25 years of attendance into history" is accompanied by a picture of a jersey being burned in the middle. On the periphery of the airframe, below the freezing point, in the presence of dozens of security guards, red robes intertwined with fire.
The fans who burn jerseys are friends of He Hongsheng and have 2 sons, and Henan Jianye is his only spiritual sustenance and life hobby. That night, he withdrew from all the fan groups, removed the logo of Jianye, and sent a farewell declaration of more than 200 words to He Hongsheng: "Brother, you know that I myself do not look at people who do not care about anyone except Jianye, including the five major leagues and the World Cup." I'm sorry, I don't want to see the wound again every day..."
Under the pressure of public opinion, the name Luoyang Longmen was shelved. In the end, Henan Jianye weighed the opinions of all parties and finalized the "Henan Songshan Dragon Gate". The strange combination of place names makes people not know where to start for a while.
The magic drama continues to play out.
When Evergrande's senior management found Xu Jiayin with several name change plans, Xu Boss made a decision on the Guangzhou team without saying a word, and officially announced on January 22, saying that the name had been registered through industrial and commercial changes, and the team in the new season was officially named Guangzhou Team.
As a result, I turned around and found that the new name of Shanghai SIPG was called Shanghai Harbor, and the abbreviation was still SIPG. Playing the side ball so magnificently, it actually passed the audit of the Football Association. It is difficult not to think of the identity of the former general manager of Shanghai SIPG, chairman of the Football Association, Chen Shuyuan.
In an exclusive interview with Bai Yansong, Chen Shuyuan rejected the conjecture of interest transmission.
"In fact, I personally don't approve of this name, I think there can be a better cultural name." But the company reported it, and the audit expert committee only told me at the end that they passed according to the rules. ”
This answer obviously does not resolve the controversy, but it is very suitable for the name of the program - "White Question".
Bai Yansong interviewed Chen Shuyuan
Suffering from inequality without suffering from widowhood is the normal state of human nature, and it is also the normal state of capital.
The same real money and silver play football, the breadth and profundity of Chinese is not only you understand.
On February 24, the domestic media reported that after Shanghai SIPG changed its name to "Shanghai Harbor", the Guangzhou team proposed a new neutral name to the Football Association, and the team named it "Guangzhou Hengjiuyuan". Coincidentally, Beijing Guoan, which has not yet finalized the name change, reported to the Football Association "Beijing Guotai Min'an." The club changed its name, and changing it became an "idiom contest".
This performance art is enough to see the panic of the capital behind it. During the epidemic period, the operation of the team is like walking on thin ice, if even the naming right is deprived, what is the significance of investing in the team? Many "super players" who once stepped on the dance floor with the hottest beat chose to stop losses in time at the most difficult moments and left the scene one after another.
On February 28, jiangsu football club, the new champion of the Chinese Super League, announced the suspension of operations.
Tianjin Teda, after announcing the change of name to "Jinmen Tiger", failed to submit access materials before the "big limit" at 17:00 on the same day, and "declared" in a silent way that it was not eligible for the new season of the Chinese Super League.
TEDA Group announced the divestment and saw the Jinmen Tiger Club become a "tiger that will die". The Chinese Football Association immediately informed Hangzhou Greentown of its preparations to enter the substitute Chinese Super League. To this end, Greentown gave up hosting the Chinese League A tournament and instead prepared for the Chinese Super League.
Since entering March, Greentown's transfer operation has accelerated, one hand is operating the return of Matthews and Dino, the other hand is grabbing Vacasso with deep foot, grabbing Sousa with Guoan, and contacting some first-division teams to provide backfield foreign aid, and the investment has been greatly strengthened.
Busy for half a day, the result was "directive resurrection" set up.
Tianjin Jinmen Tiger, who was about to leave the funeral, was pulled to undergo artificial respiration, and after a rescue, miraculously appeared in the third-tier league entry list announced by the Football Association on March 29.
