Zhang Zhe, all media reporter of Guangzhou Daily
The Chinese Football Association officially announced the first stage of the 2022 Chinese Super League schedule yesterday. This season, the Chinese Super League will be divided into four stages with 34 rounds, basically every four days.
How was this delayed schedule formulated?
What is the Chinese Super League system this year?
What difficulties did the preparations for the Chinese Super League encounter this year?
The person in charge of the preparatory team of the Chinese Football Federation made a public answer to this yesterday.
The double round robin system will not change the division between the two teams
At the request of all clubs this year, the preparatory team of the Chinese Football Federation originally arranged the schedule according to the plan of restoring the home and away system and expanding the army to 18 teams after playing 34 rounds in the whole season.
However, according to the domestic epidemic situation, the Chinese Football Federation has changed the original competition system plan. On the premise of ensuring that 34 rounds are played in the whole season, the preparation team of the Chinese Football Federation refers to the competition system of the Chinese League last year and adopts three divisions for four stages. The double round-robin system of each stage consists of 10 rounds, 8 rounds, 8 rounds, and 8 rounds.
The grouping of the three competition areas is carried out in a serpentine arrangement of "host + last season's ranking". The only host in the three competition areas is Meizhou Hakka.
Therefore, the group rankings of each competition area are: the host Meizhou Hakka (Meizhou Division A1), the first Shandong Taishan (Haikou Division B1), the second Shanghai Haigang (Dalian Division C1), and the third Guangzhou Team (Dalian Division C2) ), fourth place Changchun Yatai (B2 in Haikou Division), fifth place Beijing Guoan (A2 in Meizhou Division), sixth place Shenzhen Football (A3 in Meizhou Division)... and so on.
After each stage, the teams in the group will perform two or two rotations according to the previous ranking, and finally complete the four stages after three rotations.
The top two qualifying teams from each group will serve as seed teams and will always be placed in one group for the first three stages.
That is to say: Meizhou Hakka (A1) and Beijing Guoan (A2), Shandong Taishan (B1) and Changchun Yatai (B2), Shanghai Haigang (C1) and Guangzhou Team (C2) are always ranked in Meizhou, Shanghai and Guangzhou respectively in the first three stages. Haikou and Dalian divisions.
Until the fourth stage, the 6 seeded teams are in the same group, but the three divisions to choose which division to be in needs to be decided by lottery, which means that only two teams can not change divisions in four stages.
In each stage, the 6 teams in the group will play in a double round robin, according to the rules of the top 12 arranged by the AFC. For example, the first round is: 1VS5, 2VS4, 3VS6, and so on.
According to this new competition system, although the Chinese Football Association has only announced the specific schedule of the first stage, in fact, the groupings of the four stages can be clearly deduced.
The specific schedule of the other three stages has not been finalized only because of factors such as whether the venue will be changed in the future and whether the game will be postponed.
The rhythm of the game is basically 4 days for each team
The four stages of the Chinese Super League this year are as follows: the first stage from June 3 to July 12, the second stage from July 21 to August 21, the third stage from August 30 to September 30, The fourth stage is October 9-November 9.
A total of 306 games in 34 rounds of the Chinese Super League were completed in 5 months.
From the specific schedule of the first stage, it can be seen that each round of the Chinese Super League this season is played in three days, and each team will basically follow the rhythm of one match every four days, with a gap of three days between every two rounds.
Although this rhythm has one more rest period than the three-day competition in the second stage of the Chinese Super League last year, it has now entered the summer, and such a rhythm can be called a "devil's schedule".
And this rhythm will be maintained for 5 months throughout the season, which is a great test for players' physical fitness. How to minimize injuries through reasonable rotation has become the number one problem for the coaches of each team to solve.
The preparatory team of the Chinese Football Federation explained that in order to allow each team to have more rest time, a week of adjustment will be given after the half of each stage, and there will also be an 8-day truce between each stage of the game for the rotation of the division.
The games in the Dalian Division are distributed at three time points: 15:30, 17:30, and 19:30; the games in the Haikou Division are distributed at 17:30 and 19:30; the games in the Meizhou Division are distributed at 16:30 and 17:30. : 30, 19:30 three time points.
This is also the arrangement made by the Chinese Football Federation based on the current actual weather conditions in the three divisions.
In order to ensure the health of the players, sufficient water replenishment time is arranged for each game, and off-field is strictly in accordance with the requirements of FIFA, equipped with various medical security means including AED cardiac pacemakers.
The preparatory team of the Chinese Football Federation stated that considering the current domestic epidemic situation and schedule arrangements, there is a high probability that the four stages of the season will adopt a competition system.
However, if the epidemic situation improves in the second half of the year, they will also actively try to customize.
At present, the Haikou Municipal Government has approved the opening ceremony at 19:30 on June 3 and the opening match between Shandong Taishan and the Zhejiang team at 20:00 to be open to fans, and some subsequent events in this division will also be considered open to fans. Events in the Meizhou and Dalian divisions are not considered open to fans for the time being.