Lhasa Shengto, the only professional football club on the Tibetan plateau, has decided to close its doors for an odd reason related to the controversy over the matches being played on its soil, in a city located at 3,650 meters above sea level.

The team participating in the third-class matches in China fought two matches at home this season, during which the referee was forced to suspend playing after only a quarter of an hour, to allow the players to breathe and use the oxygen bottles, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Last season, the team, which ranked 26th among the 32nd Class III teams, fought most of its matches 2,400 kilometers from its stadium, in Deyang City, Sichuan Province. "We wanted to provide the world with a window on football in Tibet, and we have done our best to host the matches, but to no avail," the team said in a statement on its account on the Weibo website, parallel to Twitter in China.

The knockout of the club, which was founded three years ago, was the decision of the Chinese Federation for the game not to allow games to be held in areas of high altitude from the sea, for fear of the health of the players.

The club indicated that it would demobilize all its players, coaches and individuals, after only five games in Tibet since its founding in 2017.
It was noted that the Chinese newspaper "Global Times" that the club is the seventeenth who stops professional football this year, which is a setback The Asian giant strives to transform into a major power in the world's first popular game.

The exit of many of these clubs came due to financial difficulties, which were worsened by the outbreak of the new Corona virus, which first appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, and caused the start of the first-class competition to be postponed to an unspecified date.

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