If Shandong Taishan team itself has no problems, then other teams basically have no chance. Is this true? It's actually not as simple as everyone thinks.
In the era of gold-dollar soccer, Shandong Taishan had little advantage. After all, at that time, financial strength was a symbol of strength. Although Shandong Taishan was not short of money at that time, the team's massive capital investment had to go through layers of audits, unlike other teams that were so flexible. However, with the recession of the golden capitalization era, the transfer bubble of the Chinese Super League gradually burst. With the implementation of various policies of the Football Association, Shandong Taishan's advantage is very obvious, the value of the players can really return to the essence.
The strength of a team is usually determined by foreign aid. But when those high-level foreign aiders leave the Chinese Super League and teams have to chase the cost-effective, the level of domestic players becomes the benchmark of the club's strength. Obviously, if we compare the real strength of domestic players, there are only three teams leading the way in the Chinese Super League:Guangzhou Evergrande, the landlord Shanghai Harbor, and Shandong Taishan, which has the best youth training.
Guangzhou Evergrande's domestic players were all smashed with capital by the golden era back then. Boss Xu has included almost all the national team including the head coach (Lippi) in Guangzhou Evergrande. Do you think the strength of the team can be poor? However, with the decline of capital, Cannavaro has become the last jeremiad of Evergrande's domestic players in 2019. With the exit of capital, Guangzhou Evergrande, which was brought together because of money, eventually fell apart because of money, once dissolved and withdrew from the Chinese football world. Although he has been reduced to China's first division today, his life has not been easy.
Then there is Shanghai Harbor. Shanghai's dominance among domestic players is mainly due to the excellent players from the Genbao base. However, this is only Stanley Wang, Yan Junling and Wu Lei (after all, Genbao youth training not only supply Shanghai, but also consider Shanghai Shenhua). Shanghai Harbour domestic players are still strong, mainly because the background behind the state-owned enterprise is really strong and not affected by any FA policy. Both the neutrality of the club's name and the share reform, plus the factor of Chen Xuyuan's role as head of the FA at the time. While everyone is pursuing how to survive, Shanghai is still using the "buy buy buy buy pay" approach and continues to hesitate to buy!
However, we have to face a very embarrassing problem. Basically the squad is so strong that it hasn't played as well as it should have in previous seasons. The main reason for this is the manager's poor training ability.
Speaking of Shandong Taishan, in recent years the team's attraction focus has been on foreign aid, the introduction of domestic players is not much. In previous seasons, including the previous double championship, Shandong Taishan basically relied on the domestic team to have the last laugh, and these domestic players are basically from the Luneng youth training. Just later the team's striker really can not find good domestic talent (Guo Tianyu is expected to become the new core, study abroad half a year after the state did not come back), had to let the foreign aid instead. As for the season before, the team also introduced a lot of domestic players, all because the "job search information" filled the desk, the new season there are many mistakes.
Therefore, the question arises, who is stronger between Shanghai Harbor and Shandong Taishan as the two strongest teams in China at present?
So far, if you look at the Chinese Super League standings, Shandong Taishan simply cannot be compared to Shanghai Seaport. It can also be said that Shanghai Seaport is the current giant and unique in the league!
But is the gap between Shandong Taishan and Shanghai Harbor really that big? We don't have to jump to conclusions. We should refer to the first meeting between the two teams this season just to find some clues.
In the 14th round of the Chinese Super League, Shandong Taishan met Shanghai Harbor. Because both teams have their own reasons, the domestic players are basically ranked at the top. Throughout the game, Shanghai Seaport had a certain advantage in possession, but Shandong Taishan's number of threats and ability to seize opportunities in the first 30 meters were higher than Shanghai Seaport. Another data shows that Shandong Taishan's possession of the ball and threatening the ball is very scattered, such as Liu Binbin, Chen Pu, Li Yuanyi, Fellaini, Moises and even Liu Yang, the side defender, all have the opportunity to threaten the goal directly or indirectly. In this regard, Shanghai and Shanghai Port seem a bit weak.
From this, we can see that Shanghai Seaport is not as good as Shandong Taishan in the overall play of domestic players. In other words, if Oscar leaves, Shanghai Seaport's attacking power will definitely drop to a higher level.
But why is Shanghai Harbor so much better than Shandong Taishan? Is it because one Oscar is better than all the players in Shandong Taishan? This is not the case, mainly because Shandong Taishan has experienced too many ups and downs this season. Whether it's pre-season or post-season, Shandong Taishan's preparations and games feel completely out of shape. Head coaches Hao Wei and Fabio, including core player Sun Junhao, have dragged down the entire Shandong Taishan team.
It was a period of time when the entire Tarzan team basically panicked, with no decent pre-game arrangements and no targeted quota arrangements. When the game came around, they just responded to a predicament with the mentality of "soldiers blocking water and dirt". Naturally, the results were not very good, which is reasonable.
But the turning point came when Choi Kang-hee took over, and the old man was not simple, nor was his tactics so powerful, mainly because of his control of the team, targeted psychological counseling, and almost all of the tip-top results were immediate.
While Shanghai Seaport has also made great strides during this period, Shandong Taishan also has an excellent record. The only chance of competition was a direct match between the two teams above. However, due to the referee inexplicably blowing away Fellaini's goal, Taishan ended up with three points a piece.
Back to regular Shandong Taishan is extremely scary. After Cui Kangxi took office, Shandong Taishan only lost one game, that is, away to the Zhejiang team. I believe that friends who have seen such a game know that the objective factors of the vegetable field limits the Taishan team too many opportunities, and ultimately was killed in seconds is also a very helpless status quo.
If we say Shandong Taishan normal play, last season's Wuhan three towns, basically no chance.
In their first season after promotion to the Super League, Wuhan Sanzhen staged a Kaiserslautern Myth in Shandong Taishan, but did Wuhan Sanzhen really play well?
Maybe, at least he is much better than other teams. But compared to the Shandong Taishan team, it's still a bit worse.
There's a reason why I say that. Consider this. From the first game of last season, Taishan suffered serious injuries. Fellaini missed many games and Zheng Zheng was suspended by the FA. Then Taishan started a nightmare season journey. The entire starting lineup was injured and Son Junho was transferred to the Korean national team for the World Cup. At the critical moment, the FA stopped two to five matches for various reasons, directly ruining Shandong Taishan's hopes of chasing points.
Until the last round of the league, Shandong Taishan collected the strongest lineup and has been fighting injuries and suspensions. Although I kept chasing and equalizing points in the end, I had no choice but to defend my title because of the inferior goal difference and finish off the Shenhua of Wuhan Three Towns.
If even half a season, Shandong Taishan can make up the main lineup, then the final championship will not be behind. But after all, it has become a fact, and then regret will not help. We can only focus on the present, look forward.
It's not that we're intentionally touting Shandong Taishan, but rather that in the current Chinese soccer environment, it's really not easy for other teams to beat the ever-healthy and stable Shandong Taishan. There is only one factor to beat Taishan: Shandong Taishan itself has internal problems, which allows the opponents to take advantage of it, at least for the time being.
