The former 8-time Chinese Super League (CSL) champion Guangzhou Evergrande (Guangzhou team) collapsed after the gold dollar soccer bubble completely burst. After the club's financial chain was broken, many of Guangzhou's big-name foreign aiders, naturalized players, and popular international players left the team.
Now, of the seven naturalized players in the Guangzhou team, only Jiang Guangtai is still playing in the Chinese Super League, but he has also moved to Shanghai Port. The other six naturalized players have returned to their countries of origin, and Xiaotao Tao-tao has officially resumed his Peruvian citizenship after completing the naturalization process last month.
The second naturalized player is coming soon after Xiao Tao Tao. He is Gaolat, who was successfully naturalized four years ago, but has not played a single game for the national football team.
Recently, according to several Brazilian sports media reports, Gallart's naturalization process is in the final stage. If there are no surprises, Gallart will officially regain his Brazilian citizenship in the next 1-2 months. When going through these naturalization procedures, Gallart only needs to pay $250, of which $50 is the fee charged by the Brazilian civil affairs department, and the other $200 is the notary fee for Gallart to provide the naturalization materials.
Golat, 32, landed in the Chinese Super League in 2015, joining Chinese Super League juggernaut Guangzhou Evergrande for a transfer value of 15 million euros, which set a new record transfer fee for the Chinese Super League at the time.
Since joining Evergrande, Golat has helped the team win three Chinese Super League titles, and he has become a key naturalization target for the club after the Chinese Football Association launched its player naturalization program. According to conservative estimates, Evergrande has paid at least 400 million yuan to Gallart over the past few years in order to convince him to naturalize.
At the beginning of 2019, Gallart completed all the naturalization procedures and was officially naturalized as a Chinese player. However, by failing to meet the five-year residency requirement in China, Golat was unable to qualify to represent the national soccer team in international matches.
With Evergrande's club breaking its financial chain and defaulting on wages, Golat was the first to terminate his contract with Guangzhou at the beginning of last year, returning to Brazil and joining Barclays Premier League side Santos on a free. Due to poor form, Golat was swept away by Santos FC last summer and transferred to Barclays B team Bahia.
In order to stop playing for the team as a foreigner, Gallart started to withdraw his Chinese citizenship and resume his Brazilian citizenship last year. Now, Golat's naturalization process is almost complete and he will soon become a Brazilian citizen again.
In other words, the hundreds of millions of dollars Evergrande paid to naturalize Golat are now wasted, and he hasn't even played a single international match. What's even more ironic is that after 400 million dollars in the Chinese Super League, Golat only paid 250 dollars.
Over the past few years, at the initiative of the Football Association, Chinese Super League clubs have invested a lot of money in naturalizing many foreign players, but very few of them have actually been able to play for the national team in the World Qualifiers, and their performances in the World Qualifiers have been very disappointing.
It can be said that Chinese soccer has paid both the price in terms of results and money for the FA's failed naturalization program. Only the agents and FA insiders who earned a lot of profit through the naturalization of players became the winners. In this regard, we can't help but ask who should now bear the responsibility for the failure of the national football team's naturalization program? Are Chen Xuyuan, Liu Yi and Li Tie enough?
