When three of the four costliest transfers of a particular window are towards a hitherto unheralded country in world football, you know times are a-changing. This is exactly what happened when during this latest January transfer window, 3 players from top European football leagues moved to China for a combined total of an eye-watering £90 million.
And these are not players at the dusk of their footballing careers looking for a last payday, which was said when Didier Drogba and Nicholas Anelka moved to China. These 3 are Brazilian international midfielder Ramires (Chelsea), Colombian hotshot striker Jackson Martinez (Atletico Madrid) and purported Liverpool-bound Brazilian striker Alex Teixeira (Shakhtar Donetsk) - players currently at the zenith of their footballing prowess and coveted by top clubs.
For a country which has only qualified for the World Cup finals once (in 2002, where they were eliminated in the group stages) and ranks 81st in the latest FIFA rankings, this is certainly a big statement of intent. And make no mistake, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
For this is possibly the start of a top-down driven approach initiated by the Chinese President Xi Jinping to turn his country into a global footballing powerhouse within the next decade and double the size of the Chinese sporting economy by 2025. An announcement from the government read:
“Throughout the country there are currently about 5,000 primary and secondary schools specialised in football. By 2020 this number is expected to reach 20,000, and by 2025 it will reach 50,000.”
Chinese business tycoons are gradually buying into this vision of their President. They are investing huge amounts into buying teams in the Chinese Super League (the Chinese equivalent of the English Premier League). Real estate companies own 13 of the 16 first division teams.
For investors currying for favours from the political establishment, it helps if you own a football team and show yourself aligned to the national interest by contributing to the most popular spectator sport in China. They are also buying stakes in some of the biggest global clubs as well like Manchester City (13%) and Atletico Madrid (20%).
Not only investors, the Chinese people are also getting involved in enhancing the stature of their country’s top flight football league. The Chinese Super League had an average attendance of just under 22,000 in 2015, up by 17% on the previous year’s figures, just a snip behind Serie A and Ligue 1 and catching up fast.
Another case in point is the television rights. China Media Capital paid US$1.2bn for the television rights to the Chinese Super League (for a five year period) which is a significant premium on the US$9m that broadcasters paid for the previous year.
We now take a look at the 5 most famous clubs in China.
1) Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao
By far, the leading team in the country has been Guangzhou Evergrande. Evergrande are the reigning five-time winners of the Chinese Super League, a streak which began in 2011 and shows no signs of stopping.
The club was playing in the second tier as recently as 2010 after they were relegated because of match fixing. The transformation began when Evergrande Real Estate Group purchased the club in 2010 and pumped money into the squad which saw them win promotion immediately in the 2010 season.
The club got rechristened from Guangzhou Football Club to Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao Football Club in 2014.
It won its two continental titles in 2013 and 2015, the only Chinese club to do so. In December 2015, the team advanced to the semi-finals of the FIFA World Club Championship where they lost to eventual winners Barcelona. They had to settle for the fourth spot after getting beaten by Japanese club Sanfrecce Hiroshima in the third-fourth playoff.
Multiple players of international repute have played for Evergrande over the years. Some of them are Muriqui, Cléo, Elkeson (all Brazil), Argentinean Dario Conca and Lucas Barrios of Paraguay, who was signed from the then German champions Borussia Dortmund.
The current international quartet of international stars at Guangzhou Evergrande are Alan Carvalho, Ricardo Goulart, Paulinho (all Brazilian) and Jackson Martínez (Colombia) who have kept them in the 2nd position in the 2016 CSL.
The team is managed by World Cup winning coach Luiz Felipe Scolari and is part owned by Alibaba founder Jack Ma. Another World Cup winning coach Marcelo Lippi managed the team from 2012 to 2014.
Their home stadium is the Tianhe Stadium in the Guangdong province and has a seating capacity of 58,500. Evergrande’s games are the most widely attended (with an average of 42000+).
2) Shanghai SIPG
Shanghai SIPG was founded in 2006 in the third division of the Chinese footballing pyramid. The club made a late entry into the CSL in 2013 after having won the Chinese second tier.
The club changed its name from Shanghai Dongya when after signing a 40-million Yuan sponsorship deal with Shanghai International Port Group (SIPG). Later in 2014, SIPG officially took over the whole club.
The club created quite a flutter when it managed to appoint ex-England manager Sven Goran Eriksson as the helm in November 2014. The Swede has shown that he is not afraid to spend big in order to achieve instant results. SIPG ruffled a few feathers in the transfer market when it parted with $50m for Ghanaian Asamoah Gyan and Brazilian striker Elkeson.
