On the 29th, the domestic professional football league admission list, which has attracted much attention from the outside world, finally landed on boots.
Jiangsu team, Beijing Chengfeng, Taizhou Yuanda, Inner Mongolia Zhongyou... a series of familiar and unfamiliar names, accompanied by a piece of official document, disappeared into the long river of history in the spring of 2021.
These brand-new club neutral names have not had time to officially appear on the stadium, have not experienced the unanimous shouting of home fans, and they have appeared on the "death list" so coldly.
Chinese Football Association announcement.
Image source: Football Association website
In terms of numbers, compared with the 14 clubs exiting from the third-tier league last year, this year's number has fallen to six, which is quite "progress".
But judging from the magnitude of the withdrawal from the team, it is much greater than last year.
Data map: 2020 Super League champion Jiangsu team.
Photo courtesy of the Chinese Super League/IC photo
The Jiangsu team is the 2020 Super League champion, and the defending champion will be disbanded in the next year. This is a sensational event that went out of the circle to a foreign country and is rare in the world of football.
As for Beijing Chengfeng, the former Beijing Renhe, the team that moved through Shanghai, Shaanxi, Guizhou, and finally settled in Beijing, although drifting along the way, there were also moments of rushing into the AFC Champions League and winning the FA Cup.
Before Evergrande entered the Guangzhou team, they were named Shaanxi Chanba at the time. They were once known as "Real Madrid of China", and they had the devil's home stadium full of stadiums.
However, these memories will disappear in the dust of history as they disband.
Just like the "ten champions" Liaozu, which is gradually forgotten by people, the glorious Tianjin Tianhai, the distinctive style of the old team Yanbian, and the "eight crowns" Dalian Shide...
One year after Tianjin Tianhai was disbanded, Chinese football suffered even greater turmoil.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Tong Yu
14+6, in just two years, as many as 20 professional football clubs disappeared.
So now, Jiangsu fans, Tianjin fans and other people involved are heartbroken, and more fans are just commonplace numbness, and even the fluke that the home team is still alive.
Even the fans of the top teams in the Chinese Super League have become very "Buddha".
In the past, it is hard to imagine that every year when the Guangzhou team, a big buyer in the transfer market, became only out and out, the outside world did not raise too many accusations...
In the 2019 Super League season, the Guangzhou team won the eighth Chinese Super League trophy in team history.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Chen Jimin
In fact, all rational fans know well that the Chinese Super League that has entered the post-Jinyuan era will never return to the time when tens of millions of euros were introduced to introduce big-name foreign aid and domestic players.
With stable investors and lineup, the team can continue to live, which is the greatest happiness.
Most teams are likely to repeat the mistakes of the defending champions at any time.
This numbness is terrible.
The root causes are the superimposed effects of the club’s own operations, strategic adjustments to shareholders, and changes in the economic environment under the epidemic.
The most intuitive feeling is that the investment environment brought by Jinyuan Football has deteriorated, and the club’s long-term over-expenditure-style huge investment will eventually be unsustainable.
During the ebb of Jinyuan, perhaps the next team will collapse.
Those celebraters who were rushed to the sky during the Jin Yuan era would be bruised all over their bodies in an instant.
The most successful Chinese Super League team in the past decade is the Guangzhou team. However, according to the club’s public financial information, Guangzhou Football Club lost 576 million yuan in 2013; lost 483 million yuan in 2014; lost 953 million yuan in 2015; and lost in 2016. 812 million yuan; a loss of 987 million yuan in 2017, a loss of 1.8 billion yuan in 2018, and a loss of 1.9 billion yuan in 2019.
Of course, it is not just the Guangzhou team that has made huge losses. These shocking figures are only due to the fact that Guangzhou Football Club is listed on the New Third Board, and there will be a public financial report every year.
As for the revenue situation of other clubs that smashed money in the Jinyuan era, one can imagine.
Screenshot of Guangzhou Football Club's 2019 financial report
The influx of capital in the Jinyuan era created a prosperous scene, but it did not bring the expected development of Chinese professional football clubs. The clubs did not have much successful commercial development. Instead, they relied more on the blood transfusion of investors. I lost myself in prosperity and drunkenness.
It is absolutely impossible for the sub-health operation model to continue for a long time, but now, the node where the gold dollar bubble bursts unexpectedly, and the pain that comes with it has made many people feel suffocated.
Data map: Wuhan team and Qingdao team in the 2020 Super League match.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Yang Bo
It's impossible to say that it can't be broken, but can the broken Chinese football really stand up?
In an interview a few days ago, Chen Xuyuan, chairman of the Chinese Football Association, said that Chinese football needs to find a development path that suits the national conditions.
This is indeed a problem that Chinese football needs to solve urgently. This road includes many aspects, such as club business development, youth training, league operations and so on.
But today's Chinese football is still far from finding this path, and these distances are made up of individual details.
For example, the Zhejiang team’s new season China Division 1 jersey was released. The overall design was inspired by Bai Juyi’s "Spring on the Lake". And it has connotation.
But if the team enters the Super League, the Zhejiang team will be forced to change to the Nike version of the uniform that has been repeatedly complained about by the outside world over the years.
When the two versions of the jersey are placed in front of you, you can tell at a glance which is better, and fans will naturally use their wallets to vote.
There have been voices from the outside world that the purchasing power of Chinese fans is insufficient. The problem is that the club’s own fan surroundings and game clothing are really taken care of in the design and marketing links?
Who would be willing to pay for those unsatisfactory peripheral products of the Super League?
Data map: Beijing Guoan team home fans.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Mao Jianjun
Huang Shenghua, the interim CEO of the Chinese Football Professional League, said in an earlier interview that the Guangzhou Division of the Chinese Super League is expected to drive 1 billion GDP in the new season.
As a football project with a large audience base, it does have a lot of potential in terms of economic benefits.
Next season, the Super League will expand to 18 teams. Based on the 23,300 average number of spectators per game in the 2019 season, if the home and away games are fully restored, then 7.038 million people will enter the stadium to watch the game. It will be in ticketing and around the team. , Catering, travel and many other aspects bring huge economic benefits.
According to statistics from the Chinese Super League in the 2020 season, the Chinese Super League has attracted a total of 389 million TV viewers, and the cumulative number of TV viewers is 1.65 billion.
Data map: Tianjin Jinmen Tigers fans at home.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Tong Yu
Overall, the Chinese football audience base is not small, but how to stimulate the consumption power of this group and bring economic benefits to the league and clubs. This requires more wisdom from practitioners and a more down-to-earth approach to provide fans with better Service and watching experience.
As a professional football league, this is the only way to get rid of the pseudo-professional label and become more independent. Only in this way can Chinese professional football have a way out.
But at the node where the Chinese players are not connected, the lack of appreciation adds a lot of difficulty to this road.
I hope that the surviving professional teams and practitioners this year will be able to survive this painful period and find the right track for Chinese football as soon as possible.
(Author Bian Liqun)