Netizens brainstormed and contributed a wave of ridiculous "neutral names", such as: Tianjin Tumbler Football Club, Tianjin Immortal Tiger Football Club, Tianjin Yongsheng Yongshi Football Club, Tianjin Relationship Hard Football Club...
And Zhejiang Greentown lost his wife and folded his soldiers, did not qualify for the Chinese Super League, and also lost the right to host the tournament in the Chinese League One.
The sense of absurdity that pervades the Chinese football league is deepened. In the whirlpool of the chaotic world of the Chinese Super League, there are also a large number of dazed players.
Playing football until the age of twenty-eight or nine, wanting to change careers without other skills to get their hands on; half-time, no game data for a year, and then going to the team next year, continuing the career is even a problem.
On March 4 this year, Zhu Yi, the administrator of the German transfer market website China, tweeted that he could help players and coaches make resumes and personal pages. Unexpectedly, I received more than five hundred emails overnight, including many national brands and players with experience in foreign countries, whose names are familiar.
In the heyday of Jinyuan football, the players were coaxed out of the sky-high price one by one, but after the bubble burst, they found themselves just a tool for simply playing football, chips in the transfer market, club toys, no way to negotiate wages, running to arbitration, arguing with each other for a long time without results; running to the court, the sports case court did not accept; running to pull banners, and creating social "unstable factors".
In the whole career development reform, they seem to be beautiful, but they are actually the group of people who have the least say.
Some Shen Xin players said in an interview with the Oriental Sports Daily: "This year's team is too difficult to find, it doesn't matter how much salary, stable, can have the ball to play, even if the crown I recognize." A player from Tianhai said: "No matter where you go, the requirements are not high now, don't lose your job." ”
But under the ruthless crushing of the wheel of the times, such a humble goal may be difficult to achieve.
Time returns to the beginning of the vortex.
March 7, 2006, Shenyang, spring cold. Hao Hongjun, a sports reporter from the Liaoshen Evening News, received a breaking call from a strange man: "I have evidence that many people have participated in gambling and manipulating matches, and I need you to come to Shanghai for an interview."
At 3 p.m., Hao Hongjun came to Shanghai and secretly met with whistleblower H, and the interview lasted for 6 hours, and the whistleblower revealed the fact that a large number of players were involved in gambling. In addition, he also provided a 3-meter-long bank card transaction bill: the amount of money on the bill was very large, just more than 100,000 yuan, and the payment time was very concentrated, always at a specific time period - often coinciding with a football game - the mysterious money flew like snowflakes.
The real bookmakers of gambling groups are often in Macau or abroad, and they all have agents in China, that is, small bookmakers, who directly contact players or coaches to achieve the purpose of controlling the game.
In order to collect gambling debts and control players, gangsters participate, kidnapping, burying alive, cutting people, beating referees... Football and Chinese football have gradually become two very different sports.
In August 2009, the Ministry of Public Security set up an "anti-gambling anti-black" task force, because of suspected kick-fixing, jiangjin, who had staged a world-class save at the World Cup, blocked Ronaldo's shot, fought for the ball, hit the opponent and fainted on the spot, and his teammate Shen Si, all of whom were taken away by the task force in 2010 for accepting millions of bribes to kick fake balls and manipulate the results of the game, and were taken away by the task force for investigation in 2010 and imprisoned.
Qi Hong, who was imprisoned for taking bribes, was one of the biggest contributors to the Chinese team's entry into the 2002 Korea-Japan World Cup
The "little fish" kept pulling out the "big fish", and those who were caught up in the storm were coaches, club leaders and even senior football association officials. Tearing off the fig leaf, people were shocked to find that the inside of Chinese football had long been rotten.
After this battle, the Chinese Super League was seriously injured, a large number of sponsors were lost, and the fans who were severely injured shouted "cherish life and stay away from football".
