Japanese media: Chinese football enters the cold winter, Suning TEda disappears worse_Jiangsu

Original title: Japanese media: Chinese football enters the cold winter, Suning TEDA disappears worse

On March 5th, Beijing time, with the dissolution of the new Chinese Super League champion Jiangsu Suning Club and the veteran powerhouse Tianjin TEDA, the Japanese media “soccer-king” wrote an article stating that Chinese football has entered a cold winter.

Just three months after winning the Chinese Super League Championship for the first time in team history, Jiangsu Suning Club was disbanded. The Japanese media said that a strict salary cap was recently introduced. With the start of the new season, the club was forced to change its name, but suddenly something incredible happened. Last season’s league champion Jiangsu Suning Club announced that it was forced to disband due to financial problems. On February 28, local time, the deadline for submitting financial statements for the new season was reached in the Super League club. Last season, 16 financially troubled clubs in the Chinese professional league disappeared, but this winter, even large clubs have fallen into a situation where they cannot survive.

One of the founding member clubs of the Chinese Super League, “Tianjin Teda”, did not meet this standard and was therefore excluded from the league. Chongqing Lifan, who ranked sixth in the league last season, got the investment at the buzzer before the final, so he escaped. Last season’s FA Cup champion Shandong Luneng was disqualified from the AFC Champions League due to a lack of salary. Finally, the defending champion disappeared unexpectedly-Suning Holding Group, which owns Jiangsu Football Club, announced that it would stop funding the club only three months after winning its first league championship.

When Suning Group acquired the club in December 2015, it won the competition with Liverpool in the following month and dug out special services from Shakhtar Donetsk for about 6.4 billion yen. thanks. Afterwards, Jiangsu Suning hired Edel in 2018, signed Miranda in 2019, and Mubarak Wakaso (2020) from Arabes (Arabes), and then won the first place in team history. A Chinese Super League champion.

However, with the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, various clubs have suffered severe blows, including Jiangsu Suning Club. In the transfer window this winter, the total expenditures of the Super League clubs in the transfer market (international transfers to February 26, domestic transfers to the end of March) are only about 3 billion yen, which is less than half of the expenditures in the same period last year. It is the lowest price since 2012. Compared with the peak in 2017, it was actually only 1/17th of the time. Due to the financial crisis, Chinese Super League clubs can no longer offer sky-high contracts to top European players as they did in the past. Now they can only look for players from neighboring countries and minor leagues. Among the highlights are last season’s MVP Sun Zhunhao was signed by Shandong Luneng, and Leonardo, who became the top scorer of J3 and J2. The media reported that most of the big-name players have left the Super League, rather than the presence of many superstars as before.

However, it is unfair to impose on the club owners only the factors that lead to the status quo. Historically, China’s sports clubs were run by state-owned enterprises, and private investment was only allowed in the late 1990s. Private companies and millionaires also understand that running a football club is unprofitable. However, as a national-level project, the popularization and promotion of football has been promoted, and the owners even participated in the game when faced with risks in an attempt to obtain “benefits” outside of the football itself.

However, their attempts are usually not satisfied, a large number of foreign players gather together, most of the profits of the league will be obtained by the organizers, the clubs will have to pay high salaries, and many clubs are forced to owe salaries. Even so, Jiangsu Suning’s withdrawal is still shocking. Even the club that won the league title is forced to operate so hard that no one can help.

Where is the future of Chinese football? Compared with four or five years ago, the current situation of the Chinese football world is completely different. It seems that the glitzy period has passed, and the severe winter period is about to begin.

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