Its other international superstar is Dario Conca (Argentina) who won the Chinese Football Association Footballer of the Year award alongside the Chinese FA Cup Most Valuable Player award with Guangzhou Evergrande in 2013.
Shanghai SIPG finished runners-up in the Chinese Super League in 2015 and in the process, qualified for the 2016 AFC Champions League. The cross-town rivalry is very strong with SIPG contesting two Shanghai derbies against Shanghai Shenhua and Shanghai Shenxin F.C.
Their home stadium is the Shanghai Stadium which has a seating capacity of 56,842. The club currently sits in the 3rd position in the 2016 Chinese Super League.
3) Jiangsu Suning
A club which is flaunting its wealth like there’s no tomorrow. It’s certainly not a new club. Far from it. It was in fact one of the founding members of the first top tier league in China in 1994, the Chinese Jia-A League.
The club was called Jiangsu Sainty until December 2015, after which it changed its suffix to Jiangsu Suning when it was acquired by Suning - the biggest electronics retailer in China. Within one month, it had set the transfer market afire by breaking its own transfer fee record twice in the same window, with a fee of £25 million paid for Ramires and later £37 million for fellow Brazilian Alex Teixeira (two of the 3 most costliest transfers of the winter window as mentioned right at the beginning of this article).
The club also has Brazilian striker Jô on its books, the same one that once played for Manchester City and represented Brazil at the 2014 World Cup.
And from the looks of it, Jiangsu are far from being done with all their business. In January 2016, Chelsea were made a scarcely believable offer of £75million for the services of Brazilian playmaker Oscar, which they turned down.
In the meantime, if rumors are to be believed, Jiangsu are planning a move for unsettled Manchester City star Yaya Toure at the end of this season and are preparing a pay packet of an astonishing £30million-a-year to lure the Ivorian.
The club is in good shape of late, having won the Chinese FA Cup for the first time in 2015 and thereby gaining qualification to the 2016 AFC Champions League. It is currently leading the title race for the 2016 Chinese Super League as well.
Jiangsu has a 61,443 seater home stadium which is the Nanjing Olympic Sports Center which hosts matches which are well attended (average attendance figures of over 26000). They are managed by Romanian manager Dan Petrescu.
4) Shanghai Greenland Shenhua
The original movers and shakers in the Chinese football ecosystem. They came to the limelight in 2012, when two former Chelsea superstars in Nicolas Anelka and Didier Drogba, in the twilight of their careers, signed up for Shanghai Shenhua.
But all was not well as they left after just one season amid reports that they were not paid the astronomical salaries promised to them. The club was also the first team in Chinese football history to appoint a foreign CEO and a technical director.
Zhu Jun and his company The9 Limited bankrolled the club till February 2014 when Chinese property developer Greenland Holding Group Company Limited took over the reins of the club and changed the name of the club to reflect its ownership.
The club is managed by Spanish Gregorio Manzano who has previous experience with European clubs such as Sevilla and Atlético Madrid. The current line-up of international stars at the club include Fredy Guarín, Giovanni Moreno (Colombia), Obafemi Martins (Nigeria) and Demba Ba (Senegal).
The club has been underachieving of late with no top-5 finishes in the last 5 years in the Chinese Super League. It is currently far off the pace as well at 8th position in the 2016 edition of the CSL.
The club plays their home games at the Hongkou Football Stadium, which has a seating capacity of 33,060. Shenhua also participates in what is known as the China Derby against fierce rivals Beijing Guoan F.C.
5) Hebei China Fortune
The newest kid on the block. The club started its journey in May 2010 in the third tier of the Chinese football - China League Two. The club was bought by Chinese property developers China Fortune Land Development Co. Ltd. in January 2015.
Originally called Hebei Zhongji F.C., the club gained promotion to the top tier of the Chinese league from China League One in 2015 by coming 2nd behind Yanbian Funde. The club renamed itself to Hebei China Fortune FC in December 2015.
They wasted no time in making a splash in the transfer market in their bid to establish themselves as one of the best clubs in China. Ivorian striker Gervinho was bought from AS Roma for €18m.
In the same winter transfer window of 2016, Argentine Ezequiel Lavezzi decided to swap the glitz and glamour of Paris for the riches of China for a fee of €9m and a rumored salary of over £400,000 a week. And he will also have two Premier League stars to give him company at the club in Gaël Kakuta and Stéphane Mbia.
And indeed they are shaking up the status quo – although the season is only 4 games old, the club is currently placed 4th in the 2016 edition of the CSL. The team is currently coached by Li Tie and is based at Olympic Sports Center Stadium in the city of Qinhuangdao and has a seating capacity of 33,000.