Unlike the downturn in football, Evergrande at that time was in a period of triumphant rise. On November 5, 2009, Evergrande officially announced its listing in Hong Kong, and Xu Jiayin became the richest man in Forbes China's rich list that year.
Some leaders like football and constantly say that they want to get Chinese football up, even if the cycle is long.
Whether or not he noticed this, Boss Xu began to participate. In March 2010, Evergrande Real Estate Group spent 100 million yuan to buy the Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Team, which had been relegated and punished for manipulating the results of the competition with commercial bribery. After the club changed its name to Guangzhou Evergrande, the first thing it did was to replace former coach Peng Weiguo and sign South Korea's "iron general" Lee Jang-so to replace it. That season, Lee Jang-so led the team to win the 2010 China League One championship and successfully overtook it four times in advance.
On March 18, 2011, at the plenary meeting of Evergrande Club, Boss Xu threw out three promises with a loud voice, "Win the Chinese Super League championship in three years, and win the Asian Championship in five years." ”
The word spread, and he was ridiculed for dreaming.
Former international Xie Hui publicly ridiculed: "If you didn't take it as a joke, then your brain must have gone into the water!" ”
Wei Yidong, a host at Beijing Television, even sarcastically said in the program, "Play well, the Club World Cup depends on you." ”
Less than five years later, Boss Xu proved to the football community that the public knew nothing about the power of money.
Of course, the success of Evergrande football, in addition to having money, also lies in respect for professionalism.
In the past, when Chinese clubs bought people, agents took the resumes of foreign aides whose contracts expired uniformly for the team to choose. "Agents eat whatever they want."
As soon as Evergrande came up, it created a model of independent ordering, directly sending scouts to Brazil to "purchase" high-quality players.
Signing Frontcourt Muric for a transfer fee of US$3.5 million, and bringing in the brazilian league's best player, Conca, for a transfer fee of US$10 million the following year, Evergrande has once again set a new record for transfer fees after the establishment of the Chinese Professional Football League.
At the same time, Evergrande began to introduce top domestic players at high prices. Gao Lin, who scored a hat-trick in the Asian Cup qualifiers and immediately received transfer invitations from a number of foreign clubs; Zheng Zhi, who transferred to Charlton Football Club in the Premier League in 2007, Zheng Zhi, who signed with Su Super League Celtic in September 2009, and a number of internationals, have all been included in Evergrande's pocket.
Most of the players were placed in Evergrande's real estate, the Peninsula Hotel. The design of the so-called Royal Garden makes the Yujing Peninsula resemble a suburban version of the "Palace of Versailles" in Guangzhou, and the gardens and buildings inside are imitating the Baroque style.
Xu Jiayin, who also has a residence on the south side of the hotel, allows players to use his yacht moored in the marina and occasionally uses a private jet to pick up players to compete. Fans also followed the light, in Evergrande's first year of rushing to the super competition, Xu Jiayin often paid for his own pocket and organized more than 400 fans to go to the away stadiums around the country to cheer.
On the evening of May 15, 2012, after Conca scored the penalty that was related to Evergrande's ability to qualify from the AFC Champions League group, Lee Jang-so was excited like a child and hugged everyone.
Less than a day later, when he was transferring back to Guangzhou at bangkok airport, Lee Chang-so, wearing a gray-and-white shirt and holding a cigarette in his hand, looked at the plane rising and falling outside the large glass window, with a sad expression.
The reason for Lee Jang-so's dismissal is that the world champion coach with the name of "Silver Fox" is about to enter Evergrande.
In Italy, the coach's mid-season appointment is known as "train jumping", which is an extremely risky move. At the age of 64, Lippi jumped on Evergrande's train, which has been halfway through the season, and the most fundamental reason was the sky-high annual salary provided by Evergrande. According to sources from within Evergrande, Lippi's entire team earns about 10 million euros a year. Obviously, even the figures who were offered to the altar could not resist such an astronomical figure.
