China resumes plan to become a football power – 04/12/2023 – Sports

Not so long ago, less than ten years, Chinese football gained ample space in the media around the world, including in Brazil.

While clubs invested billions of dollars to hire internationally renowned coaches and players, Chinese leader Xi Jinping was often seen kicking balls in stadiums inside and outside the country.

It was all part of a plan, launched at the turn of 2016 and outlined by the politician, to create a football culture and make the world’s most populous nation a “football superpower” by 2050.

“Football has come to be seen as the main sector of the sports industry capable of increasing the generation of wealth for the country, in addition to contributing to the Chinese economic development”, says Emanuel Leite, associate researcher at the International College Football of Tongji University, in Shanghai.

As China has traditionally been more successful in women’s football, Xi had ambitions especially for the men’s team: qualifying for the World Cup, hosting the tournament and winning it.

These are not easy tasks for a nation that participated in the competition only once, in 2002, and was outside the top 70 of the FIFA rankings when the plan was revealed – today, it is in 81st place. The government’s solution was to make a heavy investment.

To support their goals, Chinese state-owned conglomerates, construction companies and developers, inflated by a boom in the property market, have flooded the country’s top domestic league with cash, making the CSL (Chinese Super League) rival Europe’s biggest leagues in terms of money invested.

At the height of the 2015/16 season, US$ 451 million (about R$ 2.3 billion at the time) were spent on player transfers, making the tournament among the five leagues with the highest investment in the world.

There seemed to be no limits to the Chinese dream, which included world champion coaches such as Luiz Felipe Scolari and Marcelo Lippi, and players like Lavezzi, Hulk, Renato Augusto and Paulinho, all attracted by huge salaries.

As quick as the rise was the fall. Bad financial decisions, cases of corruption in various spheres of sport, in addition to the financial crisis aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic, have severely shaken the structures of football in the country in the last three years.

This weekend, the 2023 CSL season kicks off with 16 teams, two fewer than last season, as a result of the exclusions of Kunshan FC and Guangzhou City. The first resigned due to his financial situation, and the second was not approved in the admission stage for the same reason.

The two cases are no exceptions. In 2021, Jiangsu surprised by also ending its activities shortly after winning CSL due to the financial crisis of Suning, its main shareholder.

The Covid-19 pandemic only accelerated a process that was already underway, as there was no sustainable growth in the Chinese league.

“To attract big names to a league without much competitiveness, the clubs offered very high salaries. Higher than the revenue generation capacity. There was incentive from the government and companies, but the account did not close”, says Pedro Daniel, director sports executive at the consulting firm EY.

With the pandemic, revenue sources have become even scarcer. Due to the Chinese government’s “zero Covid” policy, the championships have spent the last three years organized in “biosecure” bubbles, which has removed fans from stadiums and restricted the athletes’ interaction with their families. As a result, many foreigners left the country.

In addition, changes in the league’s financial rules, such as fines for the use of foreign athletes that doubled their cost, meant that large signings practically ceased. With few stars, it became more difficult to raise the technical level of local athletes.

At the height of the crisis, not even the biggest clubs escaped the crash. In 2021, after the collapse of the Evergrande group, which triggered the worst real estate market crisis ever recorded in the country, Guangzhou Evergrande was unable to pay the players’ salaries in full. In 2022, it dropped to the second division.

The decline of clubs and the failure to raise the bar has undermined Xi Jinping’s goal of seeing his nation back to the World Cup. The absence from Qatar was China’s fifth straight on football’s biggest stage.

The Chinese national team attempted a kind of artificial evolution, looking for athletes born and bred abroad. Accelerated naturalization has generated controversial situations, such as that of five Brazilians who gained citizenship without any Chinese ancestry.

They received new names: Fernando became Fei Nanduo, Aloisio became Luo Guofu, Elkeson was called Ai Kesen, Ricardo Goulart was called Gao Late and Alan Carvalho was called A Lan. During the pandemic, however, they left the country and the invitation behind.

However, the plans of the Chinese government were not left aside. According to researcher Emanuel Leite, Xi Jinping is convinced of the geopolitical importance of football and will continue to seek solutions to achieve his goals.

“Football serves as a bridge, which establishes connections, connections and, consequently, business”, says Leite, author of the book “China, Football and Development: Socialism and Soft Power”.

For him, the best way for the Asian country to meet its needs in sport is to seek exchanges with partners like Brazil. “We have the expertise in training athletes, and there is a huge demand in China to learn.”