Dec 27. 2016- Much thanks to a huge football friend of a president, the Chinese are quickly and obviously buying their way to football relevance. Starting with the £49 million purchase of Hulk, Shanghai SIPG recently broke their own transfer record spending £62 million on Oscar. Fellow China Super League club Shanghai Shenhua have made Carlos Tevez the highest payed player in football with a weekly salary of £615,000. These purchases are only the beginning. Several Premier League coaches have already voiced their concern about top players leaving their clubs for better pay days.
China’s plans don’t stop there though. President Xi Jinping wants their international team to become a top level squad by 2050. He plans to have 70,000 stadiums throughout the country by 2020, and bring in foreign coaches to train their youth. China’s men national team haven’t qualified for the World Cup since 2002, their first ever, where they failed to register a goal, and lost all three of their matches. For the upcoming 2018 World Cup, they are winless in five games. Given they are moving in the right direction after hiring Marcello Lippi as head coach of the men’s national team. However, like the players they brought to China, they broke the bank for him as well, granting him a £20 million per year contract till 2019.
Now given this certainly isn’t the way everyone wants football to grow in any country, but money isn’t the only new thing coming from China. Players recall having nowhere to play when they were young children, and now summer camps with foreign coaches are becoming more, and more available for everyone. Most importantly, they have brought back some honor, which is the essence of any sport on the planet, to Chinese football. In the past, football and corruption came hand in hand according to players. Hopefully, with President Xi Jinping being the super fan he is, the country will keep moving in the right direction. With that being said, he has kept his expectations realistic, and remained patient. The football world must do so as well.
Article by: Nick Husni
The post Chinese paying their way into the football world appeared first on Sports 961.