On November 9, 2013, the Evergrande football team reached the final of the AFC Champions League under the leadership of Lippi and finally won the championship. This is the first time that a Chinese club has won the AFC Champions League.
Lippi's highlight moments while coaching in China
At the end of the game, the CCTV broadcast screen appeared "Guangzhou Evergrande, the top of Asia" eight big characters, Lippi and the players embraced excitedly, Elkeson kissed the Evergrande team logo on the camera, and the fans with wet eyes sang the sea and the sky. The boiling scene of the crowd is only comparable to The success of China's Olympic bid in 2001.
That day, Evergrande gave a shot in the arm for the long-lost Chinese football. This also kicked off the prelude to golden dollar football.
As a hero who improved the "soft power of the country", Boss Xu was quite low-key at the two sessions that year, and the Hermes belt, which had been watched by everyone, was quietly replaced by seven wolves.
It is the nature of a businessman to pursue profits. Xu Boss, who burns more than a billion yuan every year, is certainly not purely paying for his feelings.
Not long after entering football, he calculated an account in front of his media friends: "If you advertise on CCTV, it is about 150,000 yuan per second." At the opening of the Chinese Super League, 25 TV stations broadcast live, more than 300 media reports, 11 athletes wore jerseys printed with 'Evergrande', and only needed to pay 40,000 yuan for 90 minutes. ”
Ten years later, the unisex reform implemented by the Football Association completely destroyed the wishful thinking of investors.
Playing soccer itself doesn't make money, the "resources" that soccer brings can make money. Jianye Group, the investor of The Chinese Super League team Henan Jianye, its chairman Hu Baosen said: I have never asked the government for anything in the name of football? The implication is that he could have ordered something in the name of football, but he didn't want it. This statement speaks to the more obscure purpose of real estate developers playing ball: to make good relations with the government.
Since 2015, Suning, Greenland, Huaxia Happiness, Kaisa and other capital giants have successively entered the game, and the value of players and club operating expenses have been continuously pushed up. Football's Golden Dollar War begins a new round of escalation.
In 2010, Xu Jiayin spent 100 million yuan to buy out the ownership of Guangzhou Football Club, and five years later, Zhang Jindong spent 523 million yuan to win Jiangsu Guoxin Sainty Club from Jiangsu Guoxin Group. At the press conference at the time, Zhang Jindong vowed that Suning's football was not a whim, "I am a super fan myself, and I like the German team the most." ”
Sun Weimin, vice chairman of Suning Group, is even more proud, "Suning should be a century-old enterprise, and the club should also be a centennial club." ”
Nothing highlights the excitement of the Chinese Super League more than the transfer market in 2016. Shanghai SIPG recruited Evergrande's former Chinese Super League shooter Wang Elkeson for 18.5 million euros to launch the starting gun of the arms race; six days later, Suning set a new record. Ramirez, signed from Premier League giants Chelsea for 28 million euros, became the new champion of the 2016 Chinese Super League, and the Chinese Super League foreign aid also entered the "200 million yuan" era.
Another week later, Evergrande used a sky-high price of 42 million euros to bring forward Martinez from Atletico Madrid to regain the king of the Chinese super standard; this time Suning reacted faster, releasing news on the same day to break the 350 million yuan record of Asian football and poach Teixeira from the Donetsk miners. Back and forth wrist breaking is over for the time being.
In just half a month, the King of The Chinese Super Standard changed hands four times between Suning and Evergrande. At that time, some people calculated that less than two months after taking over the Jiangsu club, Suning burned 12 small targets.
The violent intrusion of capital has completely broken the normal ecology of the ball market. Other clubs will either go to great lengths or be constantly marginalized in this scuffle.
The crazy domestic football market peaked in 2017.
The total expenditure of 16 Chinese Super League clubs is nearly 400 million euros, ranking first in the world for the second time. The two clubs at the top of the list are Hebei Huaxia Happiness and Tianjin Quanjian. Although Shanghai SIPG only used less than 70 million euros, it set a record for transfers in the history of the Chinese Super League:
60 million euros to bring in 25-year-old young player Oscar.
