Zhejiang, who finished third in last season's Chinese Super League, are likely to miss out on qualifying for this year's AFC Champions League, according to reporter Jia Yanfeng. The AFC has revealed that they have shown great concern over Zhejiang's failure to prepare their stadium to compliance standards before the start of the qualifiers. There were even inquiries about whether the Zhejiang team intended to withdraw from the tournament. According to reports, Zhejiang team has not been able to receive investment from shareholders since the start of this season's Chinese Super League, and the club has been actively seeking a solution, but no progress has been made. The lack of money has become the main reason for Zhejiang's withdrawal from the AFC Champions League.
Greentown group and zhejiang energy zhejiang stock reform work did not make progress, the current funds can maintain the zhejiang super league operations, but to participate in the champions league, zhejiang team to bear the venue renovation security and a series of additional costs, the original greentown want to and zhejiang energy to share this part of the cost, but due to the two sides did not reach an agreement on the reform of the music equity, both sides refused to invest in bear the cost, zhejiang fans did not give up to let the team to participate in the Champions League qualification, the media reported that Zhejiang fans are willing to collectively crowdfund the costs to keep the Champions League qualification, after all, this is the Zhejiang team back to the Champions League group stage after 12 years. According to the schedule, Zhejiang will face Thai Premier League's third-place team, Thai Port, in the AFC Champions League qualifying round on August 22 in Beijing.
And according to Miao Yuan, a well-known domestic soccer media person, Zhejiang is likely to face a heavy penalty from AFC if the team withdraws from this year's AFC Champions League qualifying tournament. Miao Yuan wrote on his personal microblog that Zhejiang's situation is really bad. There is no need to add burden to the Asian Champions League. There is no competition that can't be withdrawn for the survival of the club. If you are fined by AFC, you will be fined. Anyway, as long as the club can stay in CSL forever, it will win. As a fan, I really can't bear to see a CSL team pull out of the AFC Champions League due to lack of money, which will have a negative impact on the image of Chinese soccer in Asia. However, from Zhejiang's point of view, we can't think about the image of the AFC Champions League and the Chinese Super League when the team's survival is in question. Looking at the already disbanded Hebei team and the soon-to-be disbanded Shenzhen team, I guess Zhejiang fans, like me, think that as long as the team can survive, it is more important than anything else.
The examples of Zhejiang and Shenzhen show us that CSL clubs are still suffering from the impact of Jinyuan soccer, with clubs short of operating funds and no progress in equity reform. The root cause of all this is attributed to former CFA president Chen Xuyuan, who has been taken away by the authorities for investigation. If he hadn't led the corporatization that resulted in a large number of companies investing in soccer exiting the game, CSL might not have fallen here. There is nothing wrong with implementing de-corporatization if it allows clubs to run their own business, but looking at the current situation in the CSL. If corporations do not provide financial support to the team clubs, operations will become difficult. Therefore, I think dear President Chen has pushed the corporatization process too quickly, leading to the current frequent chaos in the CSL and a serious decline in the overall level of the league.
