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Ever since the financial explosion in the league in the mid-2010s, the Chinese Super League has become a prime destination for a handful of the world’s best football players.
Sure, some of the stars who have moved to China weren’t in their primes when they did so, but the huge wages on offer have still been able to tempt some major names who could easily have continued to ply their trade in a top European league, and it’s to be expected that the same pattern could follow in the 2020s.
Here are 5 of the most famous players to have played in the Chinese Super League.
#1 Carlos Tevez
Argentine striker Carlos Tevez is perhaps one of the most underrated players of his generation. After bursting onto the scene in his native country and then in Brazil in the early 2000s, he moved to England and went onto huge success with Manchester United and their rivals Manchester City, winning Premier League titles with both clubs as well as the Champions League with the Red Devils in 2007-08.
Tevez moved to Juventus in the summer of 2013 and immediately caught fire there too, scoring 21 goals and being named Player of the Season as the Old Lady won the Scudetto. After a second Scudetto followed in 2014-15, the Argentine surprised everyone by moving back to his boyhood club Boca Juniors – but after two years there, eyes were really opened when he moved to Chinese side Shanghai Shenhua.
The move reportedly made the striker the highest-paid player in the world, with an annual salary of around $41m – but his time in the Far East was hardly a success. Tevez played just 20 times for Shanghai and scored only 4 goals despite the relatively lower standard of football in the league. He was criticised for letting himself get out of shape, and after just over a year at the club, he moved back to Boca Juniors.
A later interview with Tevez saw him quoted as stating that he’d been “on holiday” during his time in Shanghai, while Boca legend Diego Maradona described him as “filling Santa’s sack with dollars” with the move.
#2 Hulk
After plundering a tremendous amount of goals for FC Porto in Portugal’s Primeira Liga – 54 in 99 appearances, in fact – Brazilian forward Hulk was a player in demand in the mid-2010s. Europe’s giants were interested in bringing the player in, but instead, the summer of 2012 saw him make a move to Russia’s Zenit St. Petersburg for a fee of €60m.
Hulk ended up playing for 4 seasons at Zenit, but when it was time to move on, rather than head to Italy, Spain or England, the Brazilian chose to move to the Chinese Super League – with money surely being one of his biggest motivations. Shanghai SIPG paid Zenit some £45m for his services – an Asian football record at the time – and handed him a wage packet of around £320k per week, giving him around £16.6m per year.
To his credit, Hulk has continued to perform excellently since his move to China, scoring a total of 68 goals in 121 games across all competitions for Shanghai SIPG and helping them to a league title in 2018 and a Chinese FA Super Cup in 2019. It’s a pity we never got to see the Brazilian at a top-level European club, but he’s had a great career nonetheless.
#3 Oscar
One of the most highly-rated Brazilian prospects in some time, attacking midfielder Oscar joined Chelsea in the summer of 2012 for a fee close to £25m, and despite the odd slump in form, his record at Stamford Bridge was excellent; his debut season saw him win the Europa League, and in 2014-15, he delivered 6 goals and 8 assists as the Blues won the Premier League and also picked up the EFL Cup.
By 2015-16 though, the Brazilian had fallen out of favour with the Stamford Bridge faithful, and despite making 40 appearances that season, a move away from the club was looking likely. Oscar was reportedly being tracked by European giants like Juventus, AC Milan and Atletico Madrid, which was why it came as a huge surprise when he instead signed with Chinese side Shanghai SIPG in January 2017.
Shanghai reportedly paid around £60m for the Brazilian – an Asian football record – as he moved to join his international teammate Hulk at the club. A 2017 interview saw Oscar admit that he’d primarily “thought about his family more than his career” when he made the move, as he was just 25 years old and in his prime at the time of the transfer, but he’s done well in China, scoring 14 goals and making 40 assists in 79 league games and helping Shanghai to win a Super League title in 2018.
#4 Paulinho
Brazilian midfielder Paulinho joined Tottenham Hotspur in the summer of 2013 for what was then a club-record fee of £17m, but despite some bright moments, his debut season saw him struggle to fit into the Premier League. By the end of 2014-15, he was widely considered a big-money flop in North London, and so it came as no surprise when Spurs were willing to part company with him.
The destination, however, was somewhat surprising; Chinese Super League side Guangzhou Evergrande paid Spurs a fee of just under £10m for his services, and he moved to the club and linked up with his former international boss Luiz Felipe Scolari. An even bigger shock though was Paulinho’s fantastic form during his time in the Far East.
The Brazilian became one of Guangzhou’s most important players and helped them to win five trophies during his time there – picking up 2 Chinese Super League titles, a Chinese FA Cup, 2 Chinese FA Super Cups and an AFC Champions League title, too.
He was so good, in fact, that Barcelona stunned the world by paying Guangzhou €40m to bring him to the Nou Camp in the summer of 2017. And to complete his turnaround from his Tottenham days, Paulinho became one of Barca’s key men too and won a domestic double in his lone season in Spain – before moving back to Guangzhou a year later, where he still currently plays.
#5 Alexandre Pato
Once considered one of the most exciting prospects in world football, Alexandre Pato became a huge star at the turn of the last decade as one of AC Milan’s key attackers, but a series of injuries curtailed his development, and by 2013, he’d returned to Brazil with Corinthians. The move didn’t really work out, and moves to Chelsea and Villarreal didn’t see him fare much better.
Still just 27 years old, Pato appeared to be done at the top level – and so his move to the Chinese Super League with Tianjin Quanjian in January 2017 didn’t really come as a surprise. The club paid £15.5m for his services, but to say the start of his career in China didn’t quite work out would be an understatement.
The Brazilian forward missed a penalty in his second match for the club, a 1-1 draw with Shanghai Shenhua, denying Quanjian their first-ever Super League title. Following that though, his form did improve somewhat, and while he won no trophies, he ended up scoring 36 goals in 60 appearances for the club, before heading home in 2019 to join Sao Paulo.