2017 Winter Window Label King Oscar
The price is almost close to a transfer fee for a top superstar in the Europa League. But according to the assessment on the Transfer Market website, the former Chelsea player is only worth 35 million euros. Oscar's annual salary after the transfer was £20 million, which was the third in the world at the time, behind Messi and Ronaldo.
"People are stupid, they have a lot of money, they come quickly." A passage from a few years ago was revived. Shu Yuhui, the owner of Quan Jian, who is not willing to be left behind, even said at Tianjin Television Station: the possibility of spending 2.1 billion yuan to introduce Messi is not ruled out.
According to the Oriental Sports Daily, the transfer investment in the Chinese Super League market has expanded rapidly from 72.17 million euros in 2014 to 403 million euros in 2017. According to the data of the German transfer market website, from the perspective of the net investment data of the league, the Chinese Super League was once the most expensive football league market in the world.
After all, there is a limit to the number of foreign aid in key positions, and after the grab, the team has to compete with domestic players.
Sun Bin, who has been working as a football agent for more than 15 years, has witnessed the wave of gold dollars sweeping in, and the transfer fees of domestic players have swelled from two or three million yuan to 60 or 70 million yuan, more than ten or twenty times. Zhao Yuhao and Zhang Chengdong, introduced by the Chinese Super League team Hebei Huaxia, even exceeded the 100 million mark, and even Zhao Yuhao, Wang Yongpo, Cui Min, Jin Yangyang, Zhang Wenzhao and other marginal players of the national football team were also speculated for more than 10 million euros. Under the huge gap in salary and strength, it is not the skill that comes out of the circle on the field, but the "white chopper chicken" figure.
After the introduction of the U23 policy aimed at honing young players, things moved in a more magical direction.
National football coach Lippi's sentence "May be Zheng Zhi's successor" inadvertently made the U23 player He Chao of Changchun Yatai team rise to 200 million yuan, compared with the statistics of the transfer market, the premium is as high as 60 times.
You know, becoming the "Asian brother" who became the king of the Premier League goalscorer, South Korean player Son Heung-min, transferred from Bayer Leverkusen in the Bundesliga to Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League, and the transfer fee was only 30 million euros, equivalent to 230 million yuan.
After dividing up a handful of "strength factions", young players who could not play have also become fiercely contested in the transfer market.
The radish sold the "ginseng price", and it was even worth more than the "ginseng" of the year.
The value of players has soared, and the operating costs of Chinese Super League teams have risen.
In 2017, Guangzhou Evergrande Football Club lost 1.23 billion yuan, and in 2018, it lost 1.8 billion yuan. Combined with the revenue of 600 million yuan in 2018, the total operating cost of Evergrande team in 2018 was 2.4 billion. As of the end of 2018, Evergrande Football Club's total liabilities were 4.11 billion. Shanghai SIPG Football Club, on the other hand, spent 2.3 billion yuan in 2018. These are the top clubs, how much investment does a club need to be relegated to success? The answer in 2016 was 500 million, and by 2018, it would have exceeded 1 billion. In 2010, the average spending of Chinese Super League clubs was only 45.5 million, compared with 200 million in 2012.
For clubs with insufficient financial resources, the success of the super is undoubtedly the beginning of a nightmare, and a steady stream of upgrade investment may drag the companies behind them to death. From the player's point of view, at their level, they simply cannot survive in the Chinese Super League for a long time.
Therefore, the Super League Battle has become a stage to test acting skills, everyone "you humble me to let", you pass the ball wrong, I take the ball out of bounds, and there are always endless chains at key moments.
