Before writing this headline, I thought for a long time about how to describe the traditional culture of the Chinese soccer locker room. This culture means that in a team, there is only one big brother player who has absolute say, even if there are other veteran players, they can only be ranked second or even lower. Of course, the premise is that the player in the first place must be in complete control of the other players, otherwise there will be problems of discord in the locker room.
Evergrande's success is said to be the golden dollar soccer, which will not be commented here for the time being. It is because of enough investment that Evergrande has attracted so many good players and achieved great success. Zheng Zhi and Sun Xiang joined Evergrande in 2010. At that time, the Guangzhou team was still in the Central League, and it should be said that they gave enough treatment. These two national soccer teams with experience of traveling in Europe were willing to join China's first division and work hard from scratch.
Their past experiences were the same. At that time, Zheng Zhi had become the captain of the national team and Sun Xiang was the main defender of the national soccer team. The former had played as a starter for Charlton in the English Premier League and the latter was the first Chinese player to play in a Champions League final. In terms of absolute role in the team, Zheng Zhi certainly had a slight upper hand.
So when other players are looking forward to Zheng Zhima, Sun Xiang won't have that attitude. Plus the two don't have much of a personal friendship, so when they're at the same club, it's inevitable that disagreements will erupt.
In the 14th round of the 2014 Chinese Super League, Guangzhou Evergrande's away match against Beijing Guoan, the conflict between them completely intensified:Zheng Zhi almost lost the ball in a backfield defense because he didn't keep his eye on his man. Luckily, left back Sun Xiang managed to fix the mistake in time, but when Sun got up, he yelled at Zheng Zhi. Being the captain, Zheng Zhi naturally felt uncomfortable, so the two started spraying each other directly on the field.
Fortunately, teammates stepped up to open up the team's two veterans. However, if you look closely at the difference, it's not hard to see that, in fact, the teammates chose to side with Zheng Zhi, while Sun Xiang seemed a bit lonely.
The following year, Sun Xiang received an invitation from Shanghai SIPG. So, without hesitation, he decided to return to Shanghai to continue playing. It can't be said that Zheng Zhi and Sun Xiang eventually turned against each other, only that the two of them weren't close enough to make it difficult to work together on the same team for long periods of time. At the end of the day, the culture of Chinese soccer has always had a standard that there is only one big-name player in the locker room, and only then can this team remain harmonious and coexist.
