This season, Shanghai Seaport is playing the best form of the past four years, they are invincible in the league, and have recently won five consecutive victories, and are on the verge of winning the Chinese Super League title again after five years.
However, Harbour's strong performance this season has been questioned by many fans and media as they have been "taken care of" by numerous referees since the start of the season. Not only have they gained some undeserved league points, but they have also escaped a number of red card penalties from the referees.
In the first derby against Shenhua, the port relied on a non-existent corner kick and was lucky to get a point when Wu Lei scored a goal to equalize the score. In matches against Tianjin Jinmen Tigers, Beijing Guoan, and Shandong Taishan, four goals from three opponents were disallowed. In matches against Henan Songshan Longmen and Nantong Zhiyun, Hong Kong relied on three unwarranted penalties for two wins and six points.
For the players, Cai Huikang shanked Shenhua's Wu Xi's toe bone and injured Guoan's Yang Liyu's ankle. He got away with it and didn't even get a yellow card. Again against Jinmen Tigers, Zhang Lin's shoveling action not only destroyed Jinmen Tigers' threatening counterattack, but also broke the ankle of tomorrow's Tianjin player. However, such a bad action only received a yellow card.
It's fair to say that the Harbors have taken advantage of the referees in the Super League this season and that's why they can showcase their performances. However, the real litmus test for the Harbour Team has now come. In the middle of this month, Harbour Team will take part in this season's AFC Champions League playoffs, and their opponent is the Thai Premier League's Pathum League.
Recently, AFC announced the referee information for the match between Seaport and Batang United, when the Bahraini referee team will enforce the key match. Obviously, the foreign referees will not be as blindly biased in favor of Seaport as the Chinese referees. Without the protection of the referees, I wonder if Seaport will be able to take down their rivals, Baton Rouge United, as well as the Chinese Super League.
This season, under the leadership of Spanish coach Javier, Harbour has changed its previous attacking style of flying the offensive flag, instead defending tenaciously in the half-court and scoring on counter-attacks by capitalizing on opponents' mistakes. This style of play makes the Harbour players' defensive moves very big and often hurtful.
Nonetheless, Harbour's defense was not completely impeccable and they were still broken down by their opponents many times in the league, but the referees and VAR referees helped them a lot. A number of games against Jinmen Tigers, Guoan and Taishan saw 4 very clean goals disallowed by their opponents.
I'm afraid these scenes will be hard to appear in the AFC Championship again. After all, referees in other countries have their own scale and standard of enforcement. It's impossible to just look at who the team is, regardless of whether the rules allow it or not, just like the Chinese Super League referees.
Of course, compared to Pathum United of the Thai Premier League, Seaport's strength is clearly superior. After all, the Harbour Team has Oscar, Vargas and other powerful foreigners, and the "Chinese Messi" Wu Lei sits in the front line. As a result, Harbour Team achieved a great victory in the AFC Champions League qualifier against Baton Rouge. Here, we also hope that Seaports can play a really convincing performance in the match, so that those fans who shout "Seaports can only win by referees" will shut up...