In a focus duel in the final battle of the 2019 season, The super hot Changchun Yatai lost 1-4 to Heilongjiang FC, and after the poor acting skills were recognized, the Yatai fans who accompanied the team on the expedition angrily tore the flag that cheered for the team, and the entire stadium was in a mess. When captain Zhang Xiaofei led the players to the stands to thank the scene, the fans shouted and scolded almost to overturn the ceiling.
Even in the Chinese Super League team with strong financial resources, the key positions of the attack such as forwards and midfielders are firmly controlled by foreign aid, and the participation of domestic players is not high, and it is difficult to get exercise. Naturally, the performance of the national team has not improved substantially, and going out still cannot change the fate of "sending points to the boys".
Club performance in continental competitions is, strictly speaking, not fully representative of the country. In the years when the Chinese Super League was in full swing, the big list of superstars gathered, the field was flowing, and the old fans of the Premier League who stayed up late were willing to turn on the TV to watch a Chinese Super League. But the level of the national team is still criticized. Soon, the wind of "letting the national football team play into the World Cup" blew down from the headquarters of the Football Association.
Boss Xu, who can always seize the opportunity, gave lippi of the "second palace" to the national team without saying a word, and also paid Lippi's huge salary in the national team at his own expense.
Lippi and Xu Jiayin
On September 7, 2019, the national football team held the World Preliminary Championship Oath Ceremony. At the meeting, Lippi led the players to take a collective oath, and Chen Shuyuan, chairman of the Chinese Football Association, delivered a speech and distributed the classic red reading book to the players and coaches present - "Red Star Illuminates Me to Fight". The players who were deeply inspired arrived at the arena did not play out pan Dongzi's revolutionary spirit. With the oolong ball package in the last 15 minutes of the national football team, Syria won the victory and laughed at 3 points.
At the post-match press conference, Lippi announced his resignation as the manager of the national football team, "If I represent such a team, then I don't want to grab money, I earn a very, very much money, I don't want to grab money, and now I announce my resignation and the decision is irrevocable." With that he turned and left the field and walked straight to the team bus.
After two entrances and two national football marshals, Lippi's former spiritual victory method was completely invalidated.
For this team that could not be saved, his final evaluation was: "No fighting spirit, no desire, no courage." ”
It's a bubble, and there's always a day when it bursts.
The year that Lippi gave up hundreds of millions of dollars of annual salary and left, China's real estate also happened to have reached an inflection point.
Regulation has increased layer by layer, and the central bank has further tightened loans in the real estate sector. 2020 is a year of unrestrained youth, the epidemic has hit the economy hard, and the central bank and the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development have put forward "three red lines" in the debt of housing enterprises. Housing companies that rely on snowball to expand rapidly are suddenly drawn from the bottom of the pot.
Financially in a hurry, the costly football has borne the brunt of the cuts in investment.
Jiangsu Suning, which won the Chinese Super League championship for the first time, announced its dissolution 108 days later
According to the incomplete statistics of southern weekend reporters, since 2020, a total of 18 teams in the three professional leagues of the Chinese Super League, The Chinese First Division and the Chinese Second Division have suspended operations or disbanded.
After the 2019 season, many employees of Suning Club clearly felt the group's control over operating costs. They even suspect that the new club chairman, Wang Zhe, is "coming with the task of saving money."
First, the game awards of other employees except the players and the head coach were cut, and during the epidemic, the players' salaries were also owed, and the club even resigned from two washers who washed the players' clothes for more than a decade, with a total annual salary of about 300,000 or 400,000 yuan. Later, the players' clothes were washed by the team manager and the driver.
On the historic night when Suning defeated Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao and won the 2020 Chinese Super League championship, people were speculating about how chairman Zhang Jindong would reward the team.
The results were astounding.
All the team received was a "commendation" commendation order issued by Zhang Jindong. It was also the last time the club received a message from the group.
Before returning to Nanjing from Suzhou, the players received a notice in the WeChat group that the celebration banquet was canceled. This caused great dissatisfaction among several foreign aides, including Santini. They have long decided not to participate in the subsequent FA Cup, but in order to participate in the celebration banquet, they specially changed their tickets to return home.
