The day after Riyadh Victory, led by international soccer superstar Cairo, arrived in Shenzhen, the professional soccer club representing the city announced its dissolution, according to Tao Xinlei, a reporter from the Southern Metropolis Daily. This was announced on the morning of January 22, Beijing time.
Shamrock Announcement.
The CFA announced the list of the second batch of teams that have completed their debt settlement, with Dalian Ren and Shenzhen becoming the only Chinese professional soccer league teams that have not completed their debt settlement. The Dalian Ren club announced its dissolution on the same night. Immediately after, Shenzhen team also followed in the footsteps of the dust, become the last five seasons in the Chinese Super League, the seventh announced the dissolution of the club. Before that, Tianjin Tianhai, Jiangsu, Chongqing Liangjiang Athletic, Wuhan Changjiang, Guangzhou City and Dalian Ren were also dissolved.
Pictures are of Zheng Zhi and Li Yi from 20 years ago.
In those days, everyone on the team was a star player. Visual China Photo.
Visual China image showing Shenzhen Football Club winning the 2004 season of the Chinese Super League that year.
Shenzhen soccer team, the rise and fall of 30 years of change
Shenzhen Football Club was founded on January 26th, 1994, and in the year of its establishment, it entered the first division with the title of champion of the second division, and then won the title of the first division again in 1995, and was successfully promoted to the first division of the first division.
SZFC won their first Chinese Super League title in 2004, followed by a successful run to the quarterfinals of the AFC Champions League the following year. That period is regarded as the team's peak moment.
The team was relegated from the Chinese Super League to the Central League in 2011. After several years of silence, by November 2018, Shamrocks emerged as runners-up in the Central League, finishing second in the 2018 edition of the league and successfully advancing to the 2019 season of the Premier League.
Shenzhen Football Club failed to secure relegation in the 2019 Chinese Super League season, instead being relegated in an early round.
However, in May 2020, the Shenzhen soccer team entered the 2020 season of the Chinese Super League as a replacement as Tianjin Tianhai withdrew from the league and announced its dissolution. Rumor has it that the general manager of the Shenzhen men's football team at the time paid a bribe of 50 million yuan to the top leaders of the CFA and asked for their help in getting Tianjin Tianhai disqualified from the Chinese Super League, as well as getting SZFF back into the Chinese Super League as a team that had been relegated.
The Shamrocks managed to stay up in the 2020 season and continue to compete in the Super League.
However, by the 2023 season, Shamrocks had fallen on hard times and could only manage 13 points in 30 rounds of the league, finishing at the bottom of the table and eventually relegated to the Central League.