On December 26, 2020, Suning Group's 30th birthday celebration banquet coincided with the period of the greatest financial pressure. According to Suning's annual report data, as of the end of the third quarter of 2020, Suning Tesco's monetary funds on the account were only 30.837 billion yuan, of which more than 20 billion yuan were unresponsive for restricted funds; while in the same period, Suning Tesco's short-term borrowings were 28.097 billion yuan, and the non-current liabilities due within one year were 4.616 billion yuan, a total of more than 30 billion yuan.
Two months later, at the 2021 Suning Group Spring Festival Group Visit. Zhang Jindong proposed that "for those who are not in the main retail track, we must take the initiative to do subtraction, shrink the battle line, the pass of the pass, the cut of the cut." ”
Football, obviously, is the one that should be cut.
After the Spring Festival, the team was scheduled to assemble on February 18 for winter training before the new season. But until that day, the players and the coaching staff had not received any notification of their return to the team. Cao Rui was the assistant coach of the team, and at the time, he joked with the players that he could take a few more days off this year. After waiting for a few days and not moving, everyone sensed that something was wrong, someone asked the leader in the WeChat group, and the other party asked them to "wait for the club to notify".
After 10 days, they waited for the announcement that the club had ceased operations.
In the 27 years since Chinese football was professionalized, it was the first top league club to announce dissolution immediately after winning the championship.
The excavator drove into two natural football lawns that had been vacant for nearly four months at the Xuzhuang football base, and a wall of "our home" was printed on the west side of the office building, which was reduced to rubble along with the entire building. Less than 3 minutes walk from the football base is the headquarters building of Suning Group. In the square between the base and the headquarters in late April, the banner "Suning Youth Training" had not yet been removed, and a sign with the slogan "Grow Together" was on the side.
Suning Youth Training Base
With the suspension of the club, the Jiangsu youth training echelon was also disbanded. From U15 to U20, each echelon has about 25 people, a total of 150 small players. After issuing their free certification, they had to find a new way out.
3 years ago, after 3 rounds of selection, Xiao Zhe stood out from dozens of players and was selected to the U15 echelon. "How proud I was then, how much I regret it now." After the Jiangsu team was suspended, Xiao Zhe offered to go to other teams for trial training, but was rejected by his father.
The training of the youth training team is different from the first team, among the 25 people, the actual growth rate is not high, and there are very few people who can play professional football in the end, and there may only be four or five good seedlings in an age group, which is the law of professional football, and more children will be eliminated because of mediocre qualifications.
To a certain extent, the original youth training system can provide a way out for their future - even if they can't play professional football, they can pass the college specialty students at the end of high school. Now the road has also been cut off.
The original echelon of children are studying at the Hexi Branch of Nanjing Outer Chinese School, which is a private school with a tuition fee of 15,000 yuan per semester, excluding room and board. Today, without club support, many parents cannot afford to pay for their tuition. With scarce educational resources, it is difficult for parents to transfer their children's school registration to public schools.
Further education is imminent, and the future is confused.
"You have to ask these kids if they want to play football now, they all want to play. But we, as parents, can't let him take any more risks. Our children have wasted three years of school time and cannot waste it any longer. ”
Lu Cheng, former director of the echelon management department of the Jiangsu team, has contacted many parents, and he knows how complex psychological struggles it is for ordinary families to choose to support their children's dreams of playing football and send their children to professional clubs.
Domestic clubs develop youth training, and the security system is so weak. Once the club is out of service, only the child and the parent can bear the full consequences.
"In the long run, who would dare to train their children in football?"
In the past decade, quick success and quick profit have continuously penetrated into the blood of Chinese football.
After the bursting of the Jinyuan football bubble, people began to know that the problem of Chinese football was ultimately due to the lack of a systematic player training path.
The far-sighted Boss Xu proposed as early as 2012 to "raise a soldier for the country". At the opening ceremony of Evergrande Real Madrid Football School, he said that through 8 to 10 years of efforts, guangzhou Evergrande team will be built into a "team composed of all domestic players".
In 2013, at the "Eight Regulations of Evergrande Football" transmission conference, Xu Jiayin further proposed the concept of "All-China Class" - a football club that hopes to achieve "All-China Class" in the next 5 to 8 years.
In the first stage of the 2020 new season, in the 35-person roster of Guangzhou (formerly Guangzhou Evergrande Club), two big-name foreign players Paulinho and Talisca were stranded in Brazil – so that counting the 6 naturalized players, all the players in the lineup were Chinese nationals.
"As long as the thinking does not slip, there are always more methods than difficulties."
In this way, Boss Xu has indeed achieved the goal of "All-China Class" proposed 9 years ago. Although in a rather dark humorous way.
As the super foreign aid strategy continues to decline, more and more teams have begun to copy Evergrande's work. Raise political awareness and strive to build a high-level team that Chinese themselves.
However, as soon as the "All-China Class" appeared, everyone was dumbfounded: the foreign aid was still these foreign aides, but the team gave them another "settlement fee" and changed their nationality to China.
Originally wanted to improve the strength of the team through this operation immediately, it was expected that "naturalization and assimilation", the foreign players who were originally in a hurry, after joining the Chinese nationality, immediately broke the golden body, and the decline in status was very obvious. Axon has scored 64 goals in 73 appearances in 2013 and 2014, compared to just seven goals in 23 appearances last year, many of which were penalties and set pieces.
Naturalized player Axon
As for Luo Guofu, who is out of shape, Xiao Taotao, who continues to be lost in the Middle Division, and Delgado, who was "returned" to Portugal by Luneng, are even more difficult to say.
In order to change the status quo of the "weak front" of the national football team, most of the players selected are attacking players in the frontcourt position. However, in last year's league, the top 16 scorers could not find the shadow of naturalized players, and the domestic player who scored the most goals was Wei Shihao, who scored 8 goals in only 10 rounds of league appearances.
The ropes of the professional league are difficult to solve the difficulties of the national team, and naturalization has been carried out for a long time with little effect.
With the transformation of its development strategy, Evergrande has reduced its investment in the "arms race" since 2017 and gradually implemented the policy of "only going in and out and not entering" in the transfer market. But because the club itself does not have any hematopoietic ability, the loss still did not brake in time.
According to the "Football News" estimates, since taking over the Guangzhou team in March 2010, 11 years have passed, Evergrande Football has invested a total of 13 billion yuan, and the loss according to the financial report is estimated to be about 7.3 billion.
Guangzhou Evergrande's Paulinho, Talisca, and even Dalian Yifang's super foreign aid Carrasco, Mushekwi and Hamsik, Shanghai SIPG's foreign aid Hulk, Arnautovic and others, Beijing Guoan's core Augusto and so on have left, in addition to salary caps and other restrictions, resulting in the inability to renew contracts with foreign aid, there are also very important factors, is that the club knows, it is time to cut expenses. Continuing to burn money and increase investment has no meaning.
"Topped the Chinese Super League in three years and at the top of Asia in five years."
Five years ago, at the mobilization ceremony when Suning officially took over the Jiangsu team, chairman Zhang Jindong shouted out the team's medium- and long-term goals with great courage.
The training base of Jiangsu Suning Football Club is gradually deserted, and dead leaves are scattered in front of the rest seats
Up to now, when the club's training base is occupied by dead leaves and weeds, Wu Xi, the former captain of the Jiangsu team, has led the Chinese team to reach the Top 12 of the Asian Zone in the World Cup qualifiers again.
Looking at the naturalized players on the screen wearing five-star red flag jerseys, people with mixed feelings can't help but rethink:
After so many years, Chinese companies have invested so much money in football, what exactly is left?